The clash between the two Soul Douluo-level powerhouses erupted instantly. The dark night seemed to be split apart—one side plunged into impenetrable darkness, the other blazing with thunder and lightning. In their Martial Soul Avatar forms, every collision sent shockwaves and thunderous roars that shook the heavens. The small island beneath them trembled, waves surging again and again, gradually washing away the bloodstains left on the port's walls.
Meanwhile, the more than twenty Spirit Emperors of the Imperial Dragon Spirit Master Regiment who had followed Wang Xiao engaged in combat with the soldiers of the Western Sea Spirit Master Regiment who had gathered.
In numbers, the Western Sea Regiment naturally had the advantage.
As one of the elite regiments of the Sun Moon Empire, it had a full strength of two hundred soldiers. Even though one squad on the walls had been annihilated earlier by Wang Xiao's group, over one hundred sixty still remained.
Excluding the twenty-some left behind to guard Xu Zihuang in the castle, the Western Sea Regiment's forces still outnumbered Wang Xiao's side by nearly seven to one.
However, in terms of cultivation, the Western Sea Regiment was clearly inferior. Every one of Wang Xiao's elites from the Imperial Dragon Regiment was at least rank sixty, while on the Western Sea Regiment's side, the number of soldiers above rank sixty was fewer than ten.
Fights between Soul Masters and Soul Engineers were unlike clashes of armies—numbers did not guarantee absolute advantage. Individual strength mattered far more. Martial souls varied endlessly, soul skills even more so. Achieving true teamwork was far harder than one might imagine.
On the Douluo Continent, team soul battles had long been a tradition, but even then the teams rarely exceeded seven members. And for such seven-man teams to reach genuine tacit understanding often required years of practice.
Here, the twenty-plus members of the Imperial Dragon Regiment divided into groups of three to five, cutting through the enemy ranks and isolating squads. Each small team fought independently while still supporting one another. With their overwhelming personal strength and seamless coordination, they forced the Western Sea Regiment to retreat again and again.
This alone was enough to reveal the terrifying might of the Imperial Dragon Spirit Master Regiment when it had been whole.
"Do not lose formation! They are only a little over twenty men—their energy will drain faster than ours. As long as we hold out, the advantage will shift to us."
A steady voice rose from the front of the Western Sea Regiment.
The panicked soldiers of the Western Sea Regiment immediately brightened at the familiar sound, instinctively turning toward its source.
"Vice Commander Qiu Ying!"
It was a red-faced middle-aged man clad in the same deep-blue armor as Haixiao. He looked much older than his commander. Barely one meter sixty in height, his frame was extremely stout, but bizarrely his limbs were short and thin, completely out of proportion to his body.
His body hunched as if misshapen, covered entirely with pentagonal gray-white scales that stretched from his face across his back, forming a hemispherical carapace behind him. This massive dome of armor nearly swallowed his limbs whole.
This was Qiu Ying, Vice Commander of the Western Sea Spirit Master Regiment. His cultivation was second only to Haixiao's—an authentic Soul Sage-level powerhouse.
His appearance was like a stabilizing force, quickly rallying the nearly shattered formation of the Western Sea Regiment.
The three Imperial Dragon Regiment soldiers closest to Qiu Ying, however, instantly darkened in expression. Among them, a lean young man wielding twin azure soul-tool rapiers had a ruthless glint flash in his eyes. The sixth black spirit ring at his side shone, and in an instant, more than a dozen azure afterimages surged forth, attacking Qiu Ying's neck from behind.
"Sixth Soul Skill—Azure Shadow Devour!"
"Qingmu! Don't be reckless! That old man's martial soul is the Armadillo—you won't break through his defense so easily!" The middle-aged man beside him, clearly the most steady of the three, shouted in alarm. But his martial soul was not speed-oriented, and he had no way to intercept in time.
In the blink of an eye, the dozen azure shadows reached Qiu Ying's back. The twin rapiers slashed like raindrops, pouring toward his neck.
"Hmph." Qiu Ying turned his head slightly, his scaled face catching the light, and sneered coldly. Instantly, his limbs and head retracted completely into the hemispherical carapace on his back. His already hunched body bent even further, his head and feet folding tightly together, transforming into a perfect sphere.
Covered entirely in gray-white pentagonal scales, the armored sphere suddenly sprang upward from the ground, colliding head-on with Qingmu's dozen azure shadows created by his sixth soul skill.
As a sixth soul skill—and a ten-thousand-year one at that—Azure Shadow Devour was not some mere clone-type technique. Each afterimage carried fifty percent of Qingmu's own strength. But likewise, if the afterimages were destroyed, the backlash inflicted on the user would be severe.
The afterimages shattered one after another as Qiu Ying crashed through them. Qingmu's face paled slightly. Gritting his teeth, he forced the shadows to scatter in all directions.
Meanwhile, the two Imperial Dragon Regiment soldiers fighting beside him drove back the surrounding Western Sea Regiment soldiers to come to his aid.
"Boom! Boom! Boom—!"
A series of explosions rang out as soul skills and soul tools collided. The two blocked every attack aimed at them by the Western Sea soldiers. Behind them, Qingmu gasped heavily, his face ashen with shame.
"Brother Tang, Uncle Fu… this time I was reckless."
The man Qingmu called Uncle Fu—the same steady middle-aged Soul Master who had tried to stop him earlier—looked grim. He didn't scold Qingmu in the middle of battle, but his voice was sharp with rebuke.
"Get up! Who taught you to turn your back to the enemy in battle?!"
Even before he finished speaking, a soul-tool shock cannon—thick as an arm—blasted from his wrist, slicing past Qingmu's ear.
A Western Sea Regiment soldier collapsed on the spot, his warm blood splattering across Qingmu's body.
Qingmu froze, glancing back at the mangled remains of the enemy soldier, then hurriedly straightened. He tightened his grip on his twin azure rapiers, steadied his breathing, and assumed a defensive stance.
Qiu Ying, seeing that he had failed to finish off Qingmu, felt some regret but didn't dwell on it. He believed that if the fight dragged on, victory would ultimately belong to the Western Sea Regiment.
The only condition was that their commander could hold off Wang Xiao.
At that thought, Qiu Ying lifted his gaze to the sky, where the monstrous fish and the black-winged tiger were locked in combat.
But what he saw made his blood run cold—his own commander was already being forced back, retreat after retreat.