Yanhu did not press the matter and departed in haste, brushing past Zhengang just as he returned. At first, Zhengang didn't notice anything amiss, but the moment he stepped through the courtyard gate, his strength suddenly deserted him. His legs buckled, and he collapsed onto the ground.
Zhengang realized that the murderous aura Yanhu unconsciously exuded had shaken his Dao Heart, completely robbing him of the ability to resist in an instant—much like a small beast encountering a fierce tiger, collapsing paralyzed and unable to rise.
Wei Yuan let out a soft snort. Two thin plumes of white vapor puffed from his nostrils, striking Zhengang. Using the power of Desolate Roar, he dispersed Yanhu's killing intent, finally allowing Zhengang to move normally again.
With a pale face, Zhengang breathed a sigh of relief that he hadn't dropped the two large crates he was carrying. One held large cuts of roasted meat, while the other was filled with neatly stacked pickled vegetables, along with several pieces of fruit.
These two large crates, containing over a hundred jin of food, were dinner for the five shamans in the courtyard. In the Desolate Realm, fresh spirit fruit was far more expensive than desolate steel, rivaling divine iron in value. These few fruits were meant specifically for Wei Yuan; all the shamans understood this tacitly, and none dared touch them. Wei Yuan did not decline, eating only the spirit fruits.
Throughout this period, Wei Yuan had continuously modified his physical body, gradually adapting to the Desolate Realm's environment. The Dao power expended to resist the sunlight had decreased drastically. His daily meditation and absorption of the origin qi of heaven and earth were just enough to make up for what he consumed, so he no longer needed to eat much food.
After dinner, Wei Yuan returned to his room to thoroughly study Fengmang's military system.
Fengmang was simply too perilous, with an appalling casualty rate. Measured across a century-long rotation, nearly half of the Desolate Shamans stationed here ended up dead or maimed, while fewer than twenty percent of the Power Shamans returned alive. Consequently, over the years, the garrison could only barely be maintained by dispatching death-row convicts and felons serving heavy sentences.
Fengmang Fortress was pentagonal, each side jutting out with an angle so they could lay down interlocking crossfire against besieging flame demons. The defenders of the fortress abandoned their names, referring to themselves by titles. The lowest tier of titles belonged to weak creatures, such as insects and rodents. Presumably, the previous Groundhog, Hamster, and Chipmunk had all fallen in battle, which was why those titles had become vacant.
One tier higher were small animals and birds.
Tier three comprised medium-sized spirit beasts; tier four consisted of large predators and fierce raptors; tier five were extraordinary spirit beasts; tier six were divine creatures and sacred beasts; and tier seven was reserved for Heavenly Shamans.
Yanhu was at the mid or late Desolate Shaman stage, and his title was at the pinnacle of tier five. Ronglong was a veteran Scenery Command Desolate Shaman at perfection, standing at the summit of tier six.
By this logic, Wei Yuan's Groundhog was close in size to a small animal and could be called the pinnacle of tier one, whereas Tianyu's Hamster was inferior even to a field mouse, making it utter trash among rodents.
Only Wei Yuan and Tianyu held official titles; the remaining three shamans were their servant soldiers and retinue. Any military merits they achieved would be credited to Wei Yuan or Tianyu. Correspondingly, Wei Yuan and Tianyu were responsible for all their servant soldiers' living provisions, weapons, and military supplies.
Supplies of every kind within Fengmang Fortress were obtained purely through redeeming military merits, an entirely fair system. It was said that Ronglong despised corruption above all else, so no one dared pull such stunts right under his nose.
As newcomers, Wei Yuan and Tianyu naturally possessed zero military merit, meaning all their issued gear was on credit. Tianyu had initially intended to keep using his custom-made weapons, but after Yanhu took one look, he immediately sent someone over with a compact crossbow, a short blade, and a buckler.
Though modest in appearance, these pieces of equipment were surprisingly all forged from desolate steel of superior quality. Tianyu was no fool and obediently swapped his gear at once. After Yanhu's warning, he had come to understand his precarious situation and long since abandoned his airs as the wealthiest man in the Wu domain.
The next day, before Wei Yuan even had a chance to visit the Hall of Books, a flame demon assault struck.
A piercing horn echoed over the fortress. Tianyu, who had been basking in the sun in the courtyard, turned pale with shock. He snatched his gear with a telekinetic pull and flew straight out of the courtyard, his elderly servant following immediately behind.
The war horn signaled an utmost emergency: everyone had to arrive at their designated assembly point within ten breaths, or be condemned for desertion on the battlefield. Under military law, no matter how cynical or flippant Tianyu was, he dared not slacken in the slightest.
