Bi Jie and his Bifang Department barbarian soldiers clung to them like a stubborn patch, engaging in relentless combat.

If this continued, the scarce troops of the Danque Department would eventually be depleted.

More importantly, it was a waste of his time.

Time was precious, and Mo Hua had many things to do.

He thought for a moment, then found the barbarian general Chi Feng to inquire about the battle situation.

By Chi Feng’s nature, he would never discuss “marching and fighting” with anyone.

He was a barbarian general of the Danque Department, seasoned in many battles, with a cultivation level of Golden Core mid-stage.

At this cultivation level, he could hold positions of real power as an elder in the Danque Department, only one rank below the Great Chieftain and the Grand Elder.

On the battlefield, he also possessed absolute “authority” and would never listen to an “outsider” in the Foundation Establishment stage, giving him unsolicited advice.

But Mo Hua was different.

Mo Hua was a Shaman Priest.

After spending some time together and witnessing Mo Hua’s various almost “miraculous” feats, Chi Feng gradually accepted this somewhat hard-to-believe fact in his heart.

Since Mo Hua asked, he certainly had to answer.

Even though the Shaman Priest adult stayed behind the scenes, living a pampered life, he certainly had no experience leading troops in battle.

Chi Feng pondered for a moment, then slowly said:

“This Shugu Secret Department is located in a valley, which was originally easy to defend but difficult to attack.”

“But the problem is, the Bifang Department has already attacked it once, and they know the situation inside the valley like the back of their hand.”

“Now that our Danque Department is stationed in the valley, the situation has changed from ‘easy to defend but difficult to attack’ to ‘trapped like turtles in a jar’.”

“The Bifang Department will lurk in the shadows, suddenly bare their fangs, and attack us.”

“And their ‘fangs’ are poisoned with Bloodfang Poison; given enough time, we will naturally bleed to death.”

Chi Feng glanced at Mo Hua, admitting:

“If it weren’t for you, Shaman Sir, obtaining the Lord God’s blessing and saving our Danque Department tribesmen with profound sacred runes, the situation would be even worse…”

Mo Hua nodded and asked again, “Can’t we stop the Bifang Department’s sneak attacks?”

Chi Feng replied, “In a direct confrontation, we are not afraid. But the Bifang Department is insidious and cunning, using rare potent poisons. Secondly, the time and place of their sneak attacks are unpredictable.”

Mo Hua generally understood.

Leaving aside the Bloodfang Poison for now.

The Yimu Regrowth Array could just offset the erosion of vitality caused by this blood poison.

But the Bifang Department’s sneak attacks were difficult to defend against.

The Danque Department had few people, making defense inherently difficult.

Now they had to organize barbarian armor and other supplies, and could not leave for the time being, so they could only passively “take the beating.”

And it was impossible to predict when or from where the Bifang Department would attack.

It could happen at any time, in any place.

To counter the Bifang Department’s sneak attacks, the Danque Department had to expend effort, constantly on guard.

They were stationed while the enemy harassed.

This kind of all-day passive “defense” was extremely draining on both troops and morale.

A slight error could lead to significant casualties.

Mo Hua mused, “So, if we knew in advance when and where the Bifang Department would launch a sneak attack, we would have victory assured, right…”

Barbarian General Chi Feng felt that this Shaman Priest adult was speaking nonsense.

“Know yourself, know your enemy, and you will never be defeated.”

If you knew when and from where the enemy would attack, how could victory not be assured?

The disparity in direct troop strength between the Danque Department and the Bifang Department was not that great.

This kind of “information” advantage could almost be considered “decisive.”

Mo Hua asked, “In general military operations, how do you gather intelligence?”

Chi Feng replied, “There are many methods. You can plant spies on the other side, and have them send messages.”

“You can send scouts to the front line to investigate movements.”

“You can dispatch sentries to set up defenses everywhere, guarding against the Bifang Department’s attacks…”

“But the Bifang Department’s people have been fighting for years and are equally experienced. Bi Jie is highly talented and cunning, so these methods are too idealistic and unlikely to work.”

First, planting spies was impossible.

Scouts would definitely be discovered by Bi Jie and then killed.

Sentries would also find it difficult to detect the Bifang Department’s barbarian soldiers moving at night.

This was why the Danque Department suffered from the Bifang Department’s attacks and harassment, enduring great hardship.

Mo Hua nodded, “I understand. Let me think about it.”

Chi Feng was slightly startled, unsure what this Shaman Priest adult intended to think about.

But before he could ask, Mo Hua had already turned and left, returning to the stone chamber.

Chi Feng watched Mo Hua’s retreating figure, his brows furrowed.

Inside the stone chamber.

Mo Hua instructed others not to disturb him, then took out a brazier, demon bones, and phosphorescent fire. Following the Da Huang Demon Bone Divination method, he performed a divination.

