Volume 1, Chapter 62 – The Demonic Beasts Arrive

After handing Liu Ping over to the squad leader in charge of this stretch of the wall, Shi Lan turned and climbed back down, returning to the edge of the training range.

By sundown, the four sides of the city wall had recruited several hundred people with decent archery, among whom nearly a hundred could hit the bull’s-eye at a hundred paces.

Aside from these, several dozen martial artists had also gone up onto the walls to help defend the city. Many were familiar faces Shi Lan had seen before—those who had passed the selection at the City Lord’s residence and taken their reward before leaving.

With this batch of fresh blood joining in, the silhouettes on the battlements were finally no longer so sparse.

Beyond those who came to help defend the city, Nie Yangze had also gathered all the able-bodied men in the city into one place, ready to be dispatched at any time.

Watching all this, Shi Lan finally felt a bit more confidence settle in her heart.

That night, pot after pot of cooked meat was carried up onto the wall. Along with the meat came a series of simple tents. Clearly, no one would be going down from the city walls tonight.

After dinner, Huangfu Yun gathered everyone together and began making arrangements.

Since most of those who came to help defend the city were Mortals, it was obviously impossible to expect them to draw the strings of the Demon-Suppressing Crossbows themselves. Each of them would have to be assigned a martial artist whose sole job was to cock the crossbow and load arrows for them.

A martial artist at the fifth stage of the Body Tempering Realm would be exhausted after drawing the crossbow a dozen times in a row and would need time to recover, so at most they could support two crossbowmen firing at full speed.

Those at the sixth stage were a bit better, but after pulling the bowstring twenty-odd times in succession, they too would be at their limits. At best, they could service three crossbowmen and still maintain the fastest rate of fire.

All the veterans of the Demon-Suppressing Army were at least at the seventh stage of the Body Tempering Realm. Among the new batch that had joined with Shi Lan, even the weakest were at the peak of the sixth stage. Those weaker than that had already fallen in the campaigns of the past days.

Huangfu Yun did not assign the Demon-Suppressing Army to the task of cocking crossbows for others. Instead, he handed that duty over to the martial artists from the City Lord’s residence and those who had joined later.

There were quite a few experts among the City Lord’s martial artists, including several at the Innate Realm and plenty at the ninth stage of the Body Tempering Realm.

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Naturally, those few Innate Realm martial artists would not be doing this sort of work. They had more important tasks ahead of them.

None of the martial artists raised any objections to Huangfu Yun’s arrangements. Helping to draw bowstrings was certainly safer than going down to fight demonic beasts at close quarters.

Once he’d finished assigning the patrols for the night, Huangfu Yun dismissed everyone to rest.

Shi Lan returned to her tent with no trace of sleepiness. She sat cross-legged and began digesting the blood and flesh essence from the meat she’d eaten for dinner.

……

“Skree!”

“Skree—”

Sharply piercing cries that shot straight into the sky, along with a sudden uproar, snapped Shi Lan awake in an instant.

Lifting the tent flap, she hurried up onto the city wall. Dawn had already arrived, and the morning light bathed heaven and earth.

After a quick scan of the situation, Shi Lan fixed her gaze on several massive shadows hundreds of meters up in the sky above her.

Those huge shadows turned out to be several predatory birds with ink-black wings. Their wingspans were in no way inferior to the Golden Flame Eagle Shi Lan had seen before—if anything, they were even larger.

The Demon-Suppressing Army soldiers all around had already raised their Demon-Suppressing Crossbows, but the bolts from those weapons could not harm the giant raptors flying so high above.

Most of the arrows were blown far aside by the violent gales whipped up by their wings before they could even get close. The few that did strike their bodies might as well have hit steel, sparking as they glanced off the feathers and slid away.

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Huangfu Yun stopped the few Innate Realm martial artists who were about to take to the skies on their artifacts, then strode over to the Nine-Bow Bed Crossbow. He turned the mechanism, and the massive siege crossbow slowly tilted upward, finally rotating to aim directly at the giant birds circling in the sky!

