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As the war drums sounded once more, the orc army finally renewed their offensive.

The main structure of the mountaintop temple was not originally designed for warfare. Although it covered a vast area, it lacked sturdy fortresses and walls. The layers of defenses established over centuries were mainly intended to thwart elite ambushes, making them less effective against the flood-like waves of the orc army. While large-scale divine spells and magical barriers offered dual physical and magical defense, they couldn't endure the relentless onslaught of brute force and combat energy from thousands of orcs. Whether maintained by magic arrays or constructed by humans, such magical defense systems had their limits. On the other hand, the orcs had numerous powerful warriors and fearless soldiers. By rotating their troops in waves, they ensured their offensive power never waned.

Despite this, the orcs' casualty rate was still higher than during the earlier stages of the mountain assault. After all, this was the core territory humans had cultivated for centuries, filled with countless magical mechanisms of terrifying quantity and quality. Even the previous generation's Viking Sword Saint, the 'Black Ice Demon Knight,' who once ambushed the temple's 'Divine Blessing Paladin' here, had been severely injured by these mechanisms. Now, for the orcs to trample everything with their ordinary army, they had to pay a heavy price in lives at every step. Moreover, the humans defending this place—whether warriors, knights, mages, or priests—were all prepared to die. Many carried self-destruct scrolls to ensure mutual destruction when gravely injured, bypassing divine spells to take their enemies with them. Some mage teams responsible for maintaining the magic arrays, upon seeing the defensive barriers nearing collapse, would collectively burn their life force to detonate the arrays, obliterating all enemies within range.

Some scholars have said: wealth can bridge the gap in power. In a sense, this statement holds true. Even a black iron warrior who has just awakened to combat energy, if equipped with full epic gear and armed with potent magic scrolls, could send a Sword Emperor fleeing in disarray. Moreover, some of the most precious treasures can enhance the user's strength. For example, Chen Xuanfeng's human disciple, Xi Luo, relied on an incomplete "Hero's Sword" to elevate his cultivation to the level of a Sword Emperor, even approaching the power of a Sword Saint.

In the entire Star Sea Continent, if we speak of measurable wealth, the southern Diamond Port's merchant alliance is undoubtedly the richest. However, merchants are still merchants; no matter how extravagant they are, what they possess is merely an accumulation of money. But when it comes to priceless treasures, the possession of truly valuable strategic resources, and the production and stockpiling of magic scrolls, the Holy Light Temple, established over a millennium ago and once nearly unified the continent, is undoubtedly the wealthiest. Even now, as they are pushed back to only half the mountain by the orcs, the wealth they hold remains immeasurable. Moreover, in such a critical battle, the role of well-equipped elite troops becomes even more significant. Currently, the tens of thousands of human warriors remaining on Saint Spirit Mountain are almost half equipped with mithril alloy armor and magical weapons, with scrolls nearly in every hand, making their combat power exceptionally formidable.

"Five... seven... nine... eleven... truly astonishing treasures," Chen Xuanfeng, standing outside the battlefield, observed from afar and couldn't help but sigh. "I never expected Saint Spirit Mountain to still hide twelve epic divine weapons unknown to me. It seems at least three of them are close to the level of the Ten Great Divine Swords. Where did they hide these things before?"

Unlike Chen Xuanfeng's calm observation, the human experts on the battlefield could not afford to wait any longer. Despite the extraordinary bravery of the human warriors, under the orcs' overwhelming individual combat power and numerical advantage, they were steadily retreating. Although they had inflicted tens of thousands of orc casualties, within just a few hours of battle, they had already lost the gate of the front mountain pass, and the battlefield gradually spread to the central square.

On the central square stood statues of the Twelve Sages, the Seven Founding Monarchs, and the Three Human Saints, which had received the reverence of pilgrims from the entire human world for centuries. Yet today, as the orc army stormed in, these statues could not protect their descendants, and one by one, they were destroyed by the shockwaves of the orc experts' battles, reduced to fragments scattered across the ground.

Faced with such a dire situation, several young human Saint Realm experts could no longer hold back. Although they knew that taking action would draw Chen Xuanfeng's attack, they had no choice. Thus, as the last statue of the Twelve Sages collapsed, three massive domains suddenly enveloped half of the square: the azure water domain "Azure Wave Cloud Realm," the sandy earth domain "Vast Sea Under the Waning Moon," and the cubic dark domain "Box of Dead Blackness," each swallowing thousands of combatants, at least half of whom were orcs, including six Sword Emperors.

Hades and Carol were already on Saint Spirit Mountain, and Tan Yueer had arrived shortly before. Their plan was to inflict as much damage as possible to the orc elite forces before Chen Xuanfeng arrived, so they targeted the core areas of the orc main force with their domains.

"Hmph, clever plan!" Chen Xuanfeng sneered, drawing the Tiger Soul Blade and the Sword of Divine Punishment from his back, and lunged toward the battlefield. Although the young human Sword Saints' strategy was sound, it had its pros and cons. The dispersed domains created distance between them, giving Chen Xuanfeng the opportunity to defeat them one by one. Moreover, domains generally could not be moved, so if they wanted to regroup, they would have to deactivate their domains, which would then require ten times the energy to reactivate. Of course, if the Four High Priests joined forces, they could merge their domains for greater combat power, but Chen Xuanfeng would surely abandon them to pursue the Four High Priests instead, which would result in even greater losses for the humans.

With the acceleration ability of the Magic Aura, Chen Xuanfeng covered the distance of several thousand meters in just a few breaths, tearing through over a hundred human warriors to reach the center of the battlefield. The platinum sword energy of the Sword of Divine Punishment condensed and slashed directly toward the domain opened by the "Death Knight" Hades.

"Master, I won't let you pass—"

Just as Chen Xuanfeng approached the "Box of Dead Blackness," a multicolored crystal sword blocked his path. The wielder of the "Hero's Sword," Xi Luo, once again stood in front of his teacher.