Nowadays, Fengguo had become the frontline battlefield.
The original Cultivators from Fengguo had either joined the Heavenly Spirit Legion or fled to Jingguo and other countries.
And the former strongholds of the Fengguo factions had all been reorganized with formidable arrays, turning them into fortresses.
Conservatively estimated, there were now over eighty Golden Core Stage Cultivators and at least five hundred Purple Mansion Phase Cultivators in the Heavenly Spirit Legion stationed in Fengguo, with the Foundation Establishment cultivators numbering over six to seven thousand.
As for the number of Nascent Soul Stage True Persons, that was top-secret information.
Under these circumstances, other than the Heavenly Spirit Legion Cultivators who went out on missions, hardly any other Tianling Region Cultivators dared to roam about in the wilderness of Fengguo.
Although Zhou Chun wanted to send lifesaving items to Zhou Daoquan and the others, he did not recklessly barge into Fengguo.
Upon reaching the border between Jingguo and Fengguo, he visited a Heavenly Spirit Legion base. Posing as the Clan Leader of the Zhou Family, he was able to find out Zhou Daoquan and the others' respective teams and stations.
Then, through the Heavenly Spirit Legion's own intelligence system, he sent letters to the three elders, informing them of his return and hinting that they should wait at their stations for him to deliver the items.
Of course, there was no problem directly handing the items over to the Heavenly Spirit Legion for delivery.
The problem was that the lifesaving items Zhou Chun wanted to give the three elders were all valuable.
He found it hard to believe that those charged with delivering the items wouldn't be tempted to swindle them once they discovered their value.
After all, the Heavenly Spirit Legion did not guarantee the items would definitely be delivered. Given the complexity of the battlefield situation, who knew whether the delivery team might be attacked en route?
Losing some of the items in such a circumstance would be all too normal.
Hence, aside from letters, which had no real cost, few people would truly entrust the delivery of valuable items to the Heavenly Spirit Legion.
After sending the letters, Zhou Chun also obtained a certificate from the Heavenly Spirit Legion proving his identity and the purpose of his entry into the Fengguo Battlefield.
This way, if he encountered a Heavenly Spirit Legion patrol on the Fengguo Battlefield, he would be spared from attack and could enter the relevant fortresses for rest and refuge.
To quickly obtain this certificate, Zhou Chun had also spent three thousand Spirit Coins on related facilitation.
This made him lament the fact that those people were really good at making money - power unused was like an expired commodity!
Once all the formalities were complete, Zhou Chun formally entered Fengguo and then chose to walk to his destination.
Fengguo was now a battlefield, and Zhou Chun was completely in the dark about the state of it, clueless as to which areas were dangerous and where the combat zones lay.
Military intelligence like that was simply not accessible to someone like him, who was not a member of the Heavenly Spirit Legion.
Hence, to avoid recklessly stumbling into a battlefield, getting attacked, or attracting too much attention and trouble, walking was undoubtedly the best choice.
Of course, Zhou Chun's so-called "walking" wasn't on his own two feet; rather, he was riding one of his prepared Dragon Scale Horses.
He had brought two Dragon Scale Horses, ready to switch between them as necessary.
And not even half a day after Zhou Chun entered Fengguo, he happened upon a minor conflict between Cultivators of the Heavenly Spirit Legion and the Primordial Demon Legion.
This battlefield was near a Mortal City, where it seemed that Cultivators from the Primordial Demon Legion were slaughtering mortals to refine their magic artifacts when they were caught by the Heavenly Spirit Legion Cultivators, triggering the war.
Counting their numbers, the Heavenly Spirit Legion clearly had the upper hand, with up to fifty or sixty people - the numbers of two small squads.
The Primordial Demon Legion, on the other hand, only had a bit over thirty.
But the tide of the war had not quickly turned in favor of one side.
Despite being fewer in number, the actual combat strength of the Primordial Demon Legion Cultivators was not much lower.
On the battlefield, one could see corpses shrouded in sinister Qi, driven by the Corpse Demon Sect disciples, lunging at the besieging Heavenly Spirit Legion Cultivators.
There were also strange Cultivators in black robes, wielding black banner magic artifacts, summoning grayish-black Yin Ghosts to pounce on different Heavenly Spirit Legion Cultivators.
These black Yin Ghosts were purely a concentration of Yin Qi without a physical form. They were hardly harmed by magic artifacts like Flying Swords, and among ordinary Five Elements Spells, only Fire Element Spells did normal damage to them; others were less effective.
Moreover, they seemed to have strong penetration against protective shields of other elements, making almost all the Heavenly Spirit Legion Cultivators opt for fire shields to protect themselves.
It was due to the frontal assault and the harassing sneak attacks of these refined corpses and Yin Ghosts that the Heavenly Spirit Legion, despite having the numerical advantage, struggled to gain ground at the beginning of the battle, unable to form a real edge.
"Those Cultivators controlling the Yin Ghosts must be from the Yin Ghost Sect mentioned in the intelligence reports. It's said that the Yin Ghosts they control are refined from the Divine Souls of Cultivators. Each Yin Ghost represents a Cultivator who died at their hands!"
Atop a mountain, Zhou Chun hid in the shadows, observing the situation on the battlefield from a distance, his expression exceedingly grave.
Clearly, compared to the Corpse Demon Sect, which refined puppets from the corpses of dead Cultivators, the Cultivators of the Yin Ghost Sect were undeniably much more evil and distasteful to conventional Cultivators.
After all, corpse refinement was at most a sign of disrespect to the dead, something Cultivators found somewhat distasteful but did not escalate to the point of necessitating the complete annihilation of those involved.