When the ambushers struck, the Baling defenders of Weicheng flung open their city gates and charged out as well, catching the Gale Army in a two-pronged pincer attack.
The slaughter in the dark grew exceptionally savage.
Commandant Sun, Xiao Maoliang, and the others were visibly shaken, for the Baling ambushers lying in wait out on the open wilderness numbered an astonishing thirty thousand!
Counting the nearly ten thousand deployed to intercept General Nan Ke, Baling had mobilized over forty thousand troops this time. Their determination to settle everything in a single stroke was unmistakably resolute.
Baling had never employed such an aggressive and ruthless style of warfare before.
Was it entirely because they had changed their commander-in-chief?
After several clashes, the Gale Army split into two columns, led southward and northward by Commandant Sun and Commandant Liu. The enemy simply possessed overwhelming numbers, and Weicheng was already Baling territory. If the Gale Army did not want to become turtles trapped in a jar, they had to pull out before the encirclement closed.
It was in moments like this that an army's true caliber showed. Facing an ambushing force six times their own number in the chaos of the night, and with the retreat order issued so abruptly, the Gale Army remained busy yet orderly, swift without collapsing, forcing their way out through the gap.
Watching the defiant "Red" banner fluttering in the night wind and drawing all their fury, the Baling army naturally mustered their remaining zeal to pursue the routed foe. The Gale Army was Panlong City's finest elite, and though their fame spread far and wide, their numbers were ultimately limited. If these five thousand-plus troops were wiped out, Panlong City would suffer a crippling blow to its vitality.
What was more, General Red was here too!
General Red had risen late to prominence, standing alongside Zhong Shengguang as Panlong City's central pillar on the back of miraculous feats of war.
If they could strike down General Red, how far could Baling Kingdom be from seizing all of Panlong City?
One fleeing and one pursuing, rolling clouds of dust surged eastward.
The battlefield fell quiet. Amid the littered devastation, only the wounded groaned in low voices.
Now that the Gale Army had fled, the Baling defenders in Weicheng had to hurry out to clear the battlefield.
This logistics unit was known as the Dushan Battalion and wore distinct uniforms. They did not take part in combat, and enemy forces rarely targeted them.
Once a battle concluded, their duty was to round up prisoners of war and transport the wounded.
Panlong prisoners were few, numbering only twenty or thirty. But thanks to the two rapid volleys the Gale Army had fired earlier, more than four hundred of Baling's ambushers had been struck by arrows. Seventy or eighty had lost the ability to move, and over thirty were critically injured, not counting the dead.
All of them needed to be brought into the city as quickly as possible for treatment.
Fortunately, Weicheng was right nearby. Soldiers of the Dushan Battalion ran back and forth with stretchers, and within a few trips, they had carried back the majority of the wounded.
Besides the city's original garrison under Hua Mucuo, some logistics personnel from the Baling main army brought by the new commander had also been integrated into the Dushan Battalion to temporarily expand their ranks.
As a result, the Dushan Battalion was full of unfamiliar faces, and many soldiers serving in the same unit did not know one another.
A dozen or so logistics soldiers, having just delivered wounded men and prisoners through the gate, suddenly produced glass vials from their tunics and whipped around, hurling them against the city wall!
Embedded in Weicheng's inner wall were nine massive bronze talismans, set more than ten feet above the ground. This was a large defensive spell array—a battle array, for short—specially erected by the Baling forces after capturing the city.
It was common knowledge that origin power could weaken or neutralize an opponent's supernatural arts, as well as empower one's own. But if both opposing armies used origin power to amplify their divine abilities against the other during a clash, the battle would become intricate and fraught with variables.
Since the fighting had just ceased, all nine bronze talismans were naturally infused with origin power, glowing with a faint azure light as runes detached from the plates and spun slowly around them. They ensured the walls grew harder and more resilient, and they served another marvelous purpose:
Sowing the Clear Heart Mantra!
With the nine talismans as the center, any Baling soldier within a three-li radius could keep their mind lucid, immune to the delusions of demons and phantoms.
Only three years had passed since General Red burst onto the scene. Baling Kingdom still did not grasp the wonders of the Dafang Pot, nor could they see the presence of Three Corpse Worms, but they knew that whenever their soldiers suddenly went mad and turned their weapons on their comrades, they had fallen victim to some enemy mind-beguiling art.
The Clear Heart Mantra was difficult to cast in the first place, and turning it into an array artifact that could cover a wide area for prolonged periods required massive talisman plates just to accommodate the intricate array lines.
Baling Kingdom's talisman-array masters had labored over the design. Though the nine bronze talismans functioned as a complete set, it could actually operate normally even if missing two or three—a detail outsiders were never told. After all, anything could happen on a battlefield; if a few were damaged, the rest could still keep out the enemy.
Yet now, these dozen-odd logistics soldiers struck in unison, hitting at least six of the array plates.
The glass vials shattered, splashing colorless liquid across the bronze talismans. The metal hissed and sizzled violently, billowing out plumes of green smoke as the delicate array lines warped and ran like melting wax.
The azure radiance on the talismans died at once. Some Baling soldiers standing nearby were splashed as well; they immediately clutched their faces, wailing as they rolled across the ground.
The logistics soldier closest to the gate vaulted onto the wall stairs without a sound. A Baling city guard moved to intercept him, only for the man to slip past him with uncanny agility.
The logistics soldier darted up beside an intact bronze talisman without slowing his stride, but the guards behind him froze in place. A moment later, they either went limp or tumbled down the stone steps.
