pjbooks Chapter 103 The Last Line of Defense
Chapter 103 The Last Line of Defense
The alarm for Blackwind Canyon spread across the globe at dawn.
This time, it's no longer a localized conflict.
On the massive satellite map of the Western Border Command Center, the red dots representing the monster migration had converged into a crimson ocean, surging out layer upon layer from the depths of Black Wind Canyon, like a bleeding wound that had split open in the earth. The energy readings of these dots were no longer the former C or B levels; they started at least at A level, and dozens of S-level signals, as blazing as lighthouses, were slowly but steadily moving towards the Dragon Kingdom.
"Of the seventy-two Demon Kings, more than forty have been confirmed to be in position." Chu Tianxiong's voice was hoarse, his bloodshot eyes fixed on the screen. "Their formation is a standard Abyss assault formation, with low-level magical beasts leading the charge to wear them down, demon generals directing operations in the center, and demon kings bringing up the rear. Their target is Liangzhou Fortress, three hundred kilometers away."
Liangzhou Fortress, the most important town in western China of the Dragon Kingdom, is also the last line of defense protecting the inland heartland. Once it falls, the fertile lands stretching for thousands of miles behind it will be defenseless, and tens of millions of people will face the demons' slaughter.
"The first batch of reinforcements urgently dispatched by the General Administration from various war zones has completed its assembly in Liangzhou," an operations staff officer reported. "It includes two S-level Awakened, thirty A-level, and five hundred combat personnel of B-level or above. Further reinforcements are on their way, but..."
"But we can't stop them," Ye Wuhen finished his sentence for him. The sword saint was still wearing that dark gray robe, holding the hilt of his broken sword, his tone as calm as if stating a fact, "An S-rank can only barely protect themselves in front of a Demon King. A few of us old guys might be able to stop a few Demon Kings, but there are more than forty of them."
The command hall was completely silent. Everyone knew that Ye Wuhen was right. For three hundred years, humanity's war against the demon gods had always been fought with blood and lives, dragged out, and exchanged for that slim chance of a turnaround.
"I'll go myself."
Zhou Tianze suddenly stood up, his short, silvery-white hair standing on end, crackling with electricity. His broken spear had been repaired, its tip leaping with dangerous lightning: "I almost got killed in the Apostle Hall, this is perfect for stretching my muscles with these Abyss scum! I'll stall for as long as I can, buying that kid some time."
"Jiang Chen's side..." Luo Qinghe turned to look at Chu Tianxiong.
"He's on his way." Chu Tianxiong took a deep breath. "And he sent a message through Su Ze."
"What did you say?"
Chu Tianxiong's gaze suddenly became extremely complex. He raised his head and repeated the sentence, word by word: "He said, 'Have all troops retreat ten miles to clear the battlefield. If one of these demons comes, I will kill it; if a group comes, I will slaughter the whole group.'"
A chilling killing intent seemed to pierce through the communicator, permeating the entire command hall. Everyone was stunned.
Meanwhile, outside Black Wind Canyon, in the Demon Clan's central command tent.
This was a grotesque tent hastily constructed from countless colossal beast skeletons and abyssal black iron, with the chilling banner of the Nine-Headed Serpent Demon God fluttering atop it. Inside, a being dressed in tattered black robes, half his face a withered old man and the other half a goat's skull, sat upon a throne forged from solidified lava. This was none other than the Seventh Pillar Demon God, the Thousand-Eyed Plague—Bartholomew.
His dark green eye slowly rotated, scanning the group of demon kings below, each with a different form but exuding a terrifying aura.
"A mere human fortress has forced us to gather here." A burly demon king, covered in ice-blue bone armor, growled disdainfully. "Lord Balsaron, allow me to lead my forces as the vanguard. Within an hour, we will raze Liangzhou to the ground!"
"Fool." Balsalon's voice was hoarse, like the hiss of countless venomous snakes. "Our target has never been Liangzhou Fortress. It's that human who killed Astra and Morgana—Jiang Chen. Any fool who underestimates him will suffer the same fate as those two fallen apostles."
He paused, the parasitic patterns deep within his dark green eyes moving faster: "Pass down the order: the entire army maintains formation and is not allowed to advance rashly. We'll wait here for him. Use these hundreds of thousands of demonic beasts, and the lives of you seventy-two demon kings, to find out his limits and discover his weaknesses."
The demon lords exchanged bewildered glances, their eyes filled with shock and confusion. Using their entire demon army as cannon fodder, just to test one person?
"What if he's really that strong?" the Ice Armor Demon King couldn't help but ask.
"If he crushes you all with power we cannot comprehend..." A strange and ferocious smile slowly spread across one side of Balsalon's goat skull. "Then I will take action myself. While he exhausts himself crushing you ants, I will use my corrupting laws to transform him, along with his true essence, his Dao heart, and everything else, into my nourishment. Immortal Emperor... what wonderful nourishment."
The demon god's laughter, like the hooting of an owl, shook the entire canyon, foreshadowing the beginning of a war that would be recorded in human history, a war that would surpass everyone's imagination.
Liangzhou Fortress.
This steel fortress, which has stood on the Gobi Desert for nearly a century, has never been as quiet as it is today.
The old-fashioned searchlights on the city walls slowly rotated in the pre-dawn darkness, their pale beams sweeping across the blood-soaked wasteland below. Wherever the beams passed, a scene of carnage unfolded—mountains of shattered monster carcasses, broken bone spikes and torn carapaces gleaming coldly in the blood. There were empty shells of armored rhinoceroses torn open from the inside, charred limbs of shadow wolves, and countless other unnamed, deformed creatures from the depths of the abyss, never before seen in the sunlight, all now transformed into the thick, dark red mud beneath the city walls.
But none of the guards on the city wall went to look at the corpses of those monsters.
Their eyes were all fixed on the black line stretching across the Gobi Desert in the distance.
That's the Demon King's army.
At the forefront were the Abyss Heavy Infantry. Each one stood three meters tall, their bodies covered in dark purple armor, the surface of which swirled with a corrosive slime. They wielded tower shields forged from Abyss Black Iron, the shields almost seamlessly joined together, forming a mobile wall stretching for miles. Behind the shields were countless Abyss Crossbowmen, blind but with each crossbow bolt taut, its arrowheads coated with a deadly, eerie green poison.
At the very center of the entire military formation, dozens of figures radiating terrifying pressure floated.
The Seventy-Two Demon Kings of the Abyss.
They came in various forms: some hovered in mid-air with bat wings on their backs, some stood on foot clad in bone armor, some resembled a rolling black mist without a fixed shape, and some were simply skeletons enveloped in dark red flames. But they all had one thing in common—the energy fluctuations emanating from each of them were consistently above S-rank. The strongest few, those at the forefront, had an aura surrounding them that had reached the SSS-rank threshold in the classification of human awakened beings.
At the very front of this group of demon kings, hovered a figure dressed in a tattered black robe.
The seventh demon god, the plague of a thousand eyes—Barthalon.
He stood in the void, the sand beneath his feet silently rotting.
No demon king dared approach him within a hundred paces. Those who got too close had become part of the ever-expanding dark green swamp beneath his feet.
"Is this humanity's last line of defense?"
Balsalon's dark green eyes slowly rolled, sweeping over the towering alloy walls of Liangzhou Fortress. His voice was hoarse and husky, carrying an undisguised disappointment.