After traveling swiftly for an entire day, Ren Tao finally caught sight of the Heaven Dou Empire's army as evening approached.
They marched across the vast plain in orderly formations, grouped by hundreds and organized into units of a thousand. From afar, they resembled a long serpent made of a sea of people.
An enormous supply train brought up the rear. Ahead of it were the light cavalry, the infantry army, the heavy infantry, and, at the very front, the heavy cavalry-a fairly standard deployment for warfare in the age of cold steel.
Yet what Ren Tao sensed from this enormous force was neither terrifying combat strength nor the pressure exerted by Soul Masters. After receiving the world inheritance, he could essentially disregard such influences.
What he sensed was an immense, unparalleled surge of blood vitality and a chaotic jumble of thoughts.
When their numbers reached a terrifying magnitude, the crowd's thoughts and auras became incomparably tangled. Only through an accumulation of such staggering numbers could the will of living beings shake a god-level life-form.
Many novels he had read in his previous life had mentioned this concept: the aura of the mortal world, the "human" talisman... and so on.
Now, faced with this "torrent of steel" formed by over a million humans, even Ren Tao had to avoid its edge for the moment.
In a head-on clash, he was confident he could kill most of them, but he did not believe his cultivation alone could resolve the karmic burden of such immense slaughter.
He circled around to the front flank of the army. There, two enormous black carriages flanked a golden carriage drawn by eight horses, its gleaming brilliance conspicuous in the gathering night.
Ren Tao's figure flickered out and back into view, and he landed atop that carriage.