Free Web NovelChapter 278: Chapter 265: Sea Battle III
"ROAR!!"
Outside Black Cloud City, on the black stone beaches near the Clear Wind Daoist Temple’s seaside location, a dense, chaotic swarm of pale monsters of all sizes surged ashore, charging toward the prepared formation of the Undead Black Army.
The largest monsters led the charge, with small and medium-sized ones filling the gaps behind them. Many of the smallest monsters burrowed directly into the ground, waiting for a chance to ambush.
The powers naturally radiating from the various monsters clashed and interfered with one another.
Just then, spider-like flying monsters were the first to dive down from the sky, spewing vast clouds of corrosive, venomous green liquid.
Their green liquid even covered some of the other monsters, instantly killing a swath of both monsters and Black Army soldiers.
"KILL!!" The Undead Black Army raised their shields and hurled their spears. Among them were Martial Artists and Summoners. Inner Strength and Void Power intertwined, coating the spears and turning them into a dense black rain that shot upward, piercing the flying spider monsters.
A large number of spider monsters plummeted to the ground, only to be instantly crushed by the charging land-based Four-armed Giants.
The giants were the largest class of monster. Each stood over a hundred meters tall, their charging steps making the earth tremble and leaving deep footprints.
They had pale, hard skin, and their four arms were covered in thick, gray stone armor, which they swung wildly as they charged.
The Undead Black Army’s defensive line was quickly broken. Aside from a few Upper-Tier Summoners whose Void Power held back some of the Four-armed Giants, the rest were sent flying or smashed to pieces.
The Four-armed Giants that broke through soon met the regular non-human Black Army.
The Elephant People roared and charged, a dozen or more of them ganging up on a single Four-armed Giant.
The Lion-man and Python Race, clad in armor, moved forward to help the Undead maintain the defensive line.
The monsters’ claws continuously tore away large pieces of armor and fragments of flesh from their bodies.
But no one dared to retreat.
Because further back, the Human Race’s Black Army watched them with a stern gaze. Terrifying, oppressive fields of Void Power had already been established around them.
Each soldier was augmented by at least ten fields of Void Power. They also had the blessings of at least ten rounds of Inner Strength from Circulation Martial Artists.
Their armor and weapons all shone with the white light of Inner Strength, which was in turn wreathed in a distorted, transparent field of Void Power.
Circulation Martial Artists and stronger warriors formed a long-range support group, standing at the rear.
Summoners of the Upper Rank and above were even further back. They were responsible for both buffing the Black Army and keeping an eye out to encircle any behemoths that broke through.
Moth Cars circled in the sky, carrying Priests to fight against the giant aerial monsters.
Fiery red meteors constantly flew past them, striking monsters that were many times their size.
Gigantic white jellyfish hundreds of meters in diameter, enormous blue whales glowing with azure light, and colorful, colossal birds with nine tails and countless wings.
Massive explosions continually rocked the sky—the battles between Priests and stronger experts against the Destruction Level sky-monsters.
Outside the Clear Wind Daoist Temple.
Everyone from the Clear Wind Path had already moved their families over and gathered here.
Su Yaping, Xia Si, and the new members—the Fog Person Pang Jiu, Wang Hongshi, Li Yuanyuan, and others—were all assembled.
Everyone could sense the distant battle unfolding on the stone beaches by the sea.
"Where’s the Daoist Master?" Pang Jiu looked around but didn’t see Lin Hui.
"The Daoist Master, in his capacity as Deputy City Lord, is participating in the core maintenance of the formation array," Su Yaping replied. "We are the support legion, behind the main Black Army. We’ll only move forward to intercept any stragglers after the main army has engaged."
"That’ll be a while, then. Traditionally, this is just the beginning. The Scions haven’t made their move, so Extreme Desire Heaven and the Taixu Origin Disk won’t act rashly. Right now, it’s just probing and attrition," Pang Jiu said gravely.
"Our mission this time is to guard the Daoist Temple and our families within. Don’t get involved in anything else," said Su Yaping.
"What about the Lin Family?" Xia Si asked.
"They’ve been escorted to the vicinity of the Inner City Moon Tower and are under the protection of the Taixu Martial Academy. Don’t worry, it’s much safer there than here," Su Yaping answered.
"These monsters are a mix of strong and weak, and they fight without any strategy, even killing their own kind. If we have to engage, how should we handle it?" Wang Hongshi asked in a low voice.
"Under normal circumstances, we’ll at most have to deal with a small number of monsters that break through. Their main characteristics are strong individual power and tough hides, but anything that gets through will certainly be heavily wounded. We need to send our toughest people to hold the front line, while the rest provide support from a distance," Pang Jiu explained.
None of them had experience in this area, so they all found his words reasonable and nodded in agreement.
"We can start by observing the defensive strategies of the nearby Taixu Martial Academy and the Hundred Seas Merchant Guild," said Su Yaping.
Not far away, the closest temporary guard unit from the Hundred Seas Merchant Guild was currently engaging a white-furred giant ape that had broken through the Black Army’s line.
The giant ape stood over thirty meters tall. Its white fur was extremely hard and thick, capable of blocking ninety-nine percent of all ranged damage.
It roared and charged toward the Hundred Seas Merchant Guild’s blue and white formation. Halfway there, two Triple Harmony Grandmasters shot out from the formation to meet it head-on.
BOOM!
The three collided violently.
The formidable bodies of the Triple Harmony Grandmasters, combined with the Inner Strength and Void Power covering them, instantly shattered and sheared off the giant ape’s fur on impact. The force caused its flesh and bones to cave in and break, and some of its flesh was even directly annihilated by the Void Power.
