I saved the entire sect by playing idly by letting things fall apart.

As he said, the clones are not scary. She already had very little spiritual energy left, so even if she created a clone, it would be very weak.

What's most terrifying is that this disciple is extremely skilled in physical combat. They could handle a dozen or so of them, but Ye Qiao had very little spiritual energy left, and her physical combat skills were insufficient to help her escape.

But, one hundred.

A hundred Ye Qiaos, regardless of swordsmanship, could all be killed by each of them with just one punch from their physical skills.

One of his clones moved slightly, leaping in front of him and throwing a punch. The strategist blocked it with his elbow, his expression turning cold for a moment before brightening with a smile: "Ye Qiao. How about we meet again someday, if fate allows?"

Ye Qiao gave him a bright smile: "If we meet again, it'll be either you or me, it'll be life or death!"

The demonic cultivators were numbed by the two men's fake smiles.

They can still laugh; their mentality must be incredibly stable.

Some people were filled with respect, thinking that he was indeed their strategist, as he could still smile even after seeing so many people.

Under Ye Qiao's command, a group of clones rushed forward, plunging the scene into unprecedented chaos.

"I'll wipe it, I'll wipe it."

The demonic cultivators quickly scattered, swaying left and right to try and avoid Ye Qiao's clones' superb physical skills. If they were even slightly slow to dodge, she could kick them against the wall with a single kick. Fifty of them fighting against a hundred Ye Qiaos—there was no way they could win.

Once they got close, Ye Qiao beat them all into submission.

"Don't go too far, Ye Qiao." The strategist's face turned slightly pale. He used a long sword to cut one of the clones in half at the waist, but a new clone appeared and entangled him the next second.

"Damn it," a demonic cultivator muttered involuntarily, "to resort to such methods, I despise her."

But considering the consequences of his disdain for her—that she would beat him to death—he hurriedly changed his tune, saying, "I secretly despise her."

military adviser:"……"

His real name is Xu Jun, a great demon in the Demon Abyss. Demons born from the gradually weakening seal of the Demon Abyss are all extremely powerful. Xu Jun is one of the few who is willing to use his brain, so the Demon Lord specially found him to command this operation.

Xu Jun's expression turned solemn, and his smile vanished. As the strategist of the team, he knew that he had to react to stop all of this from happening.

Seeing that the strategist's expression was indifferent and that he seemed to have a solution, they couldn't help but feel a little relieved.

Xu Jun knew he had to make a decision. He took a slight step back, adopting an attack stance. Ye Qiao also gripped the talisman, ready to counterattack, thinking he was about to unleash a powerful move.

Unexpectedly, the boy suddenly shouted, "Run!"

His sudden outburst was too unexpected.

Not only was Ye Qiao slightly stunned, but even his subordinates were surprised that he would make such a decision. After all, judging from Xu Jun's expression, he seemed to be planning to fight Ye Qiao to the death.

So his solution is to run away?

"?grown ups?"

"Wait for us, sir!"

"grown ups!!"

Ye Qiao instinctively wanted to chase after him, but Xu Jun simply threw out a clone to intercept it. This clone was very strong, and at least half of his divine sense was devoted to it. Once the clone died, the damage to him would be irreversible in a short period of time.

This method of detaching the tail to escape is too ruthless.

Ye Qiao decisively stopped, fearing that if she continued to chase, the other party might push her too far and perish together with her.

A powerful demon is not so easy to mess with.

He ran away swiftly, but the demonic cultivators who were left behind suffered the consequences. Ye Qiao's clones swarmed them and wiped them out in just a few moments.

Ye Qiao took out the jade slip, wanting to see if he could contact Elder Zhao and the others. Jade slips are items used by cultivators to communicate. In the past, demonic cultivators were not very intelligent and were often immersed in fighting and killing, so they often ignored the function of jade slips. With this strategist present, Xu Jun obviously thought of this point and specially brought a demonic cultivator who knew how to form formations to set up an isolation formation.

Simply put, it's like a cell phone signal being blocked; the jade slip's light dims and there's no reaction whatsoever.

Just as Ta Ling and Chu Ling reunited, they were still searching for Elder Zhao and the others. Ye Qiao looked at the hundreds of clones that had been separated and directed them to find the location of the array's core.

The jade slip could not be used for communication, and the Changming Sect was indeed very large; not to mention other places, it had a total of twelve mountain peaks.

The seniors who came to help also couldn't find Elder Zhao and his group. The most urgent task was to break the isolation array so that the seniors could contact Elder Zhao before discussing anything else.

Ye Qiao's spiritual energy was already nearly depleted, and after distributing it to over a hundred people at once, it was completely exhausted. She needed to find a way to replenish her spiritual energy. Her current cultivation level was already at the mid-stage of the Nascent Soul realm, and the high-grade Spirit Restoration Pill was of little help to her at this point.

