Longzang

Chapter 495 On the verge of breaking out

Waves of Wu tribe warriors surged toward the boundary like a green tide.

Ding'an City is like a reef, steadfastly resisting the onslaught of the green tide. The tide is so vast that it surges to both sides. Ding'an City is built on a hillside, with flat plains to the east and undulating mountains to the west and south.

The Wu tribe army split into two groups to encircle them from the left and right. On the plains, Wei Yuan had already built seven or eight small fortresses, each equipped with five or six cannons and a thousand soldiers, forming a solid defensive line.

However, the Wu tribe soldiers were simply too numerous. The 600,000 who besieged Ding'an City, and the 200,000 who flanked it from both sides, were overrun by the Wu tribe in an instant. The two small fortresses at the forefront were captured by the Wu tribe in a flash. The green tide swept over them, and the people inside were instantly torn to pieces.

The two high priests, caught up in the frenzy of battle, leaped into the third small fortress and began slaughtering the defenders. One of the high priests transformed his left hand into a blade over ten feet long, and with a casual swing, he could cut seven or eight human warriors in two!
At this moment, three or five ordinary human warriors in front of him were so frightened that their faces turned pale and they huddled together.

The great shaman, who loved people who huddled together, stuck out his two-foot-long tongue and licked the blood off the blade. Just as he was about to sever it with a single blow, a large hand suddenly grabbed his head and ripped it off!

The other great shaman, upon recognizing the figure, turned and fled!
The man who stepped out from behind the high shaman was none other than Wei Yuan.

He reached out and ripped the great shaman's blade from his hand, then hurled it with all his might. The blade flashed like lightning, instantly piercing the fleeing shaman's body and taking away all his life force.

Wei Yuan stood atop the fortress, a halo of light exploding before him, and a water blade gleaming with golden light shot from his hand, sweeping across the endless army of witches.

Wei Yuan's golden water blade could dig rapidly underground, completely crushing ordinary witch soldiers. Wherever the water blade grazed, the flesh and blood there would instantly disappear. With a horizontal sweep of the thick water blade, a clearing instantly appeared within dozens of feet in front of Wei Yuan, the ground littered with severed limbs, flesh turned to mud, and rolling heads.

A hundred feet away, a large banner stood erect, bearing the insignia of a legion commander. The Wu tribe typically formed a legion of five or six ten-thousand-strong units, and then combined multiple legions into a larger legion.

Upon seeing the large banner, Wei Yuan immediately changed the direction of the water blade, shooting straight at the banner and utterly destroying countless witch warriors, turning them into mincemeat!

The manner of death was so horrific that the morale of the legion immediately wavered. When the legion commander saw the water blades cutting through the army and approaching, he was terrified and turned to flee.

Although he held a high position, he was only a Grand Shaman, and his position was solely due to his noble lineage, not because he was significantly more capable than others. Having just witnessed Wei Yuan tear two Grand Shamans apart with his bare hands, how could he dare to take a direct hit from Wei Yuan?
As soon as the legion commander fled, the banner moved with him, and the legion's morale collapsed instantly. Large numbers of witch warriors began to retreat. Meanwhile, two more legions were pressing in from behind, and the two sides clashed, resulting in countless casualties.

The walls of Ding'an City were now covered with Wu soldiers, and the bunkers were completely surrounded. One by one, they began to fall silent, while only the city towers continued to fire desperately, constantly killing and injuring the Wu tribe.

The Wu tribe warriors had already jumped from the city walls into the city, and the reserve troops in the shelters couldn't even show their faces, let alone rush into the bunkers to provide support.

In the city lord's mansion, Bao Yun finally gave the order, and a pillar of blood-red smoke shot straight into the sky!
The tarpaulins covering the tops of more than a dozen tall towers behind Ding'an City were lifted, revealing dozens of modified defensive cannons. All the cannons fired simultaneously—it was actually the front part of the city wall of Ding'an!

The shells exploded upon impact, instantly shredding hundreds of shrapnel into countless witch warriors on the city walls, the shockwaves sending surrounding witch soldiers flying. The surviving human warriors, however, took refuge in fortified bunkers made of cement and steel, impervious to the bombardment.

Immediately following, a sharp whistling sound rang out in the sky as more than a dozen missiles were launched towards the central army of the witch army. The high shamans in the witch army immediately took action, and hundreds of spells wove a colorful cloud in front of them, blocking the missiles' path.

However, all the missiles changed direction at the same time, pointing straight down, and finally exploded in front of Ding'an City, landing right where the Wu army was most concentrated!
More than a dozen enormous fireballs rose into the air, instantly creating several large gaps in the dense ranks of the witch army. This missile attack directly claimed the lives of tens of thousands of witch soldiers.

The cannons on the high towers behind Ding'an City roared incessantly, bombarding the witch army on the city walls. The witch soldiers were pushed and shoved as they tried to scale the walls, but on the bare walls, there was no cover or shelter. They screamed and howled in terror from the bombardment, some even jumping off the walls. After all, the walls weren't high, and they wouldn't die from the fall.

However, the witch army that rushed into the city was not so lucky. While the artillery fire blocked the reinforcements, a large group of elite Qingming heavy armor warriors appeared and surrounded the lightly armored witch warriors, slaughtering them all in the blink of an eye.

The city's defensive cannons roared incessantly, their fire washing over the city walls again and again. These shells, which produced a great deal of shrapnel, had very limited effect on sturdy buildings, but their lethality against the Wu tribe was quite terrifying.

