The three of them waited for the forces from the rear city to come a bit closer.
Sam knew they would be coming earlier than the forces from the front city, because he released the captives just for this reason. He knew that they would go and ramble their mouths to the rear city to save their lives.
After all they wouldn't be able to just disappear into thin air, not before crossing the rear city and since all the flow of the people for the rear city are stopped from their current location, it is hard for them to blend into some random group and disguise themselves casually and escape.
Sam counted on it and it actually happened. They sent a lot of forces too.
But they are moving too slow. They are too cautious, they move like every step they are taking is a trap.
Sam looked at them for more than an hour and they barely reached the place of their first trap. The first trap in the rear path. It belongs to Kumar.
He set it up.
The three of them are currently looked at the scene to see how well the trap works. One could see that there is a faint sense of competition between them.
All three of them don't know why there are feeling that way, but they are feeling it. This sense of competition and slight rivalry. These are the only things they could get out of this pathetic controlling life of killing and following orders from those gods that are looking down on them in entertainment.
The forces of the rear city entered a large area with a bunch of rocks. The whole terrain is rocky and it is a bit elevated. The scout team and their small falcons entered first. These falcons are smaller in size and they are just a little bit bigger than a regular falcon. They are the perfect beasts for scouting this area.
After they finished the scouting, they sent a green flare upwards with a scroll and the rest of the team moved. They occupied the place and rearranged their formation for the upcoming terrain while the scout team once again moved.
From what the trio could see the forces are a team of sixty members. It is like two guard units. But most of them are Peak stage Pre-transcendent cultivators and there over a dozen of them at Initial stage transcendent stage.
The leader is even a Middle stage transcendent one.
Sam now understood why the Fiend tribe woman locked up here said that the forces of the other two cities are not easy to deal with.
If the initially deployed forces who are generally sent to test the waters have a Middle stage transcendent cultivator of Astral Plane, then there is no way the city's forces are weak.
As the group waited for the scouts report to come, one of them who was looking around suddenly stepped on a rock that clicked.
*CLICK*
The clicking sound could be heard quite loud and clear.
And all of a sudden the spiritual energy in the whole area started rising. The troops got alerted and they looked around.
"Everyone get your beasts and weapons ready. We don't know what is coming.
The formation masters, check the surroundings; it seems like a formation is activating."
"We're already on it."
The leader gave the orders and his subordinates are replying to them, but they are a tad bit late and it didn't take much time for them to realize that.
The spiritual energy became so dense and concentrated and soon everyone felt a lot of spear intent. All the sharp weapons in their hands started vibrating and particularly the people who held spears in their hands and covered in spear aura felt like they are being suffocated.
It felt like they are in a territory which was claimed by someone far superior than they could ever be and they are just here trespassing beyond their limits.
The team leader observed the situation but he didn't know what to do. If it was an attack coming from a certain direction and made by some people he would have been able to figure it out. But unluckily, it is neither of those.
Before he knew it, the spiritual energy started condensing above their heads. And soon spears formed.
The spears emitted the spear intent stronger than anything they have seen before. They wanted to defend themselves, but the power soon overwhelmed as the rain of spears hit them.
No amount of defense could stop them from being injured if not dead as the spears rained down one after another and after the first wave came the second and the third.
The team leader who managed to defend most and had suffered the least damage looked around in the chaos and saw that there was only a certain portion of the area that was being attacked and yelled his orders.
"Everyone, defend yourself and move forward, the formation covers a limited area."
With that he started moving forward.
The formation masters who wanted to look for the nodes didn't dare to move anywhere else, but once the leader mentioned they noticed the borders of the formation and started moving along with the leader to the edge of it.
The rest of the forces followed behind as they moved to the edge and crossed past. For some reason there is no barrier and the density of the spears raining down is higher if they wanted to retreat backwards.
So, they could only move forward.
But the damage was being done no matter which direction they moved.
Some people were so desperate that they used the corpses of the dead beasts and their companions as meat shields to get out of the area.
After fifteen minutes of struggle, the people who were alive got out along with their beasts and as if someone was monitoring it, the formation stopped as soon as everyone left.
The spears didn't rain anymore and it looked completely normal.
Kumar looked at the screen and then at Sam as he spoke.
"That formation disc of yours, really did wonders didn't it? The timing is precise."
"Yeah, an intelligent being doing a task is always better than an intelligent machine doing it. The formation of spirits is used for a reason."
They once again focused on the situation after their little exchange.
With all the scouts, their beasts, the total force counted up to 124 candidates. Out of them the dozen scouts and their dozen falcons are not in the formation zone which left hundred people and out of them, there thirty candidates died.
Only ninety four of them are left.
When the formation disappeared, the scouts finally returned and they were dumbfounded by all the destruction that has happened.
The whole area completely changed. The rocky terrain has turned into a terrain of rubble. Plain and loose at the same time.
They camped there and recovered as they patched up the injured ones.
The leader went to the formation masters and asked.
"What kind of trap is that?"
The formation masters didn't know what to say.
"Don't tell me you didn't understand even a bit of it." The leader asked again but none of the formation masters spoke.
"I think it is a single formation. We have never heard of anything similar to what this was in any books. Not even the thousands of our sect records have something like that. We didn't see any trace of the known formation styles within our realms and the realms surrounding it.
It is a completely built up formation made of fully original ideas.
The basic styles we learned and were taught all came from the Gandharva race. As much as they are profound and useful, they also made our perspective limited.
Whoever that is doing this, has come from outside and they are really good at what they do.
From what we observed, the formation is acting on based of spear intent which is completely unfamiliar to us. If my guess is right, for it to have such an intense intent, the formation's core foundation should be absorbing the energy and refining it like a spear user. That is all I understand."
The leader looked at the one who spoke. He is not even a formation master. He is just a normal soldier from a unit.
The formation masters looked at him with a frown.
"I have never seen you. Are you a formation master by any chance? Can you show me your badge if you are one?"
One of them even directly asked.
The leader frowned and said,
"Are you familiar with the formations?"
"Yes, a little bit." The soldier answered to the leader, ignoring the formation master.
"I am not really good at constructing them and creating them, but I can analyze the ones that are created." The soldier continued seeing that the leader was silent.
"How does that work? If you can analyze them, you can imitate them right?"
"Not really. The formation nodes need to be placed in a certain order. I can know which node does what after placing it, but I don't know which node should be placed first and which node should do what before placing them. If I blindly imitate it, there is a chance I would be dead while messing with a formation. That is why I didn't bother about it."
