From the depths of the sandstorm, a number of figures emerged, their entire being surrounded by a sphere of clear energy marked by around fifty individual bright marks that even those unaware of the true natures of the Great Families could see and identify with but a little thought. In front of each one that emerged, a large array floated right in front of them, guided by their hand, with some using their left and some using their right. All of them exited the sands near to their third generation, and all of them were guiding the great arrays that they had constructed right at the spots that had already been targeted and slightly weakened.

Great Dark had been correct in his assumption, and he hardly needed to keep watching in order to know what they would do next. He fell back down to the ground and joined Great Light in powering the defences.

With those arrays prepared and pointed at the weakened points of the barrier, even if they had only been weakened by an extremely small extent in comparison to what would be needed to break through the first layer fully, they focused all of their energy and joined in to the attack, combining their attack beams with those used by their third generation as to further destabilise the protective dome that surrounded Paragon.

The moment that their significantly more powerful attack struck, the entire dome fluctuated, the waves from the strikes flowing across the surface and spreading all the way around it. Some that looked up were able to see how the waves converged at the top, rippling and cancelling one another out but not without affecting the barrier’s stability. It was connected to the sandstorm that guarded Paragon, and thus as the barrier shimmered, the sandstorm also wavered, albeit far more briefly than the dome itself did.

Some might think that it meant that they withstood the attack, but just as the third generation did not stop drilling into the barrier, the arrays created by the second generation also persisted.

“Great Light, use that rash mind of yours! How long would it take them to break through the barrier?”

Prompted by his brother’s question, the twin of Great Earth glanced at the rippling of the dome all around them and stared at it with intense focus for a little while. He hardly appreciated the way in which he was seen by his other half, but he also viewed himself in an identical manner and thus preferred to focus on the things that mattered rather than those that did not.

After a while, he came to a conclusion.

“So long as the entirety of the barrier is kept up, and they keep attacking it, the place is likely not going to endure more than another few minutes. We must use the second layer.”

“Hm… Then we should ensure that they are pulled towards a single spot… no…” Great Dark hesitated, glancing at the barrier, ‘A single point will make it easier for them to invade, but it is possible to challenge them more easily if they are all funnelled towards a single point… However, if they are spread out, then they will be taking down the entire barrier at once and make it far more difficult to rebuild it in any short amount of time, and they will all invade at the same time from all around the encirclement… Heavens, they just had to all come at once while she was away, or even trapped by them… No…’

He dismissed that thought. Wei Yi was safe, that much simply had to be true within his mind, and the true question was whether she’d be able to arrive and assist with the situation in time if she was called upon.

“Yi Shi Ming, please call for Wei Yi. We may require her aid, depending on how well we truly believe the defences are going endure,” Great Dark ended up saying to the spatial gateway, wherein the spatial spirit nodded and vanished from the spot, retreating to focus on the task, “Great Light, we must move the barrier and intentionally part the sands… We will focus them on a single point with the most and strongest defences for the situation… There.”

The twin of Great Earth pointed to one particular direction, where Meng Chu, Luo Lia Kun and a few other notable figures were positioned and prepared to activate the defensive methods that they had access to. There, the smallest number of Greats was currently attempting to attack them, and there was where the largest number of defences had been set up. Most of the people present were naturally familiar with how to use them, and thus it ought to be the position from which the largest amount of damage could be done to the enemy without suffering too greatly on their own.

In addition, the funnelling of foes towards a single position essentially guaranteed that any powerful methods that target a large area will hit at least a few of them, whereas their current, more spread out positioning made it difficult to get more than two or three at once, regardless of what kind of technique or inscription was used.

Great Light also looked in that direction and contemplated it for a few moments, being mostly as conflicted as Great Dark had been moments prior.

“That might work,” he said, “When are we preparing for the change?”

“Judging by their current progress, we should begin right away…” Great Dark concluded, “The longer we hesitate, the greater the chances of our defeat!”

