Elven cultivators

Chapter 445 Troop Nest, Destroyed Behind Enemy Lines (Part 2)

In the year 9550 of the Dawn Calendar, spring arrived.

Before the snow and ice had completely receded from the wasteland in the north of the continent, army after army had already set off from various key routes.

The banners of the six major powers fluttered under the same sky, and soldiers from all over the continent marched along official roads, mountain passes, and river valleys, leaving countless winding black dragons across the gray and white plains.

Grain carts, supply wagons, and golem transport wagons rolled slowly in the middle of the road, their wheels making a dull creaking sound as they rolled over the frozen ground.

This is the first time since the outbreak of the Scourge that the Dawn Continent has assembled a united army of such scale.

The entire army was divided into three routes.

The eastern route advances along the forest defense line of the northern border.

The central route traverses the Ash Wasteland, heading directly towards the Wind-Weeping Canyon.

The western route crosses the ruins of the Red Leaf Plain, pressing down on the undead army's controlled territory from the side.

The Temple of Tides dispatched a flanking force composed of sea creature warriors and deep-sea servants from the coastal direction, advancing parallel to the coastline.

The three armies advanced in the same manner: the fleet went first to bombard the enemy on a large scale, and the infantry entered the battlefield after the bombardment to clear out the remaining dead, consolidate the recaptured territory segment by segment, and then advance to the next segment. They fought steadily and cautiously, step by step.

This tactic is not radical, but it is extremely effective.

Lacking anti-air capabilities, the undead army suffered repeated defeats in the face of the Alliance's fierce offensive.

In just two months, the Alliance forces recaptured all the area between the northern border and the Ash Wasteland.

The pace of progress once exceeded the expectations of the alliance's command.

Many people began to be optimistic that, with this momentum, the Alliance would soon be able to reach Windwail Canyon and force the undead army back to the Underworld.

However, the situation soon changed.

The first abnormality occurred in the air.

As the eastern fleet flew over a valley, the Mirror Sparrow, responsible for forward reconnaissance, suddenly transmitted a set of unusual images.

In the video, a large number of grayish-white bone fragments are attached to the rock wall at the end of the valley, and the surface is covered with a grayish-green substance similar to moss, like the nest of some kind of creature.

Before the scouts could identify it, the rock wall suddenly exploded, and countless gray-white figures poured out of the cracks, rushing towards the fleet.

They were enormous skeletal birds. Their skeletons were pieced together from thousands of bones of various origins, including human skulls, animal ribs, wing bones of giant birds, and even vertebrae of dragons, all forcibly bound together by some grayish-black fascia-like substance to form huge, twisted flying bodies.

Each one has a wingspan estimated to be over twenty meters. During flight, the skeleton makes a constant, dense creaking sound, as if it might fall apart at any moment, yet it miraculously maintains its overall structure.

Their attack method is also very simple and brutal: suicidal ramming.

A giant skeletal bird crashed into the side of a flying boat at an astonishing speed. The energy shield on the surface of the boat dented violently at the point of impact, creating a violent ripple.

The skeletal giant bird's body shattered into countless bone fragments upon impact, but those fragments did not scatter; instead, they adhered to the surface of the protective shield, continuing to wriggle and try to squeeze into the gaps in the shield.

Then came the second head, the third head, and the fourth head.

Hundreds of skeletal giant birds, like a gray-white wave, swept towards the fleet from both the left and right.

They crashed into the airship's shield one after another, and each bone fragment that exploded left a wriggling grayish-white substance on the shield's surface, constantly eroding the shield's energy structure.

After enduring dozens of impacts, the protective shield of a flying ship finally collapsed, and a skeletal giant bird crawled in through the crack, tearing open the hull with its skeletal claws and slaughtering the soldiers on the deck.

The airship swayed violently in mid-air before losing buoyancy and, like a giant bird with broken wings, spun and plummeted to the ground, creating a deep crater in the frozen soil.

The remains were mixed together with bone fragments, scattered all over the ground.

The same scene played out simultaneously above the three armies. Caught completely off guard, the Allied fleet lost more than twenty Flying Ships in just three days.

Fortunately, with precautions in place, the Alliance army began using fire magic and talismans to focus on clearing away the broken bones left behind by the dead skeletal giant birds, which stopped similar aerial attacks.

