Compared to the previous three clashes, the fourth battle was far more grueling and subdued.
The Sacred Shaman watched the engagement from the rear alongside numerous Nether Shamans and Desolate Shamans, while five Scenery Command experts led by Xuanjizi and Canglongshi showed themselves in Qingming, with who knew how many more lying in wait.
In this battle, the Shamans launched an all-out offensive, while Qingming relied on its fortifications to contest every inch of ground in desperate defense.
The Scenery Command grandmasters on both sides maintained a tacit understanding, watching from the skies throughout and remaining on guard against one another. Yet they were not entirely idle, periodically launching surprise strikes against the Great Shamans and dharma idols locked in fierce combat below.
Whenever one side mounted an ambush, the other had to intercept it, all while calculating how to retaliate without drawing the notice of the extraterrestrial monsters. This covert war sapped no less mental energy than a decisive duel beyond the heavens.
Right in the thick of the battle, a Nether Shaman suddenly spat out a crimson thread of silk that shot across a hundred li in an instant, seeking to latch onto a human dharma idol! At that moment, a winding arc of sword-light appeared without warning, severing the red silk in a single stroke!
The severed tip of the thread hit the ground and turned into something resembling a long, slender tongue, bouncing rapidly across the earth in a bid to escape.
Amidst the chaos, Wei Yuan grabbed it in his hand. It tried to drill through his flesh, but accomplished nothing beyond grinding itself into a bloody pulp; Wei Yuan's skin remained entirely unscathed.
An aura of Bingli Divine Wood emanated from Wei Yuan's hand, freezing it solid in an instant before he put it away.
After suffering such a stinging loss, the Nether Shamans grew considerably more cautious. Su Xuejing was a monster capable of stalling a Sacred Shaman beyond the heavens. Within the Shattered Lands, he could unleash his full power, whereas the Nether Shamans were forced to restrain themselves; in a true fight, they might not even be his match.
Thus, inside the Shattered Lands, Su Xuejing commanded far greater deterrence than an ordinary human Scenery Command expert.
Beyond Su Xuejing, there was also Wei Yuan. Wherever Wei Yuan went, chaos followed, and every Nether Shaman gave him a wide berth. Everyone was waiting for Wei Yuan to deliver that Yang Bullet to Hongye; until that happened, no one wanted to provoke him.
At this moment, Wei Yuan was like an idle rogue strolling through a village carrying a bucket of nightsoil—he could swagger wherever he pleased, and not a single thug dared show his face.
On the ground, the battle proceeded much as it had before, with one slight difference: optimized by Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World, Wei Yuan had replaced the original site of Ding'an City with a defense line composed of numerous hastily built redoubts.
These small redoubts were spaced roughly a hundred zhang apart, leaving wide gaps between them.
To traditional generals, this defensive line was riddled with flaws, leaving openings everywhere for large formations to march straight through. When Wei Yuan had first laid it out, several Qingming commanders had voiced strong objections. But their protests were in vain; Wei Yuan had carried out the plan regardless.
Qingming's current defensive network was designed by Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World based on a new doctrine of interlocking firepower rather than wall-based containment. Until it was destroyed, each independent redoubt would continuously deliver firepower. The firing arcs of the various redoubts intersected and covered one another; if the Shamans wished to weave through the gaps, they would have to endure constant bombardment and bleed continuously along the way.
Many of the conclusions produced by Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World seemed contrary to common human wisdom at first glance, but a deeper inquiry revealed that every single one rested on rigorous deduction.
No matter how formidable an army was, it could scarcely withstand such catastrophic casualties, push through the redoubt zone, and still retain its combat effectiveness.
Uprooting these small redoubts would also demand a steep price and an immense amount of time. Throughout the siege of any single redoubt, the attacking forces would constantly be raked by fire from the surrounding strongpoints.
Even when a redoubt was breached, inside were roughly a hundred breastplate-armored warriors whose melee capabilities were formidable. The attackers would still have to endure a final, brutal round of hand-to-hand combat and butcher every warrior within before truly securing the position.