Nothing more needed to be said. They knew their foe, the procedures to go through to achieve a certain state of the guarding barrier, and with his command being shared to every single soldier in range of their communication methods, they hardly needed to wait for the message and orders to be delivered to them before they could act. Thus, those who couldn’t be observed from the other side of the wall stepped away and headed towards their chosen position, and the rest persisted in supporting the barrier for as long as they could.

It took a minute to light up all of the inscriptions, prepare them, and to manipulate the sands as to give them what they required to collapse a portion of the sandstorm without destroying the rest of it at the same time, which was quite a lot more difficult to do than say.

Before going through with it, the darker twin of Great Earth turned to the gateway and asked, “Anything?”

The spatial spirit appeared within the gateway, shaking her head as she said, “I am not currently able to reach Wei Yi, although she does still remain alive. We had agreed that the message would be considered more significant with each attempt to contact her within a certain period of time, so the moment that we are more certain that we are at risk, I shall attempt it again.”

“Got it… Do you think that she might-”

“Great Dark, such a thought is simply unhelpful in the current situation. Regardless of her true state, we have to act with care and not let ourselves fall, whether or not she can come to save us at the end or not,” the spatial spirit interrupted him, “She had said herself that if this is all reliant on her, then it is hardly a true force as it is a person standing in front of a large crowd that simply follows her around while relishing in the results of her actions. The Arbiters must be capable, even if not as much as the Ascendant herself.”

He nodded quickly, turned to the communicative inscription and activated it, calling out, “We are shifting the sands at this very moment! Report changes and oddities right away!”

No response was needed from the other side before he directed his energy into the central inscription and activated everything that they had just prepared. Countless inscriptions, connected to one another through the array web that now covered the fortress, lit up and performed various actions, with some directing energy in certain ways through the enormous array beneath Paragon’s surface while others targeted the foes on the outside to force them to move.

They needed the sands to calm in a single area by which Paragon could be approached, but they also needed their foes to see moving as being a viable alternative to their current position, in which they were clearly handling the sand on their own without too much trouble. If nothing gave them the information that the sandstorm did shift, whether that was through the methods of communication that they possessed or some other manner to alert them to a change in the situation. Something that would force them to act and potentially reconsider their avenue of attack would be ideal, and that was exactly what they had prepared.

All at once, all of the inscriptions that were able to project brands, fire planar energy attacks or even direct killing intent or spiritual will towards the foes of Paragon and the Ascendant’s Arbiters were activated, an immense degree of energy being instantly directed at the Great Family members outside.

Several scorching brands filled to the brim with crimson lightning, bolts and spheres of concentrated earth, water, metal, wood and fire-type energies that shot out straight at one of the anchors of their foes, as well as far more than that appeared all at once, soaring at the Greats or even appearing right beside them – as was the case with the brands, for instance – with no delays like those that the initial volley to repel them had. Each attack was times just right, and so they all ended up falling upon them within a few seconds.

That finally got them to move in a slightly less leisurely manner than before, with many of the third generation and some of the second generation seeking to dodge the most dangerous of the individual attacks while focusing their strength to completely block those of lesser significance that might still impact upon their ability to participate in the battle.

All at once, the sounds of explosions, thunder, crackling and cracking of stone and ice and far more spread out from all directions, converging upon Paragon with a wave of greater morale.

Most of the soldiers weren’t too familiar with the capabilities of the Greats, after all, so all that they wished to see, and believed would be sufficient, was a large quantity of attacks being sent at them all at once to bring them down a notch or two. With that many explosions and other noises of damage and destruction passing through the sandstorm to reach their ears, it was difficult to not be excited at the possibility of victory approaching them.

Still, all of them had been taught to not let their guard down or underestimate the foes that they couldn’t know the names and titles of due to the manner in which they would have discovered even earlier than this so long as one of the common guard and soldiers accidentally exclaimed something about the Greats while drinking in one of the Kong Prison Realm’s combined brothels and taverns. Frankly, they couldn’t be sure whether saying something like ‘great families’ in reference to the usual families that controlled the districts in the light would also alert them, and whether they had any idea at all what was being said beside their titles, but doing as much as possible to prevent any kind of accident from exposing a large quantity of people being in the desert for no good reason was still wise.

