You promised to wreak havoc on the dungeon, but instead you've got Dragon Slime!

He knew this was the first step. Stepping into this area meant embarking on a path of no return.

……

As night fell, the camp was set up three miles outside the Bone Tower.

The soldiers dared not sleep; one campfire after another burned, the firelight casting the shadow of the bone tower that swayed on the horizon.

Some soldiers prayed quietly, while others gnawed on their rations, lost in thought. No one could truly find peace.

Ron spread out a map in the large tent, tapping his fingers on the symbols surrounding the bone tower.

"tomorrow."

he whispered.

No one spoke inside the tent.

Viser silently sharpened his sword, while Claudia quietly adjusted the rune array. Everyone understood that this battle would be deadly.

A deep, resonant sound came from the distant bone tower, as if someone had knocked three times inside its belly.

Many people in the camp instinctively gripped their weapons, the campfire crackled and popped, and sparks flew for a long time before finally falling.

Before dawn the next day, the bugle sounded. Ron tossed his cloak back and walked to the front of the army.

The ground was already filled with black bone stakes, arranged in three rings: the outer ring was a chevaux-de-frise, the middle ring was a talisman nail, and the inner ring was a blood groove.

The craftsman stayed up all night, filling the bone stakes and iron nails with cow blood. The blood troughs extended outwards like dark lines.

Viser led his armored squad on a patrol, and seeing several guards from the old city moving sluggishly, he immediately pinned them to the ground and had them beaten with batons. No one tried to stop him. Here, there was no mercy, only life and death.

Claudia slapped a stack of talismans on the table and distributed them to the squad leaders in an orderly manner.

"Plug your ears with beeswax, wrap your neck with cloth strips, and breathe slowly. The wind from the bone tower will seep through the cracks."

She only said that much, without explaining the underlying principles. No one asked, and everyone just did as she was told.

Before the march, Ron spread the map out on the wooden crate and pointed to three places with his dagger—the collapsed earthen slope on the south side of the base, the wind cut on the north side, and the broken bone beam on the east side.

He said, "Today we'll take the three outer points and establish a foothold in the Jingyu area. Tomorrow we'll push deeper."

There was no encouragement. The troops moved as soon as the instructions were given.

The advance team of three hundred men was divided into three columns, each dragging a chain, one man per column, to tie the entire column together as a rope.

Two heavily armored beasts were at the very front, with wooden shields strapped to their backs. Behind the shields, a heavy crossbowman crouched, his crossbows already cocked.

On the left wing were sixty bone snake manipulators, with two rows of bone flutes hanging from their waists; on the right wing were pitch-pot soldiers, carrying leather bags filled with exploding sacs.

The three columns had barely moved two hundred paces from the camp when a grayish-white fog swept over them.

A tightness gripped my chest, as if something was pressing down on my heart. Someone's breathing became out of rhythm, and they were immediately kicked back from behind, forced to keep pace with the drumbeats. The drums pounded, all in one beat; whoever lost their rhythm was doomed.

The first gust of wind came from the left, like someone dragging a saw through the air.

The heavy armored beast at the front had a layer of iron scraped off its shoulder, revealing black and red flesh, but it didn't stop and continued to push.

Behind the shield, a crossbowman's hand began to tremble, his crossbow sights shaking into a straight line. His companion pressed down on his shoulder, and after three breaths, the trembling was suppressed by the drumbeats.

The fog grew thicker. There were sounds in the air, like many people whispering in my ear.

Suddenly, three people in the front row raised their hands at the same time and started smearing their hands on their necks.

The person next to him moved even faster, kicking the man to the ground and then severing his hand with the back of a knife. The severed hand fell to the ground, blood splattering everywhere.

No one screamed; their mouths were stuffed with sheepskin, preventing them from speaking.

Ron stood in the second formation. He raised his hand, and waves of blood-red ripples surged forward, as if forcibly pressing a corridor out of the entire fog.

