War

In the span of more than half a shichen, Xia Wenlin, appointed in the hour of crisis, had raced against the clock to relay his orders to the defenders along the city walls. He had also anticipated that traitors might have infiltrated Wanxiang City by now, and had emphasized this point heavily when transmitting the messages. Yet reality could not be resolved by mere foresight alone, for time was simply too short. The mid-ranking officers only had time to pass the word down to non-commissioned officers; there was no time at all to relay it to the rank-and-file soldiers. There was only enough time to evacuate the relevant caravans at several gates and seal the city doors shut. What was more, after so long a period of peace, when war truly descended, many assumed it had to be a joke. Thus, when the crowds converged inside the city to form battle formations, only a handful of the city guards reacted in time. Most of the soldiers merely watched with dubious, skeptical eyes. By the time the formations were locked, fractures spiderwebbed across the city walls, and key nodes of the inactive array were blasted to pieces, the soldiers on duty atop the battlements finally jolted to their senses— War had truly begun. "Quick! Go... go inform the supervisor! Someone's attacking from inside the city!!" "Don't run! None of you run! There's no one backing them from outside—block these bastards inside the city!" "The array! Hurry, raise the city-protecting array!!" Shuddering roars and shouts rose and fell above and below the walls in the wake of the assault. It was too abrupt. So sudden that the sect combat forces covertly deployed by the Wanxiang Sect had not even reached their operational posts. And the forces responsible for Wanxiang City's routine defense were largely martial apprentices produced by martial halls under the sect's banner, not elite disciples nurtured from childhood. Once chaos erupted, never mind the ordinary folk on the streets, even the city guards dissolved into an uproar. Just then, a sharp shout echoed across the battlements: "Flee and disrupt morale, and you shall be executed without mercy!" A middle-aged man stood suspended in midair. With a casual flick of his hand, several arcs of sword qi slashed through more than a dozen guards who were preparing to flee in the mayhem. "It's the Seventh Elder!" "A Third-Rank Grandmaster is here!" With the middle-aged man's appearance, the panic atop the walls was barely brought to a halt. To ordinary soldiers, a Third-Rank Grandmaster was an existence akin to a god. Seeing the chaos subside, the middle-aged man swept at low altitude along the sprawling wall, his deep, commanding voice carrying into the ears of every defending soldier: "The sect's elites are already on their way to reinforce us! The array will soon rise—hold fast with the aid of the city defense array!" And as if to corroborate his words, circuit lines of array markings gradually lit up across the towering wall, while a translucent dome slowly condensed in the sky above. Wanxiang City's city-protecting array was belated, but it had begun to activate! The middle-aged man's arrival temporarily stabilized morale, but only in certain sections. Near the breach in the wall, the forces that made contact with the Black Scale Army collapsed almost upon impact. They had had no time whatsoever to form their battle arrays. A young non-commissioned officer sprinted across the wall, searching in haste for his battalion commander—the leader of their five hundred men—for that unarmored mob of rebels and traitors had already begun ascending the battlements, seizing control of the eastern wall. And the two battalions standing before them were nearly wiped out. The young officer dashed forward, gasping for breath, his eyes sweeping across the nervous faces of the soldiers on either side, until he finally spotted a middle-aged man atop a gate tower, puffing away on a hand-rolled cigarette with audible smacks of his lips. The moment he saw him, Cheng Yu hurried forward and shouted urgently, "Commander, what time do you think it is?! You're still here smoking?!" The battalion commander glanced sideways at him, a faint smile tugging at the corners of his lips. In an unhurried drawl, he said, "Ah, Cheng Yu. Come, sit." As he spoke, he fished a small wooden box from his robes and carefully drew out a cigarette. With a hint of reluctance in his eyes, he offered it to the young officer. "Here, have one?" The young officer stared blankly at his commander. These cigarettes were precious. Usually, the battalion commander would take a single drag and snuff it out, yet now he was offering him a whole one. Recovering his senses, the young officer did not take it. Fuming with anxiety, he said rapidly, "Commander, hurry up and organize the troops! Those rebels have already breached our defense sector!" The battalion commander sighed. Leaving his outstretched hand where it was, he took a deep drag from his own cigarette. The ember glowed brightly, and he exhaled a slow ribbon of smoke. Only then did he murmur, "I know." The young officer grew even more exasperated. "If you know, why aren't you moving?! When an elder comes by and sees you doing nothing, he'll definitely take your head!" The battalion commander chuckled. With a flick of his finger, the burning butt somersaulted through the air and tumbled down from the high wall. He then unhurriedly brought out a fire-striker, preparing to light another. At this point, the young officer could no longer bear it. He lunged forward and snatched both the fire-striker and the cigarette from his hands. "Commander!! What on earth are you doing?!" "Shut up!!" the battalion commander suddenly snapped in a low bark. The young officer froze. The commander snatched the two items back, lit the smoke for himself, took a drag, and smiled again. He slowly exhaled a single sentence: "Cheng Yu, it's useless." With that, the commander looked at the young man with gentle eyes. "Their battle formation is fully locked. The elders wouldn't dare come over here. Cheng Yu, you're still young. Hurry up and run. Your cultivation isn't bad; once you leave this army, you should be able to find decent prospects elsewhere." The young officer said in