Yang Mie's expression changed.
"You mean..."
"Yes."
Zhou Xuan pushed his back a little straighter against the cabin wall. His ribs still ached faintly.
"As long as those scattered Hideous Demons keep roaming the Northern Lands, sooner or later, the Demon Spike's aura will draw them here. One or two wouldn't matter, but if dozens, even hundreds, of surviving Demonic Beasts all poured into the Ice Abyss—"
"They'd feed that spike."
Yang Mie finished the thought, his voice dry.
Zhou Xuan nodded.
Little Stone understood. His fists clenched and loosened several times.
"Then... what if we smash it?"
Little Stone ventured the question.
"Didn't you just seal that spike? While it's quiet, we could gather everyone's strength and pull it out in one go—"
"We can't."
Zhou Xuan shook his head.
"I told you, forcing it out would count as an attack. The Colossal Being's Battle Will Core would explode. The lingering War Intent of over a thousand cultivators at or above the Nascent Soul Realm would detonate at once, on top of ten thousand years' worth of accumulated Law Power. Do you think half the Northern Lands would be enough for that blast?"
Little Stone fell silent.
Yang Mie paced twice around the Control Panel, then stopped.
"Then it's a dead end. We can't kill it, and we can't leave it alone."
Silence settled over the cabin again.
If they killed it, the Northern Lands would be destroyed.
If they left it alone, the Demon Spike would eventually awaken completely.
What the Northern Lands had once relied upon was about to become the source of their destruction.
Zhou Xuan closed his eyes and quickly ran through every resource he could call upon.
The Divine Statue in Jade Dragon City had just reached the late Spirit Transformation stage, but it