When validating this strategy, Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World had treated each redoubt as an isolated unit, breaking the scenario into distinct tasks for mortals to simulate and calculate. Finally, it compiled all individual test cases, eliminated redundancies through the immortal plant, incorporated other necessary variables, and arrived at the final conclusion through a series of complex adjustments.
In the end, Wei Yuan had constructed several hundred small redoubts in one go, garrisoning each with over a hundred soldiers and deploying tens of thousands of defenders across the former area of Ding'an City.
Discrepancies still arose between actual combat and the projections of Smoke and Fire of the Mortal World. The Shaman forces were simply too vast; shoved forward by the ranks of warriors behind them, the horde forcibly spilled across the redoubt zone. In the blink of an eye, every small redoubt found itself under frantic siege.
Fortunately, Wei Yuan had deployed the Dragon Gallop Army behind the redoubt zone, forming a steel barrier that firmly checked the Shaman army's momentum.
The Shaman troops surged like a tide, crashing against the battle line of the Dragon Gallop Army. The front ranks of the Dragon Gallop Army had already fixed their bayonets and locked into close combat.
Braving the hail of bullets, the foremost Shaman warriors charged desperately. Yet when they finally reached the Dragon Gallop Army, they were skewered on the bayonets of these warriors clad in full heavy armor!
The instant the clash began, the Shaman ranks collapsed row upon row.
After cutting down the incoming Shamans, that rank of Dragon Gallop soldiers would step back, ceding the front line to the next rank of heavy infantry. In this manner, ranks rotated back, fired, engaged in melee, stepped back again, and fired once more, disrupting the Shaman formations while steadily reaping lives.
Naturally, the Dragon Gallop Army alone could never withstand the charge of hundreds of thousands of Shaman troops. But right behind this defensive line stood over a hundred city defense cannons, bombarding relentlessly and claiming hundreds, if not thousands, of Shaman lives every single moment.
The fierce onslaught of the Shaman army also forced Wei Yuan to unleash his missile strikes ahead of schedule; otherwise, the front would have collapsed. If the Shamans broke through, directly behind them lay Qingming's heartland, inhabited entirely by civilians unprepared for battle. Meeting the spearhead of the Shaman horde now would result in nothing short of a one-sided slaughter.
The moment the missiles launched, the Shaman sharpshooter Great Shamans appeared one after another to intercept them. Yu Zhizhuo, however, had modified a portion of the projectiles. As they reached the airspace above the Shaman battle array, the first wave of missiles burst open simultaneously, discharging more than a dozen submunitions that scattered across the Shaman army.
Each small warhead was guided by a cultivator's divine sense, weaving unpredictable trajectories through the sky. Even so, the sharpshooter Great Shamans unleashed their full might, loosing arrows like rain to shoot down the vast majority of the submunitions in an instant. The few warheads that struck the ground all detonated with violent force, proving to the Shamans that every single one was real.
Wave after wave of missiles whistled through the air, rapidly draining the dharmic power of the sharpshooter Great Shamans until some were forced to withdraw and rest. Just as the sharpshooter Great Shamans were growing exhausted and subconsciously lowering their guard, an unremarkable missile in the sky was struck by an arrow—and abruptly ruptured, unleashing over a dozen flying swords that shot forth like lightning!
Every single one of these flying swords was a magic treasure; even at the lowest grade, their lethality was not to be underestimated. Screaming through the air, the cluster of flying swords slew two sharpshooter Great Shamans in rapid succession before being knocked down by the others.
Within the Qingming army, Cui Yu opened his eyes, blood trickling from his nose. Without a word, he tilted his head back and swallowed an elixir pill. At that moment, the origin qi of heaven and earth poured down from the sky, causing his aura to surge step by step.
After regulating his breathing for a brief moment, murder blazed in Cui Yu's eyes. He scanned and locked onto his next target, awaiting the arrival of the next special missile.
Chapter 520