Chapter 1611 - Second Plan Begins

If they alerted the camp and the deacon came, they would be summoned back immediately. That would shatter the next step of Liu Wuxie's plan, and he still needed to gather a massive stockpile of martial souls to create the kind of effect he wanted.

Since he couldn't trust the Santi Tribe, he would fall into danger the moment the Santi Tribe bailed out at the critical moment. Tian Can's presence meant he wouldn't fear for his safety, but it would still alarm the Immortal Slaughter Palace, and that wasn't the outcome he wanted.

He had to make the plan foolproof. Liu Wuxie froze the snake-scorpion in place, then formed seals and forcibly extracted its primordial spirit from its soul sea.

Now that he had reached the ninth-level Earth Immortal Realm, his ability to create martial souls had climbed to an unbelievable height. In only a few minutes, he condensed over a hundred light orbs in his palm.

"Not enough. It's best if I can hunt a snake-scorpion at the higher levels of the Heaven Gaze Realm," Liu Wuxie thought, then activated the Ghost Pupil that pierced through layers of rock until he traced the snake-scorpion's den. He discovered they lived deep in the underground world.

"Tian Can, lead the way for me." Liu Wuxie summoned Tian Can as insurance in case the Snake-Scorpion Clan had experts lurking nearby, then ordered him to take the lead and carve a path.

He left Nanmen Shan outside as a lookout, guarding against the arrival of other disciples of the Immortal Slaughter Palace. The moment Tian Can received the command, he charged into the Snake-Scorpion Clan's nest and immobilized over a thousand snake-scorpions with a single move.

Liu Wuxie followed close behind. He didn't need to act at all, and he devoted himself entirely to refining martial souls. Logically speaking, the movement of a quasi-immortal should have alarmed the Snake-Scorpion Clan's campsite, but Liu Wuxie relied on the Great Spatial Mythical Art to lock down the surroundings and prevent any news from leaking out.

On top of that, Tian Can never released his aura at the Quasi-Immortal Realm. He suppressed his cultivation to the pinnacle of the Heaven Gaze Realm instead, ensuring the Snake-scorpians couldn't sense anything unusual.

In the blink of an eye, Liu Wuxie refined thousands of snake-scorpions into martial souls. The deeper they went, the more powerful snake-scorpions finally appeared.

Without a quasi-immortal to oversee them, the snake-scorpions remained only an ordinary clan. They could never produce experts at the Quasi-Immortal Realm, and the Heaven Gaze Realm would always be their ceiling.

Liu Wuxie and Tian Can slaughtered their way forward, and the snake-scorpions suffered catastrophic losses. The Santi Tribe's massive bodies made the underground world unsuitable for them, so the two races kept to themselves and never interacted.

Two hours later, Liu Wuxie and Tian Can finally arrived at the Snake-Scorpion Clan's main base.

Liu Wuxie signaled Tian Can to stop, then deliberately allowed the Snake-Scorpion Clan to swarm toward them.

"Human, you're courting death!" A terrifying Snake-scorpion emerged with a towering build several times the size of the others, bearing the silhouette of a giant scorpion, its serpentine traits woven through its form.

The Snake-Scorpion Clan truly lived up to its origin as a fusion of snake and scorpion. Scorpions carried venom, and snakes offered no mercy either, so the Snake-Scorpion Clan combined the worst of both.

They were the origin of the phrase about a human having a snake and a scorpion's heart.

The snake-scorpion standing before them could only be the leader of the Snake-Scorpion Clan.

"I don't have time to waste with you. Kneel if you don't want to die," Liu Wuxie ordered. He unleashed his aura at the ninth-level Earth Immortal Realm, letting a wisp of an Immortal Emperor's will press outward with it.

Even Tian Can trembled so hard that he nearly dropped to his knees. So, how could the ordinary snake-scorpions stand a chance?

