Steady Cultivation: Starting With the Perk “Work Hard, Rest Hard”

Chapter 383: Xiao Cai Makes Her Entrance

The stationed troops reacted quickly.

One hundred thousand elite soldiers rapidly took up positions on the city walls, each a cultivator at the Tai Chi Realm. Leading this force was a commander who was shockingly a Near King-level powerhouse.

"General Zhou, you finally came!" Yu Dong hurried over.

Zhou Ding glanced at the calamity energy in the distance, and said coldly, "My troops will not act immediately. Try defending first. If you can't hold them off, then I'll order an attack. You're at least a Continent-City Level cultivator;to call me for such a small crisis without trying yourself is a bit incompetent."

Yu Dong forced a wry smile. "General Zhou, I sensed a life-or-death threat. I had no choice but to call you!"

"Oh?" Zhou Ding only then grew serious.

As the calamity energy spread, they realized it was coming from all directions, not just one.

Those calamity energies treated chaotic energy like nothing, moving through the chaos with ease.

When the calamity energy approached to within a hundred light years of the city, it immediately surged, and one calamity fiend after another burst out, dashing rapidly toward the city!

Yu Dong sensed their aura and inhaled sharply. All of the calamity fiends were cultivation-level Hunyuan or higher;half of them were Tai Chi Realm or above, and many Wuji Realm fiends were mixed in. Their strength was terrifying.

Zhou Ding frowned. "What on earth did you do to anger heaven and earth?"

"Nothing!" Yu Dong protested immediately, feeling wronged. "I just built a city!"

He sighed and quickly organized his subordinates and the other outside cultivators in the city to begin defending.

When a wave of calamity fiends neared, Yu Dong gave the order, "Attack!"

Cultivators on the wall immediately launched their assaults into the chaos at the fiends.

Their strikes landed on the fiends, inflicting heavy losses, and one by one the calamity fiends fell.

Yet the defenders showed no joy, because more or less, all of them had been tainted by calamity energy!

Calamity fiends were the kind of disgusting things where killing them still caused problems, and not killing them was worse.

Attacking them meant getting contaminated by calamity energy!

Yu Dong looked at the calamity taint on his body. This calamity energy had penetrated the city's defenses and affected his soul. His Wuji Dao was trying to erase the taint, but the process was slow.

"This quality of calamity energy is off. It even affects me!" Yu Dong said gravely.

"Father, look! After those calamity fiends fell, some strange stones seem to have dropped!" Yu Lai, ever sharp-eyed, had seen crystals scattering into the chaos after the fiends died.

Yu Dong replied casually, "Maybe they're just impurities."

But Yu Lai had other ideas;he intended to collect those crystals to examine them.

Calamity fiends kept surging from the black gas, charging the city in suicidal waves.

The calamity taint in the bodies of the city's cultivators accumulated. Many sensed the invading energy entering their souls and affecting their will, so they had to stop and fall back to recover.

But purging the calamity energy was painfully slow.

The city's living defensive capacity rapidly dwindled as the calamity fiends died. Even though the city's fortifications had not been breached, the pressure on the defenders only increased!

Even General Zhou Ding was wary of the black gas.

The attrition continued.

Cultivators on the walls continued to fight with all their might to help defend the city.

They fought so fiercely largely because the one hundred thousand troops were waiting nearby. With such an army stationed there, they weren't afraid of ultimate defeat.

"That's about enough."

With a wave of Zhou Ding's hand, the hundred thousand troops formed a single mass, like a long spear—a white line—that shot forth from the city.

All the calamity fiends encountered along the path collapsed at the army's charge.

Zhou Ding led the force directly into the calamity energy, locking onto one of the most powerful calamity fiends.

"Calamity spirit! Die!" Zhou Ding thrust his spear with unstoppable, terrifying momentum.

To him, this strike, backed by the combined power of one hundred thousand soldiers, would easily kill a calamity spirit.

Little Cai laughed.

"Perfect timing!"

Little Cai transformed into her true form. The Heaven-Devouring Fish opened its enormous maw and, without hesitation, swallowed Zhou Ding and the hundred thousand troops behind him!

"Impossible! How can there be a Near King-level calamity spirit?" Zhou Ding instantly lost his composure. He had never heard of a calamity spirit growing to Near King-level!

Calamity spirits normally appeared in the God Realm Sea, where the growth ceiling prevented any from reaching Near King-level. So how was this possible now?

Zhou Ding struggled desperately against the devouring force, but the dense calamity energy around him was interfering with his Wuji rules and hampering his abilities!

He made a snap decision, transferring every bit of calamity energy on him onto the hundred thousand troops behind him.

He then swapped positions with the army and flung the troops into the maw. Riding the mass's momentum, he forced himself free from the devouring force and burst out of the calamity energy zone in a single push!

Little Cai closed her jaws after swallowing them. The hundred thousand troops were now inside her calamity domain, beginning to be corrupted by calamity energy and converted into calamity fiends!

"This one is ruthless!"

Little Cai hadn't expected such decisiveness—using the hundred thousand troops as a shield and shifting the calamity taint onto them to free himself from interference.

But those one hundred thousand troops were a feast for her.

As a calamity spirit, she drew power from the destruction of living beings. Pulling these eternal-life cultivators into the Nine Nether Realm was a fulfillment of her Dao;she not only earned the Nine Nether Realm's reward, but also contributed to her master's cause.

Little Cai took a long, deep look at the city, then gave no further pause. She commanded her calamity fiends to retreat back into the calamity energy and sped away into the distance.

Before long, the teleportation arrays flared with light, and squads of soldiers appeared, immediately heading to East City to reinforce it.

Unfortunately, by the time reinforcements arrived, Little Cai had already retreated in time.

"General Zhou, what happened? Where are the stationed troops?" a Near King-level general supporting the relief force asked, unable to find a single soldier.

Zhou Ding's face was grim. "They were swallowed—trapped by the calamity energy and devoured by the calamity spirit!"

"What exactly occurred?"

As the two spoke, they suddenly sensed a commotion outside the city.

They used their thoughts to probe and saw many scattered cultivators scrambling over black crystals.

Those cultivators were even fighting each other fiercely for the crystals.