Smelting desolate steel was merely the beginning. The current molten steel was only the most rudimentary grade; its composition could be fine-tuned through various means in the future to drastically enhance its properties.
Yet this step held tremendous significance. Not only did it eliminate the immense amounts of azure qi and human karmic luck required to convert desolate iron into desolate steel, but it also drove a massive increase in output, multiplying production capacity dozens of times over.
The only drawback was that it was rather hard on the shamans.
After that barrage of Desolate Roars, the Strength Shamans had lost nearly half their shamanic power, and a few had even roared themselves hoarse. What was more, because the Desolate Roar possessed immense power, Wei Yuan's casual adaptations had produced some odd side effects. For instance, the ones responsible for the gentle, melodic humming were starting to look surprisingly delicate and pretty in the eyes of the other shamans. But with battle at hand, matters of male and female were far from Wei Yuan's concerns.
Ronglong and the Desolate Shamans knew very well what this furnace of molten steel signified. The Desolate Shamans were thrilled, while Ronglong, a man of few words, simply walked over and clapped Wei Yuan heavily on the shoulder. At the same time, a wisp of ordinary karmic luck drifted into Wei Yuan's sea of consciousness.
Wei Yuan's thoughts stirred. When he had taught the Strength Shamans to cultivate the power of Great Yin Water Essence—nearly impossible to achieve in this realm—Ronglong hadn't shown the slightest reaction. Yet now, upon seeing a furnace of molten steel, he was thrilled beyond measure? Ronglong maintained an impassive exterior; had Wei Yuan not received the karmic luck, he would have almost been fooled.
Now, Wei Yuan was even more confident regarding karmic luck. Ronglong's weakness had been laid bare, after all. None of the other Desolate Shamans offered anything, except for the one who had roared out that first furnace of molten steel, who also contributed a wisp of ordinary karmic luck.
With three wisps of Desolate Shaman karmic luck now in his grasp—one of them coming directly from Ronglong—a new plan gradually took shape in Wei Yuan's mind.
Striking while the iron was hot, Wei Yuan proposed to Ronglong that this Desolate Shaman and the entire choral roaring troupe remain behind instead of participating in the upcoming defensive battle, dedicating their full efforts to smithing equipment. That way, in about a dozen days, the first batch of gear would be ready.
Naturally, Ronglong agreed, and the Desolate Shaman was eager to cooperate as well. Wei Yuan gave him a friendly reminder that the work ahead would be grueling, advising him to prepare himself mentally.
How could the Desolate Shaman tolerate having his stamina questioned? He immediately proclaimed that in his youth he had taken on three hundred beautiful shamans for ten days and ten nights straight without uttering a single complaint of exhaustion!
Wei Yuan took it as pure boasting, but Tianyu's eyes shone with veneration, as if he wished nothing more than to prostrate on the spot.
Twenty days later, Wei Yuan's first batch of equipment emerged from the forge. Just then, the flame demons launched a massive offensive. Wei Yuan pooled together his Strength Shamans and members of the choral roaring troupe, rounding up a force of one hundred, and led them rumbling toward the battlefield.
It was a bitter battle. The flame demons had deployed scores of Scenery Command experts. Five consummate Scenery Command combatants pinned Ronglong down relentlessly, while the other Desolate Shamans had to face at least two, and in some cases three, Scenery Command foes. Around and above the fortress, diverse mindscape worlds clashed against one another in a chaotic frenzy, darkening heaven and earth.
The power of the mindscape worlds spilled over, inevitably permeating the skies above the fortress and creating faint ripples. By now, Wei Yuan understood that these ripples possessed the power of spatial shockwaves. The moment anything touched them, even desolate steel would be instantly twisted out of shape; no matter how formidable a physical body might be, it was utterly fragile against them. That was the reason neither the flame demons nor the Strength Shamans dared take to the air.
The bloodstone used to construct Fengmang had only a single function: drawing in the stray power of mindscape worlds from the surrounding area and converting it into spatial shockwave ripples, thereby forming an invisible defensive net over the fortress.
