The Resolve of Luosha

Earth, Luosha. Countless soldiers gathered along the capital's battlements, and the Transcendents stood in heavy armor, arrayed in tight formation. Edward's wanton slaughter across other nations could hardly be concealed from the rest of the world. Once they realized surrender offered no survival, even cornered rabbits were pushed to bare their teeth. Unfortunately, every resistance mounted by the other nations had ended in failure. Edward was closing in on Luosha at terrifying speed, and everyone present knew a fight to the death was inevitable. In truth, none among them possessed the confidence to oppose Edward. But since death was guaranteed either way, all they could do was stake their lives on one final stand. Standing atop the city walls, Tsar Peter gazed into the distance. Before Edward had even arrived, overwhelming dark clouds surged forth to blanket the sky, rapidly plunging the heavens into suffocating gloom. "Nikolayevich, disperse the dark clouds overhead," Tsar Peter ordered. The burly man beside him, clad in a heavy black iron vest, nodded. Raising his hand, a whirlwind rapidly condensed within his palm, and he launched dozens of compressed air shells into the sky. These invisible wind-pressure shells burst instantly upon slamming into the dark clouds, scattering them until the azure sky reappeared. "He's here!" At that moment, a youth clad in leather armor spoke, an eagle alighting upon his shoulder. Tsar Peter closed his eyes, let out a faint sigh, and in the next instant spoke with resolute conviction: "Initiate Plan One. Attack!" In the distance, several cities away. Edward halted at the outskirts of a city. Looking upon the deserted urban expanse, he sneered, "Evacuated, have they?" An instant later, he took to the sky and flew toward the capital of Luosha. Yet he had barely covered any distance before he abruptly looked up above the clouds. The clouds were instantly pierced through as nuclear warheads rained down one after another. *Foolish!* Edward sneered. His cloak wrapped around him in an instant while the Demon Cross unleashed an immense burst of crimson energy to shield him. The warheads detonated on impact, and the entire world turned stark, blinding white. Mushroom clouds rose one after another. In the capital of Luosha, Tsar Peter and the others could clearly feel the faint tremors vibrating through the earth. Though they were not close enough to see the mushroom clouds with the naked eye, everyone knew the first wave of attacks had begun. In reality, none present had pinned their hopes on nuclear weapons, for the nation of Weidaliya had already tried this tactic, and Edward's presence here was proof enough of its outcome. Even so, Tsar Peter and his commanders had never expected the warheads to kill Edward; their only goal was to weaken him slightly and deplete his reserves of energy. In fact, to burn away as much of Edward's energy as possible, sacred rituals had been laid beneath the detonation zone beforehand. The nuclear blasts would not devastate the ecosystem or trigger a nuclear winter; their destructive force was directed solely at biological organisms. That meant that so long as Edward remained within the strike zone, Luosha could empty its entire nuclear arsenal upon him. Ever since Transcendent powers had emerged, nuclear weapons could no longer serve as the ultimate deterrent. Often, their deterrent value was severely blunted: if a hostile Transcendent infiltrated an underground missile silo or munitions depot, the warheads could easily be turned against one's own people. As a result, nations had steadily reduced their stockpiles. Luosha currently possessed an arsenal of just over a hundred warheads, and this time, they had dropped every single one. At the epicenter of the nuclear bombardment, Edward had completely failed to anticipate Luosha's sheer madness. He had assumed Luosha would do as Weidaliya had done—launch four or five warheads merely to test the waters. Who could have imagined Luosha would unload more than a hundred in a single breath? Explosion followed explosion in savage succession. Shockwaves, thermal radiation, and blinding thermal flashes hammered furiously against his barrier, until even he began to buckle under the strain. Human technology evidently had its own terrifying might. Channeling the Demon Cross, Edward gritted his teeth and pushed forward through the inferno. Warheads detonated around him in unbroken sequence, the colossal force contorting his energy barrier into ever-shifting shapes, giving him the gut-wrenching illusion that the barrier might shatter at any second. He was forced to pour out even more energy as he flew, and only after burning through a tremendous amount of power did he finally break free of the drop zone. Emerging from the onslaught, he hovered in midair and could not resist looking back. The bombardment zone resembled true apocalyptic ruin—incandescent radiance annihilating matter itself, a terrifying scene that left even him shaken to the core. "Madmen! Dropping that many nukes on their own soil!" In the end, Edward had to admit that Tsar Peter was truly a terrifying opponent. Tsar Peter certainly would not sit quietly awaiting death, but aside from nuclear weapons, what other cards could he possibly have left to play? "Peter Yegoryevich Turgenev, let me see... just how far you can go!" Edward murmured to himself as he looked toward Luosha's capital. Once more wrapping his cloak around himself, he sped forward. Before he had flown far, he spotted a man standing in a circular clearing. At that moment, the man raised his hand and swept his index, middle, and ring fingers downward against the sky. The surrounding gravity spiked exponentially, causing even Edward to sink slightly under the weight. "To think you can affect even me! Hand over every drop of your blood!" Surprised at first, Edward quickly turned ecstatic as he dove toward the man, baring his vampire fangs. Ordinary living creatures were not even worthy of having him bare his fangs to drink their blood; he would simply drain them dry with his abilities. But this man was qualified to be bitten! Watching Edward dive toward him, Ivan showed a faint smile. He was one of Luosha's paramount Transcendents. Abroad, his most renowned title was 'The Crusher,' for he showed no mercy to his enemies, using gravity to crush his foes into mangled masses. "Long live Luosha! Oorah!" As Edward closed in, Ivan took a deep breath, plunged an autoinjector pen into his neck, and roared at the top of his lungs. In the next instant, a massive tumor erupted from his neck. His body rapidly swelled, warped, and finally detonated. The moment his body blew apart, the surrounding gravity skyrocketed uncontrollably. In the blink of an eye, Edward was slammed into the earth. The entire ground caved downward with a thunderous roar, layer upon layer, the compressed soil growing denser and harder by the second. *Humm—! Humm—!* The energy barrier around Edward vibrated violently. The gravitational force was astronomical. A hundredfold, a thousandfold, ten thousandfold... Edward clenched his teeth, his cheeks trembling frantically along with his shivering energy barrier. He channeled the Demon Cross to endlessly ramp up his output, yet he still could barely rise. *Madmen, every single one of them is mad!* Edward had not expected Ivan to be so ruthless—the man was determined to drag Edward down with him in death, and he actually possessed a lethal trump card. He had no idea what Ivan had injected, but whatever it was, it was far from ordinary. For it to elevate Ivan's ability to the point of threatening him was terrifying. Yet this only hardened his resolve to slaughter every soul in Luosha. He would never permit such war-crazed madmen to exist on the Earth that belonged to him.