As flames erupted atop the city wall, a plume of white qi suddenly rose above Wei Yuan's head.
Amidst the explosions, the battle plan previously calculated within the Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World was entirely discarded, and fresh deductions began from scratch. Every immortal plant node was brought online, while the third and fourth reserve echelons in the rear were ordered back to their camps to sleep on the spot.
Until the new plan was generated, they were entirely on their own.
The soldiers currently garrisoning the wall were all elite troops. The officers were well accustomed to shelling their opponents, but this was the first time they were on the receiving end. Even so, they reacted swiftly, commanding the soldiers to find cover immediately.
Bao Yun's response was equally prompt. She at once ordered heavy infantry bearing massive shields to mount the ramparts. Braving the concussive force and searing flames of the explosions, the heavy infantry ascended the wall, each moving to cover an archer by holding a heavy shield overhead to deflect the explosive arrows raining from the sky. Every one of them was exceptionally strong, and even when an explosive arrow detonated directly against the face of a shield, half of them could hold their ground by sheer grit.
In a flash, Wei Yuan appeared atop the wall. With a sweep of his hand, he conjured a water curtain dozens of zhang wide to intercept the incoming explosive arrows. The heavy arrows struck the water curtain as if sinking into a bog and detonated one after another. Wei Yuan flickered continuously from point to point, unleashing sheet after sheet of water. Single-handedly, he intercepted half of the explosive arrows, instantly alleviating the pressure on the defenders.
The Dao Foundation officers followed his example, casting various defensive spells to intercept the barrage. Wei Yuan casually reached out and snagged one of the Shamans' explosive arrows, wiping away the magic power primed to detonate it, and pried it open for inspection. Packed inside the cylinder of the arrow shaft was black gunpowder—roughly three jin of it.
Wei Yuan snagged another seven or eight explosive arrows, wiped away the detonation magic, and stowed them into a storage treasure.
Only with Wei Yuan's personal intervention was the situation brought under control. By now, however, the Shaman vanguard had charged to within a hundred zhang and burst into a full sprint.
The short-barreled cannons along the wall roared once more, but their fire was noticeably sparser. Many had been wrecked in the initial blasts, and a good number of the gunners were wounded.
Yet the fighting spirit of the defenders remained unshaken, and they kept up a steady volley. Shaman warriors in the front ranks fell in droves under the hail of bullets, but they proved markedly tougher than before. Wei Yuan noticed that quite a few Shaman warriors took two or three rounds before collapsing for good.
With the adoption of the new gunpowder, the Qingming fire guns were designed with enough power to drop a Shaman foot soldier with a single shot. Could this entire Shaman contingent consist of elites? Their physiques hardly looked the part.
There was no time to ponder it now. Wei Yuan immediately deployed twenty Dao Foundation warriors along the wall, who opened up a furious barrage with flying-sword guns, barely managing to suppress the momentum of the Shaman charge.
Taking advantage of the time Wei Yuan had bought, Bao Yun instantly dispatched a second wave of reinforcements to the wall while evacuating the wounded to field clinics in the rear. Damaged short-barreled cannons were shoved straight off the ramparts to make room for newly delivered guns.
The Shaman vanguard finally reached the foot of the wall and began to scale it. The directional sword-mines newly installed along the parapet were triggered, unleashing hundreds of dense flying swords that tore into the besieging Shamans below, blasting wide empty swathes through their formations.
The third wave of heavy sword-and-shield troops deployed by Bao Yun reached the battlements in the nick of time, clashing head-on with the Shamans who had made it to the top. Under their cover, the marksmen on the wall continued to fire desperately down at the Shamans below, reaping their lives.
Once close combat began, Wei Yuan confirmed once more that these were indeed ordinary Shaman warriors. However, their physical resilience had drastically increased; compared to the past, they seemed like an entirely different breed of soldier. Fortunately, while their defense had improved, they had also grown somewhat clumsy, and their raw strength remained unchanged.
Fierce as the Shaman warriors were, they were no match for the Bone Tempering heavy infantry Bao Yun had sent up. Within moments, they were cut to pieces, on the verge of being driven right off the ramparts.
