Junior Uncle is too cunning.

Marquis Chong, Bai Gui, glanced at the cave dwelling, sighed inwardly, and flicked his sleeve towards the cave, instantly causing all the pearls and warm jade inside to disappear into his hand.

Chonghou Baigui left the cave without lingering. He first went to the Northern Marquis Kingdom, took away a group of the most talented members of the Chonghou clan, gave a few instructions to several Golden Immortal Ancestors, and then left the Southern Continent. No one knew his whereabouts.

Meanwhile, Marquis Chonghou Hu of the North seemed to know nothing. Every day, besides constantly besieging foreign barbarians within his territory, he was also mobilizing the large army within the Marquis of the North's territory, seemingly preparing for a decisive battle with the Shang Dynasty's imperial court.

As one of the top lords of the Great Shang Dynasty, the Marquis of Beibo possesses astonishing strength once he truly gets going. Not to mention his army, he has twelve Golden Immortal experts. Although there are only three true Golden Immortals, Martial Golden Immortals are far more powerful than Golden Immortals at the same level.

Of the twelve, eight were at the early stage of Golden Immortal, two were at the middle stage, and two were at the late stage. One of them, in particular, had already reached the level of a second-rate True Monarch, and was also a Martial True Monarch. In terms of combat power, he should be no less than a True Monarch who had just stepped into the first-rate realm.

This one person alone is enough for the Chonghou clan to occupy a place in the Southern Continent. Of course, this does not include the two Golden Immortals taken away by Chonghou Baigui. Otherwise, the Chonghou clan would have one Great Luo Golden Immortal, fourteen Golden Immortals, and dozens of Xuan Immortals. The entire Beibohou Kingdom has hundreds of thousands of immortals. Although a large portion of them are at the Heavenly Immortal or True Immortal level, such a powerful force would be considered one of the top sects even in the Eastern Continent.

Back then, before the Lingbao Sect was incorporated into the Chan Sect, although the sect had over 100,000 cultivators, only a few thousand were true immortals or above, and only three could reach the Golden Immortal level. Compared to the Northern Marquis Kingdom, it was utterly insignificant.

It was only in recent years that their fortunes began to rise. Not only did Chen Fusheng and Li Shundao break through to the Great Luo Golden Immortal realm, but there were also more than a dozen Golden Immortals, making them equal to the Northern Marquis Kingdom. Although the number of Immortals was still insufficient, they were still considered evenly matched.

The Northern Marquisate was the fourth-ranked vassal state among the vassal states of the Great Shang Dynasty. There were three other states that were equally powerful, especially the most powerful Western Marquisate. It was estimated that only the God of Wealth Cult under Li Shundao could surpass it.

Aside from the four major vassal states, the Shang Dynasty had many vassal states. Even the weakest vassal state had at least a few immortals under its command. If you calculate it this way, you will find that apart from saints and quasi-saints, the human race of the Southern Continent alone could suppress any race in the prehistoric world. The dragon race and the demon race were not unjustly defeated.

It's important to understand that the Southern Continent was ultimately ruled by the Shang Dynasty. Even a weakened camel is bigger than a horse, let alone the fact that it hadn't reached that level yet. Therefore, the strength of the Shang Dynasty's imperial court was definitely among the top in the prehistoric world. If you add the Fire Cloud Cave, the ancestral home of humanity, then apart from the Three Pure Ones Taoism and Western Buddhism, humanity was the undisputed overlord of the prehistoric world. Even the Heavenly Court and the Underworld could only be on the same level as it. This was the status and recognition that humanity had earned over several eras.

Otherwise, even with the combined strength of the feudal lords, the Great Shang Imperial Court alone would not have been so highly regarded by the Heavenly Court and the Underworld, reaching a level of equality. It was all due to the inherent strength of the human race.

This doesn't even include the human disciples who have joined various Taoist sects. Leaving aside others, just the fact that the Human Sect's Grand Master Xuandu is a quasi-saint demonstrates just how profound the human race's foundation is.

Although Grand Master Xuandu cultivates the Yin-Yang Wuwei Dao of the Taiqing Sage and prefers tranquility and nature, he will definitely intervene if the human race is ever in crisis.

After all, no matter how powerful Grand Master Xuandu was, he could never escape the fact that he was human.

It should be noted that the three emperors of Heaven, Earth, and Man in the Fire Cloud Cave of the human race, plus the Grand Master Xuandu, make up four quasi-saints. It should be noted that even the powerful Heavenly Court only has the Jade Emperor, the Queen Mother, and the other five emperors, totaling seven quasi-saints.