In Wei Yuan's eyes, the value of this function was virtually beyond measure—that bloodstone was without doubt an immortal stone in its own right.
Yet the flame demons held an overwhelming advantage in numbers. With all the Desolate Shamans pinned down, Strength Shamans were being hurled over the fortress walls one after another. Consummate dharma idol Strength Shamans bearing fourth-rank titles would rush to their rescue, but their strength lagged far behind that of Desolate Shamans. Though they could pull their brethren from the encirclement, they suffered grievous wounds in the process.
After several rescues, the flame demons noticeably adapted their tactics. The instant a Strength Shaman hit the ground, heavy forces swarmed them immediately, making rescue increasingly difficult.
When another fourth-rank captain with a consummate dharma idol leaped down into the flame demon army, a bright, vivid crimson slash of saber light suddenly flared!
The slash swept across the Strength Shaman captain in an instant, seizing his movements. A thin red line broke across his body, and his flesh split open along the seam. At its deepest point, the wound reached three feet, nearly cleaving a massive chunk of his torso away!
The captain was extraordinarily ferocious. With a wild roar, he activated a life-preserving secret art and instantly cut down a dozen flame demons around him. But hundreds of flame demons swarmed him, thrusting countless weapons into his body and viciously twisting the blades.
Knowing there was no escape, the captain bellowed with fury, "Boss! Avenge me!"
His body swelled rapidly. Terrified expressions spread across the surrounding flame demons as they scrambled to retreat. But it was too late. Amid a terrifying detonation, a cloud of blood surged into the air, its dark crimson glow blanketing everything within dozens of zhang. The blood cloud rose layer by layer, billowing into a multi-tiered mushroom cloud.
When the blood cloud dispersed, an empty crater remained on the ground. The Strength Shaman captain, along with hundreds of surrounding flame demons, had vanished completely.
Keeping an eye on the broader battlefield, Ronglong recognized that the defenses were nearing a breaking point. He immediately sent a divine thought back into the fortress: "I beseech the God of Craftsmen to join the battle!"
The divine thought manifested as a thunderous voice in the skies above the fortress, reverberating through every corner. Next came the rising roar of a whirlwind within the fortress, and from the gale rang the combined roar of the Arias: "We are ready!"
The earth trembled as a long dragon of steel set out from Wei Yuan's courtyard, trailing closely behind the moving cyclone and charging straight for the nearest section of wall.
Wei Yuan marched at the very front. Leveling his spear at the dense sea of flame demons before them, he roared, "The time has come to display your invincible might! Go forth, and crush everything in your path!"
At the vanguard, two burly Strength Shamans surged forward shoulder to shoulder. They now wore solid breastplates encasing their entire upper bodies. No longer did they suffer the pathetic state of using a few thin plates of steel over vital areas; their bodies were encased in heavy steel armor, leaving only their four arms bare.
Both wielded colossal warhammers. Relying on their steel armor, they crashed recklessly into the mob of flame demons. With a ferocious bellow, they raised their heavy hammers high and brought them crashing down upon the densest cluster of foes!
Countless flame demon weapons locked together in an instant, forming a massive overhead shield to block the blow.
The heavy hammers smashed down into the center of the weapon-shield, rattling the flame demons violently, yet failing to shatter their defense.
Yet at the exact moment of impact, dense plumes of white steam blasted from the back of the hammerheads. With a deafening boom, a tremendous surge of power manifested out of thin air, more than doubling the force of the strike and instantly shattering the flame demons' shield formation!
The flame demons on the perimeter were sent flying, while those in the center were smashed into paste! The might of that single hammer strike rivaled the desperate, all-out blow of a fourth-rank captain!
Seizing upon the flame demons' disarray, the armored Strength Shamans advanced like mobile steel fortresses. Eight shamans wielding those peculiar steam-blasting warhammers spearheaded the assault, while the rest shoved forward with tower shields, forcibly pushing back flame demons that outnumbered them tenfold. Each shield-slam was followed by a vicious thrust of their short blades, slamming and stabbing again and again.