As such, every guard, soldier and warrior had not thrown down their weapons and prepared to celebrate just because of a few explosions, not that it would have been easy to do so when the sandstorm around them suddenly opened, a large passageway that stretched up from the ground all the way up into the sky appearing in the sands. It was formed by the flow of the sandstorm itself, but the way in which it had suddenly appeared made it seem like someone had taken a sword and sliced the sands apart.

Fortunately for the warriors at that location, they saw no great swordsman with his blade in the ground after performing that feat, or else some of them might have wanted to surrender. Given that there was no room for such a thing in the Arbiters, as they were foes to a highly vindictive group, that wouldn’t have gone well for them.

Due to the extraordinary nature of the sudden collapse of the wall, it immediately came to the attention of the Greats that surrounded Paragon, for the sudden drop of sand was visible from any direction as the fortress itself became more visible to the attackers.

Most of them had gotten away from the previous barrage with few hits whatsoever, not to mention those that would be anything more than a passing inconvenience to them, and the most severe thing that happened to any of the Greats was a small crack on one of their anchors. Seeing as that kind of thing could be repaired with a little bit of effort by even a regular cultivator, not to mention one of the Greats, this was barely even worth mentioning.

Just as had been predicted, they decided to converge upon the sudden opening within the defences. Whether they were aware of the fact that they were being lured there on purpose or not, that did not appear to be stopping a single one of them as they approached the sudden gash in the sands by heading around to it while getting further away from the centre of the storm, then running back to their original distance when they entered the calm region of the desert. For a few moments, the pressure on the sides of the dome was indeed lessened, but the moment that they entered the sandstorm-free zone, all of that distance barely mattered as their beams were able to proceed uninterrupted by the particles of sand that previously hindered them.

Thus, as soon as their formation was remade within that narrow pathway to the fortress, their attack became significantly more effective and concentrated, and their collaboration truly shined.

With that many beams of various densities and strengths targeting a specific pattern of points on the outermost barrier, the stability of it was rapidly being reduced, especially in that area. It was akin to applying an immense degree of heat to a block of ice, using it to cut through without needing all that much force in order to accomplish it.

Great Dark and Great Light channelled as much of their energy into it as they were able to, but as they had already accepted and decided that it was time to surrender the first layer of protection that currently covered them, they waited for just a little longer before agreeing to revoke their supplementary energy from it and permit that part of the barrier to fall. The rest would still be maintained, as to force them to enter from a single point and thus give the Arbiters far more room to defend themselves with whatever methods they were able to muster, but it would still lose the ability to truly hinder the Greats.

“Yi Shi Ming, send a second attempt and then shut the gateways. Everyone who isn’t intent on fighting to the end has already left, correct?” Great Dark asked, proceeding when he saw the mother of the Master of Yi City nod in the spatial realm, “If you can, keep watching and continue your attempts.”

“I shall do so. However, even if I was to reach her, it would take a minimum of a minute to fully rebuild the connection and allow her to travel through the prison realm to reach you, so-”

“Then we shall last for as long as we can, then a minute longer,” Great Light interrupted, temporarily taking his hands away from the inscription and instead using his plentiful energy to summon large chunk of ice after chunk of ice, gathering them within the air until he was surrounded by literal tonnes of ice planar constructs, “We may not have been the strongest at combat, but we are able to stand our ground for that much at the very least.”

With that, he launched them all into the air, intentionally providing them with just enough forward and upward momentum so that once they reached their peak height, they would then drop right onto their foes while they were attempting to circumvent the next layer of the defences in their path.

