Lin Mu had his eye on everything and was waiting for the right moment. The army of the Northern Tribes progressed steadily at first, but the newer ones that were coming from the back had slowed down a bit.
"Who is that?" someone questioned.
Lin Mu's spirit sense suddenly picked up on several strong spirit Qi fluctuations coming from the back and his eyes went wide.
"Dao Treading realm… They are the council members!" Lin Mu announced.
There were about four Dao Treading realm cultivators that he could sense openly, but he was sure that more were hiding or keeping their spirit Qi fluctuations controlled. That was normal since there was always a chance that they might affect their own people with it.
A high leveled cultivator would exert passive pressure on lower leveled cultivators just by the mere virtue of their presence. This was usually fine when they were in low numbers, but when multiple of them were present, this pressure would multiply.
And in a setting such as where an entire army consisting mostly of Qi refining and Core condensation realm cultivators was marching, this could get very problematic.
Having known this, Lin Mu tried to track the other Dao Treading realm cultivators. Even if he couldn't sense their spirit Qi fluctuations, there were other ways to find them after all.
The easiest being to observe how the others behaved with them. The soldiers would be venerated towards these elders. Soon enough, Lin Mu found three more Dao Treading realm elders hidden among the army.
"There are seven Dao Treading realm experts among them right now. More might be coming." Lin Mu stated.
Jing Luo and the others nodded their heads, taking note of this information as it was really importance.
Another minute passed, and Lin Mu raised his hand.
"They are in position, ACTIVATE THE TRAPS!" He ordered.
"ACTIVATE!"
"ACTIVATE!"
Several formation masters gave out the subordinate's orders and almost simultaneously thousands of formations were activated.
~KABOOM~
In less than a second, the sounds of explosions could be heard as the explosive trap formations were the first to activate. The effect was almost instantaneous as blood and flesh splattered around as hundreds of Qi refining realm and core condensation realm cultivators died all at once.
More and more explosive traps activated, and the commanders in the army started to realize the situation. They wanted to give the order to rush and scatter, but didn't know just how far the traps were spread apart.
Many of the soldiers ran on instinct, but were still caught in the explosions.
After about twenty seconds, the explosion came to an end as all the explosive traps were used up. But that was not the end.
"RUSH OUT! RUSH OUT!" The commanders in the army ordered, not wanting to stay here any longer.
They could easily guess at this point that they had been ambushed and that the enemy knew exactly where they were coming from.
"Elders! What do we do?" one of the higher ranked commander asked the Dao Treading realm elders.
The Dao Treading realm elders were at the very back and were not afflicted by the formations. In fact, there were no formations present here either. If there were any, they would have definitely sensed it.
This was also the reason why Lin Mu had not asked to put traps at the very back as they would only get found out.
It was evident that the effect on the Dao Treading realm elders was very profound as anger appeared on their faces.
"WHO DARES!!!!" One of them shouted before rising up into the sky.
~WHOOSH~
The very air shook as strong spirit sense scanned over the area. In just a few seconds, the elder found out about the traps and discovered where all of them were.
"FUTILE EFFORT!" The elder shouted as he took out a long bone.
The bone was polished on one end and sharped into a stake on the other. The elder held the bone firmly and chanted something before throwing it towards the ground.
"BREAK!"
~RUMBLE~
The bone stake drilled into the snow covered ground and let out a strong wave of spirit Qi. The ground shook lightly, making one think as if it were a weak earthquake. The Qi refining realm cultivators that were close to the place where the Bone Stake fell directly spat out blood and fainted.
The pressure was simply too much for them. The elder didn't care for this either as they had already sustained casualties. If he didn't stop the traps quickly, many more would fall.
~SHUA~ SHUA~ SHUA~
As the wave of spirit Qi from the bone stake spread, the runes started to reveal themselves.
But when the Qi refining and core condensation realm cultivators saw this, they were stunned.
"This… what is this… the entire field is filled with formations?"
Since they could see all the trap formations clearly now, they saw the other traps that were yet to be activated.
~SHUA~
But they didn't get to look on for long as the formations started to break down. With the bone stake as the center of the circle, the wave of spirit Qi spread from it, broke apart every trap formation in its path.
"What do we do now?" The formation masters questioned.
"Activated all of the traps, even if the enemies are not in range. They are going to get destroyed anyway." Lin Mu ordered.
The formation masters nodded and tapped the formation plates planted into the ground. This was the control center of it all and could manage all the formations they had planted all over the field.
~HUMM~
In the next second, the second flurry of traps activated. But this time it was a mixed bag as various effects occurred.
Flames raged, winds blew, ice spread, poisons burst out!
Most of these had been weakened by a bit since the supporting formations were broken, but the effect was still enough to kill a couple thousand more Tribals.