Witnesses drew sharp breaths, as though they had just seen a ghost materialize in the dead of night.
The logistics soldier drew his blade and struck the talisman in one seamless motion.
By the time he sheathed his weapon, a massive "X" had been gouged into the bronze surface.
The array carved upon it was utterly ruined.
He severed two torches beside the talisman, plunging the immediate area into darkness.
At the same time, his companions loosed two whistling signal arrows into the air. Against the pitch-black sky, brilliant bursts of azure and crimson light detonated in dazzling spheres.
It had all unfolded so abruptly that before the Baling garrison could make sense of it, someone bellowed from the inner street, "Shut the gates! Shut the gates at once!"
To accommodate the coming and going of the logistics teams, Weicheng's gates had been left wide open.
The Baling guards rushed forward to close them, but the dozen logistics soldiers and the Panlong prisoners charged back to stop them. One man pulled a bow and arrows from his back and felled four Baling soldiers with three lightning-fast shots.
One arrow pierced two men clean through.
Torchlight illuminated his face—it was none other than He Lingchuan's old acquaintance, Hu Min!
The logistics soldier beside the bronze talisman pulled out a small blue pot and lifted the lid.
The vessel had twin handles and was exquisitely fashioned, with a ruby embedded right at its center.
Unseen by mortal eyes, hundreds of Three Corpse Worms poured from the pot, lunging toward the nearest Baling soldiers!
***
He Lingchuan plummeted into the cavern, and the web instantly bounced him upward.
It felt just like landing on a trampoline.
Borrowing that momentum to roll, he dropped layer by layer, taking great care not to let his face or head brush the silk.
Though his world spun in dizzying circles, he could still spot numerous menacing silhouettes across the brocade-like expanse—hulking spider monsters in relentless pursuit.
If he hadn't been tumbling at breakneck speed, they would have caught him long ago.
The moment He Lingchuan plunged below, he realized the space within the nest was terrifyingly vast.
Rolling down to the second-to-last layer of webbing, he barely managed to brake his descent, though the mud coating his hands had been scraped almost completely away.
He looked around. Over endless ages, colossal stalactites had grown downward to meet rising stalagmites, joining into stone pillars sturdy enough to prop up an entire underworld.
There were at least several dozen such pillars, some long and some short, perhaps still growing. Though arranged without any apparent pattern, they possessed a breathtaking, uncanny grandeur that gave the cavern immense depth.
The space supported by these pillars resembled the inside of a honeycomb cake: interconnected, semi-open stone chambers of varying sizes. Dense stalactites hung from their ceilings, while the floors were covered in a thick layer of black humus, piled high with dead branches and rotting leaves.
Moss-like vegetation grew across the soil, some green and some violet, dense and compact, carpeting the chambers like thick rugs.
In short, he stood before a colossal, three-dimensional, magnificent underground labyrinth of at least thirty or forty tiers!
Even without spiders snapping at his heels, He Lingchuan doubted he could ever find his way through this maze.
Luminescent spores covered the rock walls and stone chambers, illuminating the Brood Mother's sprawling nest as bright as day.
Because of that light, He Lingchuan could see clearly that right beneath him—and only beneath him—lay a terrifying abyss!
In this vast cavern, the dead center alone was entirely hollow.
Spores glowed along the bottom of the chasm, looking as distant as stars scattered across the sky. He Lingchuan roughly estimated that his distance from the bottom was about... fifty to seventy zhang—between one hundred sixty and two hundred meters.
Plunging straight down from here would reduce him to meat paste.
Clearly, this was another of the Brood Mother's defenses, preventing any intruder from easily breaching her labyrinth, especially with spider guardians converging from every direction.
From the moment he tumbled down, He Lingchuan had fallen straight into their encirclement.
Their arrival was so prompt likely because Sun Jiayuan had already provoked them earlier.
On the web beneath his feet, He Lingchuan spotted a severed arm. Judging by the scraps of cloth clinging to it, it was Sun Jiayuan's remains. He must have landed in this exact spot, overwhelmed by the swarm before he could even draw his bow.
Looking around, He Lingchuan saw bloodstained fragments scattered across the silk. Clearly, the earlier blast had packed tremendous force.
Worst of all, more spider guardians were closing in.
In this world woven of silk, He Lingchuan could never match the agility of the spiders. By the time he found his footing and dropped into a crouch, the silk lines leading to the rock walls were choked with them.
His path was cut off.
And within ten breaths at most, the spider guardians would pounce upon him.
He could never withstand the fury of over a hundred elite monsters. Facing such an eight-legged deluge, ordinary men would have felt their knees turn to jelly.
Zhu Erniang's nest was a death trap through and through!
He Lingchuan had no time to grumble. Drawing his bow, he aimed at several of the largest stone chambers closest to him and fired four command arrows in rapid succession!
Though the cavern was cavernous, the air smelled foul, carrying a stale, moldy odor.
More accurately, it smelled of fermentation.
At a moment like this, He Lingchuan welcomed anything that could serve as fuel.
All four command arrows struck their targets true.
*Boom, boom, boom, boom!*
Four deafening explosions erupted as walls of fire surged toward the ceiling!
For the first time in its existence, this quiet, orderly sanctuary of constant warmth was shattered by roaring chaos.
The stone chambers held both vegetation and dry foliage—materials that caught fire at a mere touch. As the gunpowder packed into the command arrows detonated, embers scattered in every direction, igniting everything they touched.
With just four command arrows, a dozen chambers went up in flames simultaneously!
The spiders left behind to guard the chambers were terrified out of their wits, scurrying around like headless flies.
Chapter 197