However, at the same time, the alliance's air superiority has also diminished significantly.

On the other hand, the Allied forces on the ground soon realized something was wrong.

The scouts quickly sent back intelligence that strangely shaped towers had appeared on various key roads in the north.

They are made of grayish-white bones, ranging in height from ten to twenty meters, wide at the bottom, narrowing towards the top, and conical at the top.

After investigation, the Alliance discovered that these bone towers appeared to have been built specifically to detect the "scent" of living people.

Within a certain range around the Bone Tower, the presence of any living intelligent being can be detected.

This naturally includes the soldiers on the fleet.

Clearly, this facility was specifically built to counter the fleet.

Although the Flying Cloud Boat and Flying Radiance Tower can block mental detection, these bone towers do not involve the mind, but only target the special 'scent' emitted by living people.

This is a method only the undead can use. The fleet's ability to block mental detection is greatly weakened by this method of detection.

After losing the advantage brought by the fleet, the Allied forces' advance slowed down sharply.

Relying on the Bone Tower's detection network, the undead army relentlessly harassed the vanguard of the three armies with overwhelming numbers, depleting the Alliance soldiers' stamina and morale.

The battle has become a dull stalemate.

The alliance leadership quickly realized that if they didn't resolve these bone towers and conversion points, they would be bogged down in an endless war of attrition.

The undead can be continuously converted into new troops, while the Alliance's troops are limited, and it takes a long time to regenerate each fallen soldier.

A war of attrition is extremely disadvantageous for the alliance.

So the league changed its tactics.

While they collected and burned the bodies of the fallen to prevent them from being recycled by the undead, they also used the Soul-Gathering Banner provided by the Silver Moon Clan to absorb the death energy on the battlefield, cutting off the possibility of the undead replenishing their forces on the spot.

On one hand, they drew manpower from the elite forces of various factions to form elite squads, which went deep into the undead-controlled areas to find the towns that the Netherworld had set up in various parts of the north, specifically for gathering corpses and converting the undead.

These towns are often located in the heart of the country, far from the front lines, and are heavily guarded. However, once they are discovered and their location confirmed, elite squads will immediately send out signals to guide the fleet to carry out targeted destruction.

This two-pronged approach can significantly slow down the resupply rate of the undead, thus expanding the advantage in the battle.

Northern part of the mainland, Julesville.

This place was originally a mining town, surrounded by continuous black mineral veins, rich in iron and copper ore.

The city wall was built with black ore sourced locally, and thick iron chains were embedded in the heavy wall, where miners used to hang baskets that went in and out day and night.

Those gondolas have long been dismantled, and the city walls are now covered with crude crossbows pieced together from bones and iron plates.

A somber gray cloud hung over the town.

That was a materialized layer of death aura caused by an excessive number of undead in the city.

Between Süle City and the front lines, a transport route operated day and night.

The undead army loaded the corpses and remains captured at the front lines onto bone carts and transported them back to Süle City. After being transformed, the newly born undead were sent back to the front lines.

This cycle repeats endlessly, like an arsenal that will never run dry.

About a kilometer southeast of Jules City.

On a hillside eroded by the wind, more than a dozen figures lay prone among the rubble and withered grass at the top, their gazes sweeping across the undulating wasteland and landing on the city billowing thick smoke.

The composition of this team is extremely complex.

Elves, dwarves, humans, orcs... and a few hybrids whose specific races are unclear.

Their equipment varied in style; some wore the distinctive blue robes of the Silvermoon Clan, some wore the emerald green cloaks of the Emerald Court, and some wore heavy plate armor forged from the Heart of the Mountains.

Although their attire differed, the aura emanating from each of them was as deep and profound as an abyss, far surpassing that of ordinary soldiers.

Legendary rank.

Every single person in this team is a legendary powerhouse.

Ryan lay prone at the front of the group, his gaze fixed on the faint grayish-white mist above Süle City, his brows furrowed slightly.

"The number of undead in the city is probably no less than 50,000."

"After all, it's the lair of undead troops, so it's normal for it to be heavily guarded."

The speaker was a sun elf, extremely young in appearance, with golden hair and eyes, a tall and straight figure, and a faint, innate white-gold luster emanating from his body.

