Wen Long sat in his throne room, dejected. Nothing was going as planned. His entire frontline had just eaten itself. What made matters worse was the fact that he now had to equip mundane soldiers with weak spiritual shields. That made the cost of acquiring and maintaining the mundane soldiers shoot way up. They were supposed to be cheap. That was their whole point. Mundane soldiers could kill low-level cultivators by skill or by numbers. Low-level cultivators mostly had only enhanced body functions going for them. The proper way to think about qi-gathering realm cultivators is to imagine them as a five-man mundane soldier squad. With this "Puppet curse" development, mundane soldiers were more of a liability than a boon.
He summoned one of his ministers to inform him about a decision he had come to with a heavy heart.
"Send messengers to demon sects and request that they join the war effort."