But the giant ape’s terrifying strength was no joke. With two swipes of its paws, it sent the two Grandmasters flying backward. Its wounds also began to heal at an incredible speed.
At that moment, Grandmasters and Upper-Tier Summoners rushed forward to engage the other behemoths that had broken through.
In the distance, the stone beaches and the harbor had become a chaotic battlefield of swirling skirmishes. The sounds of massive impacts, explosions, and roars overlapped and thundered through the air.
The group from the Clear Wind Daoist Temple observed for a while, each contemplating for a moment.
They finally decided to adopt a hit-and-run hunting strategy. They would leverage everyone’s speed advantage to help the surrounding battle groups maintain stability, thereby keeping the monsters completely isolated and far away from the Daoist Temple.
Once the plan was set, everyone unleashed their Body Techniques and vanished from their spots at extreme speed.
Only the strongest few—Su Yaping, Xia Si, Pang Jiu, and others—remained.
"We’ll stay here to ensure the final line of defense," Su Yaping said reassuringly.
Xia Si didn’t speak. Instead, she gazed far into the sky, toward the floating third mountain peak.
That was where her teacher, Lin Hui, was right now.
*
*
*
Atop the third mountain peak.
Li Hanzhang, Hong Lingxiao, and Lin Hui watched the distant defensive lines gradually fall into fierce battle, all of them waiting.
The Moon Tower, which was responsible for surveillance, would notify them the instant a Scion or low-level Fog Spirit appeared.
Their mission was to ensure the floating mountain peaks were not destroyed, so the formation could continue to operate and augment the power of the three City Lords.
"Be careful. They’re here!" Hong Lingxiao suddenly warned in a deep voice.
The Moon Tower’s audio alert reached their ears from a distance.
Following the prompt, Hong Lingxiao was the first to disappear, shooting off at extreme speed toward a blue meteor that had broken through in the distance.
Before Lin Hui could even see what was happening over there, his own alert arrived.
"Sir, please engage the Minglan Scion, Bomila. Target is a white-haired male in blue-gold full-body bone armor, armed with a giant white bone mace..."
What followed was more detailed intelligence on the Scion: specifics, special abilities, strengths, and advantages.
The entire information transfer was completed in just one second, which was a long time to receive information for an expert of Lin Hui’s caliber.
Receive, comprehend, verify visually, then strike.
The entire process took less than two seconds.
He and Li Hanzhang moved out at almost the same instant.
In the blink of an eye, Lin Hui appeared before the Scion Bomila who had broken through, and thrust his sword out like a bolt of lightning.
But the Scion blocked it.
A strange, sky-blue power completely blocked the corrosion of Lin Hui’s Disaster Energy. This surprised him slightly.
However, what he was famous for wasn’t this diluted concentration of Disaster Energy, but... his speed!
SHIING!
The next instant, Lin Hui’s speed exploded. In the moment he made contact with the strange, sky-blue power, he had already gotten a rough sense of its properties.
In the second moment, he struck.
PFFT!
The layers of sky-blue power shielding Bomila shattered one after another.
The helmet of his armor split in two, and his head, completely caught by surprise, flew high into the air before exploding into a ball of blue fire.
In just the blink of an eye, this Blood Progenitor-level Scion, who was even stronger than Han Sanmian, had fallen to Lin Hui’s sword.
But there was no time to rest. A second alert sounded.
Lin Hui sped off to meet the second Scion that had broken through.
The second, the third... the ninth... the tenth...
The Scions far outnumbered the Blood Progenitors; this was the advantage of the God-Swarm.
The Fog Spirits were not picky about their partners and were particularly fond of mating with species that had extremely high reproductive capabilities.
As a result, the Scions varied wildly in strength, and their numbers were immense.
Lin Hui killed twenty Scions in a row, but new ones kept pouring in relentlessly.
He thought the other defensive lines or the other Blood Progenitors weren’t pulling their weight, but a quick glance from a distance showed him that nearly every Blood Progenitor was single-handedly fighting at least two Scions.
Even so, a dense swarm of Scions was still charging in madly.
’There are too many of them...’
Fortunately, these Scions had provided him with seven types of the Pulse of Annihilation, which meant they could be classified into seven different species.
Soon, his rapid slaughter attracted the attention of some powerful Scions. Two winged-human Scions, known for their speed and each with four wings, ganged up on him.
These two actually possessed speed approaching the super-godspeed of the Fog People. For a time, even Lin Hui couldn’t end the fight quickly.
After being tied up with them for at least ten minutes, without using his major trump cards or the Typhoon Star-Breath, he finally managed to kill them with great difficulty.
But the next moment, four more winged-human Scions arrived to surround and kill him.
He understood now. The more he stood out, the more likely he was to be targeted and surrounded by the enemy. The pressure would naturally shift toward him.
So, he decided to simply use his speed to maintain a stalemate, keeping things in balance. As long as the mountain peak wasn’t destroyed, nothing else mattered.
After he killed the first winged-human Scion, he no longer received a Pulse of Annihilation from them. Killing more of them would yield no benefit, so it was better to maintain the balance.
But what Lin Hui hadn’t expected was that this stalemate, this tangled fight, would last for a full six hours.
The battle only eased up when the sky gradually darkened and the night fog was about to appear.
But the reprieve didn’t last long. A second great wave of monsters surged forward once more.
The God-Swarm was actually ignoring the night fog and continuing with a second offensive wave.
