Arman is having the worst time of his life.
He is not even able to freely roam the streets, because there is at least one shooter who will be aiming at his a.s.s once he shows up on the streets.
He was thinking on how to get away, but he couldn"t find any other way. He was barely able to hide for sometime when someone comes chasing him.
He is extremely regretting all the things he did. At least, the things he did in the past day. He has ruined the train track in hopes of causing an accident, but he got the timing wrong and they were able to rectify the mistake easily before the crash could happen.
He doesn"t know what he was thinking when he was doing, he just felt like doing that stuff and no reasons came to his mind to not to do them. But now, he can think more than dozen reasons to not to do it. It was like he was possessed.
Arman who is away from the thunder G.o.d temple, was obviously missed on the information regarding the Devil Guided incense.
In fact, he is not even bothered to think about the war.
And in his current situation, he couldn"t think even if he wants to.
For the next week, within the western continent, Arman is like a sewer rat. He lived in dark corners and barely got any rest. No matter what time is, his resting place would be busted in at most three hours.
Philip, Jack and Watt just checked on Sam. His complexion almost returned to normal and his energy levels are also quite high with the absorption of the black patches. His skin is almost back to normal.
Except for the large gaping scars of the two chain sickles on his upper chest, his body is same as it is before the incident.
In the past week many things happened.
Philip and Jack broke through Peak stage Grand realm. They have been treading on the edge for this break through for a long time. But due to all the running around they weren"t able to concentrate on cultivating. Now is the only time they had free time.
Watt also reached the peak stage of Grand realm for some time, a little before the other two and he seemed to be just a step away from break through to the Nascent realm.
Currently, the news about Sam"s return was already sent back to the Thunder G.o.d temple, but they didn"t call them back for some reason.
They seemed to be too busy with the war to care about them.
At this moment, the trio and Arc are sitting together in a room going through the war reports that are being read by someone in the Imperial Palace.
In this one week, there are great changes in the war. Actually, the church is able to deal with two minor powers and they took control of those two minor powers. The major powers were not able to intervene in the situation because, the nearest two major powers Usaine Sect and Beast faction are were attacked by the church at this moment.
But those attacks are minor and didn"t last long, they even revealed two s.p.a.ce gates the church placed in both places. Although, there might be other gates it is still considered a loss for them to be exposed for a probing attack and got blocked.
But it cannot be calculated like that and the church could be said to have won because, their twelve Priests who are Pre-transcendent cultivators when the war started, out of them eight of them became transcendent cultivators while the war is going on. And the situation was same for both the minor powers.
For every minor power, the church sent twelve priests and in that sixteen already turned into Transcendent cultivators and these sixteen are the reason for the loss of the two minor powers.
The new land and the new powerful cultivators, they are gaining in. But the church is not without any losses.
Usaine Sect and Beast faction realized that something is off with the attacks that are made on them and then only realised they were being distracted.
So, they reacted fast enough and checked the situation with another minor power and they were able to stop the invasion of the church in the third minor power. They reacted fast enough and eliminated the church completely.
But for the past few days, the church tried to gain their upper hand back in the minor power which they were eliminated.
There, the sixteen newly transformed transcendent cultivators started attacking.
In fact, all the minor powers should have been dealt with in a week, but they failed in doing so because, the meeting in the central continent ended faster than expected and the retaliation from the minor powers is faster than they imagined.
After the Old one was caught, he didn"t care about the strategy anymore and just went along with the long- lasting battle with the minor powers and in between, he is been sending a unit or two of followers to any of the major powers.
Simply put, the church is extremely focusing on the vicinities of the central continent.
After they read through the report, Arc and Philip are discussing the things regarding the war and how they should react if a sudden situation arises.
Their main problem is the followers of the church who are also the soldiers who will be in the front lines are currently all Grand realm cultivators.
The minor powers and the major powers can handle them, but that is going to be a serious problem if the empire is invaded in the same way. There are not many Grand realm soldiers compared to the major power and the minor powers.
In fact, the Grand realm cultivators are not even soldiers in the empire"s army, they hold a position of at least a Regiment commander.
As Arc and Philip are discussing all these factors.
At that exact moment, the attendant ran in and said.
"Your majesty, the church followers are invading through the woods on the western side of empire and the northern ice lands also informed that they have been attacked by the church followers. The soldiers are all seemed to be Novice stage cultivators. They are awaiting your orders."
"Tell them, to be defensive, don"t let them invade the city and if there is no other way, ask them to use the Impact cannons.
As for the Northern Icelands, what is the exact situation?"
"They are defending themselves well and they said that the first wave of followers that came are no threat to them, but they are feeling a bit panicky about these new invaders and they seemed to have been searching for the s.p.a.ce gate."
"Send a regiment over to the norther lands and ask them to stay strong, if they find any s.p.a.ce gate, just ask them to attack them from long range, it is almost impossible to seal them without any formation knowledge."
After giving the instructions, Arc went into a deep thought.
He was thinking why the empire was being attacked all of a sudden.
Philip is also thinking the same. The church is focussing on taking over the minor powers and even battling the major powers. The beast faction and the Usaine sect are both onto the church too. They are even trying to get their nations back.
But at this moment, the church should have been focusing their manpower at those positions.
While they are thinking.
In Sam"s tower, inside his room.
Sam"s body turned back to its original colour and there is a faint black smoke coming out of him.
His whole body started twitching a little as smoke escaped through the pores of his skin.
His body started to have a change as the dark elemental energy started spreading all over him.
Inside his body, near the spiritual core and even his spiritual consciousness, the shadow corrosive energy was almost disappeared.
Due to Sirona"s formation the shadow energy in the patches which spread all over his body was also clearly absorbed.
Even the crack on the spirtual core has disappeared completely.
But what Sirona did, still have some side effects, because the energy spread all over the body, there are many traces left all over the muscle fibres and now Sam is subconsciously trying to digest them by attempting a shadow fusion.
Meanwhile, Arman who is running around the city, finally came towards the factory area and he noticed that one of locomotive factory is not working. So, he decided to escape there.
While he decided to hide in there for the time being, Philip has already sent out an order to capture him. He decided to put out this cat and mouse game, seeing that Arman is turning more and more desperate.
He was supervising Arman"s capture and Arc is still trying to make sense of the situation.
But at that moment, there are sudden calls to Arc and his attendant.
The gist of the news was such.
After there is a probing attack in the morning in the western part and the northern part, the Arian empire was being invaded by the church.
The followers are being appeared out of the woods. And at this moment, there are more than fifty cities which are being invaded directly and to get the trouble even more serious, Philip got another call and that is the church followers are appearing out of thin air near the vicinities of Sam"s city.
Then only they understood one thing. Not only is church deciding to use the man power on them, they are even using one-way s.p.a.ce gates from who knows where to invade the western empire.