166: Elite tactics, second place in the overall standings!

However, no one had expected that the internal points ranking of the Qingming Faction would undergo such astonishing changes at this moment.

As the strongest Cultivator of the Qingming Sword Sect, Luo Qianjie's total points had soared to 8.7 million, a battle record sufficient to make countless Cultivators despair.

However, his ranking on the total points leaderboard had quietly slipped to third place.

Above him, two powerhouses had already emerged, their point growth rate accelerated by battlefield feats or resource plundering.

Meanwhile, on other battlefields, the power balance between the factions was undergoing a violent reshuffling.

After suffering setbacks at the hands of the Qingming Faction, the Wuji Faction did not fall into a slump; instead, they turned their spearheads toward the relatively weaker Five Aggregates and Yangquan Factions.

Relying on their disciplined army of Cultivators, the Wuji Faction devoured the territories of these two factions like a tidal wave. Every attack was accompanied by rigorous tactical deployment, leaving their opponents unable to parry.

To make matters worse, the Bitao Faction emerged as a dark horse during this period.

The Five Aggregates and Yangquan Factions, which bordered them, were already facing immense pressure from the Wuji Faction, and now they had to deal with surprise attacks from the Bitao Faction, making their situation increasingly miserable.

Their territories shrank step by step under the pincer attacks of the two factions, with resource points falling one after another, leaving them in an even more pathetic state than the Nightmare Faction.

Among them, the Wuyun Sect, relying on the Formation mastery of their Sect Legacy, laid down layers of defensive Formations around their base city, resisting the attacks of external enemies like a wall of bronze and iron.

They managed to preserve eight resource points surrounding the base city, barely holding onto their final line of defense.

But the Yangquan Faction was not so lucky; after repeated bitter battles, only six resource points guarded by heavy troops survived, while the rest of their territory fell into enemy hands.

Seeing the critical situation, they realized that if they continued to fight alone, they would likely be completely devoured sooner or later.

Under the mediation and promotion of many direct-line Nascent Soul Cultivators from the Five Aggregates and Yangquan Factions, the two Sects finally put aside their sectarian prejudices, resolutely abandoned their mutual conflicts, and chose to join forces to build a defensive line.

Relying on their combined forces and resources, they were finally able to stabilize their footing.

They even had a little spare energy to launch small-scale counterattacks against the bordering Nightmare Faction, symbolically 'waving their claws' to show a hint of an unyielding Aura.

Without this timely alliance, the best outcome for the two factions would likely have been to rely on constantly reinforced Formations to fight like trapped beasts within their base cities, desperately defending this last inch of ground.

Su Ling, who had ended his closed-door cultivation several years ago, immediately summoned Song Moting, Chen Miaoyin, and others through Lu Tao upon emerging, holding a secret discussion in their temporary Immortal Cave at Yangyuan Cave.

The group sat around a stone table shrouded in a Formation, meticulously deliberating every detail from resource allocation to tactical deployment, eventually finalizing an action plan capable of shaking up the war situation.

With the plan set, the group began six months of preparations.

They spent a huge sum of money to collect rare Formation Materials, upgrading the defensive Formations of the resource points they were responsible for, thereby solidifying their rear Foundation for subsequent outings.

After everything was ready, Lu Tao, Song Moting, Qi Yunling, Chen Miaoyin, Luo Xuanxiao, and Su Ling, whose strength had quietly approached the Late-stage Core Formation, formed an elite team of eight Nascent Soul-level combatants and quietly infiltrated the outer regions of the Bitao Faction.

They did not engage the enemy's main force head-on, but instead specifically targeted the battles over resource points.

Whenever both sides were locked in an inseparable battle and the rear was empty, they would fiercely launch a surprise attack, seizing the enemy's unguarded resource points directly.

The first to suffer was the already struggling Five Aggregates Faction.

At that time, Su Ling had already used the numerous top-tier Yin-attribute Materials he had collected to forcefully push the ten thousand souls banner to the level of a high-grade magic treasure.

The number of remnant souls the banner could contain soared to 50,000, and the Aura of the Soul-Devouring Spider Mother also skyrocketed, capable of intimidating ordinary Nascent Soul Cultivators with just a Soul-Shaking Shriek.

Coupled with the Crimson Flame Demonic Ape that Qi Yunling had fully tamed, this Tier 4 Middle Stage Yao Beast could suppress most of the enemy's combat power with its Flame Prison Domain the moment it made a move.

