The battle lasted for nearly a minute.
With the last miserable scream, the stench of blood filled the air, marking the fight's end.
One man's head was crushed, blood and pale matter seeping into the earth.
Another was pinned to the ground by hoes, his body torn and shattered beyond recognition.
In comparison, the man in gray clothes was the most "complete" corpse—though his limbs were twisted unnaturally, and his head had been rotated more than 180 degrees.
"What is a slaughter?"
"This is!"
Looking at the ruined state of the three bodies, Su Zhan's face showed pure satisfaction.
He had witnessed Clones brutal killing with his own eyes, and could feel that his shadow army's killing power had reached a whole new level.
Clones way of killing was completely unlike that of ordinary cultivators.
Normal practitioners feared injury, feared being counterattacked. They struck with caution, dodged, and held back—especially when fighting someone of equal strength.
But the Clones? They had no such concerns.
Once they struck, it was with one goal: to kill, no matter what.
Whether the target had trump cards or fought back didn't matter in the slightest.
A perfect example was the strongest of the three—the man in gray—who was also the closest to breaking through to the second layer of the Mortal Realm.
The moment the fight began, he reacted quickly, defending against the first wave and immediately pulling a gleaming dagger from his sleeve. One glance told Su Zhan this was no common blade—his eyes lit up instantly.
With a sudden move, the man in gray slashed at Clones, stabbing him clean through the neck.
Against an ordinary cultivator, that would have been the end right there.
But Clones ignored it completely. Without hesitation, he and Clones crippled the man's arms and legs.
The man in gray fought desperately, swinging his dagger in a frenzy. Clones No 2 and Clones No 3 let their heads be smashed, their black arms hacked apart—yet they never let go.
The man's cries turned from rage to despair to sheer terror. Even as he died, he howled, "What the hell are you?! What are you?!"
The other two fared even worse.
At least the man in gray could resist for a while—these two didn't even have a chance. Other than screaming, they could do nothing before being torn apart on the spot.
When they died, they still couldn't understand what those black shadows were that had killed them.
The whole fight might have been brutal and lacking in technique, but that suited Su Zhan just fine. Evil men like these didn't deserve a quick death. They had to taste despair and agony first.
"Search them. Don't miss a thing…Clones, bring me that shiny dagger."
Su Zhan took the weapon from Clones. Even without touching it, it gleamed faintly.
Oddly, for a cold weapon, it felt warm in his hand—and he could sense it drawing in a strand of his spiritual energy.
"A real prize," Su Zhan said with a grin. "No wonder this guy was so arrogant—it's a spiritual weapon. If I'd been anyone else today, that blow might've killed me outright.
"Unfortunately for him… he met me.
"No—more accurately, he met the Clones. Today's full of surprises."
A spiritual weapon, as the name implied, possessed a degree of sentience and far surpassed ordinary arms. Its greatest strength was its ability to channel spiritual energy, vastly increasing its destructive power.
Steel and stone that normal weapons couldn't scratch could be sliced like tofu.
Even powerful cultivators with bodies like iron wouldn't dare take a spiritual weapon's strike head-on.
Because of this, spiritual weapons were extremely costly. Even the lowest grade—"primary spiritual weapons"—started at a hundred low-grade spirit stones.
It was obvious these three had done plenty of robbing themselves.
Su Zhan tested the dagger on the mine wall.
The previously solid stone was carved into instantly, leaving deep cuts as fragments slid to the ground.
"A spiritual weapon is truly extraordinary," he murmured. "But it burns through spiritual energy fast. With my current strength, I could only use it five or six times in a row."
Normally, those who could wield such weapons effectively were cultivators in the third or fourth realm and above. For someone like Su Zhan, at the first realm, using it was taxing.
"Keep this as a trump card. If anyone else dares come for this site—kill them outright.
"The more cards we have, the better. The more spirit stones we take, the better. Even if two second-realm cultivators or a third-realm expert come, they'll die here."
The beauty of the storage space showed its worth now—paired with the overwhelming numbers of his shadow army, he could easily overwhelm stronger enemies.
And this was just the beginning.
As Clones numbers and intelligence grew, Su Zhan planned to split them into melee attackers, ranged cover, and ambush teams. At that point, even cultivators a realm or two above him would be within his reach.
"Master," Clones voice sounded. "We've searched them. Found a hundred impure spirit stones."
"That's all from the three of them combined?" Su Zhan frowned. "They must have more hidden somewhere… I should've left one alive for questioning. Still, I got a spiritual weapon today. That's worth it."
"Alright, dispose of the bodies. Let's get back to work."