"Who are you? Why are you trespassing on our Vicia Chamber of Commerce territory? Do you wish to start a war with the Commercial Alliance?" a shrill voice cried out.
Indeed — here stood Lorist, facing a meticulously arrayed, impossibly dense formation of heavy armored spearmen that stretched endlessly down the street and around the far corner, and he was calmly demanding they surrender their weapons and give up their lives. This couldn't even be called arrogance anymore. It was just plain bizarre.
The heavy armored spearmen hadn't expected him to say something like that. A visible ripple ran through their perfectly ordered ranks — a flurry of muttered curses and angry shouts erupted before quickly being suppressed, restoring silence and calm. From this alone, one could tell that the Vicia Chamber of Commerce legion was a well-trained, elite fighting force.
The shrill voice rang out again. "And who are you?"
"The Grand Duke of Northland, head of the Norton Family — Norton Lorist." Lorist made no effort to conceal his identity.
The formation of heavy armored spearmen before him stirred again. This Grand Duke of Northland, standing alone with a single sword at the front, had to be out of his mind. Could one man really hope to hold back a ten-thousand-strong legion? Once the formation closed in and ten thousand spears thrust forward, even a Great Swordmaster would have to retreat and dodge. Did he really think his ridiculous Grand Duke title would make anyone obey his commands?
Sure enough, the shrill voice issued the attack order. "First battalion, attack the left section of the wall! Second battalion, attack the right section! Third and fourth battalions, rotate in as support. Fifth battalion, frontal assault — kill him!"
The command was concise and clear. The commander of the heavy armored spearmen had evidently realized that the enemy forces holding the northern gate and wall were few. Besides the two hundred-odd enemies at the gate itself, there were only a few hundred more on the walls — meaning the enemy hadn't yet managed to open the gate to let their main force outside into the city. They must have climbed over the walls. So recapturing the walls should be the top priority.
The dense formation of heavy armored spearmen before Lorist underwent a dramatic shift. The left and right columns flowed around Lorist and his flimsy street barricade like running water, rushing toward the stone stairways on either side of the gate that led up to the walls. The three frontal columns didn't charge at Lorist right away — instead, they advanced ten meters and halted, reforming into a horizontal battle line.
Before long, a line of heavy armored soldiers bearing iron shields half their height assembled before Lorist, with over a dozen ranks of spearmen forming up behind the front row of shield-bearers. This was a hundred-man battle formation. They rested their long spears on the shoulders of the soldiers in front, and the entire formation instantly became a hedgehog-like monster — every spear point aimed directly at Lorist…
"Kill! Invincible with me — charge forward!" a rough, commanding voice bellowed.
Every armored soldier began to march, their synchronized, thundering steps inching closer to Lorist in unison.
Meanwhile, the spearmen attacking the stone stairways on either side of the gate had already clashed fiercely with the guards on the walls. Because the stairways had four large landings, the attackers couldn't form proper formations for coordinated assault — they could only rely on sheer numbers and brute courage to push upward. The Norton Family guards had wisely abandoned the bottom two landings and fought the enemy on the upper two. Though outnumbered, their cultivation levels surpassed the attackers', and they were well accustomed to fighting in such tight, cramped spaces. The heavy armored spearmen could only be seen tumbling from the upper landings of the stone stairways…
The Vicia Chamber of Commerce's biggest mistake in dispatching this heavy armored spearman regiment to retake the northern gate and walls was not including longbowmen or any ranged attack units. A few volleys of ranged fire would have wiped out at least half the guards on the walls. The Norton Family guards didn't carry many crossbows either, but with no enemy ranged threat, they stood openly on the ramparts under Jost's command, picking off the attackers on the stairways one by one. For a time, the spearmen charging up both stairways suffered horrific casualties, while the defending guards had virtually no losses.
When the city-defense ballistae in the towers on either side of the gate joined the fight, the morale of the attackers below plummeted further. Yet even under these conditions, the heavy armored spearmen fought to the death without retreating. They also changed their tactics — hugging the walls to avoid the towers' blind spots, and selecting soldiers with exceptional martial arts and high-level battle force cultivation to launch assaults, trading casualties with the defending guards.
