Lord of the Desert

Chapter 593 Fortunately
"It's not that easy."

Kou Fei replied.

"When a living being dies, its life force usually dissipates naturally. As its acquired will gradually withers away, it transforms into pure spiritual energy and returns to the world. The great formation has a special mechanism to collect this life force. Once activated, it consumes a considerable amount of energy and is accompanied by corresponding celestial phenomena."

"The great war of the gods only occurs once every few decades. Is this the reason?"

Huo Wei stared wide-eyed, a slight smile playing on his lips, a look that seemed to be a mixture of pleasure and mockery.

"So people who die in ordinary times really die in vain, which is a pity..."

He sighed softly.

At this moment, everyone present felt as if their hearts were overgrown with weeds, a kind of indescribable unease. However, the prestige of the Ancestral Dragon was unshakable and unwavering, so much so that they not only dared not say anything, but even avoided looking at the shrine from afar.

"Remember, this war will not end with the passage of time or the gain or loss of land, unless the great formation is fully charged."

Kou Fei returned to his seat and sat down.

"As the commander of the western front, I want you to remember one thing: the temporary advance of the front line is not important, nor is the local casualties in the battle; the exchange ratio between the enemy and ourselves is the most important."

"Why make it so complicated?"

Feng Manyun repeatedly touched the side of her thumbnail, her irritated tone revealing a hint of panic and disgust.

"Aren't people going to die anyway? If we go north alone to destroy the giant spirit's ley lines, we can probably kill enough people in less than a winter."

Kou Fei didn't reply, but just stared straight into her eyes until she looked away and remained silent.

Few people in the room liked Feng Manyun—she was too eccentric and arrogant—but what she said was actually true.

Leaving aside celestial beings, even an ordinary Yuan Magnetic Warrior could wipe out the entire population of a city in less than a day and a night. In addition, considering the extermination methods mentioned earlier, such as destroying earth vein nodes, poisoning water sources, and damaging food supplies, the energy recharge speed would far exceed that of war.

But that is irreversible.

In Hong Fan's view, the origin of the clan was clearly not benevolence, but rather its value to the gods—therefore, leeks can be cut, but not dug up by the roots.

The meeting lasted for about an hour, finally ending near dusk.

Because the topic was too heavy, the venerable elders from the Northern Frontier, who rarely gathered together, lost their appetite for the banquet and dispersed after saying goodbye.

Soon, only two people remained in the hall.

The dim light slashed in diagonally, carving out a boundary between black and white on the rock bricks.

Huo Zhan was the last to stand up, and suddenly sneered.

"What are you laughing at, Brother?"

Kou Fei asked softly.

“I laugh at us for practicing martial arts for so many years, pouring our hearts and souls into it, only to find that we are no different from sheep and pigs raised in captivity.”

Huo Zhan pulled his gaze out from the dark red incense stick in the shadows and sighed.

"some."

Kou Fei calmly retorted.

"Of the animals born in the wild, less than half survive a year, and only 20% live to adulthood; those in pens, though their lives are not in their own hands, are fortunate to be able to eat well and live peacefully."

When the incense burned to its end, the ashes collapsed silently.

You're right.

Huo Zhan nodded silently and strode out.

At this moment, the snow outside the palace had dissipated, and the azure sky was torn open, revealing a newly emerged red sun.

The snow piled up in the courtyard, bathed in its light, appeared as tender and pink as freshly killed flesh.

······
Two months later.

March 5th, the 36th year of Zhenghe. A wild valley not far west of Fengsui City.

In the frozen, solid forest, a dense, heavy, nearly six-meter-tall solid sand ball is hurtling straight at 100 kilometers per hour; under its absolute weight of 200 tons, the trees blocking the way, regardless of height or size, are knocked down and crushed like hemp stalks.

The pheasants on the branches were startled and their flight was interrupted, cutting off the narrow path for animals.

The sand ball made several minor adjustments to its direction, bursting through the dense, chaotic coniferous forest and crashing into the cliff on the side of the valley.

A sudden burst of icy dust filled the air.

The sound of wind and thunder roared and lingered in the valley for dozens of seconds before finally stopping, even triggering a small avalanche some miles away.

After a long while, when the noise subsided, Hong Fan, who had been floating and following along, drifted down with his hands behind his back.

The slightly deformed sand sphere disintegrated on its own, revealing a huge crater behind it.

The crater is four meters in diameter and two meters deep, with radial cracks extending as far as thirty meters from its perimeter.

"It is made of granite and has a compressive strength of about 160 MPa; if TNT were to produce the same effect, it would need to weigh at least tens of kilograms; this power is enough to destroy a section of brick-clad rammed earth city wall."

Hong Fan grabbed a handful of stone chips from the pit, rubbed them together in his palms, and dust fell between his fingers.

"The disadvantages are that it starts slowly, takes time to accumulate kinetic energy, is not flexible enough in changing direction, and has a low absolute speed, but it does not consume much true essence and is very powerful."

As he spoke, he took a few steps back, closed his eyes slightly, and released his life star intuition with all his might.

Within his sea of ​​consciousness, a three-dimensional scene with a radius of 100 meters unfolded in an instant, in which the structures of sand, soil, and rock were clearly defined; in this state, Hong Fan felt as if his consciousness was flowing in a solid, and he could instinctively distinguish the direction of stress and the critical point.

【weathering.】

He silently activated the power of the sand world, simultaneously transforming several stress points within the sandy cliff; instantly, the dull sounds of rock slabs breaking echoed continuously, and large sections of the already teetering cliff collapsed during the impact.

Hong Fan did not dodge.

The scattered sand suddenly gathered at his feet, rising into a twenty-meter-tall human-shaped giant statue; this giant statue had no facial features, its arms outstretched to the sky, punching away more than a dozen rocks of varying sizes.

The sand and dust settled slowly, like mist.

Despite the intense confrontation, most of the granite blocks retained their intact structure, while the sand giant's arms were noticeably deformed.

[Faster reaction time, but limited destructive power.]

Hong Fan silently watched as Sha Liu repaired itself under Wu Xiang Ling's control.

In essence, both sand spheres and sand giants are just special applications of the desolate sand realm. At that time, facing the life-or-death pressure of the pseudo Iron Venerable, Hong Fan, with the blessing of the Dragon Soul Fruit, drove the sand flow to instinctively replicate and enlarge his body, and achieved certain results.

That battle seemed like a hallucination, and it reappeared in his dreams many times afterward.

After advancing to the Yuan Ci realm, Hong Fan finally had the ability to use the Sand Giant Statue regularly, and whenever he had free time, he couldn't help but go out of the city to practice and study it.

The power of fluids is not so intuitive.

But a towering giant naturally possesses an unparalleled sensory impact, instilling more oppression and despair in the enemy than "soft and loose" sand.
Isn't interpreting strength in the simplest way simply an amplification of the self?
Unfortunately, reality is not as wonderful as imagined.

The more times Hong Fan tried, the more he felt like he was just wasting his breath.

The colossus approached the woodland with heavy steps, took a step, spun around, and delivered a sweeping kick that snapped a giant cedar with a diameter of 2.5 meters. Its supporting foot twisted 150 degrees in the frozen ground, grinding a two-foot-deep crater.

Hong Fan simply shook his head upon seeing this.

"A single fireball can achieve the same destructive effect, but consumes only one-tenth of the true essence required for the previous set of movements."

He pressed his throbbing temples.

"And the load is still too heavy."

As the true essence of the sand world was withdrawn, the colossus collapsed with a roar.

(End of this chapter)