He is a member of the royal family of the Emerald Court named Derek. In fact, as legendary powerhouses, the members of this team all hold high positions and status within their respective factions.

However, Ryan is one of the top three true disciples of the Silvermoon Clan, and the strength of true disciples is recognized throughout the entire continent.

Therefore, everyone in the team regarded him as their leader.

Ryan turned to look at his teammates and said in a deep voice, "Then, proceed according to plan. We will set up an array here and then send a signal to guide the fleet here."

"But there's one thing everyone must remember: once the signal is sent, you can't move. If you move, the signal will be interrupted, and the fleet won't be able to pinpoint Süle City's location. So we must stay nearby until the fleet arrives."

Everyone nodded, their expressions solemn.

Although they were all legendary-level powerhouses, capable of standing alone anywhere on the continent, they were currently deep in enemy territory, and a slight misstep could cost them their lives.

Ryan took out a stack of array flags and array plates from his sleeve and began to set up the array.

His array formation technique was extremely skillful. The array flags were planted in different positions on the hilltop, and they were connected by spiritual energy to form a net-like structure that was invisible to the naked eye.

The array plate was buried in the ground, with only a palm-sized surface exposed. The surface was covered with fine runes, and after spiritual energy was injected, it slowly lit up with a pale blue light.

This formation is called the "Seven-Spinning Spirit-Intercepting Formation," a medium-sized formation that combines offense and defense.

Using array flags as nodes, it guides the earth's spiritual energy to converge on the array plate, forming an energy shield covering the entire slope. The shield can withstand continuous attacks from legendary-level enemies, while also weakening the undead forces surging in from the outside, making it difficult for them to move an inch within the array.

While Ryan was setting up the formation, Mia and several other disciples of the Primordial City also began to get busy.

They distributed their talismans and pills to everyone, and checked each of their magical artifacts and spirit weapons to ensure that nothing went wrong during the battle.

A moment later, the formation was set up.

Ryan took out a palm-sized bronze token from his pocket. The front of the token was engraved with the outline of a flying bird, and the back was decorated with a circle of complex runes.

He infused his spiritual power into the token, and the runes on its surface slowly lit up. Then, a thin, bluish-white beam of light rose from the outline of the bird, piercing straight into the sky and exploding hundreds of meters in the air, transforming into a continuously expanding halo, like ripples created when a stone is thrown into water.

The signal has been sent.

The spirits in Süle City reacted almost instantly upon hearing the signal.

The city gates suddenly burst open, and a group of greyish-white figures rushed out of the city, the sound of horses' hooves heavy and rapid, like a series of urgent drumbeats.

It is the Pale Knight.

They were covered in pale bone armor and rode pale bone horses galloping toward the hillside.

There were about three or four hundred riders. In the blink of an eye, the pale knights rushed to the edge of the slope and immediately noticed Ryan and his group.

The pale knight in the lead let out a low neigh, and his skeletal horse suddenly accelerated, leading his men to charge fiercely at them.

The runes on the array plate suddenly lit up, and a layer of light blue light spread outward from the array plate, enveloping the entire slope.

The moment the pale knight rushed into the halo, his speed suddenly slowed down, as if he had sunk into a sticky swamp.

Taking advantage of this opportunity, Ryan and his men acted decisively.

Mia's Crimson Whip unleashed a blinding flash of flame, piercing through the gaps in the formation like a fiery serpent and precisely wrapping around the neck of the nearest pale knight.

Flames seeped into the seams of the bone armor, hissing as they burned. The knight's head quickly charred and shattered in the flames, and his entire skeleton fell from the horse, crashing to the ground and breaking into several pieces.

The others also joined in. A dwarf's warhammer, crackled with lightning, crashed down, smashing a knight and his horse into a pile of shattered bones.

The orc's totem pole swept across, sending two pale knights who were rushing too fast flying.

The human mage flicked several ice spikes from his sleeve, freezing the hooves of a bone horse to the ground. His companion, who was close behind, then beheaded the rider with a single sword strike.

The battle ended in just a few minutes.

Faced with the onslaught of more than a dozen legendary powerhouses, the three hundred-plus Pale Knights were annihilated in an instant. Ryan and his men, however, showed no sign of relaxation, their gazes fixed solemnly on the direction of Sulley City.