With such a formidable configuration, within just one year, the group had jointly captured three weakly defended resource points of the Five Aggregates Faction.

Although their main targets were the Nascent Soul Cultivators guarding the resource points and they did not ruthlessly kill the Core Formation and lower-level Cultivators.

The points exchanged for the captured resources alone were extremely generous, laying a solid Foundation for the team members' points rankings.

Following the Five Aggregates Faction, the Yangquan Faction soon tasted bitterness as well.

The first to bear the brunt was the Magic Iron mining area in the Flame Demon Mountain Range.

This resource point, which had been touched by Su Ling and his group eleven years ago, had been rebuilt by Shen Qingxuan and guarded by four Nascent Soul Cultivators, yet it still could not escape the fate of being captured.

When the battle broke out, the Flame Prison Domain of the Crimson Flame Demonic Ape instantly enveloped the mining area, and the Yin Souls released by the ten thousand souls banner surged toward the enemy like a tidal wave.

In the end, three of the five Nascent Soul Cultivators of the Yangquan Faction fell, and even Shen Qingxuan and Xiao Zhuyun were seriously injured, forced to flee in a sorry state and shrink back into their base city to heal, never daring to show their faces easily again.

In the following two years, Su Ling's team moved along the border between the Yangquan and Bitao Factions, clashing head-on several times with the Nascent Soul teams assembled by the Yangquan Faction.

Relying on their tacit cooperation and overwhelming combat power, they forcefully repelled the enemy's multiple encirclements, killing nearly ten Nascent Soul Cultivators.

They beat the Yangquan Faction so hard that they dared not assemble teams to go out anymore, and could only watch helplessly as five resource points were occupied by Su Ling and his group.

After the group spent a year coordinating the distribution of benefits with the various Nascent Soul Cultivators of the Bitao Faction and stabilizing these five resource points.

This fearsome Nascent Soul team quietly disappeared from the Yangquan battle line.

When they appeared again, they had already penetrated deep into the intersection of the Haoyang and Qingming Factions.

Here, they continued their previous tactics.

Sometimes they would raid the rear resource points of the Haoyang Faction, and other times they would fiercely break through the strategic strongholds of the Qingming Faction.

They stirred the originally deadlocked battlefield into a muddy mess, and the deployments of the two major factions were completely disrupted.

After several years of fighting, the rankings on the total points leaderboard had undergone earth-shaking changes.

Lu Tao's points were the first to break the ten-million mark, firmly sitting in first place on the total points leaderboard with an absolute advantage, becoming the universally recognized 'National War Champion'.

Su Ling created a miracle with his Core Formation Mid-stage cultivation, his points reaching over 9.5 million, suppressing a crowd of Nascent Soul Cultivators to rank second.

Qi Yunling, with the help of his two Nascent Soul-level beast pets, came from behind, his points soaring to 8.5 million, surpassing Song Moting to rank fourth.

Song Moting was slightly inferior, with 8.1 million points, just 200,000 less than the fifth-place Pei Tianque of the Haoyang Sect, temporarily ranking sixth.

And Feng Yihan of the Wuji Sect, who was originally ranked second, had fallen to seventh, with 7.8 million points.

Luo Xuanxiao and Chen Miaoyin, due to less accumulation of points in the early stage, even if they advanced and retreated with Su Ling and the others in the later stage, their total points only reached about 7.5 million, barely ranking eighth and ninth on the total leaderboard.

Liu Muyao, who had once been in the forefront, fell to tenth place.

It is worth mentioning that Lu Tao, Song Moting, and Chen Miaoyin, in addition to their campaigns, would specifically allow the Nascent Soul Cultivators under their command responsible for guarding resource points to rotate, giving them the opportunity to follow the elite team on operations.

Zhao Lie and Murong Yue took advantage of this opportunity to accumulate a large number of points in several battles, successfully squeezing into the top fifty of the total points leaderboard.

The remaining four or five Nascent Soul Cultivators, who were either Bitao Sect Disciples or of Loose Cultivator origin, also gained generous points for participating in the operations, allowing them to enter the total leaderboard.

After all, after the National War ended, Su Ling would most likely enter the Bitao Sect for cultivation.

And afterward, he and Lu Tao would definitely participate in other Plane wars.

Being able to recruit some fellow Sect members with decent strength to surround themselves would provide more advantages when facing Plane wars!

Unknowingly, a small force with Su Ling's team as the core had quietly taken shape, becoming an important power influencing the landscape of the National War.