Chapter 933
The Methods of the Nian Sect
Zhao Sanhuai stared intently at the telescope, and when he saw the first few dozen cultivators cross that invisible boundary, a cruel sneer curled at the corner of his mouth.
He suddenly waved his hand and roared at the top of his lungs.
"Detonate!!!"
Inside the underground palace beneath the city wall.
Elder Liu suddenly formed a hand seal and slammed it hard onto the red copper array plate in front of him.
"boom--"
This was not an explosion.
This is the apocalyptic sound of three thousand explosions occurring simultaneously!
Ten miles outside Hongyun City, the seemingly flat, snow-covered wasteland suddenly collapsed half a foot in an instant. Immediately afterward, countless extremely dazzling blue-red pillars of fire, carrying destructive heat and shockwaves, erupted from the ground!
"Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!"
The earth trembled violently. The snow that filled the sky was instantly evaporated into white steam, which was then dyed blood red by the raging flames.
The three or four hundred Qingyun Sect disciples at the forefront were torn to pieces in the flames and the blast wave mixed with copper fragments before they could even let out a scream.
Severed limbs, pieces of flesh, and broken magical artifacts were thrown hundreds of feet into the sky by the shockwave of the explosion, and then rained down on the cultivators behind them who were completely stunned by the blast.
"Trap! There's a trap!"
"Retreat! Retreat quickly!"
The cultivators behind were terrified and desperately tried to escape. However, driven by extreme hunger and panic, they huddled together, trampling each other, and countless people were suffocated to death in the snow by their own kind.
Mo Ku was thrown to the ground by a gust of air. His head and face were covered in black ash and blood. He stared blankly at the thunder zone in front of him, where flames were still rolling.
"What...what is this thing...how could a mortal have such abilities..." Mo Ku's lips trembled, his mind blank.
"It was the formation that detonated the spirit stone waste and the mortal's gunpowder!" Yin Feng Zhenren crawled over, covered in soot, grabbed Mo Ku by the collar, and roared shrilly, "They've been waiting for us all along! This isn't some mortal city at all, it's a meat grinder!"
"Don't retreat! We can't retreat!" Elder Liehuo's hair and beard stood on end, like a raging lion cornered in a desperate situation. "Retreating means starving to death on the mountain! They're just bluffing! This kind of explosion can't possibly reach the city walls! Fly over there on your swords! All inner disciples, fly over there on your swords!"
Elder Liehuo's words awakened the cultivators who had fallen into despair.
Yes! They are monks! They can fly!
"Whoosh whoosh!"
Hundreds of highly skilled inner disciples and elders forcibly burned their primordial essence and blood to activate their flying swords, transforming them into faint streaks of light that rose from the ground, attempting to cross the minefield and directly rush towards the city walls of Hongyun City.
On the city wall.
As Guo Tianyou watched the cultivators fly up like locusts, his sinister smile grew even more unrestrained.
"Fly? I'll show you today that this sky no longer belongs to you!"
Guo Tianyou suddenly raised his horizontal sword and chopped down with all his might.
"Anti-air defense array! Eight-bull crossbows! Fire!"
"Bang bang bang bang bang bang—!!!"
On the city wall, dozens of huge crossbows simultaneously unleashed a deafening roar.
But this time, what was fired was not just a heavy armor-piercing arrow as thick as a child's arm.
In mid-air, the enormous arrows suddenly split open with a "crack," revealing massive animal-catching nets woven from an extremely tough mixture of black iron wire and celestial silkworm silk, covered with poisoned barbs. These nets, like the gaping maws of demons, descended upon the cultivators flying through the air.
"What the hell is this thing?!"
An inner disciple, seeing the enormous black net rushing towards him, frantically swung his flying sword, trying to cut it down. However, his sword energy, weakened by hunger and depleted true essence, didn't even leave a white mark when it struck the silkworm silk.
"Shoot-"
The black net instantly bound him tightly, its barbs digging deep into his flesh. The poison took effect immediately; he felt a wave of numbness wash over him, even his internal energy ceased to circulate, and he plummeted straight down from a height of tens of feet like a stone.
With a "splat," it fell and turned into a pile of minced meat.
In the sky, there were dozens of such large nets. They were intertwined, blocking all possible routes for the cultivators to advance.
"Break!"
Elder Liehuo roared and frantically formed hand seals. A huge fire serpent roared out from his hands, attempting to burn through the giant nets.
"Your fire is too small!"
On the city wall, Zhao Sanhuai snorted coldly, a strange, large bow, its body jet black and emitting a ghostly glow, appearing in his hand at some unknown time. He drew a specially made, crimson arrow from the quiver on his back. The arrowhead was entirely crafted from top-grade spirit flame stone.
