The camera zoomed out even further and showed the surrounding area of the temple.
There was a massive forest about 10 kilometers away from the boundary of the temple. Each tree of that forest was at least 50 meters tall with thick, bushy crowns that would be able to hide entire elephants with ease.
The camera kept zooming in on the right side until hundreds upon hundreds of silhouettes could be seen sitting on and around the trees.
It zoomed out before once again zooming in towards the left side. There stood massive, multi-armed silhouettes under the trees, a few of which were half as big as the trees themselves. This was the side of the Jia Kingdom.
***
On the right side.
Fan Xinya stood atop a thick tree branch, staring towards their target of the day. Close behind him were more than 760 people of different genders, races, and attires bunched up.
*Rustle*
The leaves right above him slightly shook and another person landed next to him clumsily. It was a slightly overweight girl that was around 7 feet tall. She had dark red skin and small horns coming out of her forehead.
"Any news?" she asked looking in the same direction as him.
Fan Xinya lightly shook his head.
"What about your side?"
She nodded once, "They're all ready."
Fan Xinya looked to his left and saw half a dozen other people standing in the canopy at the same height as him and staring outwards.
These eight individuals had risen to become the leaders of their respective groups.
All of them were either rogue cultivators or those with minor backgrounds. They had chosen to join the competition for different reasons. Some in hopes of gaining fame, some for the treasures, and some hoping to join one of the bigger powers.
But each of them led a certain number of cultivators of their own. All together they came to be more than 10,000 in total, and these were just the rogue cultivators.
The geniuses belonging to the military were different.
"So? When do we strike?" she asked impatiently. Fan Xinya glanced towards her and let out a soft smile. This chubby girl belonged to a tribe of 'Imps'.
Every Imp, even the ones belonging to the same family would be vastly different than the others. Their bloodlines were highly unstable and could produce any number of mutations.
She had the blood of some kind of a horned beast running through her veins, which gave her skin the peculiar color. But she was also a hardened warrior and loved fighting which was in total contrast to her image.
"The one who makes the first move will have the biggest losses. There's only a few thousand of us so we can't take the risk, but the Jia can," he gestured towards the other side of the temple where hulking Jia soldiers blocked out the sun.
Just from an initial census, there seemed to be more than 20 thousand of them.
"But won't they get to the treasure first then?"
"Yeah, but that doesn't mean they'll get it. It jus-"
*Hooowl~*
An extremely loud wolf howl interrupted him. It was coming from the side of the Jia.
Fan Xinya straightened his back and stretched out his neck to get a better view. The Jia had indeed made the first move.
Two fully armored units of about 2,000 giant soldiers each had walked out of the forest on foot. Each of these men was decked out in full metal armor from head to toe.
This armor covered their entire bodies, leaving only a space for the eyes. It was simply called the "The Guardian" by the Jia military was mass-produced just for this competition.
The armor was able to block every normal attack of Mid-Stage Spirit realm cultivators and beasts of equivalent power.
The Jia military had more than 500 million soldiers in total, yet they were only able to produce these 4,000 armor pieces. It showed how hard and expensive they were to make.
The armors had glowing sigils imprinted on them which were giving out a faint yellow light. In the soldier's hands were gigantic two-handed masses, hammers, greatswords, and shields.
"Ho Ah!"
"Ho Ah!"
"Ho Ah!"
Every Jia cultivator started shouted while thumping their chests as soon as they saw these men step out.
These people were the vanguards in almost every battle. The sigils on the armor pieces gave them different abilities and powers that helped them take almost any attack head-on.
Behind these 4,000 soldiers stood 15 people in a straight line. These fifteen were the most famous geniuses from their side, from both the military and the roque cultivators combined.
One of them stepped out and shouted, "ONWARD!"
The Guardians let out loud roars and started running towards the temple.
Hundreds of scorpion beasts that were roaming the boundary between the temple and the forest turned towards these new enemies. They let out a mix of crackling noises and hisses and charged towards incoming Jia soldiers.
Multi-colored poison's dripped out of these creatures maws as they punched on the soldiers, but the result was not what they had expected.
The first row of soldiers suddenly stopped and implanted their massive shields in the ground in front of them.
Every shield let out a yellow colored barrier that connected with the others and formed a straight, impregnable line.
As soon as the beasts impacted with the barrier a massive force pushed them back, momentarily stunning them. The soldiers quickly took advantage of this opportunity and swung their weapons, which passed through the barrier without any trouble and cut off parts of these beasts.
Within a few minutes, these hundreds of creatures were nothing more than a mess of mangled corpses.
One of the Guardians that seemed to be the leader turned around and raised his mace into the air proudly.
Everyone watching lout of loud cheers which came to a sudden halt.
The Guardian leader turned around and his pupils shrunk.
The temple doors had swung open and out came a countless number of even bigger beasts. The smallest of these was about 3 meters long, while the largest was over 100 meters.
*SCREECH*
One of the 100-meter long scorpion beasts screeched loudly and this literal army of beasts charged towards the guardians like the ocean tide.
The Guardian Leader scoffed and went back to his position.
"BARRIERS! UP!"
The Guardians channeled all of their Qi into the shields and the barrier reformed, this time several times brighter than before.
