Within the trial world, once a formal alliance established its foundation, member territories tended to gravitate closer to one another.
This geographical consolidation was natural, as the systemic requirements for relocating a territory were relatively forgiving.
Clustering together dramatically enhanced an alliance’s collective security and streamlined cooperative defense.
The Holy Spirit Alliance operated under this exact principle.
Prompted by Ai Lan’s seductive prodding, Musa had finally steeled his resolve.
He intended to thoroughly purge dissenting elements and stabilize his core base before Elara could reach the capital.
Yet both Musa and Ai Lan severely miscalculated Elara’s operational speed.
More accurately, they had failed to anticipate that the armed resistance at Elara’s territory would collapse with such staggering swiftness.
The entire engagement had concluded in less than half an hour.
Following a morning council, Elara’s forces had broken camp and marched toward the Holy Spirit Alliance before noon.
When Elara finally broadcasted her public system notice across the region, her vanguard was already less than a hundred miles away from the alliance’s capital sector!
This tactical pacing was the direct result of Toji Hisami’s guidance.
Issuing the public announcement at the one-hundred-mile mark served a dual purpose: it granted nearby independent lords sufficient travel time to converge on the location, while ensuring Elara’s column could close the remaining distance to the alliance’s doorstep with maximum efficiency.
"I suspect their immediate objective may be launching preemptive strikes against fellow alliance members who lack die-hard loyalty to their faction."
Toji Hisami rode at the head of the formation atop the silver unicorn, with Lyra seated comfortably behind him as usual.
Elara flanked them on her white deer, forming the spearhead of the elite vanguard.
The elven domain’s infantry marched in the primary echelon, followed closely by the Xuanwu Guards and the heavy supply trailers.
To maximize transit velocity across the terrain, the escort trailers had been stripped down ruthlessly.
Every non-essential accessory or comfort feature had been jettisoned in favor of structural stability and speed.
Consequently, the captured water tribe prisoners lashed to the open beds endured a violently jarring ride that left them repeatedly vomiting up their bile.
"Marta, execute standard scout deployment."
"Understood, my Lord."
At Toji Hisami’s signal, Marta surged forward alongside several duplicate afterimages, with select elite swordsmen trailing closely behind.
Operating on a two-mount rotation, the warriors easily sustained Marta’s breakneck patrolling pace.
Marta carried a set of signaling fireworks; the moment he detected hostile forces from the Holy Spirit Alliance moving against isolated members, he was authorized to ignite an immediate flare.
The accompanying elite swordsmen were positioned to intercede and extract allied targets whenever tactical conditions permitted.
Additionally, Elara had dispatched a squad of her own mounted knights to ride in tandem with Marta’s scouts.
For this high-stakes negotiation, Elara had mobilized roughly half of her total territorial forces; even after organizing specialized operational units, her active retinue still numbered around one hundred combatants.
Having finalized the operational parameters with Elara, Toji Hisami eased his mount back toward the rear of the column.
The towering frames of the Xuanwu Guards entirely shielded him from view.
Over the course of the march, Elara’s column had already intersected several groups of independent lords journeying along the same highway.
Yet she maintained her relentless pace, merely offering brief hand gestures instructing the onlookers to converge directly upon the Holy Spirit Alliance’s capital zone.
When those independent lords caught sight of the wretched group of water tribe prisoners securely bound and dragged along in Elara’s wake, their expressions shifted dramatically.
Each of them reacted like a shark catching the scent of blood in the water, instantly realizing that a political storm of catastrophic proportions was about to tear through the Holy Spirit Alliance that very night.
They immediately triggered their private communication crystals, alerting allies and trading networks.
The news propagated exponentially; wave upon wave of independent lords abandoned their domestic duties, setting out overnight to converge upon the designated coordinates of the Holy Spirit Alliance.
Because the transport wagons had been structurally reinforced for speed, Elara’s column advanced at a blistering rate.