Only those of Heaven-grade or higher can take effect quickly, but Heaven-grade items are extremely rare, and Ye Qiao doesn't actually have any.

"Xiao Ai, are you there?"

Mu Li: "? What?"

"I can't sleep because I'm so poor."

Mu Li: "..."

He understood Ye Qiao's situation. "You can go to your Danfeng Peak and see if you have any Heavenly Grade Rejuvenation Pills, but I think that with your wealth, your Changming Sect, which has managed to stay at the bottom of the rankings for a hundred years, might not even have any Heavenly Grade pills."

What's absurd yet somewhat reasonable is that Ye Qiao is the only one in Changming Sect who can move freely. With her mid-stage Nascent Soul cultivation, those demonic cultivators dislike her but can't kill her, which means that no demonic cultivator dares to approach Ye Qiao when she strolls around Changming Sect.

After listening to Mu Li's advice on how to overcome tribulation, she shook the jade slip, sighed deeply, and wished she could just lie down on the ground, not caring about the raging flood.

But that still didn't work. She could only force herself to say, "Forget it. Our Changming Sect may not have any top-grade pills now. Even if we did, we already gave them to me before."

She had already used up those pills during her battle with the Demon Emperor.

"However, it's not entirely without a way to break the deadlock."

After she finished speaking, she contacted the tower spirit, who was also frustrated. "I can't find Elder Zhao." It went to Jade Cry Peak with Chu Ling, but still couldn't find Elder Zhao.

They're really good at hiding!

Ye Qiao possessed high spiritual sense, but Elder Zhao's spiritual sense was even higher. In addition, Elder Zhao was quite versatile; while he wouldn't say he was an expert in formations and pills, he was quite knowledgeable about them. If he set up a small isolation formation, they would have no way of finding where the other party was hiding.

If you want to find Elder Zhao, the best way is to break the isolation formation and contact him using a jade slip.

During regular classes, Xie Chuxue would occasionally have her compete with Mingxuan. The two would set up formations in the Changming Sect, one setting them up and the other finding and breaking them.

Whoever wins will be the first to escape the clutches of their martial uncle. This competitive training method is very effective. In their daily training, the two of them use all their skills to make things difficult for each other. After all, there is no room for brotherly and sisterly affection here. Whoever loses will have to stay and be tortured by Xie Chuxue.

Neither she nor Mingxuan wanted to lose, so they had to find the core of the formation as quickly as possible.

During that time, Ye Qiao and Ming Xuan searched almost every one of the twelve peaks, finding places where they hid formations everywhere. This caused some elders and peak masters to complain. Xie Chuxue suppressed those discontented voices and brazenly claimed that she was training the future prodigies of their Changming Sect. Now, no matter how unwilling they were, they could not stop them from training.

Thanks to the training they received, finding a single key point in the formation with a hundred clones was quite fast.

"We've found Ye Qiao!!" Half an hour later, one of her clones excitedly informed her, "The core of the formation is at Jade Qiong Mountain."

Ye Qiao was slightly taken aback, but quickly rushed over. The massive array came into view. She narrowed her eyes and quickly found the weak point in the intertwined array. She cleanly and neatly kicked the array eye to break it. The array did not break immediately, so Ye Qiao threw out another array-breaking talisman.

The massive formation requires a large number of talismans to break it.

She doesn't have many formation-breaking techniques, and she can draw talismans from a distance, but she lacks spiritual energy.

That's fucking awesome.

"What should we do? What should we do?" Lue Ying asked repeatedly.

Ye Qiao beckoned to the Jinghong Sword, "Come on, little Jinghong, slash at me."

She needed some lightning to assist her, and the Swift Sword didn't say much. Seeing its master give the order, she gathered lightning and struck down without hesitation. The lightning bolt shone with a terrifying purple light, instantly engulfing the thirsty spiritual root.

The Jinghong Sword paused slightly, then immediately unleashed a second bolt of lightning.

Back and forth they went, the entire Jade Mountain flashed with dangerous purple lightning.

"Who is undergoing tribulation?"

"Trying to undergo tribulation at this time is tantamount to courting death."

It's no wonder they misunderstood; the lightning really did resemble the purple lightning that only appears during a tribulation.

The entire Jade Mountain was engulfed in lightning and thunder, deterring the demonic cultivators who had originally planned to investigate.

As the Jinghong Sword slashed at her with all its might, the spiritual root within her body was instantly absorbed. Even the elegant Jinghong Sword was somewhat devastated at this moment. All of her former sword masters had lightning spiritual roots, but the problem was that none of them had spiritual roots that could be absorbed so much.

Besides the Heavenly Dao, who else could afford to feed such a voracious spiritual root?