Zhao Sanhuai's arm muscles bulged as he drew the powerful bow, which required thousands of pounds of strength to draw, to its fullest extent.
"go with!"
The bowstring snapped, and the crimson arrow transformed into a shooting star, moving even faster than a flying sword. It instantly pierced through the swirling snow and accurately struck the vital spot of the fire serpent released by Elder Liehuo.
"boom!"
The moment the Spirit Flame Stone Arrow touched the fire serpent, it unleashed an extremely terrifying storm of fire-attribute spiritual energy, instantly tearing the fire serpent apart and slamming into Elder Liehuo's chest with a violent gust of air.
"puff!"
Elder Liehuo coughed up a mouthful of blood, his ribs broken in countless places. His protective aura, which he was so proud of, was as fragile as a piece of paper in front of the armor-piercing weapons specially made by Hongyun City.
Like a bird with broken wings, he fell from the sky with a scream, crashing heavily into the minefield below, instantly triggering a secondary explosion, and his entire body was blasted into a charred mess.
"Junior Brother Liehuo!"
Mo Ku and Yin Feng Zhenren's eyes nearly popped out of their sockets when they saw this.
An inner sect elder, a dignified cultivator at the mid-stage of Foundation Establishment, was shot dead in mid-air by the guards on the city wall with ordinary weapons before he could even touch the edge of the wall!
How is this possible! How is this possible!!!
"Kill! Shoot them all down! Bring down every fly in the sky!" Guo Tianyou roared madly from the city wall.
Three thousand heavily armored crossbowmen lined up in three neat rows and began a brutal volley of fire.
"Swish swish swish——"
A dense rain of armor-piercing arrows poured down from the sky. Each arrowhead was coated with deadly poison and spirit flame stone powder; even a slight scratch would be fatal to these cultivators whose true energy was depleted.
The cultivators fell from the sky like dumplings being dropped into a pot. Blood stained the snow outside the city walls, and screams, wails, and the clash of weapons mingled together, creating a most mournful elegy of hell. "Monsters...they are monsters..."
Those outer disciples who were lucky enough not to take flight and hid in the snow collapsed completely as they watched the one-sided massacre in the sky. They threw away their flying swords, covered their heads, and ran around in the snow like headless flies, crying and shouting that they wanted to escape back to Qingyun Mountain.
Mo Ku watched as his sect disciples collapsed like a house of cards, and as the elders and elites died tragically under the rain of arrows. His spirit completely broke down.
"Zheng Yi!!! You monster! You deserve to die a horrible death!!!"
Mo Ku suddenly let out an extremely shrill roar. Instead of retreating, he advanced, forcibly burning decades of his lifespan and primordial essence. A layer of eerie, blood-red flames ignited all over his body, and in that instant, his cultivation faintly broke through the limit of the Foundation Establishment stage, reaching the terrifying realm of half-step Golden Core.
"I'll fight you to the death!"
Mo Ku transformed into a streak of crimson light, piercing through the dense rain of arrows and the giant net at a speed almost imperceptible to the naked eye. He withstood the transparent holes left by dozens of armor-piercing arrows, and like a crimson meteorite, he crashed madly into the figure in the gray cotton robe on the city wall.
"Sir, be careful!" Guo Tianyou and Zhao Sanhuai were shocked and tried to stop him, but Mo Ku's speed, achieved by burning his life force, was too fast, and they couldn't react in time.
Mo Ku's face, twisted like a demon, was less than three zhang away from Zheng Yi. He could even see Zheng Yi's calm, still eyes.
"Die! Come to hell with me!" Mo Ku laughed wildly, stretching out his skeletal claws and viciously grabbing at Zheng Yi's throat.
Zheng Yi remained standing there, not even blinking. His hands were still tucked into his sleeves.
Just as Mo Ku's fingers were about to touch Zheng Yi...
"Om-"
Suddenly, a very thin, almost transparent golden light curtain appeared in the air in front of Zheng Yi.
This is a corner of the ultimate city-protecting formation that Elder Liu personally set up, draining 50,000 mid-grade spirit stones.
Moku's blood-red claws, powerful enough to tear through refined iron, slammed fiercely into the light barrier.
There was no earth-shattering explosion, nor any violent air currents.
There was a soft "pop" sound, like a finger popping a soap bubble.
However, Mo Ku felt as if he had crashed into an unshakeable, towering mountain. A recoil force ten or even a hundred times more terrifying than the power he had just released surged into his body through his hands in an instant.