The towers had only two embrasures each facing the city interior, and once they lost their angle on the attackers on the stairways, they had no choice but to aim their ballistae down the street instead. To avoid hitting the guards and Lorist near the gate, the bolts were fired toward both sides of the street.
The men ripped doors off their hinges and quickly fashioned several large makeshift wooden shields, rendering the city-defense ballistae — which lacked the power of the Norton Family's war chariot crossbows — far less threatening. Though they still dealt some damage, their slow rate of fire and limited effect kept casualties within what the spearmen behind could tolerate.
"Kill!" With a thunderous roar, the hundred-man spear formation closed in and thrust their long-spears — which had been蓄势 for this very moment — at Lorist, who wore a lazy, carefree smile. Like a peacock spreading its feathers, the formation unleashed nearly a hundred spear thrusts that sealed off every possible space before Lorist. Up, down, forward, left, right — there was nowhere he could dodge those razor-sharp points. Only retreating backward offered any path of escape.
Lorist had no choice but to retreat. Just as the frontal spears were about to pierce him, he drifted backward from where he stood. The spearmen, who thought they had won, could only watch helplessly as their spear tips stopped less than half a centimeter from Lorist's chest, unable to make contact. If only the spears were a little longer, they all thought.
Every spear hit nothing but air. But the spearmen didn't despair — they retracted their spears and pressed forward again, driving the enemy back until there was nowhere left to retreat. That would be the moment to claim their glory. Nothing could stop a battle formation's advance — not some Grand Duke of Northland, nor the laughably flimsy barricade behind him.
The spears began to retract — but every single spearmen's eyes widened in horror. Lorist had pinched the tip of one retracting spear between two fingers, his entire body light as a feather, and was riding the momentum of the retraction straight into the heart of the formation.
No one could reverse their force from retraction to attack in that instant. The retraction lasted only a fraction of a second — two blinks at most. Yet Lorist exploited that fleeting moment to breach the formation. A dozen spears tried to change direction mid-retraction to intercept him, but they collided with adjacent spears instead, throwing the formation into even greater chaos. Panicked shouts and curses merged into a cacophony.
Sword light erupted. The formation shattered instantly. Screams cascaded without end — heads severed, blood spraying, bodies toppling. The spearmen, weighed down by their four-to-five-meter spears, were virtually helpless against Lorist once he had penetrated their ranks. In close-quarters combat, they couldn't even parry — their long spears had become liabilities. They could only watch as Lorist swept past them, a flash of his blade, a spray of blood, and the world turned crimson…
It was a massacre. The outermost spearmen dropped their spears and scrambled away from the formation on all fours. When they reached the ranks behind and looked back, they saw Lorist standing atop a mountain of dismembered corpses, drenched head to toe in blood, his expression relaxed and content — as if wiping out a hundred-man formation was as easy as sipping a cup of tea…
Every spearmen in the front ranks who had witnessed the slaughter nearly stopped breathing in that moment, involuntarily shrinking back. But a furious roar erupted from behind them: "Kill! Kill him! Charge and kill him!"
The front-rank spearmen snapped back to reality, their hearts filled not only with shame but with rage. Their eyes reddened. Kill! Kill the demon before them and avenge their comrades!
"Kill!" The first armored spearmen to charge Lorist thrust with all the fury and precision he could muster — the sharpest thrust of his life. But Lorist sidestepped with a gentle lean, the spear grazing past his right ribs. A flash of sword light, and the spearmen clutched his throat and collapsed onto the blood-soaked ground.
"Kill!" Countless spears thrust toward Lorist from all directions, forcing him to take two steps back to avoid the onslaught. But immediately, more spears stabbed in from every angle…
For Lorist, the chaotic melee was actually harder to deal with than the organized battle formation. He didn't want to open his Blood Domain. Indeed, once activated, he would become the god of that crimson world — no matter how many enemies there were, life and death would be in his hands. But the Blood Domain had a time limit. At most, Lorist could sustain it for about fifteen minutes before exhaustion set in. He couldn't waste it on endless waves of fodder soldiers. Who knew where the enemy's elite fighters might be hiding, waiting for him to let his guard down…
Screams and the sounds of fierce fighting came from the barricade behind him. Worich and the others had also engaged the heavy armored spearmen. Lorist retreated while kicking up the corpses of dead spearmen and hurling them at the charging enemies, disrupting their momentum before suddenly surging forward into the mass of soldiers, hacking and slashing wildly.
