Longzang

Chapter 486 New War
As the flames rose atop the city walls, a wisp of white vapor suddenly appeared above Wei Yuan's head.

The original war plan, amidst the chaos of war, was completely overturned by this explosion, and a new deduction process had to be initiated. All the immortal plant nodes were activated, while the troops in the rear, who were the third and fourth wave of reserves, were pulled back to their camps and put to sleep.

Until a new plan is developed, we have to rely on ourselves for everything.

The city was now defended by elite troops, and the officers, accustomed to their own side bombarding the enemy, were experiencing their first attack. However, they reacted quickly, ordering their soldiers to take cover.

Bao Yun reacted swiftly, immediately ordering heavily armored infantry to scale the city walls with massive shields. Braving the impact of the explosions and flames, the heavy infantry reached the top of the walls, each protecting an archer as they held their heavy shields above their heads to block the exploding arrows raining down from the sky. They were all extremely strong, and even when the explosive arrows detonated directly on their shields, they managed to withstand about half of them.

Wei Yuan's figure flashed, and he appeared on the city wall. He waved his hand, creating a water curtain dozens of feet wide, blocking the incoming explosive arrows. The heavy arrows struck the water curtain as if falling into mud, exploding one after another. Wei Yuan's figure continued to flicker, creating wave after wave of water curtains, single-handedly blocking half of the explosive arrows, greatly reducing the pressure on the defending army.

The Dao Foundation officers followed suit, each employing various defensive Daoist techniques to intercept. Wei Yuan casually picked up an explosive arrow from the Wu Clan, wiped away the detonating magic, and then disassembled it to examine it. The arrow's cylindrical body was filled with black powder, approximately three jin (about 1.5 kg).

Wei Yuan summoned seven or eight more explosive arrows, removed their detonation power, and stored them in his storage magic item.

Wei Yuan personally intervened to stabilize the situation. But by then, the Wu Clan's vanguard had already reached a hundred feet and began to sprint at full speed.

The short-barreled cannons on the city wall roared again, but the sound was much sparser. Many of the cannons had just been destroyed, and the gunners were mostly injured.

The defenders on the city wall remained steadfast in their fighting spirit, firing continuously. The front-line Wu tribe warriors fell one after another in the hail of bullets, but they were noticeably more resilient than before. Wei Yuan observed that many Wu tribe warriors took two or three bullets before collapsing.

With the adoption of new gunpowder, the Qingming fire lance was designed to kill a Wu tribe infantryman with a single shot. Could this group of Wu tribe members be elite? But their physiques don't seem to suggest so.

There was no time to think it through. Wei Yuan immediately deployed twenty Dao Foundation Warriors at various points along the city wall. They fired wildly with flying swords and spears, barely managing to suppress the Wu Clan's charge.

Taking advantage of the time Wei Yuan gained, Bao Yun immediately dispatched a second batch of troops to reinforce the city, while simultaneously evacuating the wounded soldiers from the city walls and sending them to the rear medical facilities. Damaged short-barreled cannons were pushed off the city walls to make way for the newly brought-up cannons.

The vanguard of the Witch Clan finally reached the city walls and began to climb. The directional flying sword mines newly installed on the city walls were activated, and hundreds of dense flying swords instantly bombarded the attacking Witch Clan below, creating gaps in their ranks.

Bao Yun's third wave of heavily armored swordsmen and shieldmen had just reached the city wall and began fighting the witch warriors who had also climbed it. Under their cover, the archers on the wall continued to fire desperately at the witch warriors below, reaping their lives.

After close-quarters combat, Wei Yuan confirmed once again that these were ordinary witch warriors, but their physical defenses had been greatly enhanced, making them practically a different type of soldier compared to before. Fortunately, while their defenses had increased, they had also become somewhat clumsy, and their strength remained the same as before.

Although the Wu tribe warriors were fierce, they were no match for the heavily armored infantrymen at the Bone Forging Realm sent by Bao Yun. In the blink of an eye, they were slaughtered and were about to be driven off the city.

