Helpless

"Meteor Fist!" Fen Jue yelled.

Boom!

"Kekeke, useless." Murong Aiyin laughed. "So weak!"

She slapped away his massive fireball with her bare hands and responded with her own barrage of icicles. Fen Jue didn't dare take them head on and dodged deftly. None hit him although there were a couple close calls. After chasing each other in the air for some time, he realized he was losing in long distance trades. He decisively shot forward, choosing to engage her in close quarters and unleash his pent-up rage.

Chen Wentian watched with a bit of amusement. Both of them assumed that Chen Wentian would be on Fen Jue's side. Fen Jue's attacks were confident and filled with power while his opponent had to be more careful. The result was that the two were relatively evenly matched when normally they wouldn't have been. This served Chen Wentian perfectly and he continued to manipulate the fight from the side. His Blue Dragon flame aura was able to push back Murong Aiyin's weird freezing field when it was starting to overpower Fen Jue. His aura would then recede when Fen Jue was getting too frisky and overbearing.

In the meantime, hundreds of crazy Divine Blazing Mountain disciples ignored the commands of their elders and charged towards Long Yifei's defense line. These just so happened to be the two hundred or so disciples that had been tormented by Murong Aiyin and the Glacier Palace elders during 'treatment'. They seemed not completely right in the head after being freed from the ice.

"Women!"

"We want women!"

"Come here, girl!"

Their eyes were red and filled with madness as they threw themselves at the only source of fresh young women nearby.

"Hah!" Long Yifei anchored the line, sending tens of men tumbling backwards. "Steady, don't break the line!"

The men were like rabid dogs. They charged forward with no regard for their own bodies. Bones were broken and faces crushed, but they still came back. The senior women at the front were struggling. They had suffered greatly over the last week and they were not in the best of shape.

"Oh no!" Long Yifei cried out as she saw one of her attendant's faint from exhaustion.

The ravenous wolves were about to pull her out and devour her when…

Woosh!

A jet of blue flame shot down from the sky and incinerated the four men around her, leaving nothing but a pile of black ash…

Long Yifei looked up to see that Chen Wentian had already flown back to join the battle in the sky. She felt an uncomfortable conflict in her heart.

"Thanks…" She muttered to no one in particular as she resumed her fight.

While this was all happening, the third battle between the elders of both sects continued to rage. This battle, compared to the other two, was the most ferocious and bloody. Screams of desperation, agony and fury from both sides melded into a cacophony of chaos. Over a thousand red robes combined to create a fearsome firestorm that hovered above, threatening to swallow everything. However, the pale white icy cloud within the center refused to be extinguished and stubbornly remained.

Chen Wentian pulled his attention from the other two battles to take stock of this and was shocked that the Divine Blazing Mountain disciples were actually on the back foot despite their overwhelming number advantage. They could not make any progress and were even losing.

Bai Qianying reaching Spiritual Ascendance was truly a boon for the Glacier Palace elders as she could lay down a similar freezing field like Murong Aiyin, albeit much weaker. It was still very effective against the Divine Blazing Mountain elders who felt their body grow cold and stiff. Even their blood, bones, and internal organs were affected.

The male elders retreated to the rear after a few initial exchanges and forced their disciples forward to wear down the strength of the enemy. The battle quickly turned into a bloody meat grinder as weaker male disciples were shoved to the front by their strong senior brothers. Those in the Mind Focusing Realm were directly turned into ice and shattered into thousands of bloody pieces by heavy blows. Those at the initial stages of Spirit Initiate Realm could last a little longer but they all inevitably cut down by ice blades or pierced by icicles.

All the Glacier Palace elders were at the peak of the Spirit Initiate Realm. A couple had even broken through a lesser realm after losing their virginity. They were united and they presented an impenetrable icy wall.

Chen Wentian shook his head. He would have let those men all die but they were still useful. If they could take care of those Glacier Palace elders it would save him a lot of trouble. He extended his flame aura and assisted the men in the same way as Fen Jue, suppressing Bai Qianying's ice field so that the Blazing Sun Art was more effective. It wasn't enough to turn the tides, only to make sure it was a close fight.

"Hoh…" Chen Wentian muttered as he kept busy, juggling all three battles at once.

He became a human puppeteer as everyone at Lakestone Keep was subject to his whims. If Fen Jue started to struggle, he would inject a bit of blue flame. If the any of the young women fell, he would immediately help and stabilize the front line. If the group of old hags got too full of themselves, he would suppress them with a wave of his hand. He was truly the one that held everyone's lives in his hands.

Both Fen Jue and Murong Aiyin knew what he was doing but they were powerless to stop him. Fen Jue wanted Chen Wentian to help quickly defeat the Murong Aiyin but Chen Wentian simply refused and flew away and let him get beat up for a while. Murong Aiyin could not even suppress Chen Wentian by herself and she definitely could not do anything if both of them truly joined against her.

They gnashed their teeth and threw furious insults his way, but he paid them no heed. What could they do? Team up and chase him? Their disciples were still fighting tooth and nail below. There was no way out. They were helpless. And they could only keep on fighting.