Unlike their crown prince, they were privy to the full scope of this operation. This was a given, considering they were dao formation experts, they were near the top of their clan in terms of prestige. So, they knew the sensitivity of this mission and how many schemes it had taken to prepare the Moon Clan with the capability to attack this clan.

If the Ahpuch failed, they would be without allies. The mysterious clans would abandon them in order to save face with their Beast Alliance allies, while the Viserions would likely have one of two fates: they would either be annihilated by the Beast Alliance, or they would be pulled in. Either way, there would be no place for the Ahpuch left in this quadrant or cosmos.

Even if the surrounding Emperor God Clan alliances didn't swallow up their territory, when Dyon's father broke free, without the support of the Viserions, he would have no issues running rampant, they would no longer have the slightest chance of suppressing him!

The more the elders thought about it, the more grim their expressions became. They couldn't let this day end like this!

Only by fulfilling the mysterious clans' requirements could they secure their protection. If they failed, what purpose would those clans have in keeping them around? They'd be thrown out.

"What are you trying to say? Spit it out." Veles said, clearly agitated.

"Nothing much," Dyon said nonchalantly, "Just that it makes more sense for you to come back to my side. If you do, you can not only receive your Dragon Refining Arts, you can also receive the 18 pages that have been unlocked as well."

Veles was stunned that Dyon would be so bold, but the Ahpuch and Laura were troubled by this, clearly. If Veles suddenly turned on them now, their chances of winning would suddenly be close to zero. Unlike the Angel Clan, the Viserions had a sizeable army. Although they still had less saint and celestial warriors compared to the Moon Clan who still had over 500 000 saints and over a 100 000 celestials still alive, if the Viserion numbers were added to the Angel Clan, their defeat was basically sealed!

Suddenly, what should have been a simple annihilation of a small clan had actually become the dooms day of the Moon and Ahpuch Clans.

Laura knew she had to do something. If she didn't, everything her father had worked for would go up in smoke. She knew that if the mysterious clans saw this situation going south for them, they would simply disappear and not bother to get involved at all.

"Don't be fooled by him, King Viserion," Laura spoke out, "If he was so confident in victory, why would he ask you to join him? You know him better than anyone, you understand how arrogant he is. If it wasn't absolutely necessary, would he ever ask for your help?

"When he came to your clan for an alliance, he never planned on asking for an alliance, he only wanted to distract you so that he could steal your Viserion Clan's prized possession. I fear that if you believe in him and step into the dome, your fate will be the same as those experts of my Moon Clan.

"If he truly cared for the relationship between your fathers, why would he ever steal from you to begin with? On top of that, why would he only propose this after your dao formation expert was about to attack? Obviously, this barrier of his can't withstand such power, or else he wouldn't have resorted to this."

Everything Laura said was reasonable, in fact, the logic was flawless… On the surface that is. Only Dyon and Laura knew that her words were nothing but bullshit. Dyon never had the intention of betraying Veles, and Laura knew that. In addition, the only reason Dyon was so blatantly disrespectful when this battle started was to ensure that the maximum amount of Moon Clan warriors were cut down.

Veles' face darkened, clearly having not needed Laura to explain these things to him. With his personality, would he ever bow down to benefits? Since he lost his tome, he would earn it back himself! Since the final 18 pages could be unlocked, he'd do it too! That was who he was!

"The things this Viserion has will be earned by his own hand. I am not a man who will abandon his allies in the face of benefits! Elder!"

Without hesitation, the Viserion Elder raised his hand, causing a ball of blazing fire to condense in his palm. In that moment, what looked like a sparling array of red rubies appeared behind him, intricately laid out, being about a few meters across. It was without a doubt a first level dao!

The was the first time Dyon had witnessed a dao formation expert fight. Although Elder Daiyu was technically of that level, as was the Daiyu ancestor afterward, the former was injured and couldn't use his daos, while the latter hadn't had the opportunity to attack at all.

Instead of showing fear, he was instead very intrigued.

The power of a dao was decided by the size of its representation along with what the martial world called its layers. The in-depth explanation is best left to another time, but in layman's terms, the larger and more intricate your dao was, the more powerful it was. As for the dao stage it reached, that was actually only determined by the richness of its color. Meaning, the brighter a dao was, the higher stage of the 9 stages it had reached.

Considering the brightness of the dao of this elder, he had reached the first stage of fire dao. It was technically also possible to tell what path, and how many paths, an expert followed by studying the patterns of their dao, but Dyon didn't know or understand enough to do that.

The ball of flames began to pulse rapidly, expanding tens of meters in an instant before condensing and repeating. In less than a second, it was more than a hundred meters across, completely blocking the Angel Clan army from view of their enemies, and vice versa.

"Break for me!" The elder roared, releasing his attack toward the boundary.

Not a single angel moved, it was as though this had nothing to do with them. They had the ultimate confidence in their King. Since he didn't tell them anything, they wouldn't do anything.

The massive ball of fire passed through the first barrier easily without a single ounce of resistance, but this was already expected. All anyone could anticipate was what would happen once the flames slammed against the second.

Rings of displaced air fired from the back of the flame, causing it to gain speed. Dyon could tell that if this attack was aimed at him, he wouldn't have the slightest chance of dodging it without some extenuating means. However, what he found interesting was that despite the power of the attack, it didn't break through space…

In modern times, even mere saints could break through space when their attacks were powerful enough. However, what Dyon didn't know was that that was only because of how fragile his home universe was. In more robust ancient universes, only the best of best spatial masters could do such a thing. In fact, if Dyon paid a bit more attention, he would have also noticed that the energy, land, and even gravity of ancient times were tens of times higher in quality than the era he came from!

As Dyon was immersed in his thoughts, a cacophonic blast emanating a hellish heat slammed into the inner shield, causing it to quake and ripple… And then… A massive crack began to spread…