Volume 4: Super-Tier Awakening & The Ancient Capital Calamity
Chapter 337
The Perilous Northern Gate Defense
Flames and smoke choked the skies over the northern gate of the Ancient Capital. The towering stone ramparts, which had stood firm for centuries, were now heavily battered and stained with thick, metallic blood. The harrowing screams of soldiers and the ear-piercing shrieks of undead monsters blended with the roaring concussions of magic artillery, weaving a tragic and desolate symphony of death. Waves of undead corpses continued to pour relentlessly from the distant horizon like a gloomy, pitch-black flood, threatening to swallow the entire ancient city whole.
The air hung heavy with the stench of rotting flesh, scorched gunpowder, and the bitter saltiness of fresh blood and sweat. Countless battle scars marred the ramparts—deep, jagged craters gouged out by dark magic and lightning bolts. The defending soldiers gripped their magic staves with bloodshot eyes, panting heavily like bellows in a forge. Having fought continuously for three days and nights without rest, their spiritual pools were drained to the very last drop, leaving only iron willpower and boundless hatred to sustain their collapsing bodies.
Yet, what filled them with true despair was not the endless horde of skeleton soldiers, but the colossal monster standing at the vanguard of the battlefield.
It was one of the six most terrifying commanders leading the current undead army—the Armor-Clad Ice Corpse Monarch!
Standing fifty meters tall, it rose like a tower of death amidst the sea of blood. Its entire body was encased in a foot-thick layer of millennium-old black ice, radiating a bone-chilling frost that froze the surrounding air into a fine, swirling mist of diamond dust. This glacial armor possessed astonishing hardness, rendering it virtually immune to the elementary and intermediate fire spells unleashed by desperate squads of mage soldiers. Even long-range magic artillery shells detonated against its hide in mere flashes of brilliant fire, shattering into thousands of fragments without leaving so much as a scratch on that dark, icy carapace.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The Armor-Clad Ice Corpse Monarch let out a muffled roar that rattled eardrums, sending shockwaves of white mist sweeping across the battlefield and hurling dozens of soldiers backward. Its massive, spike-covered tail, encased in razor-sharp ice, suddenly lashed out, sweeping across the ramparts like a reaper’s scythe. With a single blow, dozens of magic cannons worth tens of thousands of spiritual stones—along with the mage teams operating them—were blasted into the abyss below, accompanied by heart-wrenching screams.
“The northeast defense line is about to break! Reinforcements, move in now!”
“Those skeletal bastards are climbing the cliff face! Kill them! Slaughter every last one of them!”
Thousands of skeleton soldiers, their eye sockets burning with malevolent hatred, clung to the fissures of the city wall, swarming upward like hideous giant spiders. Wielding razor-sharp bone sabers, they mercilessly cut down any soldier blocking their path. Blood spattered across the ancient stone blocks, streaming down the drainage ditches to turn the ramparts into a true slaughterhouse.
At the central sector of the northern gate, Lieutenant Colonel Lin Tiesong stood firm like a beacon amidst the storm. His military uniform was in tatters, and a massive patch of dark blood stained his left chest from a direct collision with a warrior-class beast moments earlier. Despite his wounds, he gripped his magical greatsword tightly, his eyes sharp as daggers fixed upon the towering monster before him.
“Listen up, all forces! Even if we die, we hold this line! Not a single step back!” Lin Tiesong’s voice was hoarse, blood welling from the corner of his lips, yet his towering aura rekindled the fighting spirit within the trembling soldiers around him.
Yet, no matter how formidable one’s willpower, it could never bridge an absolute gap in power.
At that exact moment, the Armor-Clad Ice Corpse Monarch seemed to lose patience. It took a heavy stride forward, causing the ground beneath its feet to quake violently like an eight-magnitude earthquake. Wielding its gargantuan skeletal arm, the monster brought a devastating punch straight down toward the section of the wall where Lin Tiesong stood.
Rumble across the heavens!
The sturdy granite rampart, reinforced with layers of dense defensive runes, finally buckled under the terrifying pressure. A gigantic fissure dozens of meters long cracked open like a spiderweb, and blocks of stone weighing thousands of tons collapsed with a thunderous crash. Lin Tiesong’s eyes bulged as he unleashed a desperate sword qi slash with every ounce of his remaining strength to parry the blow, but the sheer impact flung his body backward, sending a geyser of crimson blood spraying into the gloomy night sky.
