By saying this, Li Chen had clearly decided that the benefits of conquering Nine Ridges Mountain outweighed the drawbacks.
Different understandings of cultivation provisions and ore veins led to vastly different degrees of utilization. Nine Ridges Mountain, traditionally considered to have only moderate strategic value, was fertile ground in his eyes.
After this period of reconnaissance, Li Chen had confirmed that the land held many ore vein provisions useful to him. If developed, they would be more than sufficient to support ten billion common folk and basic industry.
In the Immortal Alliance's hands, a medium-sized blessed land like this could support only a few Core Formation cultivators and several hundred Foundation Establishment cultivators. In Li Chen's hands, however, it would become a large frontline base. He could even take this opportunity to move Materialized Heaven's main body, the Bone Kun Warship, there to help rebuild the teleportation array.
Once this succeeded, it would completely break the stalemate across the eastern front.
With this nail driven into the enemy's second-line belt of cities, the Puppet Master faction could seize every frontline spirit peak. It was truly a case of pulling one strand and setting the whole body in motion.
The artificial intelligence's simulations also indicated that the Immortal Alliance would most likely retreat voluntarily, attempting to trade strategic depth for breathing room.
Time slipped by unnoticed, and a new year had already arrived.
The disciples of the West River Gate continued patrolling the mountains every day, fighting the Puppet Dao cultivators who slipped into the area.
They knew only that the frontline fighting was growing desperate, that more and more small raiding parties were infiltrating their territory, and that enemy warplanes and killing machines were appearing ever more frequently. They had no idea that, in the rarely visited mountain forests within