The display impressed some, and while Yi Shi Ming was obviously not within that camp as she had personally observed several momentous battles between Kong Shi Meng and a number of other figures of incredible prowess that few in the modern world would be able to ever match, she could not object to someone acting with bravery and passion. Once upon a time, her son would also be a little rash, and while he almost always won in the end, he had not always acted in the best way all the way through a battle or situation.

She withdrew from the gateway, letting it shut into a small point that would barely result in any spatial fluctuation due to its miniscule size, then used the minimal connection that remained between her and Wei Yi to attempt to reach the Ascendant. One second passed, then two, three and four, then five, but there was no response, meaning that this attempt was also likely to be a failure.

Out of everyone at the battlefield, Yi Shi Ming was perhaps the calmest, but even she couldn’t help but feel slightly nervous when the woman who controlled the Kong Prison Realm didn’t respond for a second time. As someone that was able to observe the prison realm and desert fortress alike with an immense degree of attention at all times, she naturally knew of some of the activities that Wei Yi had engaged in prior to leaving, and was aware of some of the things that she had been learning. That did allow her to have a far more educated guess regarding the intentions of the Ascendant, but even then she wasn’t in any way aware how long she had intended to remain away from the fortress.

If she was already heading back, then even if she didn’t respond to any of their attempts to communicate with her she might be able to make it back just in time to catch the Greats before they have a chance to damage the fortress in any way, but if her intention was to remain away for a year – as unlikely as such a thing would be when she should be well aware of the consequences of such a departure and the dangers it would bring – then she might be in no position to respond any time soon.

Then, the Ascendant’s Arbiters that were meant to develop to become a group capable of truly acting in their own name would fall, and she might only learn of it many months after it actually happens.

It would be a tragic thing, to put it mildly.

Yi Shi Ming sighed and returned her focus to the outside world, observing the situation. If it progressed in a poor manner and got much worse much more quickly than she and the other temporary leaders of the Ascendant’s Arbiters theorised, then she would attempt to contact Wei Yi multiple times in short succession, making it blatantly obvious to the Ascendant that her presence was required.

All that would be required then would be a minute of continued survival, and she could come in and… there was the problem with that plan, really. Wei Yi was powerful, that much could hardly be denied, and she was certainly powerful within her own realm and even against the next realm, but she was not some omnipotent being that could defeat twenty-four of the second and third generation at a single time, not in the state that she had been in when she had left Paragon. Even if she was summoned, even if she invigorated everyone within the fortress and the prison realm, even if she managed to recover their exhaustion and injuries and even if she could endure the attacks of the second generation while still putting up a decent fight, there was no guarantee of her being able to attain even a pyrrhic victory.

They had come to rely on her within their minds, and yet her capabilities weren’t even sufficient to turn such a situation around unless some kind of miracle occurred, but the problem with miracles was that they were rare. Too rare to ever rely on.

Less than a minute after the Great Family members regrouped, they were already close to shattering the portion of the defences that they had chosen to focus on, and only a moment after that observation could be made, they succeeded. Their many beams finally dug all the way into the spherical barrier, and with the sound of shattering glass that could be heard all over Paragon, a large chunk of the barrier suddenly collapsed.

There wasn’t even a moment of hesitation as all of them instantly rushed into the dome, acting in unison with a degree of accuracy that might impress even the Bai District’s best and brightest.

Their haste brought them straight into a secondary barrier just at the edge of the walls themselves, a couple of metres away from the outermost defensive layer, and also delivered them straight into the path of the numerous incoming chunks of ice, all of which were falling down upon that region with absolutely immense speed and force, leaving the range of Great Light’s energy manipulation only moments from impact. As a result, they maintained an immense degree of stability as they crashed into the ground and the anchor-based barriers of the Greats.

Altogether, the sound of a thousand individual chunks of ice all with a sharpened point as to make their impact most effective against the defences of the Arbiters’ foes crashing into those very defences was nearly as loud and impactful as the shattering of the barrier, but while the latter delivered a significant degree of progress to the Greats’ assault, the former did not.

