"Father."
Li Changsheng looked at his father, who was silently drinking tea, and said calmly,
"You were right. I shouldn't have gone to beg for help. Now that I have begged, resentment has filled my heart. The people I begged have already taken a different stance from us."
Li Kuangren shook his head, stood up, and flew toward the border.
After a long while.
Their family floated in the cloudy sky. Ahead, dark clouds seemed to bear down on the city... Those were massive spirit boats, each mounted with enormous cylindrical barrels.
A cultivator tossed a basket of spirit stones into the top of a black cylinder, waved a flag, and shouted the word "Fire!"
The veins on the cultivator's hands bulged as he gripped the rear of the cylinder. As the spirit stones were consumed, the cylinder actually emitted a dazzling blue light.
A small golden array formation appeared on the barrel, firing a powerful beam of light that stretched for a thousand meters.
The beam roared as it struck the ground, drawing the blazing gazes of everyone on the spirit boat. Dust and sand were kicked up, and the earth rumbled.
The beam of light acted like a sharp carving knife cutting through solid rock, blasting a rift over a hundred meters long and several meters wide.
The residual Spiritual power from the spirit stones caused the cannon barrel to glow red-hot, while the earth below radiated the luster of molten magma!
And such spirit stone cannons were equipped on all three thousand spirit boats present!
On the ground.
The Azure Cloud Army, clad in black iron beast-blood armor, could be seen wielding a new type of Dharma Treasure.
They were long cylindrical barrels, looking strikingly similar to the rifles Li Wei had seen in his previous life!
Only, for these "rifles", the Azure Cloud Army could be seen loading pinky-sized spirit stones into them, followed by the manifestation of a small array formation on the weapons in the cultivators' hands.
"Fire!!!"
The leading cultivator shouted. The cultivators simultaneously raised their "rifles" to a forty-five-degree angle.
Accompanied by the loud bang of a volley.
An incredibly spectacular sight unfolded across the lands of Azure Cloud Prefecture.
Every muzzle fired a beam of light that streaked across the sky like shooting stars in beautiful blue arcs, descending like rain.
The mid-air beams shot straight for ten thousand meters, actually weaving together in the sky to form a series of small array formations.
These arrays expanded continuously until they all merged into one colossal blue array formation.
At this moment, even Li Kuangren and Li Changsheng looked up in shock.
It rained; it was a beautiful rain.
The mountains shook, and the earth trembled. The ten thousand cultivators holding the long rifles looked at their masterpiece in disbelief amidst the shaking ground.
The beams of light continuously fell from the sky for a full minute, subjecting the ground beneath that colossal array formation to an impenetrable, torrential baptism!
"I succeeded, hahaha!"
A joyous voice rang out. It was none other than the current family Patriarch, Li Chuxiu!
This Patriarch, who had been hopelessly obsessed with the weapon blueprints passed down by the Old Ancestor, had been researching them for centuries.
He was also the family's foremost master of hidden weapons!
Witnessing his masterpiece, he knew that the efforts of more than half his life had not been wasted in the slightest.
He completely lost his composure and grabbed Feng Chunlin's shoulders.
"I succeeded! The weapon blueprints passed down by the Old Ancestor were made of iron.
Those 'bullet heads' couldn't possibly pierce our bodies, and their trajectories were easy to track."
"But cultivators cannot block spiritual qi, let alone a grand array! A single spirit stone combined with the concentration of a 'Spirit Gathering Array' focuses the spiritual qi into a single piercing needle.
Even a spirit stone with the lowest amount of spiritual qi could pierce through a Foundation Establishment cultivator!"
"For cultivators to practice array formations, ten thousand men would be utterly unable to form a legion grand array without decades of coordination.
But my Dharma Treasures can! Talismans and talisman arrays are embedded within the spirit stones.
It only takes a single volley for the array formation 'rhythm' used by all the cultivators to synchronize perfectly!"
"Hahaha, I have finally succeeded!"
Feng Chunlin was shaken violently, but he didn't blame him in the slightest; his eyes were filled only with excitement.
Li Kuangren exchanged glances with his son and daughter. The three of them were thrilled.
Looking at the swept battlefield, Li Kuangren suppressed the urge to howl wildly.
He gripped the railing of the spirit boat tightly, staring at the dust-covered area ahead and the destructive power that even a Nascent Soul realm expert couldn't produce.
And this was merely the destructive power of a mere ten thousand cultivators!
They hadn't even applied their own Spiritual power to the 'spirit rifles'.
He practically growled as he asked, "Chuxiu, the power of the spirit rifles and spirit cannons is not enough. It is still far from enough."
Hearing this, Li Chuxiu finally calmed down. He said in a deep voice,
"Your child understands. This is a revolution. These were merely the obsolete hidden weapons your child refined when attempting to deal with Li Chuyuan.
However, these hidden weapons are cheap to manufacture and can be refined using ordinary spiritual ore.
Your child's idea was to combine these 'spirit rifles' with array formations. This is a breakthrough."
"If this were a battlefield against the Wu Tribe, it would be an absolute bloodbath." The corners of Li Chuxiu's mouth curled up slightly.
"But do not worry. Your child was merely verifying the array formations. Since the array formations can be put to use, it is like opening the floodgates."
Li Kuangren turned around and looked at Li Chuxiu's confident face. He patted Li Chuxiu's shoulder. "We do not have much time left."
The hand on his shoulder felt as heavy as a mountain.
Li Chuxiu gazed toward the Western Frontier.
Not only were his and Li Qiuming's enemies there, but there were also the immortals and the Wu Tribe who intended to treat Azure Cloud Prefecture as meat on a chopping block.
For the first time in his life, he felt such a heavy burden.
"Then your child shall work without sleep or rest. I request to borrow the Myriad Dao Pagoda, as well as a massive amount of spirit stones."
The crowd on the spirit boat nodded, looking down at the ground.
Those were the Azure Cloud Army cultivators who had been training over these centuries.
The major sect factions and family disciples of Azure Cloud Prefecture were all gathered here.
They set up array formations amidst the dust and sand. As the fiery glow from the spirit rifle grand array blew over them, they stood in the crimson dust and smoke like resilient, unburnable grass.
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