He was full of disdain for his deputy commanders because he was sure that they had used their nascent souls to gain an advantage over him instead of guarding their nascent souls jealously and preventing them from being harmed by their enemies.
He was willing to bet on this because they had their nascent souls out, and he could see them. He just can't respect that they finished off their enemies ahead of him with their nascent souls, because if he had a nascent soul, he was sure that it would be better and stronger than theirs.
Above the three of them was the phantom figure of a humanoid form. These phantom figures stood guard above them and had their arms folded across their chest just like the three of them were doing.
The phantom figures didn't have any faces, so they didn't have eyes, a nose, or lips. They didn't have ears either. So they looked like white statues made out of translucent foam.
These phantom figures are their nascent souls. The fact that he can see it and has seen it before, while he has never seen the nascent souls of the three patriarchs, only makes him look down on them more.
His suspicion of how they finished ahead of him, even though they were supposed to be weaker than him, was confirmed when a new batch of enemies arrived. As soon as these enemies appeared, the three of them controlled their nascent souls to fly forward to engage the enemy.
These new enemies had come from a farther distance than the 100-kilometer range around the mothership. They were on their way before the fighting was concluded, so they didn't receive the news that the first batch of troops had been defeated spectacularly.
So these gem people and the gem kings leading them thought that they were coming to defeat the enemies. They didn't know that they were only here to die.
What made matters worse is that they didn't see the nascent souls coming at them at all. They didn't have the foundation of a sect to assist them, so they didn't have a spiritual artifact that could allow them to see spiritual beings, like the one Arthur currently possesses, so they continued moving forward, completely oblivious to the swift approach of death.
The three nascent souls smashed into the bodies of the gem people and killed them with one attack. It didn't matter if what they smashed into was a rank 4 gem king with a power output of 100C or a gem noble with a power output of 1C. Everyone who the nascent soups touched once died immediately.
This was because their souls were weak. They had all refined their bodies to various extents and had powerful energies, but their souls had been neglected and had gone unstrengthened all of their lives, so they were doomed to fail in a confrontation with a nascent soul.
This is why it is said that golden core cultivators can't match nascent soul cultivators, no matter how powerful they are and no matter how numerous they are. The possession of a nascent soul is simply an insurmountable gap that golden core cultivators can't overcome.
Throughout history, very few golden core cultivators have been able to overcome the advantage of a nascent soul and go on to defeat nascent soul cultivators.
Void Claw was one of these select few golden core cultivators, and this was only because he possessed a spiritual treasure for defending his soul and a powerful vessel sigil technique for increasing his strength and overwhelming the nascent soul cultivators.
But even though Void Claw was able to defeat the nascent soul cultivator, the best that he could do was destroy their body. He couldn't destroy the nascent soul of the enemy, so he couldn't kill the nascent soul cultivator.
However, Arthur was different. Not only was Arthur able to withstand spiritual attacks, but he was also able to damage the souls of nascent soul cultivators.
When he had fought one of the three nascent soul cultivators in order to prove his strength, he hadn't been able to see their nascent soul, and he didn't have a spiritual artifact to protect his soul. But his soul had been able to withstand the spiritual attacks and gave him the chance to fight back.
Apparently, his talent of having a durable soul was no joke. No matter how his enemy had attacked, his soul had withstood the attacks like a rock. He only felt slight pain and didn't become unconscious immediately.
He had focused through the pain and used heavenly lightning from the Lightning Vessel Sigil to attack everything around him. His attack was a wide area of attack because he couldn't see what he was attacking. This made him waste a lot of heavenly lightning for the attack, but it was worth it.
When the heavenly lightning touched the nascent soul, it began to melt it like a hot knife touching butter. His attack had critically injured his enemy and had nearly killed them.
If the three ancestors hadn't interfered to block the remaining of his attacks, he would have truly destroyed that nascent soul and killed that nascent soul cultivator.
It was later that he learned that using heavenly lightning to attack a nascent soul was overkill. Apparently, normal lightning would have been good enough to injure the invisible nascent soul. But he didn't know that this, so he shouldn't be blamed for nearly killing his enemy.
However, the three of them didn't accept this excuse that he was ignorant. They continued to hold a grudge against him after that event. Their grudge and dislike for him only increased when the three patriarchs and three ancestors decided that he should lead the army.
It can be said that he was fortunate to have the tools he needed to defend and defeat the nascent soul cultivator that he fought. Unfortunately for these gem people, they lack the tools that he had.
All that they saw was that their comrades were dying in droves without any apparent wounds on their bodies.