But at this moment, Wei Yuan's face had begun to darken.

On the city wall, a Qingming warrior rushed out from the city tower and hit a Wu Clan warrior at close range.

The witch warrior had a bloody hole in his body, but it hadn't been pierced through. He grabbed a human next to him and pulled him down the city wall. In an instant, the human warrior disappeared into the witch warrior's sea of ​​enemies.

In the city lord's mansion, Bao Yun kept issuing orders: "The ninth and tenth battalions of the vanguard will scale the city walls! Once on the walls, the seriously wounded will be evacuated."

However, what rushed out of the shelters inside the city were not the elite Ninth and Tenth Battalions, but two thousand ordinary soldiers, half of whom were not even at the Blood Fusion Realm.

These two battalions were not elite vanguard or central armies, nor were they regular left or right wings; they were ordinary troops, both soldiers and farmers, without any special battalion designation. The deployment of these two battalions was not ordered by Bao Yun.

Bao Yun's face flashed with surprise and confusion, but she quickly understood. The generals looked at the two Dao Foundation Warriors who remained silent and realized that Wei Yuan was beginning to intervene in the command.

Two more battalions of ordinary soldiers, totaling four thousand, rushed out of the city and headed towards the fiercely contested city walls. Once ordinary troops are deployed, it means the entire army will have to be mobilized. The battle has only just begun, and the pressure is already this immense?

Within the Wu Clan army, thousands of archers continuously hurled explosive arrows, most aimed at the city walls, with some also flying into the city. Wei Yuan couldn't afford to pay attention to the arrows aimed at the city walls; he could only try his best to intercept the explosive arrows landing on the walls. At this moment, four thousand ordinary warriors scaled the city walls. Wei Yuan activated Instantaneous All Beings, and an invisible force descended from the sky, instantly boosting the strength of all the warriors. A large number of Foundation Establishment warriors suddenly appeared.

The witch warriors on the city wall were wiped out in the blink of an eye. Then the defenders began to rain down bullets on the witch army gathered below. The few remaining short-barreled cannons were particularly powerful, taking down hundreds of enemies with a single shot.

Suddenly, a strange horn sounded in the central army of the Wu tribe, and the Wu warriors at the front retreated like a tide, retreating to a distance of two miles in one go. Then they formed a dispersed formation, raised their shields for defense, and remained motionless.

Wei Yuan frowned deeply, waiting for the momentary annihilation of all living beings to pass!
The short-barreled cannons continued to bombard, but at this time the Wu tribe's formation was relatively scattered, and each shot could only take away twenty or thirty people.

The colossal beasts of the witch race began to hurl balls filled with black liquid again, while the archers continuously fired explosive arrows. The blood curses in the air did not cease either.

Wei Yuan had no choice but to shut down the instantaneous beings, and then the Wu Clan launched another attack on the city.

This time, another colossal beast appeared within the witch clan's formation. It stood two zhang tall, like a small building, supported by eight short legs, resembling an ancient giant crocodile. Its body was covered with small, table-sized armored beasts, each covered in bronze-colored scales.

The behemoth was incredibly fast, moving like a small mountain. Those witches who couldn't dodge it in time were either knocked away or trampled to death.

Wei Yuan immediately ordered the front lines to concentrate their attack on the giant beast, but when the bullets hit the smaller armored beasts, a significant portion were deflected. Those that did pierce the scales only left a bloody, mangled wound. The smaller armored beasts seemed completely oblivious to the pain, remaining motionless.

To the side of the city gate, a short-barreled cannon turned its muzzle and aimed at the behemoth. With a loud bang, several small armored beasts were blasted away, finally leaving a wound on the behemoth.

As the behemoth continued its charge, various Daoist techniques rained down upon it. However, the smaller armored beasts possessed extremely strong resistance to the Five Elements Daoist arts, making them almost impossible to kill with Foundation Establishment Daoist techniques. Wei Yuan deployed four Foundation Establishment warriors on the city wall to unleash water blade techniques, but each only managed to slice open one of the smaller armored beasts before the behemoth reached the city walls.

