Volume 3 – The Place Where My Heart Feels At Peace, Chapter 35: Assault
“It’s Officer Qian! Open the door, quickly!” a sentinel of the 131th Company yelled loudly.
His voice spread far away, and the soldiers resting in tents planted along the wall as temporary camp crawled out of their beds and rushed towards the wall.
Qianye’s footsteps weren’t too quick. He ran at a fixed speed on the wasteland before stopping in front of the small town’s entrance. He raised his head for a look before waving his hands to stop the sentinels from opening the door. Then, he leaped up onto the wall. The small town’s composite steel door only opened up a slit before the wire rope of the gear rolled back along the strip and closed the door once more.
Bao Zhengcheng was already standing beside the town’s door. The heads of two large human-shaped arachne were tossed down from the wall and landed beside his feet. Qianye then jumped down and said simply, “I’m back.”
Bao Zhengcheng nodded strongly before striding over and giving Qianye a heavy hug.
Suspicious glitters were already forming in the eyes of the man who was as brawny as a bristling bear. He rubbed his eyes in a fluster and muttered a swear, “Dammit! Tonight’s mountain wind sure is strong!” Then, he scratched his head in attempt to conceal his embarrassment, “Boss, what are we going to do now? Do we retreat or do we fight here?”
Qianye smiled bitterly before saying, “It’s impossible to retreat now. Earth Castle has already been surrounded. We can only defend here to the end and await reinforcements.”
“Surrounded?” the face of an expeditionary force battalion commander changed greatly. His feet were obviously a little shaky.
“That’s right. I’ve seen more than five hundred dark race regular soldiers and several thousand cannon fodders along the way. What’s wrong, major? Are you planning to retreat?” Qianye asked without batting an eyelid.
Bao Zhengcheng’s thick eyebrows twisted together as he subconsciously reached for the pistol around his waist. If the size of the dark race forces Qianye saw alone had reached this level of scale, then this so-called retreat would be in fact to leave behind the majority of the men to cover their retreat. Only the officers of ranking lieutenant and above would have a chance to escape. Right now this battalion commander was the highest ranking officer of the scene. If he chose to escape right away, then the entire town would fall into disorder before they even started fighting.
The battalion commander’s face alternated between colors of green and white. A moment later, he finally let out a bitter smile and said, “If we retreat now only death awaits. Let us defend and hope that we can hold out until reinforcement arrives. Those masters at the back though, sigh!”
Bao Zhengcheng slapped him once heavily on the shoulder before saying, “Ignore those masters at the back. Go summon anyone who can pick up a gun first! If we guard this place then there is still hope, or we are all going to die.”
The battalion commander nodded and left in a hurry.
Bao Zhengcheng approached the serious-looking Qianye and asked, “Boss, are there really that many black blooded bastards out there?”
Qianye let out a somewhat bitter smile and said, “It will only be more than what I said.”
A cold gleam flashed across Bao Zhengcheng’s eyes as he said seriously, “From this scale, we can basically confirm that the dark races’ collective army is on the move. If Xichang City really had not realized this at all, then the second Earth Castle’s defenses fall we are going to lose at least a hundred or so kilometers of defense line.”
Qianye said indifferently, “No matter how f*cked up the imperial military intelligence office is, I don’t think they would make such a mistake.”
The duo looked into each other’s eyes, and Bao Zhengcheng suddenly said, “It’s not Miss Qiqi.”
Qianye was startled slightly.
“She would not use us as cannon fodders to gain military accomplishments. Miss Qiqi may appear to be bad tempered, but she is not this kind of person.”
Qianye looked at Bao Zhengcheng’s sincere expression and did not know if he should nod or not.
For an instant, he did harbor such doubts before. It would be a joke if they were to say that expeditionary forces knew nothing about the mobilization of the dark races’ collective army at all. However, if battles were to be expected in the near future, then all frontline battle groups should have been notified that the defense line would be shrunk. Only those who were predefined as cannon fodders would be an exception, and these people would knowingly or unknowingly sound the first shot of the battle and be expended fully on the battlefield.
Cannon fodder tactic was something neither the humans nor the dark races could avoid.
But if it wasn’t Qiqi, then there was a problem with that military advisor grade intelligence map. The map was sent together with the munitions, and the seal on the goods were intact. Although the goods were transported using the expeditionary forces’ transportation channel, it was the Yin Family’s officers who escorted them. So just who was it that were able to tamper with the goods right in front of the expeditionary forces and the Yin Family’s eyes?
Qianye suddenly smiled and said, “It’s not important who did it. Our first priority is to survive this battle. As long as we return alive, we will know the truth eventually.”
Bao Zhengcheng nodded. After a moment of silence, he suddenly cried out, “Boss!”
“What is it?”
“If we really can’t hold out any longer, then you should evacuate first! We will help you pin down the enemy troops!” Bao Zhengcheng thought for a moment before saying clumsily, “Who knows, maybe those rubbish back at Xichang City really didn’t know that the collective army here had been mobilized. Someone has to go back and report to them.”
Qianye ignored Bao Zhengcheng’s clumsy excuse and frowned silently. He had never considered even a trace of this possibility in this regard. In the Red Scorpion, the rules dictated that the officers should be the ones to cover their subordinates’ retreat.
Bao Zhengcheng grabbed Qianye’s shoulders and shook him once strongly. He exclaimed in a solemn tone, “Boss! Get back alive! If, I’m just saying if, but if there’s really someone behind all this…”
His identity as a soldier kept him from saying more, but Qianye understood his unsaid words. Staring at the bloodshot eyes of this bear-like man, Qianye ultimately nodded very, very slowly. This tiny bit of movement was in fact, harder to execute than enduring thirty five cycles of origin tides.