The Snake-Scorpion Clan's leader might have reached the pinnacle of the Heaven Gaze Realm, but he held no power before Liu Wuxie. The rest of the snake-scorpions collapsed to their knees in unison.

"Human, you..." The Snake-Scorpion Clan's leader shook violently, then dropped to his knees as well.

"I already said that I do not want to waste time with you. Do as I say if you don't want to die."

With Liu Wuxie's current ability, he could erase a small clan with ease.

The Snake-Scorpion Clan looked terrifying only to ordinary cultivators, and Liu Wuxie's combat strength was already close to the peak of the Laman Astral Domain.

The Snake-Scorpion Clan's leader glared with hatred. "You slaughtered so many of my people, and you still want me to obey you? Dream on!"

He communicated in the human tongue through soul energy because his sharp, narrow mouth couldn't produce human speech, and the voice he projected carried a loud, piercing screech.

"You will," Liu Wuxie replied with a cruel smile as the Pool of Faith poured straight into the Snake-Scorpion Clan leader's soul sea.

The Pool of Faith couldn't control the Witcher Clan or the Divine Race, since they stood among the most ancient races in the world, but it bent the Snake-Scorpion Clan's leader with ease.

Three breaths later, the Snake-Scorpion Clan's leader dropped fully to his knees and prostrated in total submission.

"Summon your people and await my commands," Liu Wuxie said, then turned and left without lingering. Through the Pool of Faith, he could communicate with the Snake-Scorpion Clan's leader whenever he wished.

Tian Can vanished and returned to the Sky Devouring Divine Cauldron.

"Master, the Santi Tribe has shown up over there," Nanmen Shan said the moment Liu Wuxie emerged from the underground world.

Logically speaking, they should have notified the campsite once the Santi Tribe appeared, but Liu Wuxie only waved his hand in dismissal. The Santi Tribe had likely sensed his assault on the Snake-Scorpion Clan and had come to probe his intentions.

Liu Wuxie had intended the Santi Tribe to witness the slaughter. He had already told the Santi Tribe's chieftain that even without them, he could still destroy the Immortal Slaughter Palace's camp.

As long as the Santi Tribe was smart, they would choose wisely. After all, Liu Wuxie would never allow anyone to discover his presence on the Serene Peace Star.

Controlling the Snake-Scorpion Clan was his insurance that the Santi Tribe wouldn't dare to turn on him.

Days passed, and Liu Wuxie returned to the campsite alongside Nanmen Shan after five days.

The deacon came out to meet them, and all eight squads had suffered losses. One squad was left with only a single survivor.

Elder Chen stepped out from the crowd and asked the deacon, "How severe are the losses?"

With so many deaths on Serene Peace Star, how were they supposed to answer to the sect?

"The Snake-Scorpion Clan and the Santi Tribe have been appearing more frequently," the deacon replied with a grim face. Out of the thirty-two disciples who were sent to patrol, only twenty had made it back alive.

Nanmen Shan stepped forward and reported their encounter, detailing how the Snake-Scorpion Clan ambushed them and killed Liao Yongming and Sun Yizhou. The other squads described similar horrors, and most of them had faced assaults by the snake-scorpions.

"Go and rest," the deacon said. He refused to pry further, as though he had grown accustomed to such reports.

Serene Peace Star had always been a primitive planet filled with danger, and dying here hardly shocked anyone anymore.

Many disciples erupted into protest, trembling as they recalled the Snake-Scorpion Clan's assault, "I'm not resting. I want to return to the sect right now!"

"Do you think you can leave the Serene Peace Star on the whim?" the deacon roared, instantly silencing the crowd.

Once they stepped onto Serene Peace Star, they no longer had the power to decide their own life and death. The survivors could claim a massive reward, enough to support them for more than a decade.

The deacon released his aura, and the crushing pressure forced everyone back into obedience. The disciples returned to their houses and rested as ordered.

