Chapter 111: Shut the Door and Beat the Dog!

As soon as Yang Ye finished speaking, the people in the room began to murmur. Some national leaders even excused themselves, leaving the table temporarily to consult among themselves.

"My husband, are you in a meeting?"

Suddenly, the door opened and Long Xiaoqing walked in. She swept her gaze over the scene in the conference room and smiled. Yang Ye nodded, stood up, and said, "Everyone, I will return in an hour." With that, he took Long Xiaoqing by the hand and led her out of the room.

Once away from the conference room, Yang Ye made separate calls to Zhou Hun and Nezha. As soon as he hung up, all of China began to mobilize. The weapons factory that Nezha had established not long ago threw open its gates. Zhou Hun and his group flooded into the facility, donning armor etched with runes and arming themselves with newly forged weapons. Simultaneously, all practitioners above the Stellar realm across China received the mobilization order from the Chinese Inspection Bureau and rushed toward Xiajing at top speed.

In China, one call from Yang Ye was enough to set the practitioners into a flurry of activity. Other nations, however, lacked such efficiency. An hour later, when Yang Ye returned to the conference room, the various nations had still not reached a consensus.

"Forget it! By the time you lot finish squabbling, the opportunity will have long since passed," Yang Ye remarked with dissatisfaction before walking out of the room.

Two days later, the Earth Star warriors—composed of Chinese practitioners and led by Yang Ye—passed through the teleportation array located in China and arrived at the junction between Earth Star and the Light Belt. At this time, Yang Ye had fewer than three hundred men under his command: forty Super-Stellar realm practitioners and over two hundred Stellar realm ones. Everyone was clad in armor crafted by Nezha’s weapons factory and held runic-etched weapons.

At the junction of the Light Belt and the Earth Star runic array stood a massive archway, covered in inscriptions. Standing beneath it, Yang Ye scanned the alien practitioners ahead. Many of the nearby practitioners merely glanced at Yang Ye and his group, looking completely indifferent.

"Damn them! They’re actually this arrogant!" Zhou Hun gritted his teeth and cursed. These practitioners from other stars could not break into Earth Star’s planetary defense array, but by occupying the Light Belt and absorbing the stellar energy, they were essentially plundering it.

As Yang Ye’s group arrived, they saw a massive influx of practitioners still pouring into the starry space on both sides of the Light Belt. Seeing this, the corner of Yang Ye’s mouth curled upward.

Nezha took out a tablet-like device, activated it, and said to Yang Ye, "Most of these people come from nearby star-continents. The one on the left is Sub-Star, and the one on the right is Light-Universe Star. Practitioners from those two landmasses are the most numerous. The rest are drifters. Sub-Star and Light-Universe Star arrived hundreds of years before us and possess practitioners at the Star Lord level. However, since we are fighting at our own doorstep, we have the blessing of our runic array, which can raise our combat power by an entire realm."

Yang Ye smiled and said, "Then what are we waiting for? Activate the array!"

"Understood!" Nezha replied. He walked to the archway and pressed a crescent-shaped protrusion on it. The arch immediately emitted a beam of blue light. The light surged straight along the Light Belt, quickly covering it entirely, as if adding a semi-transparent glass shield. It extended all the way to a large circular light belt in the distance before stopping.

That circular belt was off-limits for practitioner cultivation, as it was the main supply line for the Fifth Star Domain’s stellar energy; anyone daring to absorb energy there would be making an enemy of every practitioner in the Fifth Star Domain. Furthermore, that circular belt was patrolled by warriors of the Main Clan. Inside that ring lay the Fourth Star Domain.

Once the runic array was activated, the alien practitioners trapped within the blue light found it difficult to leave, and those outside found it just as hard to get in. Yang Ye sneered, raised his hand, and waved it. "Kill them! Leave no one alive!"

Zhou Hun and the others, having waited impatiently, charged forward immediately. Though Earth Star had not been relocated for long and the practitioners had yet to learn the Main Clan’s language, slaughter was a universal tongue.

"Whoosh!" As Zhou Hun’s group moved out, Long Xiaoqing followed suit.

Nezha smiled at this moment and asked, "Master, you didn't do this on purpose, did you?" Curious about the cold sneer on Yang Ye’s face, he added, "Why would you say that?" Yang Ye glanced at Nezha and replied indifferently.

Nezha analyzed, "If you had stationed troops the moment Earth Star arrived, while there would still have been invaders, there wouldn't have been this many. You let it be for half a month, and the nearby practitioners assumed we were weak, causing them to swarm in. You must know, every one of these people carries items. Even if they don't, when they are killed, the stellar energy in their bodies will be released and channeled into Earth Star. After this battle, once the runic arrays below are built, we will be able to condense a vast amount of energy crystals..."

"Nezha, you’ve got it right," Yang Ye said coldly before striding forward. Nezha shrugged; he hadn't even finished speaking yet.

What he wanted to say was that among the Fifth Star Domain, Yang Ye and Long Xiaoqing possessed top-tier combat power; this protracted battle was effectively like "shutting the door to beat the dog."

Long Xiaoqing was the second to last to set off, yet she surged to the front. She largely ignored practitioners below the Stellar realm, focusing her strikes entirely on those at the Super-Stellar level and above. Her moves were lethal, and she faced no enemy who could withstand a single blow.

The Light Belt was long, visually spanning at least several hundred thousand kilometers. In the past half month, hundreds of thousands of alien practitioners had gathered there. Many had even built shelters on the belt, installing small runic arrays to condense crystals. The stellar energy supplied by the Main Clan to each star had a quota; with too many practitioners nearby, the resources allocated to each individual were pitifully small. That was why they resorted to plundering other stars.

The Main Clan did not forbid such conflicts. Only through constant fighting and plundering could a race grow strong. These lower-tier groups were essentially weapons in the hands of the Main Clan, and they were naturally happy to see their weapons become increasingly powerful. Of course, such combat and plundering were restricted to within the same star domain. For instance, if a race from the Fourth Star Domain wanted to conquer a race in the Fifth, they had to obtain permission from the Main Clan first.

...

The foreign practitioners never expected the newly arrived Earth Star to possess such immense combat power, especially the man and woman. After suffering heavy casualties, they all scrambled to retreat toward the main circular belt. However, their retreat was not as fast as the slaughter being carried out by Yang Ye and Long Xiaoqing.

Along the Light Belt, starting from the Southern Heaven Gate and extending forward, the path was littered with the corpses of alien practitioners. As time passed, aside from the Super-Stellar powerhouses like Zhou Hun, the two hundred-plus Stellar-level Chinese practitioners were relegated to logistics, collecting the armor, weapons, storage rings, and small energy-condensing arrays from the bodies.

Back on Earth Star, seeing the Chinese practitioners advancing like a hot knife through butter, the other nations—who had initially been reluctant to send their own people—finally could no longer resist and arrived at the Southern Heaven Gate. But by then, the gate was already guarded by dozens of Chinese practitioners, who forbade them from passing.