They knew very well that the real test had only just begun.

Sure enough, the gates of Julesville opened again in no time.

This time, what emerged was not a few hundred riders, but a densely packed army of undead.

Low-ranking skeleton warriors and undead soldiers surged out of the city like a gray-white tide, pressing down along the wasteland towards the slope.

Behind them followed towering bone giants and rock beast demons, while pale knights flanked them.

However, what is even more eye-catching are the Stonefall Titans and Frost Giants mixed in with the army.

The Stonefall Titan was formed entirely from grayish-brown rocks and bones, its surface covered with crack-like patterns, from which a dark red glow of lava seeped.

Their heads were sunken deep into thick rock helmets, with only two slit-like eye openings visible, their interiors shimmering with a lava-like luster.

Its limbs were as thick as giant pillars, and each step it took left cracks and pits in the ground. Its shoulders and back were covered with layers of rock slabs, like the fault lines of a mountain.

The Frost Giant is slightly shorter, its body composed of white bones and eerie blue ice crystals, with a translucent ice shell covering the surface of the bones, reflecting a cold, faint light.

Both of these undead unit types were almost all of the Gold rank. The undead army quickly surrounded the hillside, charging in from all directions.

The moment they entered the array, they were weakened layer by layer by the energy ripples within the array, and their movements became sluggish and clumsy.

Ryan and the others stood around the array plate, methodically harvesting the undead that poured into the array.

However, the undead pouring out of Jules City seemed endless; as soon as one batch was wiped out, another would immediately pour out from the city gates, continuously filling the gaps in the encirclement.

Although low-level undead cannot break through the formation's defenses, they continuously drain the formation's energy.

This is also a tactic commonly used by the undead.

Ryan could sense that the energy in the array was slowly decreasing.

Fortunately, he had a lot of spirit stones on him, which would last him for a while.

However, the good times did not last long.

Soon, legendary-rank undead made their move in Jule City.

Pale Knights, Stonefall Titans, Frost Giants... more than a dozen legendary undead rushed out of the city and attacked Ryan and his companions.

With the arrival of the legendary undead, the pressure on Ryan and his companions increased dramatically. Ryan and Mia exchanged a glance and each threw out two guardian deities, which finally stabilized the situation.

Just then, Ryan suddenly felt an unusual vibration coming from beneath his feet, as if something was rapidly moving deep underground.

"Watch out for the ground!" Ryan suddenly hissed.

Before he finished speaking, a section of ground not far away suddenly exploded, sending rubble and dirt flying everywhere.

A gray-black undead emerged from the ground, its body resembling an ape with elongated limbs, covered in thick mud and rubble.

Its limbs are extremely long; the claws on its forelimbs can dig through the soil with incredible speed, while its hind limbs are thick and powerful.

The moment it emerged from the ground, it pounced on Derek, who was closest to it.

Derek was locked in a fierce battle with a legendary-rank frost giant and had no time to dodge. He was pounced on by the undead ape and dragged into the ground in an instant.

"Derek!" an elf from the Emerald Court exclaimed in surprise.

With Derek, a powerful combatant, gone, the defensive pressure on the team has increased significantly.

The onslaught of undead from the front became even more ferocious, with several legendary-rank undead beginning to approach the array plate from different directions, attempting to destroy the array's core.

Ryan had to devote more energy to maintaining the formation, while simultaneously bombarding the approaching legendary undead with the Golden Wheel and the Haoyang True Fire. To make matters worse, a shriek, completely different from the previous ones, suddenly came from Jule City.

The hiss was deep and drawn-out, like a cold wind blowing from the depths of the earth, carrying a death aura far purer than that of ordinary undead.

Immediately afterwards, a figure shot into the sky from the city.

It was a pale knight.

But unlike the ordinary pale knights before, it was nearly three meters tall with a frame as thick as a beam.

He held a bone spear in his hand, its shaft straight as an arrow, the tip of which condensed into a point of almost solidified grayish-white light.

The skeletal horse he sat on was much larger than an ordinary skeletal horse. Its body was covered with a layer of bone armor, and its four hooves were in the air, supporting the knight and suspending him above the city wall without touching the ground.

Saintly rank.

Ryan's expression hardened slightly, but he didn't panic much.

