[V6C170 – Sorrow of a Silent Parting]
The mountain winds rushed at Qianye’s face as he walked out of the cave. The breeze contained an eerie chill along with the faint scent of blood and gunpowder.
He glanced over and found that the flames of war had ignited everywhere—the land was filled with lingering smoke as rumbling sounds echoed continuously in the ears. At the end of his vision, a tall peak shook a couple of times before its gradual collapse. The impact filled the air with dust and blotted out half the sky.
Further out was the valley in which the Zhang clan was advancing.
Countless black dots were approaching rapidly from over the horizon. There were individual experts as well as extremely fast airships. However, these smaller vessels appeared sporadically with no organized formation, leaving immediately after dropping off combat squads. They simply didn’t dare approach the Zhang clan’s primary fleet.
The human side seemed relatively frail compared to the enemies rushing over like a swarm of bees.
Qianye leapt up and approached the closest battlefield in due haste.
It was a hilly region where a group of human warriors was holed up on a rocky mountain, frantically resisting the dark race’s attack. Hundreds of dark race warriors had surrounded the peak while launching fierce attacks. There were thirty or so people halfway up the mountain, including a second-rank viscount who was observing the summit battle with his hands behind his back.
There were only twenty or so human soldiers. Be it in terms of cultivation or number, they were far inferior to their adversary, but they made up for this with great coordination and teamwork. Apparently, they were well-experienced in organized combat.
The ten at the front, wielding swords and shields, locked down the incoming dark race soldiers. Those at the back were raining bullets into the enemy group with no regard for their origin power consumption. Dark race soldiers were mowed down one after another. This small squad was actually halting the advance of a force many times their size.
Despite the bad situation, the overseeing viscount was in no rush to take action. He had also concentrated most baron and knight level experts around him instead of having them charge at the peak. Otherwise, the situation on the mountain wouldn’t be in a deadlock like this.
He glanced toward the sky from time to time as though he was waiting for something.
A thousand meters away, Qianye was crouching behind a pile of rocks with his crosshairs locked onto the viscount. After realizing that the latter was waiting for something, Qianye decided to wait and see what they were planning.
After a while, the defense atop the mountain started to falter. The dark race’s casualties were also increasing gradually.
That viscount laughed coldly and said, “It seems the humans will not waste their ammunition for such trash. In that case, we have no need to keep them alive. Let’s go!”
The viscount let out a long howl—his body swelled up rapidly and his black fur grew longer. In the blink of an eye, he had transformed into his werewolf combat form with a bloodthirsty glint in his gaze.
However, his long howl soon came to an abrupt halt. His body was violently jolted forward and nearly fell to the ground. At this point, everyone saw a cloud of blood and flesh bursting out of his back. Having lost the support of his now-broken neck, the werewolf’s head hung down limply.
None of the werewolf viscount’s subordinates had come to even after he was gravely wounded. During the moment that they were petrified, the heads of two more barons suddenly burst open, and then the knights also fell down one after the other. Only at this point did the lucky survivors hear gunshots in the distance. However, the timbre of a sniper rifle wasn’t that distinct amidst the battles taking place everywhere.
Qianye put away the Thunderbolt, checked the battlefield once more, and left. With the leader killed and over half the experts cleared out, the dark race squad fell into chaos. Even if the people atop the hill couldn’t win, it wouldn’t be a problem for them to escape. The dark race force in the area was too big. Qianye had no intention of spending too much origin power on soldiers beneath the champion level.
Qianye was just picking out his next battlefield when he suddenly turned around and stared toward a certain point in the east. He had sensed there an extremely familiar origin power fluctuation.
He arched his body and shot through the rocky mountain terrain like a beast, approaching the location under the cover of the landscape.
Moments later, Qianye climbed atop a hill and looked down at the battlefield below.
There was a natural valley between two hills. The topography here was complicated with rocks jutting into the sky and numerous caves along the cliffsides, a natural battleground through and through.
This place was supposed to be a barren land with only a few weather-resistant shrubs. However, a verdant oasis seemed to have appeared right in the middle of the battlefield. The landscape was splendid with numerous ancient trees reaching into the sky and their falling leaves spinning about. There was even a rainbow peeking through the foliage from time to time, nothing short of a paradise on earth.
There was a clear spring glistening under the sunlight at the center of the oasis, beside which stood a decorative rock. If one had to point out something out of place in this scenery, it would be this yellowish rock. There weren’t any carved lines or exquisite pores on it, and it was no different from a stone one would find anywhere. Yet, it stuck out like a sore thumb amidst the beauty of this almost fantastical ambiance.
The oasis in the barren lands was exceptionally distinct, making it near impossible for people to overlook it. That yellow rock was the most eye-catching of all, especially since it was moving about instead of standing still.
Qianye knew at a glance that the leaders of the two armies were locked in a battle of domains. It was just that the projection of such life-like visual phenomena was extremely rare.
This so-called battle of domains meant that the two parties were fighting for control over the origin power in the environment. They were drawing upon the power of the world for their own use, empowering their bodies and attacking their opponents. However, visual phenomena would emerge when the origin powers controlled by each combatant came into conflict. This was a scene formed of different domains.
But what was with this oasis? It was simply too realistic! Could it be that those waves and grasses possessed offensive capabilities?
Qianye had a faint guess about what was going on after seeing the numerous leaves. His eyes turned blue as he glanced back at the oasis. The Eye of Truth swept away the domains’ interference on his senses, allowing him to see the entire battlefield clearly.