After Liu Wuxie returned to the house, he ordered Nanmen Shan to wander and gather information, focusing on the campsite's layout and its facilities. Meanwhile, Liu Wuxie activated Ghost Pupil and drew the entire camp into his view.

His divine sense pressed downward, probing the underground world inch by inch.

"So, there's really something fishy here. Besides mining the vein, there's another team digging deeper underground," Liu Wuxie murmured as his divine sense pierced through the layers of rock. He saw miners grinding away to excavate astral crystals, but one team stood out sharply, with every member clearly an elite.

If there is no other surprise, this team must've discovered the remains of the Heretic God.

Liu Wuxie thought, and the suspicion hardened inside him.

The Immortal Slaughter Palace had used mining for astral crystals as a smokescreen, while the Heretic God's remains served as their true objective.

Liu Wuxie swept the area with Ghost Pupil, finding countless spiritual arrays covering the entire camp. Many regions were under layered spiritual arrays, ensuring the camp could hold its ground even if the Santi Tribe attacked.

𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

With towering defenses and a quasi-immortal stationed there, the campsite stood as stable as a mountain. Most importantly, the teleportation array meant reinforcements from the Immortal Slaughter Palace could arrive in mere minutes once battle erupted.

If Liu Wuxie wanted to wipe out this campsite, he would need to destroy the teleportation array first, then tear apart the surrounding spiritual arrays, and finally throw the entire camp into chaos. The first obstacle proved troublesome, since the teleportation array was far beyond his current reach.

Destroying the restrictions and spiritual arrays would be far easier for him, and he would handle that at night. As for plunging the camp into chaos, that would be easier with a large number of martial souls from the Snake-Scorpion Clan.

"If it comes down to it, I can take the gamble and wait for the Santi Tribe to attack the camp. That will allow me to destroy the teleportation array," Liu Wuxie murmured. With his current status, the elder guarding the teleportation array would never allow him to get close.

Only a battle would force the elders to leave their posts, and that alone would solve two of his three problems.

After Nanmen Shan finished touring the campsite, he relayed everything he had seen to Liu Wuxie.

At nightfall, Liu Wuxie turned into a streak of light, concealed himself in the dark, and merged seamlessly with the shadows. He broke the restrictions and spiritual arrays with ease, focusing only on avoiding the quasi-immortal's divine sense.

Under normal circumstances, quasi-immortals remained in seclusion and rarely showed themselves. The spiritual arrays protected the camp so thoroughly that the Santi Tribe's attacks were harmless unless their quasi-immortal acted, and that would immediately provoke the camp's quasi-immortal to retaliate.

Liu Wuxie guided various runes into the spiritual arrays, and they slipped in like tadpoles blending into water. For the moment, those runes remained harmless as they merged with the spiritual arrays, but a single command from Liu Wuxie would make them instantly shred every spiritual rune in the camp, revealing the true profundity of spiritual runes.

Liu Wuxie returned to his residence late at night. He only needed to wait for five days until the next patrolling session to visit the Santi Tribe again.

Five days slipped by in the blink of an eye. When their turn came again, something felt wrong because the deacon never dispatched them and instead ordered them to remain inside the camp to guard the mines.

Liu Wuxie frowned the instant he heard it. If he couldn't leave, he would lose the ability to coordinate with the Santi Tribe.

"Tian Can, I need you to make a trip to the Santi Tribe in my place. I've written down the plan and the attack sequence in detail," Liu Wuxie said. He decided to send Tian Can instead while he remained in the camp. A coordinated attack from both inside and outside would maximize the effect.

He used the Sky Devouring Divine Cauldron to send Tian Can out of the camp. The camp's spiritual arrays activated completely at night, sealing the place so tightly that not even a single fly could escape.

The slightest contact with the spiritual array would immediately alert the camp’s experts. Even disciples trying to leave in broad daylight were rigorously interrogated.

Liu Wuxie sat alone in his residence as a cold smirk spread across his lips. He murmured, "Let the second plan officially begin!"