The announcement was merely a formality and everyone that was here could see that the enemy was about to arrive. The hills and mountain started to disappear and a large path opened up there.
It was nearly four kilometers wide, giving more than enough space for a large army to pass in a single wide rank or several narrow ranks. But that was not all, as Lin Mu and the rest could see a large number of people appearing.
"What in the…" The Patriarchs of the Alliance couldn't believe their eyes.
Lin Mu narrowed his eyes and sensed several auras that were alarming to him.
"This… is far more than we estimated." Jing Luo spoke.
"Indeed…" Lin Mu agreed as his spirit sense extended as far as possible, scanning over all the enemies that had appeared.
The area behind the path was covered entirely with black dots. These were none other than the people of the northern tribes that looked small from this distance. But the sheer number of them was massive.
"How much is this?" Someone couldn't help but wonder.
"Roughly around five million…" Lin Mu said, before taking a pause. "And more come." He added upon sensing more appearing from the barrier surrounding the forbidden continent.
His spirit sense could go up to a hundred kilometers but not here as it was stopped by the barrier. He could sense more and more of the northern tribe members appearing from it.
"Heavens! Did they bring in their entire population?"
As far as they knew, the number of able bodied cultivators in the Northern Tribes shouldn't have been this many. It was simply impossible due to the lack of resources. Even if Gu Yao had been supplying them with resources in these few years, these many humans simply could not be birthed and grown in that time.
The number in the army thus seemed to be a little too much.
But a minute later, Lin Mu finally sensed something.
"The pills of grace… They've used pills of grace!" Lin Mu discovered.
"What? So many of them?" Patriarch Mingliang asked in surprise.
"Yes, but it is mostly the leveled cultivators that are at the Qi refining realm and core condensation realm that have taken them. They might have used the pills of grace to inflate their numbers.
They've really forced their normal tribesmen to join in this fight." Lin Mu explained.
His spirit sense could probe the bodies of the northern tribesmen and sense the muddied Qi of the pills of grace in it. Thankfully, the ones that had taken it were just the weaker cultivators.
"They might have split the pills for the lower members instead of focusing them on a few to raise Dao Treading realm or other high leveled experts." Jing Luo guessed.
"Seems like it. They do need the low leveled cultivators as the major part of their army." Lin Mu agreed.
From what Lin Mu could observe, around sixty percent of the army of the northern tribes was composed of Qi refining realm cultivators, thirty percent were core condensation realm cultivators and the rest was higher realm cultivators,
Lin Mu couldn't really probe those higher realm cultivators as of now as that might alarm them, thus simply estimated using the others. The Qi refining and core condensation realm cultivators couldn't sense him after all.
The army of the tribes was progress faster that what a normal army would, but it was still taking them a while to reach the point at which the alliance could begin its attack.
'Our numbers are not a match quantitatively, but we might be able to match with quality. So far we do seem to have the higher number of Nascent soul and higher realm cultivators,' Lin Mu thought to himself.
The alliance roughly had two thousand Nascent soul realm cultivators among them right now. This was a massive number and it had only risen to this level in the recent couple of years.
It was the Kong Plane and the resources that arrived from it that which helped raise many to such a level. Just two years before, the number of Nascent soul realm cultivators in the entire alliance, including the independent powers, would have been at merely eight hundred or so.
Of course, right now, most of the Nascent soul realm cultivators were only at the Infant Soul stage. With only the minority being in the adult soul stage, most of them being from the sects.
As for the Dao Shell realm cultivators, they numbered in the fifties, greatly lower than the amount of Nascent soul realm experts. And as for the Dao Treading realm cultivators, there were only thirteen.
This included Lin Mu, Little Shrubby, Jing Wei, Daoist Hua, Patriarch You Yi, Patriarch Mingliang, Patriarch Shandian, Jiao Fang and the rest being the supreme elders and high elders of the sects.
They had tried their best to match the expected number of Dao Treading realm experts of the Northern tribes, which from what they knew about their council was at eleven. Though they also had doubts that there would be more and were prepared for it too.
Lin Mu watched on as more and more tribals arrived, now their numbers, including higher realm cultivators at the Dao Shell realm as well.
His brows furrowed as he spoke, "The top three sects… are they going to join or not?"
Lin Mu was truly infuriated by them at this point and if they really didn't come even now, he wouldn't leave them be after all this was over. If Lin Mu failed, they would get destroyed anyway too.
Jing Luo's expression turned stern upon hearing this as well and he replied, "they have been cooperating before and were told of the location for the ambush as well. If they have any sense, they should have arrived… but it seems like they haven't yet."
Seeing the number of the northern tribesmen, Lin Mu knew that they needed as much support as they could get and the three top sects being here would certainly help out a lot.
