Scourge Messenger

Chapter 394 The Long Night Fortress
The North, the Long Night Fortress, Sky Route.

Although it's called a sea route, with the steel walls of the Long Night Fortress reaching hundreds of feet high, it looks little different from a moat. The sky here is perpetually overcast; for millennia, not a single ray of light has ever pierced the clouds.

A loud, ancient bugle call rang out from the city wall, and within a quarter of an hour, more than 200,000 messengers had all returned to their posts and were ready. Dark clouds surged on the horizon, and as time passed, they became clearer and larger, blotting out the sun and covering the earth like mercury.

That's a demon race numbering in the millions!
Like prisoners held captive for ten thousand years, at the moment of breaking through the blockade, their hysterical malice merged with the relentless blizzards of the far north, forming a destructive torrent capable of engulfing everything. They would destroy all buildings in their path, trample all living beings they encountered, and drain every drop of blood from this land!
buzzing-

A muffled horn blast heralded the start of the battle, and over 100,000 ballistae bolts exploded into the demon horde, halting their charge. These two waves reduced the demon horde by nearly one-fifth.

Despite their small number, these demons are all at least at the Foundation Establishment level, while the crossbowmen are operated by just over 300,000 mortal messengers, and the crossbow bolts are made by millions of mortal craftsmen, involving eighteen cities and tens of millions of households. Resources are allocated by thirty-eight military garrisons. All of this effort over the past six months is for this very moment—to crush the vanguard of the demon horde!
When the distance between the demons and the Azure Sky Path shrank to the distance of an arrow's flight, the Foundation Establishment Commanders standing on the city walls began to unleash their power. The reason the city walls were built so high was not only to block flying demons, but more importantly, to give the Foundation Establishment messengers a wide field of vision and a safe casting distance. At this moment, all kinds of supernatural powers descended like a heavenly tribulation!
Thunder and fire erupt from the heavens and the earth; gods and demons clash!
The chaotic and rampant Dao patterns began to randomly generate calamities on the battlefield. Calamities beget calamities, chaos breeds chaos, and the entire area irrevocably turned into a wasteland. But this still could not stop the advance of the demon horde. They were only three hundred steps, two hundred steps, one hundred steps, fifty steps away from the Long Night Fortress. Their numbers were so vast that it seemed they could stretch their necks and step onto the celestial route to climb the Long Night Fortress!
Just then, a ship set sail from the eastern end of the Azure Sky Route. The ship was small, with only one person standing on it. In the face of the surging demon army, he was as insignificant as a lone boat in a tsunami.

The demon at the front had already noticed him and was rushing and leaping, trying to be the first to be stained with blood. The people on the ship had indifferent expressions, their eyes slightly narrowed, as if they were still half asleep.

“【Ice-blocked River】,” he said softly.

The water in the river instantly turned into sharp, hard ice spikes, which pierced through the demons' bodies like barricades, and continued to solidify, freeze, and extend the blood inside the demons. In the blink of an eye, the ice spikes extended dozens of feet long, strangling all the demons who came one after another!
The lone boat sped along the Sky Channel, ice spikes erupting wherever it went. The speed of the journey increased, and so did the speed of the ice spikes. By the time the boat reached the westernmost point of the Long Night Fortress, ninety-five percent of the demons on the snowfield were dead. The surviving demons could not break through the ice spike barricades and were met with targeted kills from ballistae and the cleansing of those who had reached the Foundation Establishment stage.

"Forget Bai Immortal Lord".

As soon as he returned to the city wall, Immortal Lord Wangbai saw his subordinate flying over to inform him: "Chang Sheng Tian has been looking for you many times. The Mountain Lord hopes that you can go outside to attend the meeting as soon as possible!"

"understood."

As Immortal Lord Wangbai stepped out of the city wall, the air condensed into a void of ice, and after a few steps, he passed through the swirling snow. After crossing some unseen boundary, the sunlight in the sky suddenly became intense, warm and comfortable, and the snowstorm vanished instantly. Behind Immortal Lord Wangbai, the magnificent Long Night Fortress was still bathed in the gloomy snowstorm, even the candlelight was dim as if it could be extinguished at any moment.