This was the simplest and quickest method Mo Hua could think of that could “predict” the Bifang Department’s movements and be useful at the moment.

Divination.

He couldn’t plant spies now.

Sentries were of little use.

He could act as a scout himself, using stealth to infiltrate the Bifang Department’s encampment and covertly gather intelligence.

But he was now the Shaman Priest adult.

There was no reason for a Shaman Priest adult to personally go to the enemy camp as a “scout.”

Furthermore, Bi Jie was in the Golden Core mid-stage. If he were truly targeted by Bi Jie, Mo Hua himself would be in danger.

Dealing with so many people, the cost of array formations would be a bit high, and accidental killings were likely.

After much deliberation, he could only fully embrace the “shaman” role and use causality for “divination.”

Having learned from past mistakes, Mo Hua was now very cautious in his divinations.

He dared not divine about his Martial Uncle, nor major cosmic causality, nor the fortunes of Da Huang, nor certain powerful individuals, to avoid offending certain “taboos” and attracting others’ covetousness.

But fighting the Bifang Department should be fine.

It was just one or two small tribal battles.

Although these battles were not simple, compared to the true “great terrors” in cosmic causality, they were truly insignificant.

At least he certainly wouldn’t have to shoulder another “black pot” like the Fate Calamity.

Mo Hua felt a little calmer.

After everything was prepared, the phosphorescent fire was lit, the demon bones were burned, and the bones began to crack.

Mo Hua, as usual, “destroyed all traces” of the divination, then took out the cracked bones to observe the卦象 (gua xiang) or divinatory symbols.

But after a long look, Mo Hua’s brows furrowed slightly.

“Failed?”

Nothing appeared on the gua xiang, meaning he had divined nothing.

How was that possible…

While Mo Hua wasn’t arrogant, he had a basic confidence in his divinations.

In the past, when divining things, even when “courting death” by divining major causality, he could usually glimpse some clues.

It wasn’t like now, where he divined nothing at all.

Was it because the causality of marching and fighting was different from other matters?

Did it require considering the timing, geographical advantages, and human factors, with complex internal causes, involving the lives and deaths of many people, and too many variables… so it couldn’t be divined so simply?

Or was it because there were also heavenly secret masters within the Bifang Department, obscuring their own causality to prevent enemies from detecting their movements?

Mo Hua frowned and thought, feeling that the second option was unlikely.

Heavenly secret masters were not like cabbages, appearing out of nowhere.

Moreover, how could a “master” capable of obscuring his demon bone divination mix with Bi Jie?

At the very least, it would have to be Bi Jie’s father, a Bifang Department Great Chieftain-level figure.

So, was it the first option?

Military campaigns emphasize timing, geographical advantages, and human factors, involving the “Heaven, Earth, and Man” triad, making them too complex and difficult to divine.

Mo Hua frowned, feeling it was a bit troublesome.

The concept of the “Heaven, Earth, and Man” triad also existed in array formations.

But this orthodox Triad Array was a heritage monopolized by the Dao Ting, and he was not qualified to comprehend it, so he knew very little about the related concepts.

If one had to understand the “Heaven, Earth, and Man” triad to divine warfare, then this “threshold” was too high.

Mo Hua’s mood was heavy, but he didn’t really want to give up.

He was an array master, having studied many complex and difficult array formations, so he deeply understood that the more profound something was, the more abstruse and difficult it became.

Profound and abstruse also meant brilliant.

And similarly, in this world, the more difficult a task, the more it was worth doing.

The more difficult a subject, the more it was worth studying.

Once difficulties were overcome, the greater the rewards and the deeper the insights gained.

Difficulties, in fact, were also a form of tempering, a step towards self-improvement.

“Heaven, Earth, Man…”

Mo Hua calmed his mind, slowly pondering, thinking:

“If these three talents are together, and I can’t divine them, then should I divine them individually? Calculate the causality of timing, geographical advantage, and human factors separately, then combine them and derive them again?”

The overall causality was too vast to calculate, so he would break it down and calculate each part.

With an idea, Mo Hua immediately began to try.

He separately derived the “timing” and “terrain” of the Shugu Secret Department’s location, and the “human will” of the Bifang Department.

But Mo Hua did not expect that even when calculated separately, this kind of “divination” involving heaven and earth still required an enormous amount of spiritual sense.

In the sky, there are sun, moon, stars, clouds, mist, ice, snow, wind, rain, and thunder. Day and night alternate, the four seasons differ, and changes vary.

On the ground, there are mountains, rivers, grass, trees, earth, stones, tigers, leopards, fish, and insects. All species multiply, life and death flow, and earthly phenomena are vast.

