Only after hearing his account did Ma Yin and the others learn what Lin Tong had actually gone through.
The Sand Demon capable of ambushing Lin Tong — a two-layer Emperor Realm cultivator — had to be a Demon King-level powerhouse. Yet even such a formidable foe had been killed outright by a single remote strike from Yang Kai. Just how powerful was Yang Kai?
There was no time to dwell on the shock, because another massive surge of Demon Race warriors was pouring through the breach.
Meanwhile, the breach on the other side, left without Yang Kai to hold it, had also been broken through by the enemy.
More and more Demon Race warriors flooded into the city, clashing at close quarters with Tiger Roar City's cultivators as a brutal life-and-death struggle erupted atop the city walls. People were falling one after another. This was the first time the city's cultivators had fought the Demon Race at such intimate range — they were no match for the enemy's ferocious fearlessness. Their lines collapsed on contact, their defeat sweeping downhill like an avalanche.
The role of the military overseers finally proved its worth. Five thousand overseers was no empty boast from Yang Kai — they truly existed.
Anyone who retreated even a single step was executed on the spot by the overseers.
With the Demon Race pressing from the front and the overseers behind them, retreating meant certain death. Standing and fighting, at least, offered a sliver of survival. At this point there was only one choice. On top of that, Lin Tong's earlier sacrifice to buy time had shaken many to their core, and the blood of not a few cultivators was now pumping with fury. With wild battle cries, they charged headlong into the Demon Race ranks, determined to tear a piece of flesh from the enemy even at the cost of their own lives.
Yang Kai seized the moment and raised his arm high, his voice ringing out: "The city stands, we stand! The city falls, we fall! Kill!"
After a brief period of panic and disarray, Tiger Roar City's morale finally surged upward. The cultivators formed up and engaged the Demon Race in fierce melee, and Ma Yin led from the very front, proving that a woman's courage was no lesser than a man's.
A deep, complex chant rose into the air. With a wave of his hand, vast swathes of radiant light enveloped Tiger Roar City's fighters. The two great wartime sorceries — Bloodlust and Life Chain — blazed forth once more in dazzling brilliance.
Under the effects of Bloodlust, the cultivators' fear vanished entirely and their fighting spirit soared to its peak. Life Chain bound the life forces of over a thousand people together, allowing them to endure far more damage without falling.
They were holding!
Everyone realized with astonishment that even after the city's grand protective formation had been torn open in countless places, Tiger Roar City's cultivators — vastly outnumbered — were managing to stand toe to toe with the Demon Race army. This was partly thanks to their overwhelming positional advantage, which prevented the enemy from advancing in full; only a fraction had made it inside the walls. But it still raised their spirits enormously, proving that the Demon Race was not, in fact, invincible.
The ten Emperor Realm cultivators had turned their section of the wall into a killing zone from which no Demon Race warrior could escape alive. No matter how many charged, they all fell. The Demon Kings evidently recognized the situation and one by one launched their own attacks, targeting Tiger Roar City's Emperor Realm cultivators.
This was exactly what Yang Kai had been waiting for.
If those Demon Kings had stayed hidden within the ranks of the army, he might never have been able to track them all down — there were simply too many soldiers. But by recklessly revealing themselves, they had given away their positions and handed him the chance to strike them down.
Yang Kai's figure darted across the battlefield like a phantom. Wherever he passed, the Demon Race casualties mounted innumerably. One Demon King after another fell to his hand on the spot, and without those Demon Kings to command and coordinate them, the once-disciplined Demon Race army gradually descended into disorganized chaos. Yet the foot soldiers remained stubbornly fearless, charging forward into encirclements that Tiger Roar City's forces used to annihilate them group by group.
Half a day later, the Demon Race army was still attacking, but the tide of battle had turned dramatically. Tiger Roar City's walls were lined with a dense forest of human heads — every one of them a cultivator of the city. Not a single Demon Race warrior remained in sight; every enemy that had broken through had been cut down.
The Demon Race army's numbers had been slashed by more than half.
Only now did the surviving demons seem to realize something was terribly wrong. The Demon Kings had vanished from the battlefield entirely — not one remained in view. Even the Demon King who had been directing operations from the rear had been slipped past and assassinated by Yang Kai.
A flock of scattered sheep!
Though the Demon Race was fearless in the face of death, they would not throw their lives away for nothing. When they could see no hope of victory, retreat was the natural choice.
Cluster by cluster, the Demon Race warriors began pulling back. Gradually, the entire army withdrew.
At that moment, the teetering grand protective formation was deliberately dropped. Yang Kai led over ten thousand cultivators charging out in pursuit, cutting down enemies for a thousand miles. The road behind them was littered with countless Demon Race corpses.
Only after a thousand miles did he sound the retreat.
Every cultivator gazed toward the direction the demons had fled, panting hard, drenched in blood as though they had waded through a crimson sea. Yet on every face there burned a look of exhilaration.
They had won!
Despite facing an enemy several times their number, Tiger Roar City had won the battle — and paid only a minimal cost. Before the fight had begun, no one could have imagined such an outcome.
They had all been certain they would die, certain that Tiger Roar City would fall and become Demon territory. But reality had delivered a tremendous surprise.
And the architect of that surprise was one man alone.
Every pair of eyes turned to Yang Kai, drenched in blood from head to toe, and every face wore an expression of profound reverence. Today's battle — without Yang Kai holding the breach by himself at the start, Tiger Roar City's cultivators would never have had the chance to thin the Demon Race's numbers. Without Yang Kai single-handedly slaying those Demon Kings, the enemy army would never have crumbled into disarray. Without Yang Kai's miraculous sorceries, the city's fighters could never have held their ground against the Demon Race.
And in the end, without him leading the charge in pursuit, the victory would never have been so resplendent.
In this moment, whether they were native cultivators of Tiger Roar City or reinforcements from the eastern, southern, and northern domains, every last one of them felt only a deep and genuine sense of kinship with this young man.