Heavy footsteps broke the deathly stillness of the battered Left Route Army camp.
Led by Chu Bai, Anping County's eight hundred black-armored Mystic Guards entered the camp with unhurried steps, a dark flood of steel.
Compared with the aristocratic clans' private troops and the county survivors inside—men who had cast aside helmets and armor and were caked in blood—the Anping troops stood in immaculate formation.
They showed not the slightest sign of distress. Their dark-gold Gold-Averting Mystic Armor did not bear a single decent scratch from a Demon Beast.
What truly sent the entire camp into an uproar, though, was the dozen or so heavily laden supply wagons following the black-armored Mystic Guards.
"Are those... Mid-Grade Spirit Stones? Heavens, the spiritual energy is so dense!"
"Hundred-Year Blood Ginseng! And Jade Bone Vine! Those are premium main ingredients for refining Foundation Establishment Pills!"
When the cold wind lifted a corner of the hides covering the wagons, revealing mountains of dazzling blue Mid-Grade Spirit Stones and century-old spirit herbs sealed in jade boxes, their medicinal fragrance spilling out, the entire Left Route Army camp descended into a frenzy unlike any before.
Chu Bai had long since told Hu Hao to "leave no traces" and secretly transport more than seventy percent of Soul-Severing Valley's core resources back beneath Anping County. Yet even the thirty percent of spoils deliberately put on display was enough to drive cultivators who had just scraped past death into a fever of greed.
"Lord of Northern Peace, divine in might! Anping troops, mighty in battle!"
No one knew who started it, but the nearly thirty thousand survivors erupted in thunderous cheers.
In these troubled times, when human lives were worth less than grass, whoever could lead them to victory and show them real cultivation resources was a god in