The yellow-browed cultivator’s instincts had always been sharp.

Before, he had predicted trouble at the smallest hint of it. As expected, the situation had devolved into something uncontrollably catastrophic.

The ten sacred lands’ cultivators had inexplicably managed to leave Sandplain Island! They arrived at the exit within moments. This incredible turn of events defied all prior understanding he’d had of them.

If the sacred lands could solve a trap as intricate as this so trivially, their abilities had been grossly misjudged!

Fresh experience had proven this: mere moments of pitched battle had resulted in the death of two comrades, without them putting up any semblance of a fight.

The haste with which they’d been attacked showed that this was entirely premeditated.

There was no way the rest of them would be able to stop the ten sacred lands’ departure from Sandplain. Any foolish attempts at defiance were futile!

The yellow-browed cultivator was quick and decisive. There was no need to waste time trying to rescue an impossible situation and put his life on the line in the process.

As soon as his words fell, he darted outward as a ray of light without hesitation or care for his former comrades.

The others regretted that they hadn’t listened to their leader’s opinions. If they had taken just half the amount of care they’d been advised, there was no way they would have been taken by such surprise.

Alas, there were no pills for regret in this world.

The other gods’ resolutions were utterly crushed by the deaths of two of their peers. The ten forefathers’ burning battle spirit and their destroyed formation added fuel to the fire. They knew that recovering or salvaging this battle was completely impossible.

“That old yellow-brow fled ahead of us, costing us the fight. No reason for us to stay here anymore. We retreat!”

There was no pushback from assigning blame upon the first to desert. Someone had to be responsible for the failure.

The yellow-browed cultivator had no ground to stand on in any future discussions of the subject, which made him a prime candidate for the scapegoat.

The other cultivators scattered in every direction like birds.

The divine forefathers were astonished. They hadn’t expected the fight at the exit to be this easy. Just as Jiang Chen had anticipated, the first to run set off a chain reaction that disintegrated the enemy’s resistance.

The last tinge of anxiety vanished from Jiang Chen’s heart. He had been correct. They had been successful!

A wave of cheers boomed from the Black Tortoise’s back.

The ten forefathers hunted down their scampering enemies like cowardly dogs, cutting each man down where he stood.

The battle ended up being a lot shorter than Jiang Chen had imagined.

It took barely thirty minutes for the fighting to conclude.

The Black Tortoise and its passengers exited the Sandplain secret realm in that time. They were already upon the open sea. Its azure waters were as calm and beautiful as ever.

A smile returned to the sacred lands’ faces. They felt like they’d been reborn.

All of them broke into laughter.

“Haha, we’re finally out! We really made it!”

They were uniformly filled with the joy of freedom. They had hesitated, faltered, and despaired before, but everything had been so much smoother than they imagined. No sacrifices at all had been required.

The man of the hour responsible for all this was Jiang Chen, of course.

“We must thank you once more, young Jiang Chen. You’ve definitely saved all our lives, as well as the ten sacred lands’ futures.”

“Reality has proven that Eternal is the best choice for the alliance’s leadership. In the near future, young Jiang Chen will surely become a pillar of Myriad Abyss. I trust no one doubts this any longer?”

The others sang Jiang Chen’s praises, but the youth himself didn’t take it too seriously. He had no interest in empty words. He was truly relieved that the Sandplain crisis had passed.

But it wasn’t time to relax yet. 

“Friends,” Jiang Chen loudly proclaimed, “we were able to escape today because we worked together. I was far from the only contributor. The trouble’s not yet past, though.”

“Oh? Why do you say that?”

“Yes, what else can there possibly be?”

“It’s hard to say specifically,” the young man replied. “Still, my instincts tell me that the mist and formation here on Sandplain were designed to limit our movement and wear away at our resources. I guarantee that the enemy’s main force is elsewhere. That’s also why we got out so easily.”

The ten forefathers readily agreed.

“I thought there would be a hard fight,” the Radiance forefather chimed in. “Instead, we couldn’t have had an easier time. The formation they prepared was complex, but we destroyed it in mere instants. The enemies we fought were totally incompetent. If they’d paid a fraction of attention to controlling the formation, it would have taken us much longer.”

“The cultivators were incompetent, but the formation was excellent. The mist too. If we hadn’t swum out, we wouldn’t have been able to reach the exit so quickly or catch the enemy off-guard like that.”

“Exactly. The key to this fight was Jiang Chen. Without the initiative, it wouldn’t have been nearly as easy.”

These speakers seemed an honest lot. They’d won the battle, but offered their honest opinion on the contributions of others.

Everyone had turned a blind eye to the fact that the Vermilion Bird had snatched away one of the gods.

Since Jiang Chen was the chief contributor to the victory, he deserved that much as a reward.

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