Chapter 1252: Ancient Ceremony
The successive appearance of these doors produced different experiences and results on different continents. Evernight was well-prepared, so they managed to destroy the first wave of the beast army with relative ease. The Empire had it much worse—the Transcendent Continent suffered greatly, and the Western Continent lost a portion of their elite troops. The lowest Evernight Continent was a complete disaster, with alien beasts running amok even in the depths of the continent.
Monsters also appeared in the void, but they didn’t pose much of a threat because the void was so vast.
Those specter-like assassination airships vanished when the Empire became aware of the problem in its communications system and started patrolling the void in greater numbers. After communications returned to their normal standards, the Empire finally summarized all the reports and concluded that the misty zones were “doors” leading to the new world.
The new world had arrived with bared fangs.
The information had just reached the major clans and continents when the second wave of beasts surged out from the doors. This time, the beast legions were greater in number and their troop types were more targeted. A large number of armored troops had appeared, and this bolstered their overall tenacity in battle.
The second wave’s swift arrival was expected yet also unexpected.
Under the leadership of Song Zining and Zhao Jundu, the Qin Continent forces made urgent repairs to the fortifications. After several days of resistance and fighting, they finally managed to kill all of the invading beasts at the base of the fortress.
The situation on the Western Continent was fairly good. In the face of a common enemy, the Empire and Evernight decided to put off their long-lasting enmity and defend their own side of the warfront. The dark races were clearly well-prepared—they had more men, greater firepower, and there were two dukes on the frontline, a rare sight under normal circumstances.
There was Zhao Weihuang overseeing the Empire side, but there was no doubt that they were a bit weaker. The Imperial forces were also somewhat lacking in military power and targeted arrangements.
Zhao Weihuang was a talented general who had been fighting the dark races on the western front for so many years. He naturally understood that the Evernight side was already well-informed about the beasts behind this “door.” Hence, they had long since transferred their troops over to defend against the charging horde.
Realizing this now made no difference. The only thing they could do was to mobilize soldiers from the Zhao clan and detain the Northern Legion, which had just received their return orders from the Qin Continent. Fortunately, the leaders of the Northern Legion were cooperative. This afforded Zhao Weihuang enough fighting power to barely stem the tide of alien creatures.
The Transcendent Continent managed to pull through the first calamity, but instead of the Imperial reinforcements they had been hoping for, a new beast army arrived at their doorsteps. Fortunately, the aristocratic families had focused their military strength in one place and thus managed to maintain the defensive line. The territories they had evacuated, however, could only be left to the heavens.
Evernight Continent was already a disastrous place, to begin with. One more calamity didn’t really make much of a difference. Neither the Empire nor Evernight had resources to spare for this abandoned continent.
Only the Fort Continent was a different scene. Qianye had stacked an army of six hundred thousand in front of the door, a force stretching dozens of kilometers. It could be said that there were soldiers everywhere. The werewolves of the Jade Sea, mercenaries of the neutral lands, and the human soldiers of Fort Continent, these forces might not be comparable to a regular army by Imperial standards, but they were desperate defenders with no fear of death.
The beast horde might be a messenger of death to other people, but the starved werewolves saw them as nothing more than moving piles of meat. Many of them would lose control and charge forward upon seeing the incoming creatures, even ignoring military orders at times. The fierce melee involved great casualties, but these werewolves were happy to risk life and limb for this battle.
As an outsider, Qianye could hardly understand the Jade Sea werewolves’ obsession with food. Being of the four major dark races and a long-lived species with boundless potential, they had no choice but to shorten their maturation and sacrifice their future growth. This kind of pain wasn’t just physical; it was also an affliction to their dignity and pride.
The werewolves fought bravely, but the second wave was much stronger than the first. Seeing the sharp rise in casualties, Qianye could no longer sit by and watch.
In order to deal the most effective blow to the enemy, he decided to let Little Zhuji loose on them!
A mouthful of her poison defeated even the strongest of alien creatures, turning an area hundreds of meters around her into a land of death. The unending march of the bestial army was thus cut off in the middle.
Qianye carried Little Zhuji back to camp before killing his way into the beast army alone. His domain was a disaster to the flying types—they dropped out of the air like flies and were duly culled by Life Plunder.
This went on for several times before Qianye’s expression grew uglier and uglier. In the end, he had no choice but to cough up a mouthful of putrid green blood. He looked around, sword in hand, only to find that there were no standing enemies nearby.
There was too much foreign origin power in their essence blood. Even the glutton that was the Song Clan Ancient Scroll considered this energy as something that had to be discarded. Absorbing too much would only put more strain on Qianye.
At this point, the beasts charging out from the mist were no longer in a formation. Qianye heaved a sigh of relief when he saw that they had turned into small, scattered groups. He glanced at the ongoing battles around the defensive formation and decided not to take action anymore. He would allow the soldiers to finish up.