The importance of the Undead Conversion Point to the Underworld is self-evident, and it is perfectly normal for it to be guarded by a Saint-level undead.

They had prepared for this level of enemy before they set off.

"You all continue to guard the array plate," Ryan instructed the group. Then, he formed a hand seal and shouted in a deep voice, "Heavenly soldiers are on the battlefield, divine power manifests, summon them!" He condensed a fingertip-sized talisman in his palm and then threw it into the air.

The moment the talisman exploded, a thick bolt of lightning tore through the clouds and crashed down on the open ground in front of the array plate.

After the lightning dissipated, a tall figure stepped out from within it.

It was the celestial soldiers themselves who had descended.

The pale knight's gaze fell on the celestial soldier. The two balls of eerie blue flames contracted slightly, then he pointed his bone spear forward and spurred his horse to charge down.

The heavenly soldier raised his hand, his halberd slashing horizontally. The halberd blade and the tip of the bone spear collided violently in the void, unleashing a visible ring of shockwave that sent the undead in the formation and the soil and rocks outside flying outwards.

After the attack, both sides retreated half a step.

They are evenly matched.

However, Ryan's goal was simply to protect the Azure Light and buy time for the fleet to arrive.

As long as the heavenly soldiers can hold off the Pale Knight, that's fine.

The battle reached a stalemate.

In the midst of this tug-of-war, several tiny white dots suddenly appeared on the horizon. The white dots rapidly expanded, transforming into bluish-white flying boats, each followed by a majestic tower.

The fleet has arrived!

Dozens of flying boats spread out in a fan shape, their spirit crystal cannons simultaneously emitting dazzling light.

The three-legged golden crow bronze statue at the top of the Feiyao Tower also slowly lit up, with blazing golden flames gathering in the statue's mouth, ready to be unleashed.

In the next instant, all the attacks erupted simultaneously, sweeping over the pale knight like a tidal wave.

At the same time, the purple and white lightning on the Heavenly Soldier's Halberd surged and slashed fiercely at the Pale Knight.

The pale knight's body was gradually disintegrated in the beam of light, his bone armor shattered, and his bones turned to dust.

It attempted to fight back, but under the restraint of the heavenly soldiers and the continuous firepower suppression of the fleet, it finally collapsed with a crash, shattering into a pile of grayish-white wreckage.

The fleet immediately turned its cannons and aimed them at Süle City.

The Spirit Crystal Cannon and the Golden Crow True Fire poured down simultaneously, causing the entire Jule City to tremble violently amidst the barrage.

The transformation array nodes were destroyed one by one, the bone towers collapsed one after another, and the undead in the city were wiped out in large numbers amidst flames and beams of light.

Seeing this, everyone breathed a sigh of relief. "Derek..."

The legendary powerhouse of the Jade Court had barely uttered a sound when the ground not far away suddenly exploded.

A figure burst out from underground and crashed heavily onto the open ground with a thud, kicking up a cloud of dirt and pebbles.

It was Derek.

He was covered in mud and grayish-black putrid liquid, his blond hair was disheveled and stuck to his forehead, and his armor was covered with cracks of varying depths.

A trace of dark red blood still clung to the corner of his mouth, indicating that he had suffered a serious injury.

However, he was tightly clutching a grayish-black limb in his hand.

Derek threw the severed limb on the ground, let out a long sigh, then raised his head and gave everyone a weary smile.

"That guy was tough to deal with, but we've finally got him out of there."

Everyone was both surprised and delighted.

Ryan glanced at Derek with surprise.

The dark gray undead was clearly a legendary creature skilled in underground combat, moving with incredible speed and agility in the mud, able to conceal its presence using the soil and putrid liquid. After Derek was dragged underground, the battlefield shifted entirely to the undead's territory.

Even so, he was still able to turn the tables and defeat his opponent in that environment, which shows how strong he was.

Ryan thought to himself that if he were in the same situation, he might not be able to do better than Derek.

It seems that this sun sprite is even stronger than he expected.

"You've worked hard." Ryan reached out and helped Derek up from the ground. "Take a rest, and leave the rest to the fleet."

Derek nodded without refusing.

Ryan turned to look at the distant city of Süle, where thick smoke was rising and the firelight illuminated half the sky.

They have successfully completed their mission.