Old Fang couldn't swallow his anger. Graceful Heaven couldn't hide its plan to start a war from Gu Nan.
Or rather, it was impossible for a powerful astral world like Graceful Heaven to completely conceal a major event that affected all its inhabitants.
Not everyone was like Gu Nan, whose army was entirely composed of emotionless divine servants. For normal Star Rulers, their soldiers were also their astral world's inhabitants.
However, he couldn't possibly allow Graceful Heaven to deploy its army so easily. Gu Nan needed to disrupt Graceful Heaven's operations as much as possible to give people from the Heaven-God Alliance time to set up the Blood Sacrifice Formation.
Although the Blood Sacrifice Formation sounded awfully imposing, its effect was very simple. To put it bluntly, it kills all living creatures inside the formation and absorbs all their power, including their flesh, blood, and souls.
The level of the formation only affected the slaughter efficiency and the degree to which it could gather power.
Graceful Heaven was not a Unified Dao level plane, so almost no Star Ruler existences were inside. Void Cutters were its top experts.
Therefore, the Blood Sacrifice Formation prepared by the Heaven-God Alliance would not have much problem in killing inhabitants. The real difficulty with formation setup was how to simultaneously activate it across the entire Graceful Heaven and gather all the power together.
"Our plan is to set up 999 sub-formations, and each sub-formation will consist of 365 regional formations…"
Zhuangxuan stood before Gu Nan, patiently explaining the plan for the Blood Sacrifice Formation.
It was impossible to hide his goal from the Heaven-God Alliance. As soon as the list of materials Gu Nan requested entered Zhuangxuan's hands, the latter knew what he was planning to do.
Zhuangxuan was quite well prepared. Not only did he prepare a plan for the Blood Sacrifice Formation, he even mapped out the detailed locations where each sub-formation should be placed.
Of course, he couldn't possibly accomplish all this alone. He must have mobilized the huge manpower and material resources of the Heaven-God Alliance, and many members even lost their lives in the process.
Gu Nan couldn't help nodding with satisfaction after he read the plan given by Zhuangxuan.
This young man's work was indeed very reassuring. It could be described as almost watertight. Even Gu Nan can't find any obvious flaws in the plan.
As for the specific blood sacrifice method, although it wasn't directly given by the crimson skull, Gu Nan himself knew a few, while Zhuangxuan used a method unique to the Myriad Heavens this time.
This method possessed traces of an ancient demonic sect's influence, but at the same time, it had also been improved using modern techniques. Both its efficiency and concealment ability were satisfactory.
"Graceful Heaven is about to wage a war soon. Your people can take the opportunity to sneak in and set up the formation," Gu Nan said to Zhuangxuan.
Zhuangxuan quickly replied, "Starting a war is indeed conducive to sneaking in to set up the formation, but I hope Senior will not inadvertently alert the enemy."
Setting up a grand formation covering the entire Graceful Heaven was obviously not something that could be done quickly. The war must start as early as possible, but it also had to drag on for as long as possible, the longer the better.
Therefore, Gu Nan couldn't scare Old Fang away from the get-go, or else it wouldn't be so easy to set up the formation if Fang Chaoyun decided to hide inside Graceful Heaven.
Gu Nan also knew this and immediately nodded in agreement. At this moment, Yan Xiaoxiao's figure suddenly appeared, her expression grave.
"Graceful Heaven made their move."
...
"Master! Master!" A middle-aged Confucian scholar followed behind Fang Chaoyun and urged anxiously, "Several units haven't returned yet in response to our call for reinforcements, so we must not move our troops right now! If we cannot defeat the enemy in one blow, we will inevitably be dragged into a stalemate—"
Fang Chaoyun didn't even look back and coldly interrupted, "Gu Nan sent troops to harass my border and assassins to kill six of my disciples. Tell me, how can I endure this?!"
The middle-aged Confucian scholar still tried to dissuade him, "There's something fishy about the deaths of my several martial brothers. It may not be Gu Nan's doing! Besides, even if it was him, he wants to provoke us into starting a war in advance. Master, you must not fall into his trap!"
There were too many people in this world who knew how to scheme. It was impossible to hide one's schemes from everyone, which was why the majority of effective strategies were overt schemes.
This was the situation Fang Chaoyun faced. Even if he knew it was a trap and that a third party might be manipulating matters behind the scenes, he must still give an account for the deaths of his six disciples!
"I've made up my mind. You need not say more." Old Fang said coldly, "Depart immediately and capture the target within three days! "
...
In fact, full-scale wars rarely occurred between planes above Realm Level.
On one hand, there was rarely a huge gap in the two sides' strength, and on the other hand, it was also because mobilizing an army was very difficult.
Void Cutters could freely travel to and from the major planes, but the armies under them couldn't do the same and could only rely on large-scale spatial transmission methods.
But these methods were exceptionally expensive. Often, an enormous sum of money would've already been spent before even managing to kill a single enemy in the war.
War was fought with money—this statement was always true.
But Graceful Heaven didn't care about money this time, and neither did Fang Chaoyun. He just wanted to completely destroy Gu Nan's astral world.
Fang Chaoyun even hired a group of suicide squad members from other planes at a high price to serve as the first wave of troops to reduce casualties to his own forcees.
What Fang Chaoyun didn't expect was that Gu Nan's ability to resist this invasion was unexpectedly strong.
Gu Nan himself didn't even show up, but his astral world resolutely adopted the strategy of a "scorched earth policy" that left nothing useful for the invaders while all the residents sought shelter inside the core city-states.
Rather, there was no need to deliberately seek shelter because Gu Nan's earlier management of his Divine Kingdom completely forbade people from going outside. Everyone must live inside a city-state.
"You were already prepared, huh?" Fang Chaoyun didn't personally enter Gu Nan's astral world and just stayed outside to observe. He was waiting for the moment when Gu Nan couldn't help but intervene.
But judging from the current situation, it might be a very long time before this happens.
The enemy army seemed to be extremely organized, and the guards in each city-state were just right to make their offensive unsustainable.
But once they started to mobilize their troops, the other side would also adjust immediately.
Distance was completely meaningless to Void Cutters.
Fang Chaoyun was sitting in a military tent. Placed in front of him was an extremely finely crafted sand table that could even be operated to accurately display the terrain of various locations.
"Since the opponent has reconnaissance methods that are difficult to detect… let's not play with tactics anymore and concentrate all our strength to attack a single city!"
...
"It's impossible for them to defeat me through the mobilization of troops inside this Divine Kingdom," Yan Xiaoxiao calmly stated, as if she was relating an insignificant matter.
"So they can only fight head-on." Gu Nan said casually, "We have hundreds of city-states and plenty of time to play hide-and-seek with him."
Yan Xiaoxiao revealed a smile. "Zhuangxuan's people have arrived. Teacher, aren't you departing soon?"
"Of course I will." Gu Nan then said, "Send another suicide squad out. This time, we'll light a fire in Old Fang's backyard first."
"Okay." Yan Xiaoxiao naturally had no reason to object. "But there's one more person you need to meet before you depart."
"Who?"
"Qinghe Realm, Zhong Qinghe."