A calamity was spreading all across the Transcendent Continent.
The locals could not even tell where the source of this calamity was. All they remembered was countless beasts charging out from the mountains and forests, destroying everything in their wake. The invaders possessed extraordinary combat strength, and ordinary beasts were not their match at all. Not to mention the lone hunters, even small squads could do nothing against the enemies bearing down from all directions.
The Nangong family was currently in disarray. In the study, an elegant man in his thirties was frowning deeply as he gazed at the urgent reports on his desk. He hadn’t even opened the latest reports that were brought in.
He had just picked up one of them with a sigh when hurried footsteps were heard outside the door. His aide charged in without even knocking. “Clan Lord, things don’t look good. Darkriver City has fallen!”
“Darkriver!” The man’s mind went blank.
He barely managed to pull himself together after a while. “How did it fall? How about the garrison? What were they doing?”
“The beasts came too fast and there were too many of them! The defenders could not hold! City Lord Xu Zhe said he will die with the city. He sent his aides to break through the encirclement and bring us this information.”
The man opened the document and saw some hurried sketches of various beasts, along with brief explanations. The artwork was fairly careless and done in an apparent rush. It would seem the document was brought here with great difficulty, evidenced by all the bloodstains on it.
“The messenger?”
“He died at the gates.”
The man nodded. “Darkriver has a garrison of over ten thousand soldiers and two kinetic towers, our most heavily-guarded city. It actually fell in a single battle! Who would’ve thought I’d encounter something like this right after becoming clan lord? This is beyond my ability to handle, convene the elder assembly.”
The aide was just about to leave when the man said, “Is there any news from the capital?”
“No.”
“How long has it been since we dispatched our messenger?”
“Five days including today.”
“That’s strange… go assemble the elders.”
Moments later, the elders of the main family were all in the conference hall, with the man at the seat of honor. “The elders trusted me and raised me to the clan lord’s position, yet I am of humble talent and knowledge. Such a sudden development is difficult for me to decide alone. This matter is related to the very survival of our Nangong family, so I hope all elders can make a decision together.”
With that, he passed down the urgent missives and documents.
Some of the elders were still putting on airs, calmly taking a sip of tea before opening the documents. After reading the contents, however, they couldn’t help but spray out the beverage in their mouths.
“Darkriver has fallen!?”
“Is Evernight attacking?”
“Look at this, what kind of monsters are these? I’ve never seen them before in my eighty years of life.”
“How did we lose so many locations? D-Doesn’t this mean half of our assets are gone?”
The elders broke into fervent discussion. After they had quieted down, an old elder said, “Duanfang, you’re the clan lord now, so you must have a decision in mind. Why don’t we hear of it first?”
Nangong Duanfang sighed. “I believe that this is our Nangong family’s biggest crisis since the Sky Demon and Iron Curtain.”
The elders nodded in succession. Their family had lost their prestige and some elite soldiers to the Iron Curtain, but this time, they were about to be uprooted. The land that had accompanied the Nangong family throughout history was now being overrun by the beast horde. Xu Zhe, who had fallen together with Darkriver City, was also one of their most powerful experts.
Seeing the elder’s reaction, Nangong Duanfang said, “My idea is to evacuate our domain and retreat to the central region of the continent. There, we can work together with the Hou, Liao, and Zhangsun families to solidify a small region and await Imperial reinforcements.”
The elders erupted into chaos before he had even finished.
“Evacuate!? We’re just giving up our ancestral lands!?”
“Our Nangong family has never suffered such humiliation since we arrived on the Transcendent Continent!”
“Exactly! Without our assets, how can we remain as a high-ranking aristocratic family!?”
Nangong Duanfang waited until the elders had poured out their anger. “The land won’t grow legs and run away. All we’ll lose is our income for the year if we leave now, at most the buildings and structures. These losses can be solved with money. With our several hundred years of accumulation, rebuilding won’t be difficult at all.”
“How about the people? What do we do with all the citizens?”
Nangong Duanfang replied calmly, “That’s even easier. They’re not surnamed Nangong, so it won’t hurt us no matter how many of them die. We can just buy more slaves, especially young women, when we return and encourage them to reproduce. We’ll be able to supplement the population in a single generation.”
He paused for a moment before saying, “But if we aren’t willing to evacuate, those beasts will be at our gates in three days. No one will be able to leave at that time. Take a look at the documents carefully, what special characteristics do you see?”
After studying the information for a while, one of the elders said, “They have land, air, and even underground types. They have creatures specializing in speed, strength, and defense for attacking fortifications. They’re lacking long-range types…”
Another person said, “Why would they need long-range types when they have so many flying creatures?”
