The decision of the invading forces to attack again didn't arrive due to a specific event. It was an inevitable choice made after they saw that the decades spent in peace had made them surpass their previous level.
After all, more than seventy years had passed since the end of the war. That time was enough to nurture promising cultivators from the human ranks to the heroic ones!
Even old monsters had managed to improve in that period thanks to the experience gained in the battles, the training areas built in the new territories, and the Divine Stele if they had a water aptitude.
The world never stood still. It always moved forward together with the powerful existences living inside it, and it wasn't unusual to see a positive trend after gaining access to so many resources.
Of course, the improvements didn't arrive immediately. The Shandal Empire had burnt and destroyed the structures that it had built in those areas, which meant that the invading forces had to invest before they could seize benefits.
Also, the positive trend didn't concern the Empire since the invaders had confined it in the old continent.
Still, the overall population of the cultivators increased, and they even surpassed their previous level in terms of power.
It wasn't hard to check which organization had improved the most during the period of peace. The Heaven Tribulations were hard to miss when all the invading forces shared borders.
That wouldn't provide a complete overview of their growth since the Tribulations only signaled cultivators approaching the heroic ranks and not those advancing through stages. Yet, they revealed the foundation of those organizations, which could lead to almost accurate guesses about their development.
The Hive stood out thanks to the soldiers from the Odrea nation. Lightning storms continuously fell from the skies above the territories of the Hive and began to slow down only when the war drew near.
Then, there were the other cultivators who had joined the war and other promising talents that had appeared in those years.
The Council and the Elbas family did not doubt that the Hive had gained the most out of the war.
The Elbas family followed the Hive in terms of the number of Tribulations. It didn't have nearly as many, but they were still numerous.
However, everyone in those Mortal Lands had noticed that the Royals had something going on under the surface. Everything had started since the creation of the dimensional portal and had continued when they forced the nobles to join their ranks with incredible promises.
No one dared to underestimate them just because their number of Tribulations didn't match the Hive.
As for the Council, it was even more mysterious.
The sects were quite secretive, and they only sent representatives in the Council. That meant that they could have different policies inside their domains and handle their growth as they wished.
Then, there was Ravaging Demon and the underground operations that seemed allowed by the majority of the Council.
Of the three invading forces, the Papral nation saw the least number of Heaven Tribulations in that peaceful period, but no one dared to underestimate it either.
Noah didn't know who had the idea to resume the war first, but he knew that there had been meetings among the higher-ups of each organization while he was busy with his projects.
At some point, he received a mental message from Elder Julia, and he stopped his experiments to join the rest of the troops in the charge toward the old continent.
Noah sat cross-legged in the sky above the western coast of the old continent. Elder Austin, Elder Julia, and Elder Ingrid stood in the air next to him, and they looked at the human troops deployed on the ground.
There were the higher-ups of the Elbas family and Council in separate groups at some distance from them. Their attention was on the ground too.
There was a large army made of human cultivators gathering near the sea, and many of them were still in the process of getting off the ships that had filled that area of the western coast.
The peripheral territories of the area of influence of the Empire were mostly barren lands filled with slaves and without any real value. The heroic cultivators of the Empire wouldn't bother to defend them, so Noah and the other's role now was to oversee the battle.
Of course, there was a limit to how much those existences cared about battles on that level. There was even a high chance that the Empire wouldn't use precious formations to defend those lands.
Those territories were useful to the Empire only as a source of Vostum, the material that most of its citizens used in their body-nourishing methods.
Still, its population had decreased after the war, and it was about to face more casualties. Losing mining camps was the last of its problems.
The Empire deployed a series of slaves to face the massive army. The clinking noise of the chains on their necks filled the entirety of the battlefield as they moved to face their enemies.
The slaves wore blank expressions. Noah guessed that they were even unaware of the situation around them according to what he knew about the inscribed chains of the Empire.
"This will be a massacre," Elder Ingrid commented as she watched the two armies nearing each other.
The other Elders didn't say anything to confute her words, and Noah knew that she was right too. It was pointless even to guess the outcome of that battle. It was clear that the Empire was only aiming to weaken the invading troops with that wave of slaves.
The battle unfolded as Elder Ingrid had predicted.
The hordes of human cultivators from the invading forces deployed effective combat formations that balanced their offense and defense. Instead, the slaves charged recklessly, uncaring that they were running toward certain death.
Their charge would continue even when some attacks bounced them back of cut away one of their limbs. It seemed that the only thought in their mind was to reach the enemy army.
That tactic eventually led to some casualty in the invader's side. The invaders endured that reckless horde for a while before deciding to switch for a more defensive battle formation.
The slaves charged anyway even when they saw that the invaders were luring them in smart traps or into empty areas that they would fill with attacks. They only cared about hurting their enemies.
Rivers of blood fell on that sandy terrain. The ground became red and turned muddy as corpses accumulated on its surface.
It was an atrocious sight, especially from Noah's position. However, he had played his part already among those human cultivators, and he had survived.
'The struggles of the ants appear pointless in the eyes of the dragon,' Noah thought as his mind wandered in the world of the laws. 'But a sword has no species, nor limits. It only knows that it has to cut to move forward.'