Hundreds of soldiers were risking life and limb to kill one another on the battlefield—most of them were dark race warriors with less than a hundred humans present. Where the battle was the fiercest, ten viscounts had four human champions surrounded. One of the four possessed a jade-like countenance, a highly refined temperament, and his robes fluttered in the wind as he waved the folding fan in his hand. Quite shockingly, it was the Song clan’s seventh young noble.
However, he was equipped with neither armor nor weapon at this moment. He didn’t have his silver mask on, either. He was playing about with his fan, opening and closing it lightly as though he was enjoying the scenery on a spring hike. How was this like a life and death battle at all?
Beside Song Zining, a tall and sturdy youth was roaring loudly. His every action was full of vigor and made up of significant movements. He alone had seven or eight of the viscounts tied down, and two among them were even at rank two. He was truly dauntless.
He had long since fallen into a disadvantage against the multitude of enemies, howling in pain whenever he received the occasional wound. Despite the cries, however, the fellow would jump back into the fray and continue entangling the enemies. Who else could this thrashing fellow be if not Wei Potian?
The other two human champions were only rank-eleven, yet they could each intercept a third-rank viscount and enter a deadlock. There was a viscount on the other side who hadn’t yet entered the battlefield and was, instead, confronting Song Zining across the battlefield.
But Qianye immediately discovered that the viscount wasn’t standing idle. His expression at the moment was serious, and the blood energy around him was almost aboil as he engaged in a desperate struggle of domains against Song Zining. All manners of beasts rushed out from his blood energy and pounced at Song Zining, but those vicious beasts would immediately sink into the central pond after appearing.
The blood beasts seemed to not know how to swim. They struggled with all their might after falling in, but their ultimate fate was to sink into the waters, never to appear again.
Qianye couldn’t help but feel surprised at this point. How could beasts formed of blood drown? The pond that was supposed to be illusory was actually drowning creatures? This scene went against all common sense!
Qianye stopped thinking about it soon afterward. The situation below was fairly urgent. There was no telling how long Song Zining and Wei Potian had been trapped there. They looked like they could still hold on, but the situation was beyond perilous. The duo’s origin power glow, in his True Sight, was already fairly dim. That was an early sign of exhaustion, which meant that they might collapse at any moment.
Qianye had no time to think about how these two long-time rivals had fallen into such a situation. He produced the Carol of Shadows—a pair of luminous wings spread out behind him as a golden luster coated the long sniper rifle.
He aimed briefly and pulled the trigger. The Carol of Shadows trembled ferociously, and the barrel jumped up from the recoil despite Qianye’s powerful arm strength. A mass of faintly visible light shot out from the muzzle, passed through an opening in Song Zining’s domain, and struck the back of a viscount.
Song Zining, who was walking on the grassy fields at this moment, found his expression shifting rapidly. He gripped his folding fan so hard that he nearly broke it. He had clearly sensed a mass of extremely powerful darkness origin power blast into his domain. Both the timing and position of the shot was just right—it entered via a small opening in his domain without being impeded in the slightest.
It was a true expert!
Song Zining’s hair stood on end. He discarded his folding fan and spun about like a blade to evade the vampire viscount with whom he was fighting. Then, with a wave of his hand, he brought the silver spear box lying nearby into his grasp.
The spear box would open up just by pressing a button. However, in the eyes of true experts, that brief moment of retrieval was enough to kill him several times over. On the verge of life and death, Song Zining’s forehead was drenched in cold sweat. He gripped the spear box tightly as origin power seeped out of his body and caused the high-quality alloy to break apart. That spear made of a mysterious material was now in his hand.
However, the origin bullet had already crossed the greater part of the domain. Song Zining broke out in cold sweat as he sensed the aura of darkness origin power close at hand. He inhaled deeply and was just about to ignite his origin power when his breath came to an abrupt stop. He watched as the origin bullet passed by him in an arc and struck the back of a viscount.
That werewolf was just launching fierce attacks around Wei Potian when his upper body exploded all of a sudden. A shower of blood poured down toward Wei Potian.
Song Zining’s thoughts spun about like lightning as he pointed a finger forward with a second thought. The near-perfect domain suddenly became full of openings. As expected, another faintly discernible bullet arrived through one of the openings and tore another dark viscount into two halves.
After being reinforced by the Wings of Inception, the Carol of Shadows’ firepower was comparable to a grade-eight firearm. How could a mere third-rank viscount withstand a shot from it?
At this moment, the dark races also realized that something was wrong. The vampire viscount contending with Song Zining was both shocked and furious. “Retreat!” He took the lead in leaving Song Zining’s domain and fled.
No ordinary sniper was capable of reaping a third-rank viscount in one shot under two clashing domains. Such destructive potential should belong to a count at the very least. The viscount had already used up over half of his energy against Song Zining. How would he dare to stay and become the third target?
However, he had just rushed out of the domain when he saw a certain person blocking his path.
The vampire viscount revealed a violent expression after realizing how young this person was. “Scram!” he shouted while accelerating and soon crashed straight into the human.
Qianye made no attempt at evasion. He only strode forward and clashed squarely with the incoming enemy.
A muffled bang ensued. The vampire viscount staggered backward several steps, his vision filled with dancing stars. Following the pure collision devoid of fancy moves, not only did Qianye not retreat but even took a step forward. A swing of East Peak sent the viscount’s head flying into the sky.
