The Formation Eye Was on the Ground, but the Person Wasn't There
Osler failed to retreat along the original route. His right hand was numb from the impact of the blade, and he hunched his shoulders, hearing the sound of a second strike through the red mist.
The wind blew to the left. He stepped to the right, and suddenly his foot sank into a patch of hot, newly risen earth. It was a rocky edge left by Yan on the outer edge. His shoe slipped, and the blade swept across his head, severing a lock of hair at the tip.
"Stop looking for anyone!" Li Man's voice came through the fog.
Osler stopped. He wanted to answer, but before he could speak, another voice, similar to Li Man's, urged him from ahead, "Follow the center of the formation."
He gritted his teeth and tapped the stone surface with the tip of his Ghost Leopard claw. There was no familiar sound of the Green Jade Bamboo striking back. He immediately lowered his body and crawled over the scorching edge to avoid the second swirling of the Moon Blade. His shoulder was still torn by the blade, and blood quickly seeped into his sleeve.
Li Man's Mobile Formation Eye was still responding, but its position was several steps away from Osler's actual landing point. She tried to pave a path in that direction, and a bamboo section was immediately bent by the fire, with only the vibration of cracking bamboo returning as feedback.
"That one is unusable." She temporarily sealed it away from the Ten Thousand Bamboos Return to the Veins. "Osler may have already moved from its original position."
Dong Jian felt two heavy footsteps ahead, the frequency like Ghost Leopard, but the second one felt unusually heavy. He couldn't tell if the figures were real or fake, so he just leaned towards the side where the impact was actually on the ground, not daring to use Mountain Domain to report his location to his teammates.
The Shi Mo suddenly raised its tortoise shell. "The person is on my side!"
A dark shadow bumped into the right side of the tortoise shell. Following the practice, Shi Mo first lightly touched the opponent's wrist guard with the edge of the shell. Osler's Ghost Leopard claws scratched three familiar short marks on the shell surface before he reached out and pulled the person into the protective circle.
Osler gasped, "They even managed to make me mishear Li Man's voice."
"Where are your eyes?" Dugu Yan asked.
"That won't do either. I just saw two pieces of tortoise shell from Shi Mo."
Shi Mo looked down at his armor but didn't laugh. He moved closer to Ye Lingling and shielded the injured Osler on the inside. Ye Lingling reached out to check and found that the wound was shallow but long, meaning he couldn't run at high speed continuously for a while.
Osler was held down by Ye Lingling for less than two breaths before he tried to stand up again. "I can still go around from the side; I was just half a step away just now."
Ye Lingling released her hand from examining the wound and placed the blood-stained cloth directly in front of him. "Can you lift your right shoulder?"
Osler tried to raise his arm, but froze halfway through the movement.
"Being able to move doesn't mean you can unleash the full power of the Ghost Leopard again." Ye Lingling wrapped the cloth strap around his shoulder and back. "You take the observation position first. If someone comes in from the outside, tell me which way to retreat."
Osler gritted his teeth and sat back down. Yu Feng remained below the stage, and no one could immediately replace his high-speed entry; but that didn't mean he could only be a burden to his teammates. He hunched his shoulders and leaned against the tortoise shell, watching the red mist swirl several times, and noticed that each time those seemingly human-shaped shadows moved, there was no corresponding scraping on the nearby stone surface.
"Shi Mo, the one on the left front is an illusion, don't turn it!" he warned.
Shi Mo was about to extend his armor, but upon hearing this, he forcefully pressed the protective shield in front of Ye Lingling. The real impact indeed came from the right side, with great force, almost knocking the healing station behind him off course.
Ye Lingling supported Shi Mo's shoulders and back, waiting for him to steady himself before administering treatment. The injury wasn't serious, but it proved that the illusion created by the Demon Charm still had value. Osler also understood that he could only call the police when he saw footsteps and sounds appear together; otherwise, even he himself might report the wrong thing.
Li Man recorded the sounds he could confirm into his short commands, not taking every hint from the other party as absolutely reliable. Each judgment was verified with a person or a bamboo stick, which did slow down his movements, but at least the people in the back row were no longer led astray by the red mist.
The Spirit Hall did not give them a rest. Yan stomped heavily from outside the fog, and the entire crevice was ripped open by fire and earth. The originally flat ground became a slope, and Dong Jian's Mountain Domain instantly received a mixture of signals: rolling stones, tortoise shells landing, and rock edges breaking.
He judged that a heavy person had landed ahead and was about to warn Yu Tianheng when he realized that only a corner of the stone platform had collapsed. The real Yan had already moved towards Li Man along another route.