"Crack, crack, crack..."
An extremely dense series of cracking sounds emanated from Mo Ku's body.
His powerful physique, forged through the burning of his life force, shattered in that instant, like a piece of porcelain struck by a hammer.
"what--"
Mo Ku let out a scream that sounded inhuman, and his whole body flew backward at a faster speed than when he came.
He spewed blood mixed with fragments of internal organs in mid-air, his body tumbling through the air like a rag doll before crashing heavily onto the snow a hundred feet away from the city wall.
He wasn't quite dead yet; his body was convulsing violently in the snow, his eyes fixed on Zheng Yi on the city wall, and blood was spitting from his mouth.
"No...impossible...a mortal...how could this be..."
Zheng Yi walked to the edge of the city wall and looked down at Mo Ku, who was struggling in the snow. His eyes were as cold as if he were looking at a crushed bug.
"In the face of death, there is no difference between cultivators and mortals. You are just less resistant to hunger."
Zheng Yi's voice drifted through the wind and snow, icy and chilling.
In the distance, Yin Feng Zhenren was utterly terrified by Mo Ku's miserable end. He lost all semblance of his inner sect elder's authority, grabbed a terrified inner sect disciple next to him and used him as a human shield, then used the last bit of his true essence to flee frantically towards the Qingyun Mountains without looking back.
"Run? Do you think you can escape!"
Iron One-Eyed let out a wild laugh and leaped out of the shadows of the city wall. He held a black short gun in his hand, and with a sudden burst of strength from his waist, he hurled the gun like a javelin.
"Whoosh-"
The short gun tore through the air, instantly covering a distance of a hundred feet.
"Pfft!"
The short spear pierced straight through the disciple who was acting as a human shield, and with undiminished momentum, it plunged deep into Yin Feng Zhenren's back, pinning him firmly to the cold snow.
Yin Feng Zhenren screamed in agony, desperately scratching at the snow on the ground with both hands, leaving a long trail of blood. Finally, his body twitched a few times and then fell completely still.
The battle, or rather the one-sided massacre, lasted for less than the time it takes for an incense stick to burn.
Of the two thousand Qingyun Sect cultivators, fewer than three hundred managed to escape alive from the ten-mile-long cordon. The rest were all dismembered in the wilderness, their blood staining the snow-covered ground a shocking dark red.
The snow continued to fall, seemingly trying to cover up the hellish scene on earth.
On the city wall, tens of thousands of defenders stood in complete silence. Looking at the corpses of the once-lofty "immortals" scattered across the ground, they felt no joy of victory, only a profound awe. Awe for the cold, mechanical weapons, but even more so for the figure in the grey cotton robe standing before them.
Zheng Yi withdrew his gaze and turned around.
"Cease fire. No pursuit allowed." Zheng Yi's calm voice rang out from the city wall.
"Sir, why don't we give chase?" Guo Tianyou licked his lips, still savoring the moment. "Those bastards are terrified. If we open the door and charge out now, we can definitely leave them all stranded in the snow!"
"Keep them." Zheng Yi walked to the brazier and warmed his hands by the fire.
"Release these two or three hundred terrified and starving remnants of the army back to Qingyun Mountain. Let them go and tell the elders and sect leader who are still dreaming on the mountain what the situation is really like down below."
Zheng Yi looked at the leaping flames, a chilling smile curving his lips.
"A pack of desperate beasts is locked in a cage with no food. Do you think they will quietly wait to die, or will they tear each other apart until they have eaten the last piece of their kind?"
In the study, Elder Liu and Han Wuhen shuddered upon hearing these words.
This method of killing someone and destroying their spirit, fundamentally dismantling a thousand-year-old sect, is a hundred times more terrifying than the crossbow formations on the city walls.
"Fatty Han." Zheng Yi didn't turn around.
"Yes, sir!" Han Wuhen quickly stepped forward.
"Find a few quick-witted brothers to clean up the bodies of Mo Ku and those inner sect elders. Don't make it too messy," Zheng Yi instructed calmly. "Find a few carriages, load them with some 'good meat' and 'good wine,' and put them with their bodies. Send someone to deliver them to the foot of Qingyun Mountain first thing tomorrow morning."
Han Wuhen was stunned for a moment, then understood Zheng Yi's intention, and an extremely sinister smile appeared on his fat face.
"Sir, you're brilliant! This is what you call 'killing someone by offering a gift, cutting off their heart completely'! Once this cart of goods is delivered, those starving ghosts on Qingyun Mountain will probably tear the roof off the Taiqing Palace!" (End of Chapter)