In the entire underworld, apart from the saintly Lady Pingxin, there are only three quasi-saints on the surface: the Emperor of Fengdu, Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva, and the Styx Ancestor. Among these three, Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva is actually a person from Western Buddhism, while the Styx Ancestor is completely indifferent to worldly affairs and does not pay any attention to the orders of the underworld.

Based on this calculation, the entire Underworld only has one Quasi-Saint, the Fengdu Emperor. As for the other ten Yama Kings, they are all at the Great Luo Golden Immortal realm. If they want to break through to Quasi-Saint and embark on the path to Sainthood, they will probably need some good fortune.

It's easy to see the strength of the human race from this. You have to know that the Heavenly Court only became so powerful after accepting most of the demon court's forces, while the human race accumulated its strength little by little.

Putting aside everything else, just look at the Underworld. It has been quite a long time since Houtu Niangniang transformed into the Six Paths of Reincarnation to create the Underworld. It is basically around the same time that the human race was created by Nuwa Niangniang. The human race has now indirectly cultivated four Quasi-Saints and countless Great Luo Golden Immortals, while the Underworld is only being supported by Fengdu Emperor.

The Great Shang Imperial Court's army arrived quickly. As the saying goes, speed is of the essence in war. Under the leadership of Huang Feihu and Jiang Ziya, they entered the northern part of Nanzhanbuzhou in just a few days, riding on flying magical treasures. This place was actually within the territory of the Northern Marquis Kingdom. However, in the face of the Great Shang Imperial Court's army, Chong Houhu directly reduced his forces and placed all his troops near the capital.

Therefore, Huang Feihu and Jiang Ziya led the army of the Great Shang Dynasty into the Northern Marquis State with ease, and only stopped near the capital of the Northern Marquis State after traveling without any obstacles.

Although the army arrived on flying magical artifacts, expending virtually no magical power, Huang Feihu, leading an army for the first time, intended to proceed cautiously and chose to establish a base in place. Jiang Ziya did not object.

Jiang Ziya accompanied the army for two reasons: first, King Zhou was worried that Huang Feihu might make mistakes in his first time leading an army, and he felt at ease having a strategist like Jiang Ziya by his side; second, it would also allow Jiang Ziya to experience military life.

After all, Jiang Ziya was already quite qualified as the deputy prime minister, but he was slightly lacking in temperament and not as virtuous as the experienced Shang Rong.

Although King Zhou valued talent, he was unwilling to hinder Jiang Ziya's development, so he directly dispatched him to the army to quell the rebellion, hoping to give him experience so that he could better handle political affairs in the future.

Looking at Huang Feihu's camp-setting skills, Jiang Ziya nodded secretly, thinking to himself, "As expected of a descendant of a military family, his camp-setting skills alone are enough to make him a famous general!"

To consider defeat before victory is to be prepared for the worst. War is a dangerous thing. A good defensive general may not necessarily be a good marshal, but a general who does not know how to defend is probably no marshal, and at best a brave general.

Moreover, among the human race today, there are many different kinds of formations, but they can all be categorized into the following types: square formations, circular formations, sparse formations, number formations, cone formations, goose formations, hook formations, Xuanxiang formations, fire formations, and water formations.

Huang Feihu is currently setting up the Nine Palaces Eight Trigrams Formation, a composite formation composed of the two basic formations: the Nine Palaces Formation and the Eight Trigrams Formation.

The Bagua Formation, also known as the Nine Palaces Bagua Formation, is also called the Five Formations, Five Elements Formation, Five Elements Bagua Formation, Eight Formations Diagram, Nine Armies, and Bagua Formation, among other names. All of these originate from the same theory, and their formation theories are similar.

The Nine Palaces are: Qian, Kan, Gen, Zhen, Zhong, Xun, Li, Kun, and Dui. There are nine palaces in total. Regardless of whether they are horizontal, vertical, or diagonal, the sum of three numbers is fifteen, which is in accordance with the numbers of heaven.

Nine is the ultimate number, derived from the number three of the six lines of the I Ching. As the I Ching says: "One begets two, two begets three, and three begets all things." There is also the saying that Taiji begets Yin and Yang, Yin and Yang beget the Four Symbols, the Four Symbols beget the Eight Trigrams, and the Eight Trigrams transform into the sixty-four lines, thus creating an endless cycle of change.