Dong Jian immediately changed his tune. "Ignore the first one. The right side is hot."
Li Man didn't ask why. She put away the two bamboo nodes on the right and pulled the formation back to the inside of Dugu Yan's poison zone. Yan wanted to approach along the original gap, but when he landed, he stepped on a shallow poison zone that Dugu Yan had just laid out.
Yan did not lose his fighting ability because of this. He pressed his palm to the ground, and the scorching soil and rocks rose forward, dividing the poisonous belt into two sections. Dugu Yan only had time to withdraw part of it, and the poisonous fog near the hot soil was already dispersed.
"His fire and earth can change the land," Dugu Yan said. "My road-blocking can only affect a part of it."
Yu Tianheng fought the Demon Charm outside the red mist. He used his left arm to exert force and his right arm to maintain defense. His close combat was obviously not as sharp as when he was in full condition. The fused figure saw that he had not fully opened his Thunder Dragon Body, so it used two Moon Blade to continuously press on the original wounds.
"Still not recovered?" Demon Charm voice came from within the red mist, its origin unknown.
Yu Tianheng blocked one of the attacks and took a half-step back. "You can try again."
He didn't force a pursuit. Shi Mo's tortoise shell was already protecting the healing system. Dong Jian needed to guard Osler's return lane. If he left this area again, the entire front line would lose the power to reliably suppress the opponent.
The Demon Charm raised her Moon Blade, signaling the ranged team members to pause for a moment and observe whether Imperial Fighting Team would rush out due to the sudden silence. Dong Jian was indeed waiting for a real landing, but Yu Tianheng did not pursue him. The merging figures confirmed that the two had their limits in their responses before raising their blades again to press their positions.
The Demon Charm, observing through the red mist, quickly discovered that Dong Jian's actual movements always occurred after a reliable impact on the ground; if only a visible figure was shown, he would mostly remain still. The figure in the red mist stopped creating more illusions and instead used the Moon Blade to change the rhythm of the contact.
The first strike was clearly close, but it suddenly stopped. The second strike was deliberately delayed by half a step, bypassing Dong Jian's shoulder as he prepared to parry. The third strike let Yan's rocky edge pass first, with the blade following from behind.
Dong Jian attempted to use his body to Momentum Shift his momentum for the first time, but his opponent withdrew in time, leaving him with only an empty, completed movement. His left foot spun a little too much on the sloping stone surface, and his old injury on his side immediately throbbed with pain.
Hearing his muffled groan, Li Man didn't help him chase the enemy. Instead, she pressed the two bamboo sections down onto solid ground. "Stand back here. Don't go to catch it every time."
"I know." Dong Jian stopped in his tracks.
Seeing the two close together again, the Demon Charm pointed her blade at Li Man's back, and another team member immediately closed in from behind. The opponent's attack was neither fire nor Charm, but a solid shoulder charge. Dong Jian could handle it, but he was separated from Li Man by the red mist half a slope, and there wasn't enough time to get there.
Li Man chose to discard a broken bamboo branch beside her, letting it fall onto the path of the other person. To avoid the sharp tip of the broken bamboo, the man paused briefly; in that brief moment, the Shi Mo delivered the tortoise shell.
"You have high hopes for Osler," Li Man said to Dong Jian. "I'll take care of things here."
Dong Jian didn't try to steal that part. Osler had just retreated from the red mist and was still enduring the pain; if he tried to help Li Man run away, it would only create another gap in the formation.
The Demon Charm saw this division of labor through the fog. The Moon Blade paused for a moment before changing its attack. The next attack was no longer aimed solely at Dong Jian, but instead brought out two sword paths simultaneously: one forced Yu Tianheng to retreat, and the other forced Dong Jian to protect Osler. Yan raised the rock ridge from the outside, which was precisely positioned between Yu Tianheng and Dong Jian.
With a loud crash, the stone platform broke into two slanted layers.
Yu Tianheng was forced to the left, and Dong Jian retreated to the right. The two were now separated by a section of hot gravel, and could no longer support each other at the same distance.
Dong Jian looked up and saw that Yu Tianheng's last ray of lightning was blocked in the red mist. Li Man had two more bamboo paths, but neither was enough for him to cross that scorching ground directly.
Dong Jian grasped a piece of unheated broken brick on the edge of the rock, then let go. Through the red mist, he could feel Yu Tianheng's heavy footsteps, but he couldn't be sure if the captain was still there when he arrived. Going back to protect Osler and Ye Lingling would at least give Yu Tianheng a place to retreat to.
"The captain has been separated," he told Li Man.
"I saw it." Li Man collected the shattered array core into her palm. "Guard this place for now. Let him decide for himself where to return from."