Over half the soldiers had become casualties. The northern gate defense hung by a thread, its collapse measurable in mere seconds. Seeing this, the skeleton soldiers below let out even more frantic, grotesque cackles, preparing for a final all-out charge to sweep away the entire stronghold.
Just at that critical, life-or-death moment when despair had consumed the minds of every soldier, a world-shaking anomaly erupted from the distant horizon!
Swish! Swish! Swish!
Two earth-shattering wind pressures tore through the driving blood-rain and thick fog, hurtling forward at supersonic speeds beyond the imagination of anyone on the battlefield. The piercing howl of fierce gales deafened the air, creating a low-pressure vortex that distorted and warped the surrounding space.
Every eye on the ramparts snapped upward toward the sky.
A youthful figure clad in dark robes was seen navigating the air, gale-force currents swirling beneath his feet into miniature tornadoes. His features were sharp and handsome, yet cold as a glacier frozen for ten thousand years. Deep within his obsidian eyes flashed a sharp, piercing cold light that seemed capable of piercing the netherworld itself. It was Lin Feng!
Right beside him, floating with absolute grace and sovereign authority, was Mu Ningxue. She glided atop a ribbon of pristine white snow and ice, flying in tandem with Lin Feng. Surrounding her body were tens of thousands of snowflakes condensing into razor-sharp ice blades that spun brilliantly, radiating an arctic chill that instantly plummeted the battlefield’s temperature by dozens of degrees Celsius.
The twin god-like martial prodigies had arrived! The overpowering might radiated by the two pinnacle powerhouses pressed down like Mount Tai, instantly crushing the blood-lust aura that had choked the northern gate.
The soldiers lying in pools of blood waiting for death suddenly widened their eyes, replacing despair with a spark of hope burning as bright as the morning star.
“It’s... it’s Magic God Lin!”
“And Chief Mu! They’ve come! The northern gate is saved!”
Cheers erupted unexpectedly from the parched throats of the surviving soldiers. The arrival of Lin Feng and Mu Ningxue at this pivotal moment acted like a divine restorative, instantly reviving morale that had flickered on the verge of extinction.
High in the air, Lin Feng paused lazily. With a gentle flick of his hand, a massive wind blade a zhang in length condensed in his palm, slashing straight down toward the skeleton soldiers swarming up the wall.
Slash!
A single sweep of sword qi flashed past, and hundreds of skeleton soldiers vanished without a single cry, blasted into millions of minuscule white bone fragments that rained down into the abyss like a summer storm. That terrifying might forced even the fearless skeleton soldiers below to pause for a beat, an unsettled tremor flickering within their hollow eye sockets.
At the same time, Mu Ningxue gracefully raised an ivory finger. The ice clouds above churned frantically, transforming into a colossal blizzard-and-ice barrier that enshrouded the fractured rampart, completely sealing off the flood of undead surging from below.
Yet, their attention was instantly drawn to the primary target before them.
The Armor-Clad Ice Corpse Monarch!
The fifty-meter-tall monster seemed to keenly sense the breath of the strongest enemy yet—an oppressive might that threatened its very undead instincts. The deep sockets of its skull suddenly ignited with blazing green ghost-fire, emitting a crisp, grinding clatter as its skeletal joints shifted.
It threw back its head and unleashed an ear-splitting, prolonged roar, directly challenging the two intruders who dared violate its killing grounds. The entire layer of black ice across its body trembled violently, and the undead energy circuits within surged furiously, generating a thick, pitch-black pressure that enveloped its entire frame.
“Hmph, a bag of oversized bones daring to bare its teeth and act presumptuous here?” Lin Feng sneered coldly, eyeing the monarch as if looking at scrap metal destined for the scrap heap.
The Armor-Clad Ice Corpse Monarch seemed to comprehend the utter contempt in his voice, and its fury surged to its absolute peak. It lowered its head, opening its cavernous jaws like an infinite black hole, directly gathering all the chill and death-qi within a radius of several miles into its throat.
In the blink of an eye, a toxic, pitch-black blizzard carrying the most terrifying corruption and destruction began condensing at the center of its gaping maw. The freezing temperatures emanating from this blizzard even caused tiny, jet-black spatial cracks to fracture across the surrounding air.
Roar!
With an eardrum-shattering howl, the Armor-Clad Ice Corpse Monarch expelled that toxic black snowstorm, blasting straight toward the airspace where Lin Feng and Mu Ningxue hovered, moving with the speed of forked lightning!