And human hearts have thousands of aspects: poverty, wealth, greed, anger, delusion, joy, sorrow, and myriad differences.

Although Mo Hua had already narrowed the scope completely.

He only calculated this valley, for the next three days, and the source of the Bifang Department’s killing intent.

But these three types of causality, mixed together, still made Mo Hua’s head throb and left him feeling mentally exhausted.

He did calculate some things.

Including the timing: whether it would be windy or rainy in the next few days.

Including the terrain: the shape of mountains and rivers, how grass, trees, birds, and beasts reproduce and thrive.

Including human will: that is, what many people in the Bifang Department were thinking, including the flow of their malicious intent and the venting of their aggression.

But these combined did not form a clear “causality.”

Mo Hua even suspected that what he had calculated were all “false.”

They were his imagination of such things in his mind. They were very subjective judgments and did not contain the objective operation of causality at all.

They were things he “took for granted.”

Mo Hua looked at the dense, inferred diagrams of various weather, terrain, and human will changes he had on paper, feeling helpless and even a little lost.

These things had cost him two full days.

Through these two days of derivation, he had indeed gained a preliminary glimpse into the profundity and vastness of the “Heaven, Earth, and Man” triad.

But the final result was useless.

The concept of Heaven, Earth, and Man was simply not something he could immediately “comprehend” and use.

Without years, decades, or even a century of study and comprehension, he could never, by his own strength, grasp the structure of the “Heaven, Earth, and Man” triad.

The gap to practical application would only be greater.

Mo Hua frowned.

The heritage monopolized by the Dao Ting indeed possessed an unimaginable depth.

In fact, Mo Hua was not even sure whether what he had comprehended, these “taken for granted” things, were truly the “Heaven, Earth, and Man”之道 (dao).

After all, no one had taught him; he could only “blindly grope” based on his own experience and intuition.

But the situation waited for no one.

Mo Hua had gained nothing from these two “wasted” days.

And within these two days, the Bifang Department launched another sneak attack, killing two Danque Department barbarian soldiers and injuring seventeen.

The Danque Department was furious, but the situation was already stalemated.

The valley where the Shugu Secret Department was located was remote and enclosed, far from the main body of the mountain realm.

In the short term, neither side could expect reinforcements, so they could only settle the outcome here.

Now, with the Bifang Department surrounding and attacking, the Danque Department was continuously being eroded.

The only solution was to abandon the Shugu Department’s stores, travel light, and quickly evacuate.

The Bifang Department, in order to seize the stores, would naturally not continue the pursuit.

As long as the people were alive, as for this batch of barbarian armor, although it was painful, it could only be abandoned.

The most important thing was to preserve the fighting strength of the barbarian soldiers and protect the safety of Young Master Dan Zhu.

This decision was proposed by Elder Ba Chuan and agreed upon by Barbarian General Chi Feng.

As a barbarian general, Chi Feng naturally hated to part with such a large batch of barbarian armor and raw materials for forging armor, but Young Master Dan Zhu’s safety was more important than anything else.

Dan Zhu, on the other hand, cherished the lives of the barbarian soldiers and was unwilling to allow these more than one hundred Danque Department barbarian soldiers to suffer further losses for the sake of barbarian armor.

In contrast, Mo Hua was actually the one who least wanted to lose this batch of Shugu Department barbarian armor.

Mo Hua was helpless and decided he had to be a bit more “ruthless.”

He cultivated many diverse dao, and was proficient in many techniques, but some of them came with a high price, which Mo Hua generally preferred not to use lightly.

In the current situation, to be crude, it meant resorting to “Divine Sense Transformed into Sword.”

But Bi Jie was in the Golden Core mid-stage, and his divine sense should be stronger than his own.

Using “Divine Sense Transformed into Sword” against a cultivator whose divine sense was stronger than his own would have an unknown specific effect, but he would inevitably suffer a backlash.

Mo Hua remembered clearly.

He had used the Astonishing Divine Sword once against the Golden Core stage “Smiling Tiger” Xiao Zhenhai during the encirclement of the Water Yama in the Dragon King Temple in Gan Xuezhou.

Xiao Zhenhai was indeed “stunned” by his Astonishing Divine Sword.

But his eyes had bled, and he had even suffered temporary blindness.

This was still the “Astonishing Divine Sword.” If he were to use the “Divine Slayer Sword” to attack a Golden Core cultivator whose divine sense was stronger than his own, the “backlash” might be even more severe.

Because his divine sense extended out using his “eyes” as a “medium.” This backlash would directly affect his eyes.

His Sea of Consciousness might not be injured, but his eyes would likely be rendered useless.

Under the premise of insufficient divine sense, even if he could truly kill Bi Jie with divine sense, there was still the hidden danger of triggering the Fate Calamity.