Even so, Wei Yuan's expression had begun to darken.
Along the wall, a Qingming soldier charged out from a watchtower and blasted a Shaman warrior at point-blank range.
A bloody hole appeared in the Shaman's torso, yet the shot failed to punch through. The Shaman seized the human soldier beside him, dragging him over the edge of the wall. In an instant, the human soldier vanished into the sea of Shamans below.
Inside the castellan's manor, Bao Yun issued order after order: "Ninth and Tenth Battalions of the Vanguard, take the walls! Evacuate the critically wounded once you arrive!"
Yet the forces emerging from the city's shelters were not the elite Ninth and Tenth Battalions, but two thousand ordinary soldiers—half of whom had not even reached Blood Merging.
These two battalions belonged neither to the elite Vanguard and Center armies, nor to the standing Left and Right wings. They were common levies, soldiers and farmers both, bearing no distinguished battalion insignia. Their deployment had not come from Bao Yun at all.
A flicker of astonishment and confusion crossed Bao Yun's face, but in the next instant, realization struck. The surrounding generals glanced at the two silent Dao Foundation warriors, understanding that Wei Yuan had stepped in to take direct command.
Two more battalions of common soldiers surged from within the city, four thousand in total racing toward the embattled walls. To commit ordinary troops could only mean one thing: Ephemeral Multitude was about to be unleashed. The battle had barely begun—had the pressure already mounted to such an extent?
Within the Shaman host, more than a thousand master archers fired arcing volleys of explosive arrows, most directed at the walls, though some fell inside the city. Wei Yuan had no leeway to worry about the arrows plunging into the city; he could only intercept as many as possible of those descending on the battlements.
As the four thousand ordinary soldiers mounted the walls, Wei Yuan activated Ephemeral Multitude. An invisible power descended from the heavens, causing the strength of every soldier to surge in an instant, and a massive number of Dao Foundation warriors suddenly emerged.
In the blink of an eye, the Shaman warriors on the ramparts were slaughtered to the last. The defenders then unleashed a blistering storm of fire upon the mass of Shamans below. The remaining short-barreled cannons displayed terrifying might, each blast capable of sweeping away nearly a hundred foes.
A strange horn call suddenly echoed from the Shaman center. The front-line Shaman warriors retreated like an ebbing tide, falling back two full li in a single breath before spreading into a loose formation, planting their shields, and holding fast.
Wei Yuan's brows knit tight. They were waiting out Ephemeral Multitude!
The short-barreled cannons continued to thunder, but against the dispersed Shaman formation, a single shot could only take down twenty or thirty.
The giant Shaman beasts resumed hurling leather balls filled with black water, while their master archers maintained an unceasing rain of explosive arrows. The blood curses in the sky never relented, either.
Wei Yuan had no choice but to end Ephemeral Multitude, and the Shamans launched their assault once more.
This time, another giant beast appeared in their ranks. Standing fully two zhang tall, like a small pavilion, it hauled its bulk on eight stubby legs, resembling a colossal primordial crocodile. Clinging all over its body were table-sized armored beasts, each plated in bronze scales.
The giant beast moved with shocking speed, lumbering forward like a shifting mountain. Any Shamans who failed to dodge in time were sent flying or crushed to death underfoot.
Wei Yuan instantly ordered the front line to concentrate fire on this behemoth. Yet when the bullets struck the small armored beasts, nearly half were deflected outright. Even those that pierced the scales left behind only mangled, shallow wounds. The armored beasts showed no sign of pain, clinging motionlessly in place.
Beside the watchtower, a short-barreled cannon swung its muzzle and lined up on the beast. With a deafening boom, several of the small armored beasts were blown clear, finally carving a wound into the giant creature.
As the behemoth continued its charge, all manner of Daoist arts rained down upon it. Yet the armored beasts possessed extraordinary resistance to the five elemental arts; Dao Foundation spells could scarcely kill them. Even when Wei Yuan posted four Dao Foundation warriors on the watchtower to cast Water Blade Arts, each managed only to slice open a single armored beast. By then, the behemoth had already reached the foot of the wall.