On the ramparts above the northern gate, Jost fired three consecutive shots, bringing down a bearded heavy-armored giant from the stairway. In less than half an hour, he had already loosed nearly a hundred arrows, and dozens of elite spearmen had fallen to his green longbow. His shoulders were starting to ache — Jost estimated that another hundred shots or so would leave him crippled.
The other two Silver Guards who could imbue their arrows with battle force had long since exhausted their reserves and sat on the sidelines as spectators. Now only Jost's battle-force-infused arrows posed a threat to the attacking spearmen. What worried Jost was that ever since the heavy armored spearmen had changed their tactics, the casualties among the guards defending the stairways had surged, and the kill ratio had reached parity with the attackers.
Many of the soldiers in the Vicia Chamber of Commerce's heavy armored spearman regiment were recruited mercenaries who excelled in individual combat. Though the Norton Family guards were their equals in martial skill and battle force, they simply didn't have enough numbers and were easily worn down by the mercenaries, leading to mounting casualties. If not for Jost firing arrow after arrow from the ramparts, both stone stairways would have fallen to the enemy long ago. Naturally, Jost had become the number one target of the attackers' hatred…
On the street before the northern gate, the scene was a maelstrom — fighting everywhere, heavy armored spearmen's corpses strewn across the ground. From the ramparts above, one could still make out Lorist's blood-drenched figure battling relentlessly. Everywhere he charged, a storm of blood and carnage erupted. The barricade behind was still held by the guards, though their dwindling numbers were becoming increasingly apparent. However, Jost had no way to send reinforcements — the fierce battle for the two stairways was still raging.
More and more Flying Tiger Legion soldiers had climbed onto the walls — nearly six hundred in all — but Jost was furious. Defense was the job of the Rock Legion's sword-and-shield infantry! What were these lance cavalrymen of the Flying Tiger Legion doing scrambling up here? There were no horses on the wall — lance cavalry couldn't exert any advantage! Sending them to defend the stairways was just sending them to their deaths! Jost cursed Ross the Tiger under his breath while ordering two exhausted Silver Guards to shout from the ramparts for Rock Legion swordsmen or longbowmen to come up first, and for the Flying Tiger Legion's lance cavalry to stop crowding onto the walls!
The heavy armored spearmen below the left stairway suddenly let out a collective roar. Several dozen soldiers launched a frenzied mass charge, swarming upward. The guards on the upper two landings were caught off guard, and their casualties spiked. Several guards were grabbed by spearmen in what amounted to mutual-suicide grapples, and both tumbled from the stairway. Fortunately, the guards on the ramparts reacted in time, and the two sides clashed into a tangled mass at the fourth landing — closest to the top.
Jost could no longer concern himself with the right stairway. His green longbow loosed a dozen bolts in rapid succession, each one a streak of lightning, picking off seven elite spearmen and knocking them from the stairway to stabilize the situation. He had just begun to catch his breath when suddenly, at the fourth landing's turn, a flash of sword light blazed upward, dazzling as a bolt of lightning. Seven guards engaged in fierce combat were flung from the stairway in a shower of blood…
Jost's blood ran cold. A Great Swordmaster! The Vicia Chamber of Commerce hadn't sent a Great Swordmaster to deal with Lorist — instead, they'd prepared to retake the walls first! No wonder those dozens of spearmen had charged together moments ago — it was to cover the Great Swordmaster's ascent to the ramparts…
The Great Swordmaster who stormed onto the wall was a cold-eyed, ruthless-looking middle-aged man, clad in the same black armor as the heavy armored spearmen but without a helmet. A streak of blood from a slain guard was smeared across his face, making him look especially savage. After reaching the ramparts, his blade flashed and another dozen guards fell. Jost's line of sight was blocked by the falling bodies, and by the time they hit the ground, the Great Swordmaster was already less than five meters away from him.
It's over… In that instant, Jost's hands and feet turned to ice. At this range, his longbow posed no threat to a Great Swordmaster — and this was on the ramparts, not on horseback in the open field. There was nowhere to dodge…
…