Changing Life And Career? I Planted The World Tree At The Beginning

After capturing Stronghold City, Chen Yu's influence expanded once again.

All the monsters within the range of Stronghold City became his subordinates and joined the Monster Legion.

The losses suffered from capturing Stronghold City were immediately replenished.

As for why he could command the monsters within his territory, while his Horadric Kingdom couldn't, Chen Yu was not clear and could only attribute it to the instance mechanism.

Due to limited time, Chen Yu did not stay in Stronghold City and immediately led the monster army to continue advancing.

Three hours later, they arrived at the second main city near the front line.

There were no defensive forces in the city, only some elderly and weak soldiers who didn't have time to retreat.

The monster army rushed in and quickly occupied the city, then advanced towards the next main city under the cover of night.

By the next morning, Chen Yu had captured the third and fourth main cities along the way.

Apart from some scattered adventurers causing trouble along the way and killing a few small monsters, there was no decent resistance.

Feeling somewhat strange, Chen Yu contacted Su Miaoyue through the communication emblem.

Su Miaoyue told Chen Yu that the Horadric Kingdom had contacted the Snowfield Giant City and was preparing to join forces with the Stuart Empire to resist the Demon Dragon forces.

However, they found that the giant city was completely empty, with only a few adventurers stationed there.

So, they were scared and immediately retreated to defend the royal city, preparing to gather all their forces for a decisive battle.

The other main cities were all abandoned, in order to buy time for some pre-war preparations.

Upon hearing the news, Chen Yu wasted no time and divided his monster army and plant life into three groups, with two little elves leading each wave to attack different main cities.

Sure enough, they encountered no difficult bones to chew along the way, and the monster army won one battle after another.

On the seventh day of the ranking competition, they captured six main cities.

On the eighth day of the ranking competition, they captured eight main cities.

On the ninth day of the ranking competition, they swept away the remaining two main cities.

Chen Yu's monster legion grew rapidly like a snowball.

By the morning of the tenth day, the number of cannon fodder monsters had reached millions.

On the morning of the tenth day of the ranking competition.

The mighty monster army had already reached the area near the Heradic Royal City, less than 30 kilometers away from the royal city.

In fact, on the ninth day at noon, Chen Yu had already captured 20 main cities.

However, due to the high-intensity marching in the past few days, the monster legion had become a mess.

Monsters of different races were densely packed together, with constant conflicts.

If it weren't for Chen Yu's orders suppressing them, they would probably have started killing each other.

Since there was still plenty of time, Chen Yu ordered a day of rest and took the opportunity to integrate the monster legion.

...

Heradic Royal City.

On the city walls, defensive facilities such as arrow towers, cannon towers, and magic towers were urgently built, almost crowded together.

Outside the city walls, there were a series of lethal traps such as trenches and caltrops spread out.

The army surrounded the city walls, ready for battle.

The candidates were also distributed throughout the battlefield, waiting for the arrival of the enemy.

In the Heradic Royal Palace, the king, wearing a heavy golden crown, paced back and forth anxiously in front of the throne.

"Your Majesty, there is news from over there."

The queen walked in from outside the hall, her expression not looking good.

"How is the situation?" The king immediately looked up with hope.

But when he saw the queen's gloomy expression, his heart sank.

He sighed and said, "My father told me that the Stuart Empire did not withdraw their troops from the Snowfield Giant City. In fact, they are even searching for the people of the Snowfield Giant City!"

"Could it be that the people of a great city can disappear out of thin air without leaving any trace?" the king said incredulously. "What should we do now? Can your father support us?"

"No," the queen replied with a bitter smile, shaking her head. "The empire has urgently conducted research, but still hasn't found the cause of the teleportation array's destruction."

"Now, we can only rely on ourselves!"

Just then, a crimson pillar of light suddenly rose from the ground outside the palace, shooting straight into the sky.

"What is that?"

"It seems to have a...very oppressive aura."

The king and queen quickly walked out of the palace.

Before they could call for guards to investigate the source of the pillar of light, one after another crimson pillars suddenly rose throughout the entire royal city.

Hundreds of pillars quickly caught everyone's attention.

The city guards responsible for maintaining order quickly found the source of the pillars.

It was a black emblem engraved with six intersecting bloodstains.

Some of the emblems were even hidden on the examinees!

...

Meanwhile, in the capital city, at the headquarters of the Soaring Dragon Empire's high school entrance examination command center.

An examiner responsible for monitoring the exam's instances hurriedly approached the chief examiner of this year's entrance exam, Rank Nine Martial Arts Master Hua Yan.

"Chief Examiner, during the routine inspection of the ranking match instance, I discovered traces of Abyss magic with extremely high purity."

"Extremely pure Abyss magic? Are they examinees from the demon profession?" Hua Yan opened his eyes and asked slowly.

"No, they are novice professionals. It's impossible for them to possess that level of Abyss magic," the examiner said urgently. "I suspect that only Rank Eight or higher experts could have such Abyss magic!"

"Abyss magic at the Forbidden Expert level?" Hua Yan's face darkened. "Let's go, let's go to the control center."

"Yes, sir."

Hua Yan and the examiner who reported to him walked together, entering a hall filled with intricate patterns.

In the middle of the hall, there was a crystal pedestal.

Above the pedestal floated a pale blue vortex with a diameter of four to five meters.

This vortex was the "entity" of the entrance exam ranking match instance's teleportation gate, as well as the control center of the instance.

Hua Yan reached out and pressed his hand on the blue teleportation gate, carefully sensing it.

After a few seconds, his expression became serious.

"What about the monitoring footage of the instance? Quickly bring it up! I want to see what's happening inside the instance."

"Yes, sir. Please follow me."

The examiner immediately led the way, bringing Hua Yan to another hall.

In the hall, there were dozens of exam supervisors, and in front of each supervisor was a white crystal projecting real-time scenes from the instance.

Hua Yan pulled a supervisor aside and sat down next to the crystal, starting to manipulate it to move the monitoring footage.

"Everyone, there's a situation!"

Suddenly, one of the supervisors stood up and shouted.

"What's the situation?" Hua Yan immediately stood up.

"Chief Examiner!"

All the supervisors saw Hua Yan and immediately stood up to salute.

Ignoring them, Hua Yan went directly to the examiner who called out and looked at the scene projected by the white crystal.

In the footage, crimson pillars of light rose from the ground, intersecting and converging in mid-air, gradually forming a seemingly chaotic but traceable complex pattern.

"This is..."

"A...demonic...ritual!"

Hua Yan's face changed drastically as he gritted his teeth and said four words.