Chapter 187 - 144: Ultimate Attack, Swift Raid on Ice Mirror Lake
Chapter 187: Chapter 144: Ultimate Attack, Swift Raid on Ice Mirror Lake
On a battlefield glimmering with the first light of dawn, fifty thousand Iron Cavalry led the charge, followed by a dark, crushing mass of soldiers, surging like a tidal wave toward a camp belonging to Ice Mirror Lake.
Their speed was incredible.
At this hour, most people were sound asleep.
Even if the thundering hooves alerted the Ice Mirror Lake Village Soldiers in the camp, it was too late by the time they scrambled to don their armor. The grand army had already charged in.
Lu Yuan leaped from his warhorse, soaring through the air.
He swung his arms, and Fist Gang erupted from his body.
The black Fist Seals transformed into raging spheres of energy about a meter and a half in diameter the moment they left his body.
Like the fists of a giant, they crashed down onto the battlefield. There were no Arrays in play—this was a pure contest of numbers and will.
Caught in the surprise attack, many Ice Mirror Lake Warriors died in their tents before they could even react.
Warhorses trampled campfires, sending sparks flying. When they landed on tents, they ignited raging infernos.
Blood splattered into the dirt, turning it to mud.
It was a complete steamroll. The Ice Mirror Lake Village Soldiers hadn’t even donned their armor, let alone found their warhorses.
A Celestial King Stronghold Village Soldier, fully helmeted and armored, galloped past on a black warhorse. He swung the Meteor Hammer in his hand, bringing it down hard on an Ice Mirror Lake Warrior who stood frozen in terror.
The hammer’s head, the size of a man’s fist, was covered in spikes and sharp edges.
Whistling through the air, it smashed squarely into the Ice Mirror Lake Warrior’s eye socket.
His head visibly caved in, and his eyeball was squeezed out.
Brains and blood streamed down his face.
Scenes like this were happening all over the battlefield.
Some were decapitated, others were run through with spears, and still others were cleaved in half.
"You bastards from Celestial King Stronghold! How dare you!" A figure shot through the air. He wore no armor, but his power was immense—he had reached the Void Manipulation realm. The very wind seemed to gather beneath his feet as he flew.
He was the strongest expert in this contingent.
He charged toward the army, followed by a large group of Innate Experts, all high-ranking officers. None of them had time to don armor, but their strength was formidable, and ordinary soldiers were no match for them.
After plunging into the cavalry formation, their fists and feet collided with the soldiers, killing many of them instantly.
A squad of fully armored Celestial King Stronghold cavalrymen.
The Void Manipulation expert from Ice Mirror Lake executed a sweeping kick from mid-air, smashing into their heads and causing more than a dozen of them to explode.
A thick mist of blood filled the air.
This caught Lu Yuan’s eye. With a light tap of his foot, he flew to the front line of his cavalry.
While still in the air, he threw a punch.
The tyrannical Fist Gang tore through the pale light of dawn, instantly slamming into the leading Ice Mirror Lake general.
BOOM!
A cultivator at the Void Manipulation realm was utterly powerless against Lu Yuan. A single punch was all it took to kill him on the spot.
A wave of blood surged as his entire upper body exploded.
The astonishing Fist Gang didn’t stop there, continuing on to smash into the Innate Experts charging up behind him.
They were almost instantly annihilated.
The ground was left pitted with craters of all sizes.
Stones and debris flew into the air.
Now, no one could stand in the way of the cavalry’s advance.
After they crushed everything in their path, barely a soul was left alive in the entire camp.
Without pausing, Lu Yuan had the great banner waved and immediately charged toward another camp.
By now, Ice Mirror Lake knew that the Celestial King Stronghold had launched a surprise attack.
However, the main force in the city didn’t rush out recklessly. Instead, they were gathering quickly, knowing that sending out small groups would be nothing more than feeding kills to the Celestial King Stronghold.
It would devolve into a battle of piecemeal reinforcements.
That would be a true disaster.
The two remaining encampments outside the city gathered their troops, consolidating their position in a sturdier stronghold to prepare for a defensive stand.
They had just witnessed the terror of Lu Yuan and his forces, so of course they didn’t dare to ride out and fight.
