As he did, his delicate brows furrowed and he tugged at Shen Lei’s hand, motioning toward the entrance. “Have they split up?” He noticed a faint scent that was separate from the one the group they had noticed before gave off. Could it be that there was one group supposed to attract their attention while the other would swoop in when they were focused on the first, catching them unawares and overwhelming them when everyone came together?

Shen Lei’s thoughts also immediately went in that direction and he cursed under his breath. Despite noticing it in time, this posed a problem for them: The idea was to rush further back inside, go through the array at the last moment, and then set off the explosion to catch the demonic practitioners all at once. But if they split up, then they could at most get half of them and whether or not it would actually amount to half was tough to say.

Plus, with how much better the other side knew the border region, they might be able to figure out where they had gone based on the general direction of the array and the worst damage of the explosion. Then what? They’d have given the enemy valuable information about themselves, allowing them to plan further steps against them while they were in the dark.

No matter how he thought about it, it seemed the other side had been much better prepared than them. Even if they didn’t know what their plan was, simply by splitting up, they were countering too many moves and creating opportunities for themselves.

This was especially true if they split into more than two groups. At this point, who could be sure that the majority of the enemy’s forces wasn’t out there, just a bit out of their spiritual senses’ reach? They’d stay undetected and while they were busy with the two groups already inside, they could rush in and deal with them all at once, turning the already dreaded battle against an overwhelming number of foes into simple carnage.

What he could think of, the Elders on the other side naturally could as well.

“Come back at once!” Elder Diao didn’t let the others speak up before he made the decision. He knew Elder Baili trusted these two to keep themselves safe but the situation was getting unpredictable. He’d rather have them close by so they only had to manage one big group.

“Yes.” Shen Lei promised at once but still leaned in toward his fiance and lowered his voice. “Let’s check the entrance before we do.” Anyway, the Elders didn’t know exactly where they were, and going back would require a moment so why not use the opportunity to gain more information?

Luo Lin nodded but raised his brows. “Outside the main gate?”

“Mn.”

The next moment, the two of them disappeared from the spot and then reappeared outside the main gate.

Luo Lin heaved a sigh of relief. Thankfully, they had practiced so much when they went to inform the other sects of what they had figured out about the demonic faction’s plan or they wouldn’t be able to do this now.

Shen Lei squeezed his hand and stepped closer to the door, checking whether anybody was on the other side through his spiritual sense and what he could hear. It didn’t seem that way so he lightly pushed it open, quickly glancing around to make sure that it was right.

He indeed couldn’t see anyone and according to the feedback from his spiritual sense, the second group had put a bit of distance between them and the entrance already even though it wasn’t much. “Let’s carefully get closer and peek. If it seems dangerous, flee. If they’re actually manageable … maybe take down one or two.”

With Luo Lin’s copied dreamscape, they had the absolute advantage as long as the other side didn’t know they were able to do it. If the other group was small, it was worthwhile taking down someone before they could understand what was happening and then disappearing just as fast. Of course, this could only be done once as the group would immediately be on high alert but even just one person to worry about less in the future might become an advantage they couldn’t let slip away.

Luo Lin nodded and the two of them glanced around, with Shen Lei finally pointing at a spot not too far away. Luo Lin inclined his head once again and they used the dreamscape to move forward, quickly checking the situation around their new location before choosing the next spot.

Luo Lin let Shen Lei pick the spots since he had more experience but he tried to find the most suitable place himself as well. In the future, maybe he’d be able to predict the spot Shen Lei would choose and they could be faster in this step, saving valuable time that could be spent fighting. Well, he didn’t know whether they’d make it even out of here but if they did, he didn’t want to have wasted the opportunity to learn and become a good partner for Shen Lei even when it concerned cultivation and going on missions. He never wanted to stay at home again to receive bad news.

Since the second group hadn’t gotten far yet, the two of them soon caught up to them. When they did, they both stood on the spot, staring at them with some disbelief. These … definitely weren’t demonic practitioners. No, instead, this was the group from the Jian Chu Sect they had been waiting for.

Under normal circumstances, Shen Lei would have been ecstatic. Now though … this put them in yet another dilemma: They were at the entrance, the group that likely consisted of the actual demonic practitioners was somewhere in the middle, and the big group from their Teng Yong Sect, the Zhen Yan Sect, and the Li Ren Sect was in the back. And they simply had no way to make the first and last meet up without having to give up their plan to simply bomb the second one out of existence. Ah, it seemed they had been too smart for their own good.