As the Law Wave reached its second level, his back became wet. He took another two hundred steps forward, and blood flowed down his heels.

The attendant beside him shoved the pills into his hand, but he didn't even look at them before biting them and swallowing them whole.

The bone snake controller on the left wing played the first section of the bone flute, and the bone snake emerged from the sand. It was more than three meters long, with its back arching segment by segment as it dragged forward.

They are more sensitive to fog, tilting their heads from side to side and avoiding the wind.

The operator switched the bone flute to the second section, and the bone snake began to carve lines on the ground. The lines intersected, forming squares.

Inside the cubicle, the gray fog had thinned out a bit, so if you walked lightly, you wouldn't be in immediate trouble.

As we approached the collapsed slope on the south side, something suddenly crawled out from below the collapse, its joints cracking, like a pile of scattered bones being pieced back together.

More than thirty skeletons climbed up, their bodies covered in tattered armor plates, black mist emanating from the cracks in their bones, and their steps were abnormally fast.

The crossbowmen in the front row fired in unison, pinning the bones to the ground. But black mist emerged from between the bones, causing them to tremble on the ground before stubbornly rising back to their feet.

The archer threw out the explosive capsule, which exploded upon landing, burning the black mist into a ball and scattering bones across the ground.

Viser took a step forward and swept his greatsword horizontally, carving a trench in the ground and sweeping away the horizontal bone.

The trench was quickly filled with dust, but it was enough. The second column stepped through the trench and established the line.

The north-facing wind cut is even more difficult.

The wind howled from deep within their bones, like countless fine threads drilling into their ears. A small team circled around from that side, and all four of them simultaneously raised their hands to cover their ears, only to tear their own ears apart.

The team leader drew his knife, patted each of them on the shoulder, made them look at him, then tied four men to the barrier with ropes and continued pushing forward. Their legs were still moving, their eyes rolled back. As long as they could walk, they weren't useless.

The broken bone beam on the east side is the third point. The bone beam extends more than ten feet from the tower body, below which is a dark pit.

Foamy mist billowed out of the pit in bursts.

When the vanguard stepped on the beam, the entire section snapped with a "crack," and one soldier lost his footing and fell. The chain binding his waist tightened instantly, pulling him back.

He struggled in mid-air, his body bumping against the fog a few times, and then suddenly fell silent.

“Pull it up,” Ron said.

The two men worked together to drag the soldier up. Once he was up, his face was deathly pale, and black liquid was dripping from the corner of his mouth.

Chapter 167

His chest was still rising and falling, but not evenly. Ron glanced at him, then pulled up the man's sleeve, revealing veins throbbing beneath the skin like tiny snakes.

He used his dagger to make a cut in the man's arm and squeezed out the black blood. The man convulsed for a while, then his breathing gradually stabilized.

“A mark,” Ron said casually.

The attendant took out a red rope and wrapped it around the man's wrist. "Red rope soldier, retreat to the second line." Ron waved his hand, throwing him backward. He could still run, so let him continue to live in the rear; if he didn't die, that was fine too.

The first wave of probing ended by noon. The first black flag was planted on the collapsed slope on the south side, symbolizing that "Quiet Domain" had taken root.

The central ring talisman nail was driven into the ground, the bone snake finished carving the second line, and the pitcher poured the last bucket of oil and lit it.

Black and red flames rose from the edge of the earthen slope, and the mist retreated from the edge of the flames, like insects that had been scalded.

Back at camp, roll call revealed forty-two missing. It wasn't uncommon for some to walk back; most were dragged back.

The medic applied medicine to the people while pushing the beeswax deeper into their bodies. Some rolled on the ground, biting off their teeth, their mouths full of blood blisters.

The army doctor stuffed a wooden stick into his mouth to stop him from biting his tongue.

The cook next to him brought over a basin of water, on which floated a layer of black ash, like fine sand.