Within little more than half an hour, the outermost structural perimeters of the Holy Spirit Alliance came into view.
To facilitate territorial expansion and resource sharing, the Holy Spirit Alliance had eschewed traditional, enclosed stone fortifications in favor of a semi-open structural layout.
Their boundary was defined by a series of perimeter watchtowers erected at fixed spatial intervals, serving as the outer administrative fence of the coalition.
Alliance members rotated shifts to man these guard towers, maintaining a 24-hour observation loop.
Presently, however, the guards stationed atop the nearest watchtower wore expressions of deep unease.
In the distance, sporadic flashes of orange flame and billowing smoke were erupting across various sectors within the alliance’s interior residential zones.
Their immediate commanding officer had strictly ordered them to remain at their posts without authorization, forbidding any independent investigation into the internal disturbances.
Several residents from nearby allied territories had attempted to break past the perimeter to check on their families, only to be forcefully turned back by the alliance’s internal patrol guards.
"Ai Lan! May you die a wretched, agonizing death!"
"Musa! You are an unforgivable traitor to the Sacred Realm!"
"I cursed the day I agreed to stay! I should have abandoned this alliance and fled with Elara from the start!"
Deep within the restricted residential sector, fires consumed several elven and dwarven sub-territories, punctuated by the desperate screams and weeping of displaced citizens echoing through the night.
Yet remarkably, those harrowing sounds failed to travel beyond the immediate blocks.
An unbroken, translucent film of shimmering water enveloped the perimeter of each targeted territory.
While the watery barrier appeared delicate enough to rupture with a gentle poke, no external rescue forces dared or managed to puncture it.
The presence of this magical water film muffled every decibel of sound, rendering the screams silent and blurring the raging fires into hazy, indistinct flickers of light against the night sky.
Under the cover of darkness, ordinary observers traveling through the region found it nearly impossible to gauge the true scale of the violence unfolding within.
The perpetrators systematically purging these domains belonged to the fanatical loyalist factions directly answerable to Musa and Ai Lan.
They operated as elite orc shock troops belonging to the alliance’s hardline military wing.
Spearheading the slaughter at that moment were two brutal orc lords, one bearing the savage bloodline of a fierce tiger clan, the other carrying the massive constitution of an elephant lineage.
Standing calmly before the translucent water film that sealed off the latest target territory was Ai Lan herself.
This burning settlement marked the fourth Sacred Realm domain they had systematically eradicated that night.
The initial target had been a dwarf settlement; entering under the pretext of an official alliance investigation, Ai Lan’s forces had butchered every living soul within.
Even the semi-dwarf lord had been executed, cleanly wiping the territory off the ledger.
Encounters at the second domain, a Blood Spirit settlement, had proven less cooperative; the defenders caught the heavy stench of fresh blood lingering on the orcs’ weapons.
Realizing their betrayal was exposed, the orcs had immediately forced a breach, though the Blood Spirit folk offered a ferocious, organized resistance.
Their lord managed to salvage the core territory crystal and break through the encirclement, fleeing desperately toward a nearby elven domain.
Ai Lan had personally intervened at that juncture, deploying a massive army to box the refugees inside the final elven sanctuary.
Presently, all surviving elements of the rebellious factions had been herded into this single elven enclave.
Acting on Ai Lan’s explicit instructions, a specialized Sea Tribe priest had utilized an esoteric marine hypnosis technique to render every single ancient treant within the elven territory dead to the world.
Deprived of the treants’ formidable combat assistance, the systematic extermination of the trapped elves was merely a matter of scheduled execution.
"Lord Ai Lan, we will conclude this entire cleansing operation well before the first rays of dawn break tomorrow morning."
The Elephant Man lord strode back to report, his massive two-handed battleaxe chipped and caked in gore from repeated use.
The elite Elephant Guards trailing in his wake possessed towering, muscular statures, radiating an oppressive aura of heavy intimidation when massed together.
