Flesh flew in every direction and blood flowed in torrents. The battlefield had transformed into a giant meat grinder, shredding every living thing that poured into it into fragments.
One after another, demonized barbarians fell.
Though they too had been born into the barbarian tribes and were strong and robust, they had received no shamanic enhancement. After being corrupted, they had lost all capacity for independent thought. Now they were nothing more than humanoid weapons driven entirely by the impulse to kill.
How could such existences possibly stand against a true barbarian force that was well-armed, brimming with killing intent, and further empowered by shamanic arts?
The moment the two armies clashed, the Demon Race's side suffered catastrophic losses, while the Shaman Bull Tribe's warriors plowed forward like bulldozers, leaving no living thing in their wake.
Ten standard squads, each comprising between two hundred and fifty and three hundred fighters, advanced under their respective captains like ten sharp nails driven into the Demon Race's formation. In an instant, everything was thrown into chaos.
Amid the clang of weapons clashing, heads soared through the air and powerful bodies toppled one by one. In their wide-open eyes lingered a trace of attachment to this land — but far more bewilderment.
These corrupted kinsmen died without ever understanding what they had been doing, why they had blocked the path of their former brothers, or why they had raised blades against them.
It was a sweeping, crushing victory. In less time than it took an incense stick to burn, the Demon Race's vanguard had been torn to shreds.
"A pack of useless trash!" Sha Ya, commanding from the rear of the army, showed not the slightest alarm. She remained as composed and regal as ever, her beautiful eyes gazing coldly at the Demon Race soldiers dying before her without a flicker of emotion.
Unlike the barbarians, this was far from her first confrontation with them.
Previously, when the four great barbarian tribes had been destroyed, the Demon Saints had led the charge, and the Demon Race had been unstoppable — meeting virtually no meaningful resistance, they had easily annihilated the four tribes one after another. But now that she was the one in command, she had begun to realize just how troublesome these alien peoples truly were.
In terms of raw individual strength, the barbarians and the Demon Race were roughly comparable. But with those damned shamans' enhancements, the balance shifted decisively.
Those various shamanic arts really were something extraordinary.
Still, she was unconcerned. They were merely demonized Demon Race slaves — she couldn't care less how many died. The true key to this battle did not lie with those Demon Race footsoldiers, nor even with these two armies. It lay with a certain shaman afflicted by the Green Demon's poison.
Her gaze pierced into the distance, cutting through the spatial barrier. Sha Ya spotted that fellow who was covered head to toe in green. The corner of her lips curled upward. He should be reaching his limit about now, she thought.
"Scatter!"
On the battlefield, Ahu's roar split the sky.
The barbarians heard the shout and immediately halted in their tracks, wheeled around, and began spreading outward in orderly fashion.
There was good reason. Behind the Demon Race vanguard, a crowd of squat, rotund figures with crimson skin had suddenly burst forth. Each one bore a vicious, frenzied expression, as if injected with chicken blood, their round bodies bouncing across the ground like rubber balls — every leap carrying them over a dozen meters forward as they charged toward the barbarians with reckless abandon.
Red Demons!
Thanks to the knowledge that Yu and Lu had gleaned from the Shaman God Temple, the barbarian warriors immediately recognized these red-skinned creatures and responded correctly. Had they charged in blindly without knowing what they were facing, the casualties would have been devastating.
One standard squad after another veered around the Red Demons and pressed forward.
The Red Demons refused to let them go, scattering as well and bouncing toward the nearest clusters of fighters.
*Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh…*
From high above, arrow after arrow streaked down, carrying the sound of splitting air and the intent to kill.
Every single arrow struck a Red Demon with perfect precision. The moment they were hit, the Red Demons reacted like lit gunpowder barrels — their already crimson skin turned an even deeper blood-red, and an aura of extreme danger surged from within. Their round bodies swelled to several times their original size in an instant, and then, accompanied by a series of thunderous booms, they exploded one after another. The blasts were powerful enough to tear holes in the void itself.
"Good heavens…" Yang Kai, watching the blossoming sparks in the air from afar, couldn't help but wipe the cold sweat from his forehead. The destructive power of these self-detonating demons was truly no laughing matter. While one or two alone were unremarkable, if eighty or a hundred of them blew up simultaneously, even a Shaman King would suffer.
The Demon Race's hundred clans really did manage to produce all manner of bizarre creatures — the Green Demons, and now the Red Demons.
Meanwhile, Sha Ya's smug smile froze abruptly. Her cold eyes snapped toward the aerial riders in the sky, and she gritted her teeth. "Damn it!"
As far as she knew, the alien peoples should have had absolutely no intelligence on her forces. But when the Red Demons had charged out, these barbarians had made the most precise possible response, rendering the surprise attack completely ineffective — and worse, costing her a number of troops for nothing.
The *whoosh* of arrows continued without pause. The barbarian cavalry mounted on their giant eagles were all expert marksmen. Even from midair, they maintained flawless accuracy, each arrow felling a bounding Red Demon and saving the lives of their comrades below.
"Kill them!" Sha Ya commanded with a wave of her hand.
Behind her, clusters of black mist vanished silently into the void, disappearing without a trace.
Moments later, at the side of one of the aerial riders, a short figure materialized without the slightest sound. It appeared in midair without any warning whatsoever, a pitch-black dagger already swiping directly toward the unsuspecting rider's neck.