Tens of thousands of beasts posed no threat to a defensive force in the hundreds of thousands. They were killed off entirely within moments.
Eiseka was drenched in blood as he ran over excitedly. “Sire, this battle is so satisfying! With all this supply of meat, we won’t need to worry about the next three years!”
Qianye shot him a glance and patted him on the shoulder. “Look at your wounds, go get yourself treated.”
Eiseka turned back to find a massive wound on his back, one so deep that even the bones were visible. Qianye’s pat left a wisp of darkness origin power that sealed the defect and stopped his bleeding.
Eiseka said nonchalantly, “This little wound is nothing to us werewolves. I’ve had worse injuries countless times, this is just a small gash.”
Qianye summoned a medic and instructed him to dress Eiseka’s wounds. He then asked the werewolf general, “What of our casualties?”
“A bit less than twenty thousand. Most of them are werewolves, human casualties are low.”
Qianye sighed, frowning. “That’s not a small number, either.”
This death toll was actually extremely low, considering the enemy was a beast army of two hundred thousand. If it weren’t for the numbers advantage and Qianye and Zhuji stepping in with their large area-of-effect attacks, the casualty rates would have easily doubled.
Eiseka didn’t feel that the losses were serious. He said delightedly, “In the past, this time of the year is when our fate would be decided. The Jade Sea would send some tribes into the great corridor or pit them against the southern humans. The great corridor, in turn, would have to attack Zheng. It was not important whether we could win. The most important thing is that they had to die, or our race could not live on. Not to mention there are fewer deaths currently, the yields are massive!”
Qianye knew of the werewolves' condition, but his mood felt heavy after seeing them hugging the carcasses in joy and listening to Eiseka talking about it again.
Unknowingly, a group of werewolf shamans and chiefs had gathered around Qianye. They fell to their knees all of a sudden and began chanting something Qianye could not understand. More and more werewolves began to kneel, and soon, the hundreds of thousands of werewolves on the battlefield were praying on the ground. The human soldiers were the only ones standing, not knowing what to do.
Song Lun moved closer to Song Hui and said, “These werewolves are really sincere about their servitude!”
“I know that!”
“Say, do you think the commander will be pulled over to the Evernight side?”
“Nonsense! He’s…” Song Hui stopped talking all of a sudden. She couldn’t help but worry when she recalled Qianye’s half-vampire identity.
Song Lun said, “I heard his wife is also a vampire who stirred up quite the commotion back in the year. Sigh!”
Song Hui’s eyes lit up at this point. “Back then, he killed his way through Indomitable in order to save Nighteye. Just the thought of it makes me feel so excited, I feel so envious of her!”
Qianye was at a loss about what to do. He tried to help some of them to their feet, but the werewolves would fall to their knees again the moment he let go. It looked like they would not stop until this rite was over.
Qianye could only stand and play his part as a totem. The werewolves’ ceremony was fairly long, and Qianye could not understand their prayers as they were made up of ancient words. Yet, they had been chanting for so long without any repetitions, now that wasn’t an easy feat.
The werewolves proceeded solemnly with their rite. The humans knew they shouldn’t disturb, so all they could do was stand there and wait.
Qianye was starting to feel somewhat bored when an inexplicable power landed on his body, causing him to tremble a bit. This energy was formless, intangible, and it was no origin power. At the very least, Qianye had never experienced something like this before. It was like a stream of ice, seeping slowly into his body and toward his blood core.
A startled Qianye wanted to stop its progress but didn’t know how to. Be it his flesh, blood, origin power, or blood energy, nothing could stop this stream of ice as it swam toward his blood core and vanished therein.
Qianye shivered uncontrollably at that moment, almost as though he had just swallowed a big block of ice. A chill emerged from his blood core and spread to every part of his body, filling him with a feeling of clarity and translucence. Qianye felt that his body was like a glass window—it was clean, to begin with, but after the chill passed over it, he noticed that there was still a lot of dust.
There were no words to describe this experience except that it exceeded all forms of joy. Unfortunately, the sensation was rather short-lived and the chill faded away in a flash.
When he woke up from the deep trance, Qianye suddenly discovered what he had just gone through. That mysterious energy was actually condensing his blood energy once more!
Although the upgrade was small, it held a significant meaning. Qianye’s blood energy was refined by the Mystery Chapter, and it had already reached the standards of the ancient vampires. It was beyond difficult to improve again. Now that this mysterious energy had purified him foundationally, this meant that his upper limits had improved somewhat.
Additionally, the power had purified him from the inside out and had thus improved his constitution as well.
How could there be such a power in this world?
Qianye opened his eyes to find that the werewolves had finished their ceremony and were standing up. He realized that this mysterious energy came from the werewolves’ ancient rite.