Another elder was shocked. “They’re almost like an army!”
Nangong Duanfang said, “They are indeed an army, at least according to their current performance.”
The elders fell silent. Everyone knew the difference between a beast horde and an army of beasts. These creatures were like soldiers with origin power cultivation, containing various troop types and roles that worked together in battle. Such an army needed little effort to sweep through the Nangong family’s lands.
The old elder said, “Having Duanfang as our clan lord is the Nangong family’s fortune. Yuanbo, he… sigh, let it be. Now, let us vote on the issue of abandoning our territory.”
Moments later, a large number of hands were in the air.
Seeing the depressed atmosphere, Nangong Duanfang said with a clear voice, “Why worry, everyone? Our Nangong family has hundreds of years in accumulation, countless secret tomes, and several secret arts. Our descendants can be found all over the world! As long as our Nangong family members remain, we can rebuild the family again within a decade! There’s no worry about rebuilding another high-ranking aristocratic family!”
His vehement words stirred everyone and ignited a long-lost passion.
“You’re right! Our foundation is exactly the reason we’re a high-ranking aristocratic family.”
“When Duke Zhao led his family to the Western Continent, were they not burning their boats as well? The Zhao clan wouldn’t see today’s prosperity had they not taken the risk back then.”
“If the Zhao can do it, why can’t our Nangong family do it? What’s all the talk about becoming a major clan if we don’t have this much courage? If the Transcendent Continent falls, we’ll go to the Western Continent. The dark races still have a lot of land over there.”
Seeing that the current morale is high, Nangong Duan issued a series of orders for their immediate evacuation. There was an unassuming order among them to recruit strong civilians as militia and provide them with basic equipment.
This didn’t seem like much, but the elders knew after looking through the documents that local mobs were no match for the beast army. Asking them to resist was just to buy time for the Nangong Family’s direct descendants to retreat.
This order would inflict great casualties among the civilians. They might even be massacred if they were to anger the passing horde. Despite that, the elders feigned ignorance and went off to manage the evacuation.
Having lost the barrier that was the Nangong family, the beast army charged into the heart of the continent without obstruction. There, several aristocratic families came together to build an entire defense system and were calmly waiting for the beast army. As for the number of civilian casualties, no one paid attention to whether it was in the millions or tens of millions.
Compared to the overrun Transcendent Continent, things on the Western Continent were much better. The door happened to open between the Zhao clan, the dark races, and the Northern Legion’s garrison. This area was a warzone, to begin with, so both the Empire and Evernight had a large number of soldiers posted there.
Lin Xitang’s promotion and disappearance were so sudden that the Northern Legion hadn’t been reassigned, or even moved. The fate of this corps wasn’t an easy decision to make because a wrong move would sour things between the Emperor and the military. As such, the legion was placed under Duke Chengen Zhao Weihuang’s command while the matter was dragged out. No one dared to cut off their supplies anyway.
The beast army put their indiscriminate nature on full display when they appeared on the Western Continent. For some reason, they split their forces into two to attack the Empire and Evernight simultaneously, greatly reducing their fighting power on each route. The dark races here had been fighting against Lin Xitang for many years, and their commander was also a famous character. Although the development was sudden, the two factions were unfazed in its wake. They retreated gradually, obstructing and killing the enemy at each step of the way.
The Empire lost over ten thousand soldiers after several days of battle, but the beast horde numbering in the tens of thousands was finally eliminated. Only a small number of them managed to charge through into the center. Then again, the losses were all elite soldiers that couldn’t be replaced easily. The only good news was there were few losses among the experts.
A door also appeared on the void continent, but the war-torn land was home to a large number of fortresses, garrisoned by elite forces. Hence, the beast horde that had appeared through the door was eliminated in just a few days. The only problem was that the creatures had appeared from the Misty Wood, so the Imperial army had no idea regarding their source.
While the Imperial mainland was suffering a calamity, the blessed land on Fort Continent was having a relatively easy time with the defense. Qianye had entered the door personally and found out what was behind it, so he was able to make ample preparations in advance. When the barrier was gone and the beast finally army appeared, there was an army of fifty thousand waiting outside the mist!
These troops weren’t sufficiently trained, and most werewolf soldiers only understood basic orders, but they had the overwhelming advantage in numbers. Qianye was there to provide targeted support during the defense, and the rear lines also possessed sufficient anti-air firepower.
The beast army was thus slaughtered in a single day.