Wei Yuan was about to follow and see what was happening, only for Zhengang and Hunter Thirty-One to seize his legs and drag him back down from midair. Hunter Thirty-One shouted, "You cannot leave the courtyard! That's the military regulation!"
"The order only said I'm not allowed on the front line! Let go, nothing will happen to me. The two of you stay here in the courtyard and don't go anywhere, lest you drag me down!"
Zhengang and Hunter Thirty-One had no choice but to let go. Wei Yuan bounded out of the courtyard and leaped onto a neighbor's roof, sweeping his gaze across the sky while taking in the neighboring courtyard's layout. Habits forged from years of battle had made Wei Yuan accustomed to leaping and bounding from perch to perch; unless strictly necessary, he never floated in midair.
Masses of Power Shamans were pouring out from every corner of the fortress, rushing toward the walls with brisk, orderly efficiency, every single one heading to an assigned post. Several other groups entered low-lying fortifications hugging the city walls to wait in reserve; these were Ronglong's mobile forces, ready to reinforce any breach at a moment's notice.
Merely observing the troop movements showed an impeccable order. Over a thousand Power Shamans were deployed as smoothly as directing one's own limbs. Ronglong was truly a god of war of his era.
Wei Yuan did not extend his divine sense, yet from the pre-battle mobilization alone, he had already pieced together a comprehensive picture of the fortress's true strength. Small though Fengmang Fortress was, its defenders were elite to an extraordinary degree. If these thousand-odd Power Shamans were unleashed onto a human battlefield, they could likely march straight into the imperial capital of Western Jin; without an immortal intervening, nothing could possibly withstand their spearhead.
The military force deployed at Desolate Blade Fortress was no less than Fengmang's, but because it had grown into a full-scale stronghold, it also housed a vast population of mediocre warriors, artisans, and civilians.
Across the entire Desolate Realm, there were five fortresses on par with Desolate Blade, and two that were even larger in scale. Calculating from this, the total Power Shaman strength concentrated in the Desolate Realm alone was a terrifying sum—perhaps enough to roll across nearly half of the human domain.
Yet when it came to the actual battlefields in the human domain, very few Great Shamans ever showed themselves, and many of those possessed dubious combat prowess, wielding flashy but impractical shamanic arts that made tremendous noise with little real lethality. They were nothing like the warriors of Fengmang, every one of whom radiated a profound, solid, and imposing aura.
Power Shamans had always ranked at the bottom of the four shamanic races, never showing anything particularly stellar when warring against humanity. But now that Wei Yuan had witnessed their strength in the Desolate Realm, he realized that more than half of their entire race's power was probably poured into this realm.
The explanation that the sunlight here merely aided Body Tempering cultivation no longer held up. The only plausible explanation was that some terrifying nemesis in the Desolate Realm pinned down the Power Shamans' main force, preventing them from pulling away to reinforce other battlefronts.
At that moment, the Great Dao of heaven and earth trembled. Fire-phase power began to boil, sending ambient temperatures soaring. Even sheltering inside the house within the courtyard, Zhengang and Hunter Thirty-One found the heat nearly unbearable, forced to channel their shamanic power and endure it with difficulty.
The Power Shamans manning the ramparts wore a peculiar sort of armor: a few steel plates covering vital areas, secured by leather straps. Since every Power Shaman had a different build, the styles of armor varied wildly. At this moment, these steel plates emanated strands of cool air, suppressing the fire-phase power.
A row of black dots appeared on the horizon—flocks of qinlong! Countless fire tornadoes converged, coalescing into a terrifying tempest connecting heaven and earth, its diameter wider than all of Fengmang!
Even the indestructible earth was swept into the storm, spewing endless sand and stones. The fiery wind was like a blade, constantly shearing across the ground to carve off chunks of shattered rock that fed into the tempest, drastically boosting its fury.
On either flank of the storm appeared vast, shadowy swarms of flame demons. Many rode upon the desolate worms Wei Yuan had encountered before, while others rode beastly monsters he had never seen. Atop each beast sat a flame demon.
Only after arriving at Fengmang did Wei Yuan learn that the desolate worm he had expended considerable effort to kill that day was merely a beast of burden used by the flame demons for travel, akin to oxen and horses in the human domain, not a war beast at all.
In this wave of attack alone, tens of thousands of flame demons were visible, outnumbering the defenders by well over ten to one. Only now did Wei Yuan truly understand what kind of war Fengmang faced.
Chapter 892