Han Lin's departure made Spring Sword and the other maids grind their teeth in hatred, yet there was nothing they could do.
Giving him a Royal Court Blessed Land token had been personally promised by that one. Whoever wished to go back on it would have to face the consequences alone; no one dared to be the first to raise the matter.
Thus, the situation remained deadlocked.
Bloodflow Cloud, Blazing Sun Sword Heir, Six Paths Saint Child, and the others harassed and ambushed them day and night without a moment's pause, swiftly compressing the Tushan Maid Corps' range of activity on a massive scale.
Whenever the army arrived, they immediately fled.
Whenever the army left, they immediately latched on again, like chewing gum that could not be shaken off.
In the end, the Tushan Maid Corps simply stopped paying them any heed. They found a treasure land where seventeen third-rank spirit veins converged, set up a spirit-gathering formation, took out the spirit stones they had been preparing for years, and devoted themselves wholeheartedly to cultivation, ignoring the turmoil outside.
No matter how the various factions tempted them, or even destroyed everything behind them, they paid it no mind.
Among the 108,000 Dao soldiers, even the weakest were at Foundation Establishment. In a place rich in spiritual energy, with vast quantities of captured spirit stones to replenish them, they had no fear of being besieged.
No, it was not a siege.
The Golden Core prodigies fled at the first sight of them, not daring to fight head-on at all. The maids could go wherever they pleased; they simply could not disperse to control spirit veins across different places.
The two sides remained locked in this stalemate, neither able to do anything to the other.
More than a decade passed like this.