Jiang Ding turned to face the army before him.
To his left, banners stood thick as a forest. Blood qi filled the sky, and a dim yellow halo of the Age of Dharma's End spread outward.
Supremes, celestial beings, Integration cultivators, and others stood straight as spears. Each wore a standard-issue helmet and faceplate, with standard-issue magical weapons, gloves, boots, talismans, and array implements... From head to toe, they looked like iron warriors.
They were armed to the teeth. Not an inch of flesh showed.
These complete sets of magical treasures were no haphazard assortment. Once combined, the array patterns on their helmets, armor, boots, jade pendants, and other treasures connected to form a miniature Supreme Great Sun Annihilation Formation, uniting offense and defense... Mainly offense, with a sliver of defense thrown in. Its edge was unmatched, the very pinnacle of attack.
The formations built into the equipment varied in grade. The lowest was a second-tier Supreme Great Sun Annihilation Formation for Foundation Establishment cultivators; the highest was a ninth-tier, high-grade formation with power comparable to an Eight-Tribulation Supreme. They also possessed an innate array-linking function: lower-tier formations would merge into higher-tier ones on their own, sending the combined formation's power soaring layer upon layer.
These were the Supreme Great Sun Sword Immortal Maiden's Dao Soldiers, an army drawn from every prodigy and mighty cultivator across the seven star domains.
It had taken nearly a million years of immortal-Dao wisdom to forge them.
Their equipment, their formations, and the Supremes, celestial beings, Integration, Void Refining, and Spirit Transformation cultivators who made up those formations embodied the seven star domains' achievements in forging, arrays, talismans, military formations, education, and every other field. A weakness in any one of them would have made this formidable army impossible.
At the heart of each