In less than an hour, a shrill alarm was sounded above the small town. Qianye and Bao Zhengcheng climbed up the defense walls and looked outside.
At the faraway horizon, a line of black tide slowly but surely surged towards their direction. It was the army of the dark races!
“Boss, remember—”
Qianye interrupted him and said firmly, “That will come after the fight!”
The dark races’ army slowly approached Earth Castle as it surrounded the town from all directions.
In the camp, the battalion commander had already propped up a weapon that looked like an anti-air machine gun. With a crisp pop, he fired a ball of colorful origin fireworks several dozens meters into the air. The light stayed in the air and did not dissipate, “Motherf*cker, I wonder how many sentry posts those dark blooded bastards left us!” the battalion commander swore while wiping the sweat on his head.
People began jumped out one after another from three or four sentry posts disguised as large wood within a dozen or so kilometers of radius. This was the first time many sentinels had seen the beacon fireworks report such a big amount of enemies. However, the second the exited their sentry posts, they immediately discovered that they were heavily surrounded already. Only the sentry post at the furthest end had a gap, and the sentinels over there began running towards the back at top speed.
A group of vampires noticed these few sentinels, and so they sent a small team of vampire soldiers to stop them. The main force was still advancing towards Earth Castle.
Half an hour later, a Blood Esquire ran back like the wind and knelt before a vampire elder, saying, “My baron, your subordinate is powerless. He has let a human escape.”
“Escape?” killing intent abruptly burst out of the vampire baron’s bloody red eyes as he howled, “If you can’t even catch a few insects then why do I still need you?”
Cold sweat rolled down the Blood Esquire’s neck as he knelt on the ground. He did not dare to complain at all that he and the sentinels’ starting spot were almost twenty kilometers apart.
The old baron finally withdrew his anger as he said coldly, “When we begin the assault, you will be the first to charge in!”
“Yes! My liege!” the blood esquire promised before he finally dared to stand up.
Several thousands of dark race soldiers approached the small city, and the unusually large and sinister figures that were mixed within their ranks put so much pressure on the expeditionary forces defending on the walls that they almost suffocated. Normally, they could scarcely find high rank soldiers, but now dozens of them had appeared all at once!
Although the enemy had only approached them from three directions and left them a door at the back, any soldiers with a shred of common sense would know that they absolutely could not abandon the city and escape unless there was no other choice. If they stayed cooped up inside the city then they might yet have the slightest chance at survival, but if they escaped to the wasteland then there was no way they could outrun the dark races.
Further back, there were even more dark races who were biding their time. This first wave of attack was just a probe. If the defenders performed poorly, then they could turn this probing attack into an all out attack at any moment.
As the dark races approached, the atmosphere slowly turned oppressive. It was like the calm before the storm.
Suddenly, a few flares were shot into the air from the small town, showering the battlefield with a blue and white light. The second the flares had gone up, the high rank soldiers of the dark races had either closed their eyes or summoned a black fog and a red light to shield their eyes from the glare. Many of the cannon fodders did not have this ability, so waves of confusion were evoked when the glare of the flares had pierced their eyes.
The powerful human-shaped arachne, werewolves and vampires summoned their natural might to suppress the confusion. Some had even killed off several cannon fodders that had completely lost their consciousness before the confusion was finally suppressed.
It was at this moment a sound that was like muffled thunder broke through the silence of the night. A ball of light lit up on the high spot of a sentry tower above the walls, drawing a clear trajectory of firing line through the gray white sky and falling right onto a high rank werewolf’s body!
This stalwart three meters tall werewolf was struck backwards by the shot, the blood fountain and bits of innards before his chest spraying several meters tall into the air! Even with the werewolf’s terrifying regeneration ability, he was unable to climb to his feet any longer. There was a terrifying, empty hole in his chest revealing innards that had nearly been torn and burned away completely.
Eagleshot!
Eagleshot’s rumble drew the curtains of the big battle.
The dark race soldiers surged towards the small town like tide waters. There were giant spiders, all sorts of wargs and several thousands of blood thralls among them.
Unhurriedly, Qianye loaded yet another origin bullet into Eagleshot and aimed at a human-shaped arachne three hundred meters away this time. As Eagleshot rumbled, a huge hole instantly appeared on this rank five arachne’s body. The upper half of its body had nearly been broken in half by the shot!
During the time it took for Eagleshot to rumble twice, the dark races had already surged beneath the walls and began climbing.
The large spiders could climb directly up the defense walls, whereas the wargs could utilize the force of a full run to leap up the wall’s body, jump vertically for a few times and get up to the ten meter tall wall.
The blood thralls were the only ones who were powerless to scale the walls. Therefore, they pushed many long ladders onto the walls and climbed their way up through the paths opened by the arachne, wargs, and high ranking soldiers.
Suddenly, there was a rumble, and Qianye felt that the bottom of his feet and the entire defense walls were shaking intensely inside the sentry tower. He poked out his head and saw several high ranking werewolves controlling a weapon that looked like a short barrel cannon. As dark origin power flashed from the cannon, a metallic artillery shell would be shot out and strike fiercely on the town’s door.
The power of this origin siege cannon was fairly strong. It was a heavy weapon that was relatively commonly seen in siege warfare. Qianye frowned. The enemy was a part of the collective army. Otherwise, it was all guerilla warfare if it was normal war preparations. Who in their right minds would bring such a heavy guy out their doorsteps?