agitation, "Why run? The array is already rising—" "It's useless," the commander repeated. Pointing toward the breach in the wall, he puffed on his smoke and said with a sigh, "There... that was the array eye for this stretch of wall. The formation for our entire sector is already ruined." Pausing, the commander shifted his helpless gaze past the young officer, looking toward the horizon behind him with a faint smile. "Besides... "You can look behind you." "..." The young officer started, then turned his head to look. His eyes instantly widened. It was late afternoon, the Shen hour. The sunlight was brilliant, and a massive cloud along the horizon looked beautiful. Yet as he watched, ferocious, colossal flying demonic beasts burst through the clouds. At first, they were merely specks of black. Gradually, however, countless flying demonic beasts of every description began to swallow vast swathes of the sky, blotting out the sun and bearing down upon the walls of Wanxiang City like a swarm of locusts. "..." The descending silence made the battle cries drawing nearer along the wall feel jarringly stark. The battalion commander continued puffing silently on his cigarette, smacking his lips. The young officer took an involuntary step back. Looking at the approaching figures clad in plain cloth upon the walls, and then at the sun-blotting flock of beasts in the sky, a tremor crept into his voice: "Com... Commander, what... what is that?" The distant flock of flying demonic beasts screeched incessantly, unsettling the mind of every defending soldier. The commander sighed, once more extending a cigarette from his wooden case toward the young officer. "Don't know. First time I've seen anything like it, too." This time, the young officer did not refuse. His hands shook as he tried to light it, failing several times until the commander took hold of his hands to steady them and ignite the tip. The young officer took a deep drag, regaining a shred of composure. Gazing at the black cloud creeping ever closer across the horizon, he seemed to suddenly realize something, his voice trembling slightly: "Commander, those people in plain clothes... they aren't rebels?" The commander had finished his cigarette by now. He opened his case for another, only to find it empty. He tossed the box over the gate tower, stood up with a sigh, and gave a strained smile. "Judging by this scale, maybe we're the rebels. The sect's higher-ups probably did something." As he spoke, the commander bent down, picked up a spirit-bladed saber lying to one side, and wiped it with an oiled cloth. "Run, quickly," he reminded him. "Any later, and you won't make it." "But..." A flicker of hesitation crossed the young officer's eyes. He was still young; he did not want to die. "What... what about you, Commander?" The commander glanced at him and grinned. "Even if we are the rebels, I, Zhang Liang, have drawn a stipend from Wanxiang City for decades. How could I possibly run away?" "Commander..." The young officer clenched his fists. "Quit dawdling. Take whoever wants to flee and get out." "But—" "Get lost!" "..." By the time the sky-blotting swarm of flying demonic beasts arrived above Wanxiang City, the array had activated. Unfortunately, demonic beasts bearing the insignia of the imperial Exotic Beast Bureau were classified as "allies." Those pressed for time in Wanxiang City's City Defense Bureau had activated the grand array in a flurried panic, with no time to alter the array formations to attack indiscriminately. They could only rely on manual manipulation of the array or attack using city-defense ballistas etched with array markings. The few elders sent to oversee the battle also slaughtered many. One after another, dozens of massive flying demonic beasts let out agonized shrieks and crashed down into the city, kicking up great clouds of dust. Yet, lamentably, this was a drop in the ocean. The first wave of flying demonic beasts dropped specially formulated mucus designed to target array markings from low altitude, instantly bogging down and obstructing the entire city-protecting array over the eastern city. With the array markings stalled, the translucent membrane of light in the sky rapidly dissipated like a burst bubble. Bereft of the city-protecting array's shelter, the second wave of flying demonic beasts skimmed low. Thousands of true elites at the Seventh-Rank cultivation leaped down from the wooden structures on the beasts' backs, reinforcing the internal conspirators' battle formation that had been under siege in the city. Having firmly secured the bridgehead carved out upon the walls, the battle formation pressed its advantage, advancing along the battlements in both directions. And amid this slaughter—or rather, massacre—a vast plume of dust billowed on the distant horizon. Arrayed in formation, the remaining thirty thousand soldiers of the Black Scale Army charged toward the walls with disciplined precision. The defenders of the eastern city routed. Before the true elites of the Wanxiang Sect could arrive, they had collapsed into swift defeat. A mere two quarters of an hour after the battle commenced, the Black Scale Army had completely seized Wanxiang City's eastern sector. Everything settled into quiet. The ten thousand Black Scale elites who had served as the vanguard bridgehead took over the city defenses in an orderly manner, beginning to clean up the battlefield and swinging open the gates to receive the incoming reinforcements. Yuan Hao stood atop the battlements with cold eyes, gazing at the retreating Wanxiang defenders. He had not left the city. Rather than sitting in the central command, he preferred issuing orders and then charging alongside the battle formations. And it had all gone even more smoothly than he had imagined. The Black Scale Guards' overwhelming intelligence superiority over the Wanxiang Sect Guards allowed all his plans to be executed with exceptional fluidity. At this thought, Yuan Hao turned his gaze toward the captured defenders trussed up like zongzi below the gate tower. A flicker of hesitation crossed his eyes, but after rubbing his hands together, he suddenly broke into a grin, his voice booming across the entire city once more: "Obstinate fools! Behead them!"