Chapter 159 - Branch Base
Chapter 159: Branch Base
Three days later, the fog in the north of Dragon City tumbled about, and the land over there raged.
It was due to the rich ores and crystals hidden underground. All sorts of magnetic fields clashed violently against each other, and they kept on releasing raging energy.
The land there was broken. All sorts of formations could be found, and it was a chaotic mess.
There was a land full of lush, green grass several kilometers away, but soon, it led to a burning desert, which had bone-chilling lakes at random points of it.
Towering mountains intersecting with each other surrounded these places, and they covered an area that was close to eight hundred meters in diameter. Trees that were hundreds of meters tall could be found all over the place. Their branches hung low, and no one knew just how many venomous creatures lived in them.
There were also creatures which were not afraid of venom that enjoyed their life in the trees. However, they were hunted by matchless beasts, which possessed great spirit energy, for snacks.
The place was a forbidden zone for humans, but it was a playground for monsters as well as their slaughterhouse.
At that moment, an insect with a crystalline body that looked as pure as a white piece of jade and had four pairs of purple wings was attracted by a sickeningly sweet flower growing in the wild. The insect swirled about in the air before it landed on it. A long needle grew out of its mouth to extract the nectar.
Suddenly, the flower shuddered. Four leaves with sawteeth at the edges snapped shut on the insect.
It looked as if it had been electrocuted. It tried to flee, but one of its wings was torn off by the sawteeth.
A few thin tendrils shot out of the depths of the pistil to bind the insect’s remaining wings.
The insect fled in a panic in an unbalanced rush. It stumbled up and down in the air. Just as it was about to be caught by the flower, a bird with feathers as sharp as blades beat it to the punch. It used its feathers to cut off the pistil and take the insect while leaving behind the “flower”, which shook its fang-like leaves angrily.
With a snap, the bird crushed the insect. It ate it, but it had not had its fill yet.
Very soon, it found new prey. It was a gray spider crawling about the crack in a rock.
When the bird pounced on its new target, it was struck by a venomous snake, which had blended with the rock and had been waiting for prey for a long time.
The gray spider was actually the venomous snake’s tail, which it used to attract its food!
The venomous snake’s scales were as bumpy as a rock. Its fangs were in the bird’s neck, where they injected extremely corrosive venom.
Slurp, slurp.
The snake kept sucking and gulping. In an instant, only a pile of feathers was left. Not even a single bone was left of the bird.
The venomous snake squirmed about in satisfaction, as if it was stretching its back after a good meal.
Then, it was snatched up by a red falcon that came diving at it from nearly one thousand feet in the air.
The red falcon’s feathers were as bright as flames. When it spread its wings, they were dozens of meters wide. Its talons shone with a metallic light. No matter how sturdy the venomous snake’s scales and bones were, they could not prevent the snake from being torn in two when the falcon gave it a gentle tug.
However, a shadow that was even larger appeared above.
It looked as if something had just whipped the mighty red falcon. It released a shrill screech and threw away the food in its claws to bunch up its wings and talons. Its speed instantly rose to another level. Waves spread through the air, and a deafening sonicboom rose.
The falcon actually broke the speed of sound!
Even so, it could not escape from the even more dangerous hunter in the air.
Boom!
A purple fireball appeared after the red falcon and struck it down. When it fell around three hundred meters, it was captured by a creature that looked like the amalgamation of a lizard and pterodactyl, but it was even more monstrous and large. The red falcon did not even have the time to shriek before it was torn to shreds.
The pterodactyl howled. Spirit flames gushed out madly as it made a declaration of its tyranny to its heart’s content so that all the other monsters would know that the true master of the area was around.
But the next second, it looked as if it rammed into an invisible wall. It stopped in a strange fashion in the air.
Clear strangulation marks appeared on its neck and wings. Its vertical, dark green pupils shone with incredible pain.
It struggled madly and attempted to spit out a fireball at the enemy it could not see, but huge black spots appeared on its body, as if some terrifying virus was invading its organs at lightning speed.
In half a minute, it changed from an elegant, mighty, and brutal tyrant of the air to a rotten piece of food.
At that moment, the invisible hunter appeared in the air.
It was a superbeast that looked like a giant jellyfish. Its head was as bumpy as a balloon, and hundreds of tentacles covered in thorns hung low under its body.
It was a close cousin of the Demonic Air Ripping Eye, the Demonic Air Hunting Eye.
There was only one word difference in their name. The Demonic Air Hunting Eye did not have the mind attacks that the Demonic Air Ripping Eye had, but it had more tentacles, and they were longer and sturdier. It also possessed fatal venom, was much more agile, and could control its spirit energy magnetic field to interfere and change the trajectory of light so that it could turn itself invisible.
Before the twenty-four 88 mm rapid-firing guns went on full blast and tore it to shreds, it was the true king who stood on top of the food chain in the area.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
The pods of three armored airships were installed with a huge platform for weapons. Each side contained four 88 mm rapid-firing guns, two hornet rocket launchers, and six heavy machine guns.