The Elephant Man gazed toward Ai Lan with undisguised, fanatical adoration.
Ai Lan offered a sweet, charming smile in return.
"Then I must rely entirely on you, Brother Laoroku."
"Haha, have no worries, Your Ladyship! Those fragile creatures with their toothpick limbs and slender frames pose no challenge whatsoever."
The Elephant Man lord beat his massive chest in a booming salute, swapped out three dulled thick-backed cleavers for fresh weapons, and turned to plunge back into the burning settlement.
Ai Lan clasped her hands behind her back, the serene smile on her lips remaining entirely unperturbed by the carnage.
"The true ascension of the Holy Sacred Realm begins this very night."
She murmured softly to herself, watching the crimson glow paint the night sky.
At that exact second, however, her eyebrows twitched sharply as a sudden, piercing premonition of danger spiked within her chest.
Almost simultaneously with the internal warning signal, a stark disruption tore through the quiet air.
A massive contingent of armed figures materialized abruptly from the dense tree line flanking the targeted territory!
The translucent water film sealing off the sector was pierced instantly by the vanguard’s momentum.
The ruptured barrier triggered a cascading energetic backlash, instantly vaporizing the remaining water membrane into harmless steam that dissipated into the night sky.
With the sound-suppression field instantly collapsing, the cacophony of raging combat and roaring flames flooded outward, immediately alerting every corner of the broader Holy Spirit Alliance capital.
Ai Lan had prudently deployed water elementals along every linear approach to act as an early-warning tripwire; any uninvited breach was supposed to encounter those summoned sentinels first.
Even should the water elementals fail to repel an intruder, they were engineered to buy her precious seconds to mount a coordinated defense.
Yet the assault launched by this incoming force was so instantaneous and overwhelming that Ai Lan received zero warning signals.
Only one horrifying logical conclusion presented itself: the perimeter water elementals had been utterly annihilated in a single, breath-like encounter!
The enemy’s velocity had been so catastrophic that the marine mages responsible for maintaining the elemental summons were dead before they could even process the breach.
A dozen potential hostile factions flashed through Ai Lan’s mind, every prominent, high-tier lord operating across the Southern District.
Yet none of them possessed combat units capable of exhibiting such terrifying, silent execution speeds!
Realizing her prior miscalculations were cascading out of control, Ai Lan’s charming smile finally shattered, freezing into an expression of glacial coldness.
In that instant, she could vividly picture the cold, judging gaze Musa would direct toward her from his distant throne room.
Musa was already undergoing a dark, psychological transformation; he remained perched on a razor’s edge.
It was Ai Lan who had systematically stripped away his remaining idealism, forging a ruthless, iron-fisted warlord out of a passionate youth.
Should she commit consecutive, catastrophic tactical failures now, she harbored zero doubt that Musa would execute her to appease his own inner demons.
"Order Lord Ike to deploy immediately! It is time for his detachment to earn their redemption."
Without breaking her gaze, Ai Lan issued a sharp directive.
An attendant nearby immediately raised a specialized conch shell to signal the rear reserve.
Moments later, a second contingent of sea-dwelling warriors broke cover, led by a blue-skinned male lord.
While the majority of sea tribe operatives encountered thus far were female, this faction was commanded by a rare male chieftain.
His skin remained glistening and soaked, leaving a trail of heavy, artificial moisture across the dry ground wherever he strode.
Waving a heavy trident overhead, he channeled raw marine energy to summon a secondary wave of water elemental infantry.
Offering a swift, formal salute to Ai Lan from a distance, Lord Ike led his aqueous shock troops forward, conjuring roaring walls of compressed river water that carried them on a surfing tide straight into the burning interior of the settlement.
Fire and water collided violently, generating dense pillars of choking black smoke that swallowed the remaining visibility across the sector.
For a brief, chaotic window, every combatant’s vision was entirely blinded by the swirling vapor and ash.