My Whole Class Isekai'd to a Xianxia? Good Thing I Can Do Mind-reading

Something wasn't adding up.

"He never left this place," Fan Ying said firmly. "You must be mistaken."

A smile curled beneath Hou Zemin's mask. 'So they really don't know… incredible. He killed them all, and no one in their own camp noticed.'

"You people are more incompetent than I thought," he said aloud, mocking. "I'm honestly surprised. Just a few hours ago, a squad of five hundred assassins infiltrated your camp. Your Array Master killed every last one of them without any of you even realizing they were here."

Gasps erupted from the crowd. Shocked faces turned toward Feng Fan, many of them unable to believe what they had just heard.

"He did what?" someone whispered.

"Five hundred… all alone?" another muttered in disbelief.

Even Fan Ying and Dong Tian exchanged stunned glances. No one had sensed an invasion. No alarms had gone off. Yet all five hundred enemies were gone, and it was Feng Fan who had done it?

A strange silence fell over the camp, heavy with awe, confusion, and an unsettling realization:

Their unassuming Array Master was far more dangerous than anyone had thought.

Feng Fan sighed. His assumptions had been correct; they somehow knew he had killed the assassins. He still wasn't sure who exactly among them was so important to the Obsidian Court, but he had a strong hunch it was the man wielding the Immortal artifact dagger.

'But this guy doesn't seem to be here for the dagger… or at the very least, he doesn't want to tell us the dagger is important to them,' Feng Fan thought.

"So, what's your answer?" Hou Zemin asked, his voice calm.

Truth be told, Hou Zemin didn't care much whether Red Pole surrendered or not. He just preferred fewer casualties, and if he could end the battle without wasting more resources, all the better. In his mind, the outcome was already decided; the battle would end with their victory. Red Pole was too weak to confront them.

His only real regret was being forced to use the purple smoke. It was a rare and costly weapon, far from something to be deployed lightly. Every sliver of spiritual qi it corrupted came at an astronomical price, even for the Obsidian Court.

He didn't even have enough resources to use it to wipe out everyone in Red Pole's camp. The energy sustaining the purple smoke would run dry long before that happened. He only wanted to destroy the array protecting Red Pole's camp. After that, they would be like pigs in a slaughterhouse.

Not only had it failed to secure an easy victory, but Xiao Zendong had also died. When he returned to his home planet, he knew he'd have to face his superiors' anger.

Fan Ying narrowed her eyes. "We—"

Her words were cut short by a sudden blast that erupted from the edge of the defensive array. A cannonball made entirely of spiritual qi shot toward Hou Zemin like a blazing comet.

Hou Zemin sneered. A short sword materialized in his hand, and with a swift, fluid motion, he slashed. Powerful qi surged along the blade, cleaving the spiritual qi cannonball cleanly in two. The split projectiles vanished into the purple smoke, instantly corroded before crashing into the ground behind him.

A deafening boom shook the desert as two massive craters exploded into existence beyond Hou Zemin's position.

Feng Fan's voice echoed, cold and full of disdain:

"Go back and suck your superiors' cock. I don't give two shits about who came here and died; I don't even remember their faces. Anyone who steps into my domain… dies!"

His voice rang across the desert, both inside and outside the protective barrier.

With Hou Zemin's display of strength, effortlessly neutralizing the spiritual qi attack, it was clear he was stronger than Prince Shen, a peak Transcending Tribulation expert. And yet, Feng Fan stood fearless.

Hou Zemin didn't react to Feng Fan's provocation. Instead, his gaze remained on Fan Ying.

"What's your answer?"

Fan Ying's reply was sharp and icy. "We won't surrender."

Hou Zemin nodded. "Good. Then… die."

In an instant, he and the woman beside him vanished into the purple smoke. The toxic cloud surged forward once more. The moment it made contact with the barrier, Feng Fan's expression darkened.

Feng Fan could feel the spiritual qi that held his array's internal structure together changing. He knew he had to act fast, or the entire array would collapse. His hands, brimming with spiritual qi, moved rapidly through the air, tracing rune after rune in a frantic dance.

"Damn it. If I had more time, I could craft an array that actually uses this corrupted spiritual qi... but right now, I can barely hold this one together," he thought, sweat beading on his forehead.

The corrupted spiritual qi wasn't suited for defensive arrays. Its nature was far more compatible with poison or killing formations. Given enough time, Feng Fan was confident he could turn it into a weapon against the Obsidian Court. Unfortunately, time was the one thing he didn't have.

Every ounce of his focus was spent keeping the current array intact. There was no room to build something new. He poured spiritual qi from the Suppression Relic into the array to reinforce it, but the purple smoke corrupted energy faster than he could repair it.

Before long, the array could no longer sustain itself.

The barrier broke.

The purple smoke surged into Red Pole's camp like a tidal wave. The cultivators scrambled to push it back, attacking it with spiritual techniques, but it was a futile effort. The toxic cloud ignored their resistance, devouring everything in its path.

Desperation spread, and they retreated toward the core of the camp.

But just as all seemed lost, the smoke suddenly halted, then vanished.

They barely had time to exhale in relief.

In its place, thousands of Obsidian Court cultivators appeared, spiritual qi swirling around them, weapons gleaming, their eyes locked on Red Pole's now-exposed camp. The real attack had just begun.