With a tremendous crash, the beast slammed violently into the watchtower. The squat, broad structure shuddered violently. A sensation of blinding, incinerating heat abruptly flared within the beast's body. In that fraction of a second, even Wei Yuan felt a brush with mortal peril. He recoiled instantly, hauling more than a dozen Dao Foundation officers with him, and shouted for every remaining officer on the watchtower to flee.
A colossal, searing fireball erupted, vastly larger than the entire watchtower. It climbed slowly into the air, first ringed by a halo of vapor. As it rose, its colors shifted continuously—from red to black, from black to gray—before releasing another ring of vapor, ultimately billowing into a towering mushroom cloud.
The fireball blazed like a rising crimson sun. Under its glare, the watchtower shattered to pieces, and countless tiny figures were flung high into the air, many taking flight in an attempt to escape.
Yet in that moment of absolute cosmic silence, their movements were agonizingly sluggish, far slower than the rising fireball. Then, as if shoved by an immense, invisible hand, they abruptly accelerated—some slamming straight into the ground or the walls, bursting into splatters of gore!
As the fireball faded into the towering mushroom cloud, nothing remained of the original watchtower but a low patch of ruins level with the ground. Over a dozen zhang of wall to either side had collapsed, and every warrior—human and Shaman alike—within dozens of zhang had vanished entirely, leaving only a shallow crater a hundred zhang across.
Wei Yuan's face turned ash-gray. The belly of that giant beast had been packed entirely with gunpowder!
No wonder it had radiated so little magic power and bore such a faint aura. Wei Yuan had assumed it was merely concealed, never imagining it was not a high-ranking war beast at all, but simply a pack animal tasked with hauling gunpowder to the wall. As for those armored beasts, they were specialized defensive creatures, entirely devoid of fear and pain.
The Shamans' tactics were ruthless in the extreme. To prevent the defenders on the wall from fleeing, they had never halted their assault. Thus, the beast's blast not only wiped out several thousand human defenders, but also took over ten thousand Shamans with it to the grave.
A massive breach nearly thirty zhang wide had been torn into the front face of Ding'an City, and the following waves of Shaman warriors surged toward the gap like a tidal wave.
With the battle brought to this pass, Wei Yuan could hold back no longer. He ordered all soldiers within the city into formation behind the breach, while reserve short-barreled cannons were hauled onto rooftops to pound the gap.
Outside the city, the Dragon Wing heavy cavalry deployed. Wei Yuan soared out to join them, launching an assault into the flank of the Shaman army.
From the rear of Ding'an City, dozens of long cylinders suddenly launched into the air. Slender and sharp-tipped, their tails spewing continuous fire, they hurtled toward the Shaman center with blistering speed!
Moving too fast for the Great Shamans to react in time, only a few were intercepted. Most plunged straight into the Shaman center, unleashing violent detonations! Fireballs billowed upward one after another; though no mushroom clouds formed, the blast zones dozens of zhang across were instantly transformed into barren dead zones!
Each of these cylinders was packed with hundreds of jin of gunpowder, and the new Qingming powder was three times more potent than black powder, producing tremendous explosive force. Within fifty zhang, any ordinary Shaman warrior caught in the open was shattered to death by the shockwave even if spared by the shrapnel. Anyone within a hundred zhang risked severe injury.
Guided by the divine sense of cultivators, these cylinders slammed directly into dense clusters of master archers, wiping out nearly two hundred Shaman snipers in a single bombardment.
Another dozen or so rockets streaked toward the sacrificial altar in the rear. When faced with an array of intercepting shamanic arts, the leading rockets detonated in midair, their terrifying concussive force blasting the shamanic sorcery aside and allowing the trailing cylinders to punch through and press forward. Ultimately, three struck the altar, blowing the entire structure to rubble. Beyond the three Great Shamans who managed to flee, the remaining hundred Shaman Scholars, hundreds of nobles, and more than a thousand guards and attendants were sent into their next lives on the spot.
Chapter 484