Once he finished adjusting the aim, Huangfu Yun ran his hand along the pitch-black bowstring. He exhaled lightly, then drew it all the way back. At the same time, he kicked up a bundle of Cloud-Piercing Bolts placed beside the bed crossbow.

The thin cords binding the Cloud-Piercing Bolts snapped in an instant. The four thick bolts sprang up like spears, dropping flawlessly into the grooves of the siege crossbow!

The preparations complete, Huangfu Yun did not hesitate. He instantly pulled the firing lever of the bed crossbow.

“Thrum!”

A deafening chord that seemed to pierce clouds and shatter stone rang out, like thunder exploding in a flat pan!

The four Cloud-Piercing Bolts shot into the sky, wrapped in rolling waves of air nearly a hundred zhang long!

Before the circling giant eagles could even react, they were instantly pierced through by the Cloud-Piercing Bolts. Each huge body now bore a gaping hole more than seven feet across, blood spraying across the sky!

“Skree—”

“Skree!”

With a series of shrill, drawn-out screams, the black shadows dropped toward the ground like kites with their strings cut, without a single one left standing.

Huangfu Yun beckoned, and several Innate Realm martial artists rose into the air on their artifacts, catching the massive falling corpses of the giant eagles and placing them beneath the city wall. A few other Innate Realm martial artists patrolled through the air, searching for any trace of the Cloud-Piercing Bolts.

In the end, they recovered only three of the four bolts, and one of those was badly worn.

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Shi Lan walked over to the Nine-Bow Bed Crossbow, awe surging through her. As expected of a vicious weapon capable of killing Earth Fiend Realm demonic beasts—its power was truly terrifying.

“The demonic beasts are here!”

A shout rang out suddenly.

Shi Lan strode quickly to the edge of the battlements. Sure enough, a herd of more than two thousand demonic beasts was charging closer in a cloud of dust, now less than five li from the city gates.

“Man the crossbows!” Huangfu Yun roared. The other centurions likewise barked their orders, and most people rushed toward the section of wall facing the oncoming herd.

The sound of bowstrings being drawn rang out one after another.

Shi Lan hurried back to her tent, took up her Demon-Suppressing Crossbow, cocked it and loaded a bolt, then returned to the battlements.

By the time the herd of demonic beasts had come within a li of the city gates, nearly a thousand Demon-Suppressing Crossbows were fully drawn.

“Loose!”

When the herd closed to within a hundred zhang of the city, the centurions gave the order in unison.

“Whoosh!”

“Whoosh!”

Steel bolts shot from the strings. Nearly a thousand shafts merged into a rain of arrows that fell over the beast herd.

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“Awwooo—”

“Hiss—”

“Roar—”

Miserable cries of all kinds rose one after another, bestial roars shaking the sky.

The arrow rain paused for just a moment, then poured down once more. After two or three volleys, more than eighty to ninety percent of the two thousand-odd demonic beasts lay dead. The few that still lived were only clinging to their last breaths.

Even the swiftest demonic beast had not managed to get within fifty zhang of the city gate before being shot dead.

A cheer went up along the city wall, full of the joy of victory.

Yet the faces of the centurions and the Demon-Suppressing Army remained calm, without the slightest hint of delight. This was only the vanguard. The main horde of demonic beasts was still behind.

The tightly shut city gates slowly opened. Thousands of able-bodied men surged out of the city, quickly setting to work clearing the battlefield, recovering the arrows, and hauling away the heaps of demonic beast corpses.

In less than half an hour, the battlefield was cleaned bare. Before Twin Moon City there remained only vast swathes of blood, mixed with fur and scales from the beasts—without a single arrow left behind.

Once the demonic beast corpses were brought into the city, they were immediately skinned and dismembered, turned into great chunks of flesh and stored away.

The bent and battered steel arrows were taken to several blacksmiths in the city to be ground and reforged. It was as if the entire Twin Moon City had become a single whole, ceaselessly in motion.