All of the chunks of ice fell not upon the third generation, which would have genuinely struggled with enduring the attack of someone in the sixth realm, but instead upon the second generation, who leapt up and created a layer of their anchors over the entire force as to prevent any of the projectiles from having a chance to land upon them. With their core and marks to empower a basic repulsive force, the ice chunks were slowed significantly before they could even impact the anchors, and were then further mitigated by the core. It all sounded highly impressive to someone with no ability to see what had occurred, and even to those that could see the upper portion of the crash but not the lower one, but the truth of the matter was more grim.

Altogether, those numerous chunks of ice were made out of a significant portion of Great Light’s total energy pool, which was now essentially wasted on the attack that did nothing but buy all of them a few moments in which the Greats were unable to attack and focused on defence instead. In comparison to what could have been done with the energy that they had, it was essentially a waste of his time and energy.

“Fuck, that did nothing!” Great Light himself cursed, sitting back down to focus on the inscription instead, “I may have been bolder than I should have been…”

“You were indeed, brother. Do recall that our current state is not truly equivalent to what we had been back in the War of Yin, at our peak. Our realm is lower, some of our methods no longer work due to the change in our cultivation method… and we are now divided, good and bad split into two individual parts. Both have suffered as a result…” Great Dark replied, his expression grim.

Regardless of their own views on the matter, they had to persist in what they had begun all those years ago, so Great Dark quickly wiped the grimness from his face while Great Light refocused all of his energy back into the inscription core of the defensive measures they had created. Both of them still had a lot of energy remaining, so the barrier wouldn’t fall too quickly without some unexpected event, and it was far more useful when it was spent in such a fashion than when it was thrown in a basic planar energy technique of the third realm.

Additionally, the more they displayed displeasure or some trace of worry in their expressions, an issue more pressing for Great Light than Great Dark the majority of the time, the more the soldiers that were able to see them through the communicative methods would notice and worry alongside them.

For the moment, morale was key, since most didn’t currently need to actually be in combat and could thus have the illusion that if they ran away, they would be safe and free to rest in whatever residences they had chosen to occupy. It was necessary to ensure that no such fantasy entered their minds, and that it had no chance to develop. Essentially, they could only believe that the Ascendant’s Arbiters would be successful this day, and nothing else.

If they had a single overwhelming force that they could display, then such thoughts could be overcome entirely instead and thus be handled far more permanently than simply forcing them away, but, once again, the only person who would be able to guarantee such a thing was not currently present. They needed to resort to more basic and common tactics instead, even if essentially lying to the soldiers wasn’t the best course of action in the long term as it was able to erode trust and respect if they figured out that they had no chance and that Great Dark and Great Light knew it from the start.

The Greats, having endured the barrage of ice, immediately reactivated their point beams and sought out another weakness within this new layer, their initial assault being highly split apart and unfocused.

Unlike the first layer, where they had their third generation scout out the weaknesses before joining in with the prepared arrays of the second generation, the two halves of the attacking force needed to act together. To best facilitate this, the third generation constantly switched their points of assault, drawing the beams all over the dome that they were faced with once again, whereas the second generation would trace their movements up to the next weakest point that they discovered.

That was, they were able to keep making progress and learn more about the weakness of the defence all at once.

“Everyone, activate the secondary defences! We must push them back!” Great Dark announced over the communication network after having examined and confirmed the exact extent of the damage to the outer layer. Due to the way in which he and Great Light had abandoned a portion of it after a certain point, it was relatively easy to repair it so long as they decided to go all out on the process, which they would be able to do so long as the forces of the Greats were pushed out of the inner layer of the domes for just long enough to begin the process of repair.

After that, it would all depend on how much progress they were able to make with the time that they had, but in the best case scenario, it wouldn’t be impossible to fully rebuild the outer layer by partially diverting the overall strength of the dome towards that point and refilling the rest with their energy.

Regardless of the way in which they did it, Great Dark knew of one goal.

“We must ensure that Paragon is not breached! We must keep this fortress standing, and we can! We have that power!”