They seemed like ancient firearms, but with the addition of spirit energy and runic symbol technology, they gained a brand new life.
The new fire powder had processed monster materials. It had destructive power that was ten times stronger than that of normal ammunition.
When rune ink made of monster blood that contained a lot of spirit energy was painted over the runic symbols carved into the gun barrels, artillery barrels, and rockets, these firearms could create spirit energy magnetic fields that could change the essence of the weapons from a molecular level and even an atomic level.
If crystals were embedded into the tips of the bullets, they could seal certain spirit energy magnetic fields which would then trigger under certain conditions. This allowed normal bullets and artillery shells to contain their own “skills”.
Even though humans could no longer use supersonic fighting jets and beyond-visual-range missiles, their 88 mm guns and rocket launchers still had the effect of destroying everything effortlessly and suppressing everything in sight.
The Demonic Air Hunting Eye was instantly reduced to mince meat and then burnt to a crisp. It was reduced to wisps of smoke that fled in a panic in every direction.
The sounds of the firearms were like shrill shrieks that told all the living creatures in the wild just who was the real ruler of the region!
The booming sounds from the flames and propellers tore through the rolling fog and got rid of a lot of aerial monsters who did not know what was good for them.
First, three armored airships with the symbol of the Red Dragon Army painted on them descended from the sky like steel deities. They were surrounded by spirit energy and looked really mighty.
Then, another three appeared.
They were followed by three more airships.
They had around ten propeller airplanes. They were crude fighting crafts with simple structure. Hundreds of even smaller unmanned fighting vehicles surrounded the propeller airplanes, and they were just as deadly.
It was as if the aerial killing machines of three different generations had transmigrated to appear in the same place. Their bodies were covered in runic symbols, and they had dazzling crystals embedded in them as well. They shone with spirit energy, which was like seven-colored magma. It flowed slowly along the patterns of the profound and complicated runic symbols, which made the armored airships, propeller airplanes, and unmanned fighting vehicles give off a crystalline feeling, and somehow, the sight of them together in one place was no longer a jarring one.
Under humanity’s aerial force was its steel army. It marched forward through the wild.
Hundreds of machine monsters formed the steel army. It consisted of crawler tanks, wheeled infantry fighting vehicles, multi-crab-legged fighting vehicles, spider-shaped intelligent fighting vehicles, automatic armored engineering vehicles, mine site trucks, and super large wheeled excavating machines. They were like the powerful arms of humanity that delivered vicious punches from Dragon City to the wild. It told all the creatures that from this moment onward, the rules in the place would change!
The new batch of freshmen from Agricultural University sent to the northern frontlines were in the pods of the armored airships. They looked down at the battlefield and the uncultivated land that had no end in sight, then the human army, which was bound to conquer it. They could not help but look forward to the fight, and their blood surged.
They really wanted to jump down at that moment to fight against the numerous monsters lying in wait in the wild.
Suddenly, the armored airships slowed down.
The students stuck their eyes and noses against the windows to see what was ahead of them.
Two mountain ranges towered into the clouds ahead of them. They were like two iron walls in the wild.
The clouds and fog in the place hung low, and the mountains were hidden in gray clouds. The black ones bared their teeth, and thunder could be heard faintly rumbling in there. Neither the armored airships nor the peerless elites wanted to fly into them.
Fortunately, a somewhat straight and smooth valley went between the two mountain ranges. It was as if someone had taken an axe and delivered a vicious slash that split the land in half. The valley was a path that the armored airships and steel army could pass through without encountering any obstacles.
But the valley was not wide. When wind blew inside, it was suppressed by the two steep slopes, which formed countless turbulences. The armored airships could not get too close, or they might lose control and crash. They had to levitate outside the valley and form a line. Then, they would have to enter one by one.
Fortunately, the Red Dragon Army had already built forts that served as command centers by the sides of the valley.
The Supernatural Tower had also sent technicians who were skilled with maglev technology and powerful people who could control air flow, wind pressure, and aerodynamics. They could handle aerial traffic in the valley.
They had also carved humongous runic matrices on the smooth slopes on the sides of the valley with the hopes to change the spirit energy magnetic field and completely get rid of the turbulence.
The armored airships spent half an hour passing through the valley slowly and steadily. Then, the area in front of the students opened up.
There was another world in the valley. It was a basin filled with spirit energy and a lot of resources. It looked like paradise!
The land in the basin was incredibly flat. Sparkling lakes that looked like silver mirrors were scattered all over the fertile, dark red soil. Three streams resembling jade belts zig-zagged all over the land. All sorts of strange plants displayed their beauty between the silver mirror and jade belts. A lot of gentle, sentient creatures treated this place as their habitat.
Even someone with no geographical knowledge whatsoever would be able to tell that it was a land blessed by the gods. If humans could develop this piece of land, they would be able to fit millions of people there, and it would become the first and most important branch base in Dragon City’s road to claim the Other World!