The behemoths of the Wu tribe, which had suffered heavy losses in the first volley of artillery fire during the siege, were now being brought out again. The city's defensive cannons had all been destroyed, and the range of the towers at the rear was too limited to reach them. Therefore, the Wu tribe once again drove the behemoths to the city walls. More pack animals followed, pulling carts loaded with poisoned water balls. The behemoths scooped up the balls and this time hurled them directly into the city!
The ball shattered upon impact, releasing toxic water that corroded the wood with exceptional ferocity. Wooden houses throughout the city collapsed en masse. Some soldiers, accidentally stepping into the black water, immediately lost their footing and fell, letting out heart-wrenching screams.

The captain beside him stopped his subordinate from trying to save the man, then swung an ice blade, ending his subordinate's suffering.

Wei Yuan's expression was cold. He ignored the tragic scene in Ding'an City and used his golden water blades to reap the fleeing witch army while waiting for the giant beasts to finish their deployment and gather in one place before he activated his divine sense.

The whistling sound swept across the battlefield once more as more than a dozen missiles hurtled towards the central army of the witch tribe. This time, however, the high witches had learned their lesson. Their intercepting spells were not concentrated in one place, and they released numerous flying, self-destructing witch insects. Wherever the witch army's formation on the ground was too dense, the generals would immediately disperse them, fearing they would become targets for the missiles.

However, this time the missiles were guided by multiple cultivators, their trajectories unpredictable, and they scattered and fell into the witch army's formation. Only two missiles, which were flying slowly in the air, suddenly accelerated and successfully broke through the interception, landing among the giant beasts!
Each missile was loaded with a thousand pounds of gunpowder, leaving nothing but barren land within a fifty-zhang radius. Even the giant beasts, with their thick hides and tough flesh, could not withstand the impact of the explosion, and the shrapnel was incredibly powerful, capable of piercing through two or three of their massive beasts in succession.

The two missiles that struck instantly obliterated half of the Wu tribe's most prized war beasts, leaving fewer than a hundred alive. In comparison, the thousands of corpses and hundreds of sharpshooters lost by the other missiles were insignificant.

Wei Yuan, positioned on the east side of Ding'an City, acted as a stabilizing force, holding off the attack of the Wu army's flank with the firepower of several small fortresses, while also managing the overall situation.

On the west side of Ding'an City, Li Zhi led his elite troops to build a defensive position in the mountainous terrain, and Wei Yuan specially replenished them with a large number of firearms and ammunition.

But in the blink of an eye, all ammunition was used up, and the witch army swept across the mountains and plains, charging into the positions and engaging in hand-to-hand combat with Li Zhi's troops. At this moment, an invisible force descended from the sky, and all the soldiers were as if injected with chicken blood, their inner power surging and boiling, cutting down the witch army as easily as chopping melons and vegetables.

Although this power did not last long, less than thirty breaths in total, it was enough for Li Zhi's troops to kill all the witch soldiers who had charged onto the position and force them to retreat and regroup.

Wei Yuan was like the most stingy nouveau riche, meticulously calculating the nurturing power accumulated by Qingming, and opening the "Momentary Beings" skill as precisely as possible, not daring to open it for even a moment longer.

At this moment, he suddenly sensed some unusual and subtle changes in the world. It seemed that a passage had opened in the sky, constantly sucking something from below.

The colors in the depths of Wei Yuan's pupils shifted, becoming one black and one white, revealing a scene that ordinary people, and even the vast majority of cultivators, could not see.

A gigantic vortex appeared in the sky, with a massive pillar of light descending from its center. Countless souls of the fallen witch clan were drawn towards the pillar of light, then ascended within it, soaring beyond the heavens!
The beam of light fell almost right next to the Azure Netherworld, thus drawing in the souls of almost all the fallen members of the Witch Clan.

Wei Yuan didn't know what had happened, but instinctively felt it couldn't be anything good. Why take these witch clan souls back?
Reincarnated as a puppet? Merged into an even more powerful soul? Transformed into a ferocious ghost?

As Wei Yuan's thoughts stirred, the yin and yang of the girl amidst the mortal world suddenly moved, extending from her feet into two black and white areas that transformed into two enormous yin-yang fish. One eye was the yang eye, faintly flaming with flames, while the other was the yin eye, shimmering with water.

The distorted world around her suddenly opened up, and two beams of light, one black and one white, shot straight into the sky!
Two faint yin-yang fish appeared beneath Wei Yuan's feet, slowly rotating. The closer Wu Clan souls immediately changed direction and plunged into the black and white light screen. Then, many Wu Clan souls, clearly entangled with dark red resentment, also abandoned the pillar of light hanging from the sky and turned to Wei Yuan.

For a time, the two forces fought repeatedly at a level almost equivalent to the Dao, vying for the wandering soul of the Wu Clan!
This was a struggle between the girl's Yin and Yang and the magnificent will of the heavens, and she actually managed to snatch back 20% of the soul.

Nine hundred miles away, on the altar, Hongye suddenly looked towards Qingming. In his perception, many souls of the witch clan had inexplicably disappeared. Hongye's gaze pierced through numerous obstacles and saw the black and white light screen surrounding Wei Yuan.

"How dare you steal the soul of my clan!" A cold light flashed in Hongye's eyes. With a wave of her hand, two Netherworld Witches immediately set off and flew towards Qingming.

With the arrival of the Witch on the battlefield, the curtain has been raised on the war.

(End of this chapter)