’All we have to do is wait for the main force from the city to finish assembling.’
’A pincer attack from both sides will surely defeat the Celestial King Stronghold.’
But Lu Yuan naturally knew what the men of Ice Mirror Lake were thinking. As their warhorses neighed, they arrived outside the camp. The dark mass of cavalrymen, one by one, took out their bows and arrows from the sides of their mounts.
They stopped a bowshot away from the stronghold.
Back in Dayong, Lu Yuan had passed the Torrential Rain Arrow Skill to Wu Han, tasking him with training a unit of archers.
However, the cost had been too great at the time, so it was never fully implemented.
Now, with the Celestial King Stronghold’s increased power, the fifty thousand Armored Cavalry were nearly all equipped with bows. After this period of training, though many had not yet reached Minor Achievement in the skill, they had at least mastered the basics. When paired with their immense arm strength...
...the result was terrifying.
The arrowheads, forged from refined iron, possessed especially powerful Armor-Piercing capabilities.
Lu Yuan waved his arm. His bronze mask glinted coldly in the light of the breaking dawn.
Inside the stronghold opposite them, the crowded Ice Mirror Lake Warriors’ eyes filled with shock.
CREAK!
The chilling sound of countless bowstrings being drawn taut filled the air.
The arrowheads, gleaming with a cold light, seemed exceptionally frigid.
WHOOSH! WHOOSH! WHOOSH!
The *Torrential Rain Arrow Skill* was, in itself, an incredibly powerful area-of-effect technique.
In Lu Yuan’s hands, a single bow and arrow could suppress more than a dozen men.
His technique was exceedingly swift.
Now, with so many men using it, one could only imagine the offensive power. Although they could not match Lu Yuan’s lethality or attack speed...
...the might was still immense.
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
The heavy armor-piercing arrows carved an arc through the sky as they plummeted downward.
Their terrifying power was immediately apparent wherever they landed.
Some elite Warriors raised their iron shields above their heads to block.
But as the dense rain of arrows fell, the shields were pierced and then shattered after a dozen or so brutal impacts, sending sparks flying.
The Ice Mirror Lake Warriors cowering below were instantly run through.
They were pinned to the ground.
These fifty thousand cavalrymen from the Celestial King Stronghold were equipped with Iron-Clad Bows and two large quivers, for a total of eighty armor-piercing arrows each. Their firepower was nothing short of terrifying.
In less time than it takes to drink a cup of tea, all the feathered arrows were spent.
It was truly like a torrential downpour, only the raindrops here were not liquid, but sharp, lethal arrowheads.
Lu Yuan glanced at the blood flowing from under the stronghold’s gate but paid it no mind. He was like an asura emerging from the depths of hell.
He issued a hoarse, cold command: "Withdraw!"
He turned his horse and galloped straight back toward the Celestial King Stronghold, with the others following close behind.
He didn’t give a single thought to how many people had died in the stronghold.
’Anyone who could survive a rain of arrows of this magnitude...’
’...deserves to live.’
The fifty thousand cavalrymen turned around at an incredible speed.
They charged toward the Celestial King Stronghold.
A moment later, they were just a black line on the horizon.
Finally, they vanished completely from sight.
By the time the reinforcements from the city finally arrived and opened the stronghold’s gate...
...the scene before them left the leading general utterly stunned.
Warriors were pinned to the ground in all sorts of positions, the terror they felt before death still visible in their eyes.
Some looked like hedgehogs, their bodies riddled with holes.
Even the Void Manipulation expert stationed in the camp had not escaped.
When the battle began, he had apparently been flying through the air. He was pierced head-on by countless feathered arrows and pinned to a rooftop.
Blood trickled down from his body.
Out of a force of over sixty thousand, fewer than three hundred survived, all of whom had managed to find a cellar to hide in the instant the attack began.
As for the camp itself, it had been utterly destroyed, its roofs shattered and walls collapsed.
HISS!
The reinforcements from the Inner City all drew a sharp, cold breath.
「Meanwhile, in the grand hall of Yellow Sand City...」
A brief silence had fallen. This outcome was completely different from what the three Princes had envisioned.