Someone was caught slacking off and pinned under the flagpole. In front of the entire army, Viser forced the man down and beheaded him with a single stroke. Blood splattered on the flagpole, making the flag even more vibrant.

No one made a fuss, no one whispered, and the wind carried the smell of blood far away.

In the evening, Claudia brought over three black wooden boxes.

Inside the box were three black crystals, with red lines flowing within them. She placed them in front of Ron and said, "A blood sacrifice to the Three Rings requires thirty volunteers." She didn't look up, her voice steady, "Of those who survive, perhaps a third will."

Ron nodded, stepped out of the tent, and stood on the high platform. Below him were countless figures in black and bone armor.

“Volunteer.” He only said two words.

First, ten members of the armored team stood up, their hands raised straight; then fifteen more stood up from the Black Language Cave; after a brief silence, five more stood up from the Dark Sea Abyss. Thirty in total.

There were no words, no one asked for medals, and no one mentioned who else was in the family.

Thirty men walked down from the stage, took the knives handed to them by the medic, and pulled with the back of their hands. Blood dripped into a wooden bowl, which Claudia poured into the Black Crystal.

As night fell, all the torches in the camp were lit at the same time.

The three-ringed blood groove was filled with blood, and the black crystal in the center of the groove shone uncomfortably, but it was very effective. Claudia braced herself on the ground with both hands, and the shadow scales slid down her shoulders, winding around the blood groove again and again.

She muttered a string of broken ancient words, and with each word she uttered, her health bar would tremble.

The wind was crying, and the bone tower was rattling. Suddenly, black smoke hissed up from the health bar, and the red line in the black crystal abruptly stopped, as if it had been pulled.

The fog in the entire camp suddenly receded half a step, like the tide pulling back. After three breaths of silence, the military flag fluttered loudly, the sound much clearer than before.

Ron raised his hand and released the Law Wave once again.

This time, as soon as the ripples went out, they bounced back as if they had hit a hard object, and then spread out in all directions.

A transparent circle appeared around the camp, invisible to the naked eye. Stepping inside, the ground felt less soft, and the whispering noises around the camp were halved. The tranquil domain was complete.

“Start driving the piles,” Ron said.

The craftsmen rushed out and drove three hundred iron nails into the ground according to their positions. Every ten nails, Claudia would place a talisman on them, and the talisman would flash with fire.

The archers threw oil jugs outwards, the oil spreading in the mist and slowly igniting, forming rings of fire.

The fire was not strong, but it was steady. Crossbow platforms were placed between the fire rings, and newly modified heavy crossbows were placed on the platforms. Bone spikes were added to the crossbow arms, and the crossbow bolts were replaced with silver-edged ones.

The craftsman said that this thing becomes dull when it gets foggy, so he added "directional nails" to it so that the crossbow bolts would be pulled towards a single point when they fly.

On the first test shot, the crossbow bolt whistled out and embedded itself in the outer wall of the bone tower three hundred paces away, half of it buried.

The fog suddenly converged on that point, as if drawn by something. A second crossbow bolt followed, piercing through the fog and striking the end of the first bolt. Together, the two bolts pried open the bone wall by an inch.

The crack was small, but visible to the naked eye. The crossbowman was so excited his hands were trembling, but the captain tapped him on the back of the neck with the hilt of his sword, and he immediately regained his composure.

The first wave of corpse puppets attacked that night. They weren't the kind that crawled slowly on the ground; they jumped directly off the tower.

Hundreds of them, covered in shards of armor, landed and ran away at incredible speed. The leading fire ring immediately exploded, flames leaping upwards.

The corpse puppets stepped into the pit one after another, their flesh charred black, yet they still charged forward.

Wiesel gripped his sword with both hands, leaped forward, and swung his sword horizontally with the first strike followed by a straight slash.

The black-armored figure and the corpse puppet collided, almost head-on.

The crossbowmen in the back row fired in a rhythmic fashion, "click, click," each arrow following the beat of the drum.