With a deafening roar, the colossal beast slammed into the city wall, causing the short and wide structure to shake violently. An intensely burning sensation immediately emanated from the beast's body. Even Wei Yuan sensed the danger in an instant, retreating and pulling away over a dozen Dao Foundation Establishment officers, while ordering all other officers on the city wall to flee.

A huge, blazing fireball appeared, much larger than the entire city gate. It slowly rose, first forming a ring of clouds, and then its color changed continuously as it rose, from red to black, from black to gray, before it stirred up another ring of clouds, finally transforming into a mushroom-shaped cloud.

The fireball, like a rising blood-red sun, caused the city walls to crumble and countless tiny figures to be thrown into the air, while many others fled in terror.

But in that moment of utter silence, their movements were incredibly slow, much slower than the rising fireballs. Suddenly, as if given a violent shove, they accelerated abruptly, some crashing directly into the ground and walls, exploding into a bloody mess!
As the fireball disappeared, turning into a huge mushroom cloud, the original city tower was reduced to a section of ruins close to the ground. The city walls on both sides, which were more than ten feet long, collapsed, and all the human and witch warriors within dozens of feet disappeared, leaving only a shallow pit a hundred feet in size on the ground.

Wei Yuan's face turned ashen; the giant beast's body was actually filled with gunpowder!
No wonder there was no magical fluctuation and its aura wasn't strong. Wei Yuan had thought it was a disguise, but it turned out it wasn't a high-level war beast at all; it was just responsible for carrying gunpowder down to the city walls. Those armored beasts were specialized defensive war beasts, clearly unaware of fear or pain.

The Wu tribe was extremely ruthless; to prevent the city's defenders from escaping, they did not cease their siege. Therefore, the giant beast's explosion not only killed thousands of human defenders but also claimed the lives of tens of thousands of Wu tribesmen.

This is where a huge gap, nearly thirty feet wide, has appeared on the front of Ding'an City. The subsequent Wu tribe warriors surged towards the gap like a tide.

With the battle at this point, Wei Yuan could no longer hold back. He ordered all the soldiers in the city to deploy behind the breach and then hoist the spare short-barreled cannons onto the rooftops to bombard the breach.

Dragonwing heavy cavalry were dispatched outside the city. Wei Yuan flew over to join them and began to attack the flank of the witch army.

Dozens of long, cylindrical projectiles suddenly shot out from behind Ding'an City. These projectiles were slender, tapered at the front, and constantly spewing fire from their rear, moving at incredible speed as they hurtled towards the central army of the Wu tribe!
These cylinders were moving too fast, catching the great shamans off guard. They managed to intercept only a few, with most falling into the center and exploding violently! As fireballs rose one after another, although no mushroom clouds appeared, the surrounding area of ​​several dozen feet was transformed into a dead zone!
Each of these cylinders contained hundreds of kilograms of gunpowder. The new Qingming gunpowder was three times more powerful than black powder, and its explosion was extremely devastating. Within fifty zhang (approximately 33 meters), ordinary Wu tribe warriors without cover would be killed by the shockwave even if they weren't killed by shrapnel. Within a hundred zhang (approximately 33 meters), they could be seriously injured.

These cylinders were guided by the cultivators' divine sense, and their targets were all areas densely populated with archers. In one round of bombardment, nearly two hundred Wu Clan archers were taken away.

A dozen or so more flew towards the altar behind it. Seeing that they were being blocked by countless spells, the first few suddenly exploded in mid-air. The terrifying power dispelled the spells, allowing the subsequent cylinders to break through and continue flying forward. In the end, three of them landed on the altar, blasting the entire altar apart. Apart from the three great shamans who escaped, the remaining hundred shamans, hundreds of nobles, and thousands of guards and servants were all reincarnated.

(End of this chapter)