Chanting cadence calls, the steel-clad Strength Shamans pressed forward step by step as blossom after blossom of blood bloomed before them. They forcibly drove back enemies more than ten times their number, sweeping them all off the ramparts.
A flash of inspiration struck the Hamster. He dashed to Wei Yuan's side and shouted, "I have a plan!"
As expected of Tianyu, the top scorer in comprehension during the examination—he could actually conjure a scheme at a moment like this? While directing the battle, Wei Yuan quickly heard him out and found the idea surprisingly viable.
Wei Yuan promptly ordered the Strength Shamans flanking his squad to pull closer, forming two fortified anchor points on either side. Though the captains of those two units were not under Wei Yuan's command, his squad had just displayed terrifying combat prowess, and he was only redeploying a dozen or so shamans. Thus, they silently complied, shifting shamans from other sections of the line. Wei Yuan then led his force back a step, positioning the bulk of his fighters on the flanks while he and a handful of shamans anchored the rear, forming a pocket.
With the mouth of the pocket open, the flame demons surged in madly. Several hundred plunged into the trap in an instant, only to be held fast by Wei Yuan, unable to advance an inch further. With a resounding cry, the Strength Shamans at the two anchor points fought fiercely, severing the trapped demons from their main force behind them and enveloping several hundred flame demons within the pocket.
At Wei Yuan's command, the surrounding Strength Shamans unleashed maximum-power Desolate Roars in sub-bass registers directly into the trapped demons. This infrasonic barrage yielded outstanding results, instantly blasting down a swathe of flame demons, leaving less than a third still on their feet. The Strength Shamans then closed in from three sides, slamming shields and stabbing daggers, cutting down the survivors in the blink of an eye.
As for the flame demons knocked to the ground, they were trampled mercilessly beneath massive shaman feet, donkey hooves, and meaty paws, suffering untold casualties.
Having wiped out this batch of flame demons, Wei Yuan reset the formation and reopened the mouth of the pocket.
Group after group of flame demons rushed into the pocket, only to be roared into stupors and slaughtered, pressing forward wave upon wave with commendable bravery.
Eventually, they didn't even bother closing the opening completely, constricting only most of it. In this way, the flame demons focused entirely on rushing into the pocket, no longer throwing their full might against the Strength Shamans holding the bottleneck.
After who knew how long, when a thick carpet of flame demons coated the ground inside the pocket, Ronglong suddenly unleashed an earth-shaking strike, slaying another Scenery Command flame demon.
Wei Yuan watched as a wisp of red and black qi descended from the heavens and settled upon Ronglong. It was a bizarre wisp—containing a trace of karmic luck, half karmic debt, and half a chaotic mess of energies.
Wei Yuan suddenly realized something: slaying flame demons in the Desolate Realm yielded no bestowal of heaven and earth? Not only was there no bestowal, but it incurred a considerable amount of karmic debt instead. On the whole, this world responded feebly to the deaths of powerful beings—there was a slight penalty for the death of a flame demon, but when a Strength Shaman died, they simply died, met with complete indifference from heaven and earth.
Thinking deeper into this, the implications became exceedingly intriguing.
Just then, high-pitched shrieks signaling retreat sounded from the flame demon ranks, and the horde withdrew like a receding tide. Inside Wei Yuan's pocket, many of the stunned flame demons staggered back to their feet, their bodies moving instinctively to flee. But how could Wei Yuan let them have their way? With a bark of command, the Strength Shamans roared in unison, another full-powered infrasonic blast knocking the demons flat once more.
Wei Yuan then gave another order. The Strength Shamans charged forward, pulled out specially crafted Soul-Binding Cords, and bound the flame demons one by one. Wei Yuan had specially manufactured these cords, braiding desolate worm fiber and qinlong ash together with steel wire; not even a dharma idol could hope to snap them.
Both sides had suffered heavy casualties in this engagement, yet not a single member of Wei Yuan's squad had fallen.
Chapter 908