Ye Qiao noticed that her spiritual root was finally starting to move, and she almost cried tears of joy. Taking advantage of the spiritual root starting to operate, she quickly gathered the spiritual energy near Jade Qiong Mountain. After the spiritual root absorbed the lightning, it finally started to operate rapidly. The spiritual energy in her body drilled into her dantian layer by layer. This was like rain after a long drought, and her heart immediately felt warm.

There's an interesting point about each realm in the cultivation world: when you reach a new minor realm, your spiritual energy is instantly replenished, just like how your mana bar refreshes as you level up in a game.

She hadn't broken through her cultivation level, but she knew she would need her spiritual root to automatically absorb more spiritual energy later on.

But now there is enough spiritual energy to draw talismans.

Ye Qiao found the pen that was almost broken from use, and using spiritual energy as a guide, a beautiful talisman appeared.

With a flick of the pen, more than a dozen array-breaking talismans struck the vicinity of the array's core, shattering the isolation array intertwined above. The jade slip emitted shimmering light, signifying success.

Ye Qiao didn't rush to contact Elder Zhao. She broke the formation mainly so that the other seniors could contact Elder Zhao first. She still needed to find those lone disciples and lock them all in the Ghost King Tower.

As for how to find them, Ye Qiao rummaged through her mustard seed bag, murmuring, "So, what's next?"

A shimmering, magical artifact appeared in his palm.

Ye Qiao prefers to call the water-based magical artifact a map.

The water system map can replicate a scene of a certain area, and can display all the people within the Changming Sect's area.

This makes finding people much faster.

.

Ye Qiao gently placed the milky-white stone brought by the Biyue Sect on it. Only alchemists would store such spirit stones that could shorten the lifespan of spirit plants.

After using the water-based array to leave the domain, Si Miaoyan gave her some more stones. These stones were only found in the Biyue Sect, a major sect of alchemy cultivators. Ye Qiao saved the stones given to her, reluctant to use them.

He truly walked the path of cultivation, relying solely on the charity of wealthy fellow cultivators, without any other means.

A light blue map leaped onto the palm of his hand, the stalactites were swallowed by the magical artifact and accelerated their operation. The general scene of Changming Sect was gradually outlined by the magical artifact. Ye Qiao checked the location of the disciples and used his clones to capture them.

Put it inside the tower.

Inside the fully equipped tower.

She had no intention of letting any disciple of the Changming Sect off easily, whether inside or outside the sect.

In a single day, Ye Qiao captured over nine hundred disciples, resulting in each of the eighteen floors of the Ghost King Tower being packed with them.

The tower spirits were shocked when they saw the situation inside their tower.

It had never seen more than nine hundred disciples before, even when it was capturing and eating people in the ghost realm. Is she poisonous? She captured nine hundred people in one day.

The seniors who came to help were equally clueless. Not to mention helping Changming Sect, after Ye Qiao broke through the sect's protective formation and rushed in, they could hardly even see any Changming Sect disciples.

After walking for a while, one of the sword cultivators couldn't contain his doubts: "What about the inner and outer sect members?"

To be honest, as expected of the Five Sects, their territory is incredibly large.

There are twelve mountain peaks, plus the main peak, and various training grounds and other areas behind the mountains.

It would be difficult to search the entire Changming Sect in a short time. After they entered, they could encounter outer disciples at first, but later there were fewer and fewer people, as if they had disappeared into thin air.

This situation is extremely bizarre.

"Perhaps they're hiding?"

As for where they all went to hide, that remains unknown.

Finding someone wasn't so easy either. Along the way, demonic cultivators kept harassing them and delaying them. Half a day had already passed, and they couldn't help but get anxious. The longer time passed, the longer the demonic cultivators stayed, and the greater the danger for those inner and outer sect members who were alone.

The jade slips were completely useless; when the group took them out, they were all dull and lifeless.

"The Changming Sect has a large-scale isolation array," the knowledgeable elder immediately concluded.

To contact the master, the formation must be broken immediately.

The problem is that all those who came to help were sword cultivators.

Such rare talents as Fu Xiu are seldom seen.

"I forgot that the demon race also has cunning talisman cultivators," the sword cultivator thought to himself. The talisman cultivator profession is truly disgusting; they have too many possibilities to manipulate.

"I should have brought a talisman cultivator from the Song family."

It's too late to go now.

"Ordinary talisman cultivators simply cannot break through large-scale isolation arrays."

Even if you went to the Song family and captured a talisman cultivator, it wouldn't make a difference. "Unless you capture Song Hansheng?"

The talisman cultivator who has risen to the top of the talisman cultivator rankings in the past century, but that number one is not here now.

As they stood there, somewhat at a loss for what to do, the jade slip in their hands suddenly glowed, and the invisible barrier surrounding the Changming Sect quietly shattered, stirring up a hurricane around them. They all looked up at the same time, lost in thought.

"The formation has been broken."

"Does the Changming Sect have any other talisman cultivators?"

"Ye Qiao," they said.

*

There are still five thousand.