A thin line separates two worlds.

The legion's encampment was just below. Staying at Long Night Fortress for a few days was manageable, but even messengers couldn't withstand it for too long; they needed to replenish their energy in a sunny and warm place. Immortal Lord Wangbai didn't go down; instead, he stood atop the encampment's clock tower, took out a jade talisman from his robes, and infused it with his divine sense.

"Hey, hey, Wang Bai, are you here yet?" A boisterous voice boomed in Wang Bai's mind from the jade talisman. Wang Bai silently placed the jade talisman as far away from him as possible: "What is it?" "Now that everyone's here, I won't waste any more words. You know the Treasure Pavilion, right? It's a platform that can be opened with the Treasure Hunting Token. Last month, someone was already selling things on it, but everyone was too busy to do so. But just this afternoon, the Treasure Pavilion listed a whole bunch of things, including two hundred pieces of demon materials, all bundled together and sold! Wang Bai, do you understand what that means?"

“I understand.” Immortal Lord Wangbai turned his head and glanced at the gloomy Long Night Fortress in the distance: “If we can find the Treasure Pavilion Master, we can make use of the million demon corpses killed at Long Night Fortress.”

There's a peculiar connection between demons and secret realms. As long as they're within a secret realm, demons won't decay no matter how long they've been dead. But once they leave the secret realm, they deteriorate at an alarming rate. Even though the far north ice plains are an excellent preservation base, the territory is too vast. By the time they transport the demon materials out to sell, they've mostly deteriorated.

There are solutions, and some supernatural abilities can keep demon materials in good condition. However, Foundation Establishment is not a common skill, and how many materials can a single Foundation Establishment cultivator process? Of course, one could also make finished products to sell, but the problem is that the quantity is simply too large. Even if the settlement gathers hundreds of laborers and craftsmen, they can only process a portion of the materials after half a year of hard work, with a utilization rate of less than one percent.

A platform capable of selling demon materials in large quantities over long distances would be like Midas for the Long Night Fortress. The North invests countless manpower and resources in the Long Night Fortress every year, with the three great immortal lords of the Eternal Heaven stationed there every three months, but the return on investment has always been barely acceptable. The only saving grace is that it has honed many elite messengers. If the resources of the Long Night Fortress can be fully utilized, the quality of messengers throughout the North could experience a major breakthrough.

"Is there a way to find the owner of the Treasure Pavilion?" asked Immortal Lord Wangbai.

"No!" the Lord of Changsheng Mountain said decisively, "There are very few wise immortals in our area, and most of the Foundation Establishment messengers' life-saving abilities are for scheming against people, with few who are good at divination and astrology."

"If Immortal Lord Zhidao has a way to find the Treasure Pavilion Master, then it won't be our turn." Another voice came from the jade talisman: "The Treasure Pavilion is of great significance to major powers. If we cannot obtain it, we must not let it go to others!"

“Don’t try to stop the torrent, Master Chi.” The mountain lord laughed. “If the Treasure Pavilion, which has been silent for thousands of years, is really going to undergo a great change, what we should do is welcome it and join it, instead of fearing it.”

“We don’t need to monopolize the Treasure Pavilion; we just need to participate in its business. The Emperor hopes that the Eternal Heaven can bring blessings to the Northern Territory, rather than stagnate. If we can make good use of this opportunity, perhaps the Emperor can also advance further… Does anyone have time to travel around and look for this Treasure Pavilion Master? Deep Blue?”

"The White Wolf Mountain Secret Realm will be open for another two months." A haughty voice rang out: "Besides, such trivial matters are not suitable for me."

“I’ll go,” said Immortal Lord Wangbai. “I just survived a calamity, so I can only be outside for a maximum of three months.”

"Then leave it to you."

(End of this chapter)