Besides the Divine Sense Transformed into Sword, there were array formations.

Among array formations, killer arrays could not be used for now.

Defensive arrays, which only defended and did not attack, were not very meaningful either.

In addition to these, there was the Yuan Magnetic Array.

Setting up many small Yuan Magnetic Arrays in the mountains to provide early “warning,” avoid the Bifang Department’s sneak attacks, and find opportunities to ambush the Bifang Department.

Mo Hua had used this tactic before.

But this time, Mo Hua also didn’t want to use it, the reason being that the valley outside the Shugu Department was complex in terrain and the mountains were too vast.

If he were to set up small Yuan Magnetic Arrays on every path, it would consume too much spiritual ink.

The spiritual ink used for small Yuan Magnetic Arrays was quite special.

Now that he was in the wilderness, once it ran out, it would be difficult to replenish.

Mo Hua was reluctant to waste so much spiritual ink at once.

Moreover, he did not have enough “array mediums” for these small Yuan Magnetic Arrays; he could only draw the arrays on the ground.

This meant that these “small Yuan Magnetic Arrays” would all be one-time use.

After being used, they would all have to be discarded.

This made Mo Hua even more pained.

But now, with divination not working, he had to choose between the Divine Sense Transformed into Sword and the small Yuan Magnetic Array.

Either exhaust a large amount of divine sense and bear the risk of backlash.

Or exhaust a large amount of spiritual ink.

Comparing them, using the “small Yuan Magnetic Array” was definitely less risky.

Mo Hua sighed.

Having too many methods was also troublesome; making a choice became difficult.

After he made up his mind, he found Chi Feng and asked for a map of the surrounding mountains.

Chi Feng was puzzled, “Shaman Sir, what are you doing…”

Mo Hua then said, “I’m thinking of a way to see if we can repel the Bifang Department and save this batch of barbarian armor.”

Chi Feng’s expression immediately became solemn.

As a barbarian general, he naturally wanted to protect this batch of barbarian armor more than anyone.

Now that Mo Hua said this, Chi Feng dared not neglect it in the slightest and quickly handed the map in his hand to Mo Hua.

Mo Hua glanced at the map and shook his head lightly.

The mountain map Chi Feng provided was simply too crude.

It might be fine for military maneuvers, but it was too rudimentary for setting up arrays.

There was no other way; he had to figure it out himself.

Mo Hua could only leave the stone hall and go to the valley outside the Shugu Department to personally survey the terrain, create a map, and consider the deployment of the small Yuan Magnetic Arrays.

Chi Feng, worried about Mo Hua’s safety, followed closely behind him.

At the same time, he was also very curious to know what methods this Shaman Priest adult, Mo Hua, could possibly have to resist the Bifang Department’s attack.

Entering the mountain forest, Mo Hua released his divine sense. As he walked, he observed the mountain terrain and considered the construction of the small Yuan Magnetic Compound Array.

Chi Feng, following behind Mo Hua, could faintly sense a subtle yet profound consciousness, and his heart was secretly startled:

“This Shaman Sir, his divine sense is actually… so powerful?”

He had not noticed it before.

“Could this be… a sign of the Lord God’s blessing?” Chi Feng took a deep look at Mo Hua, his gaze narrowing slightly.

Mo Hua, however, paid no attention to Chi Feng’s thoughts.

Previously, his divine sense had been restrained. Now, to observe the mountain terrain and construct array formations, he had to release it completely.

Chi Feng was in the Golden Core mid-stage and was not an outsider; he could be useful later.

Therefore, he needed to reinforce his extraordinary image as a “Shaman Priest” in Chi Feng’s mind.

He needed to let Chi Feng know of his “power” in the way of divine sense.

This way, he would have a say in front of Chi Feng.

Mo Hua glanced at Chi Feng, sensing the activity in his mind, and nodded slightly. Then, he focused on studying the deployment of the small Yuan Magnetic Arrays.

To set up the small Yuan Magnetic Arrays, one needed to understand the mountain terrain and have a complete topographic system of the entire mountain range in one’s mind.

Only then could the small Yuan Magnetic Arrays respond to each other and form a cohesive whole.

This was Mo Hua’s original intention.

He had personally come here to set up array formations.

But as Mo Hua himself walked through the mountains, with the sky above his head and the earth beneath his feet, a subtle feeling suddenly arose in his heart.

And this feeling grew deeper and deeper.

Mo Hua couldn’t help but look up at the sky, then down at the ground.

The sky was crimson, the mountains desolate, the terrain complex. They walked through the mountains. Causality was fluctuating.

As he watched, Mo Hua’s heart was suddenly startled.

He suddenly realized that his comprehension of “Heaven, Earth, and Man” was indeed wrong.

Even his understanding of causality had a fundamental misconception.