In the boundless jungle, the Fifth Avatar, wearing Wushi Yan's identity, rode on the back of a tiger-shaped Mechanism Beast, his eyes half closed.
He appeared to be resting with his eyes shut, but was actually on standby, awaiting instructions from Broad Cloud Peak.
By now, the Fifth Avatar had traveled through the forests for hundreds of miles around as Wushi Yan, notifying the hundreds upon hundreds of tribes scattered throughout the thousand-mile mountains. He had also ordered them to pass the word among themselves and take different routes to the Market District. At last, he had successfully set the Shaman Folk's great migration in motion, bringing the population entering Broad Cloud Ward to as many as three hundred and fifty thousand.
Unfortunately, even with Li Chen doing everything he could, the homes of nearly half the Mountain Folk had still been destroyed, and hundreds of thousands had perished beneath the iron hooves of the Kingdom's army.
Still more Mountain Folk wandered the wilderness, homeless, threatened at every moment by wild beasts and starvation.
Hundreds of miles away, Li Chen sat in a quiet little courtyard in the Inner Valley beneath the main peak, thoughtfully watching the distant live scenes projected by the Mystic Light Illusory Image Array.
"Over on Fellow Daoist Qi's side, the refinement of stellar ash is already on track. At the earliest, the first batch of miniaturized Crimson Sun Divine Thunder should be ready in a little over three months."
"But without sufficient delivery capability, it'll be difficult to pose enough of a threat to the enemy."
"I still need to shape the situation and draw most of their experts into one place!"
What he was considering now was how to resolve the enemy completely in a single stroke.
In this world, superweapons that transcended cultivation