Book 7, Chapter 25: Duel
Book 7, Chapter 25: Duel
Demonic Beast corpses were scattered all throughout the battlefield.
The floating fortress in the sky was smoking everywhere.
Even so, the ruler of the skies had eventually emerged victorious.
Eternal Night stood at the head of the city, gazing down. His gaze was quite focused and serious.
Lonely Skyleap charged over with excitement and said, “Your Majesty, our three days of pursuit has finished. Less than a tenth of the Beasts remain, and they no longer pose a threat to us.”
“Mm.” Eternal Night grunted faintly.
Lonely Skyleap was a bit surprised. “Your Majesty, is there a reason why you don’t seem to be happy about this?”
“I just don’t think that it’s really worth getting happy over,” Eternal Night replied calmly.
“Not worth getting happy over?” Lonely Skyleap was stunned.
Eternal Night continued indifferently, “The Beasts have incredibly fast reproductive cycles, some of them having multiple a year, and producing many cubs each year. The only thing that has been limiting their numbers until now is their constant in-fighting. Now, they’ve been backed into a corner, and there is an abundance of resources available to them. Since there’s no need for them to kill each other, the Beasts will be able to return to their former numbers in but a few years. Is it really worth being happy over? On the other hand, we Harpies have suffered quite a few casualties during this battle, and our armies have been significantly weakened. I imagine that both Sky City and the Floating Points were damaged as well.”
Lonely Skyleap hung his head.
Eternal Night was correct. The Beasts’ reproduced incredibly quickly, and the strength they had lost would quickly be recovered with the passage of time. Of course, producing Demonic Lords would take some time, but the constant infighting made it so that their rate of ascension was quite high. Without any interference from infighting, it was possible that some would even gain the strength of an Emperor rather quickly.
Only when the Beasts’ strength reached a certain level would they begin to fight with one another due to their vastly different personalities.
This was virtually an ingrained habit by this point. After all, the humans had managed to defeat the Beasts before in the past under the banner of the Illustrious Diving Dynasty, yet weren’t the Beasts still the most powerful today?
Of course, it wasn’t like Eternal Night had no way of dealing with this situation.
Striking while the iron was hot and taking control of this uncivilized territory, culling the number of Beasts as needed was more than sufficient.
Of course, there was still a Desolate Beast to think about.
Whenever the Beasts were in particularly dire straits, the Desolate Beasts would reawaken.
However, Eternal Night had no clue which Desolate Beast would be the one stopping them this time.
Even though the Harpies had won, Sky City had also suffered its fair share of damage. The momentary malfunction of the Sark’s Nucleus in particular had played an important role, and further maintenance was necessary. Of the three Floating Points, the Origin Energy Demonic Tower had been quite seriously damaged and wouldn’t be fully repaired for quite some time. It seemed that only two Floating Points would be participating in the battle against the humans.
Even Lonely Skyleap couldn’t help but question whether they had made the right decision. After all, they had no choice but to press on towards their duel with the humans and had no time to expand their base of operations.
Even so, this was the truth. Just as the Beasts weren’t totally unified, neither were the Intelligent Races. Otherwise, they really might have had a chance to overturn the status quo thousands of years ago.
The world situation refused to bend to the will of a single man.
“Reporting!” Just as Lonely Skyleap was deep in thought, a Harpy soldier suddenly rushed in and handed Eternal Night a letter.
The letter was fashioned out of a Thought-Uttering Jade. When Eternal Night picked it up, the jade flashed brilliantly, and its contents were immediately transmitted into Eternal Night’s mind.
He sighed. “The humans were victorious, and Youthful Labor failed.”
“Youthful Labor failed......” Lonely Skyleap muttered to himself before sighing and shaking his head.
Youthful Labor was handpicked by him for his astounding consciousness power. He had managed to endure the consciousness molding technique they had obtained from the Astrals and managed to refine a kind of special soul poison. This poison was incredibly rare, and the way the poison had to be administered was also extremely secretive. It should have been quite hard to notice, but unfortunately, he had still failed in the end.
“So he failed, did he,” another low voice spoke. This time, however, the speaker was a black shadow that had silently appeared next to Eternal Night.
That figure was an Astral elder.
“Yes. Just as you predicted, right?” Eternal Night said calmly.
The Astral replied, “Whatever are you saying, Your Majesty? How could it be as I predicted?”
Eternal Night chuckled coldly. “This kind of consciousness poison can only be used by the Astrals. Su Chen must know now that we have allied with the Astrals. There is no longer any room for compromise between us.”
The Astral elder chuckled. “The humans and the Harpies are already mortal enemies. The fight for the right to rule has no place for compromise in the first place. Tacking on another reason for enmity is not such a big deal. Su Chen has exterminated the Astrals, so we will fight with him until the very end. Your Majesty, you will definitely defeat the Boundless Sect as long as our two races are united.”
“Two races?” Lonely Skyleap raised an eyebrow. “The Harpies are just taking in a dog that lost its master, is all.”
The Astral elder was enraged by Lonely Skyleap’s words, but all he did was chuckle in the end. “You may look at it as you please, General.”
Eternal Night shot Lonely Skyleap a glance, clearly disapproving of what he had just said. Lonely Skyleap could only tactfully lower his head in silence.
Eternal Night said, “Su Chen has not died, and the human race has won a great victory. The letter my observer sent me doesn’t detail how many casualties they suffered, but their main force is intact, so a fight is imminent. All that remains is to prepare for the duel. For the sake of our success, you can begin to carry out your plan, Pablo.”
The Astral elder chuckled when he heard this. “Your wish is my command, Your Majesty.”
He bowed and retreated into the shadows.
Once the Astral elder had disappeared, Lonely Skyleap said, “Your Majesty, this Astral is not trustworthy. They might help us in our scheme against Su Chen today, but tomorrow they could be scheming against us!”
“I know. But Su Chen is far more terrifying than them,” Eternal Night replied.
Lonely Skyleap felt a shiver run up his spine.
An idea surfaced in his head, and Lonely Skyleap couldn’t resist saying, “Your Majesty, if you had a chance to go back in time to when Su Chen offered himself up to you, would you still choose to work with him, or would you kill him?”
Eternal Night shot him a deep glance and didn’t reply.
All he said was, “That’s a stupid question.”
Lonely Skyleap fell silent.
After some time, Eternal Night sighed as well.
Then, he said, “Gather everyone into formation, and put the Craftsmen and Metalskins to work on repairing Sky City. The time limit is three days. After that...... we will forge on ahead to the Skywild Plains.”
“Understood!”
Meanwhile, over at the Boundless Sect.
Su Chen was similarly tallying up the losses they had experienced.
The price for victory were the lives they had lost along the way.
Even though Su Chen had attempted to fight as much as possible and decrease the burden on his soldiers, he couldn’t fight back the pangs of sorrow as he took in just how many lives had been lost.
“Six hundred thousand......” Su Chen muttered in a low voice.
In comparison to the tens of millions of Beasts they had slaughtered, six hundred thousand was not a large number, but that was still six hundred thousand individuals who had died.
Just yesterday, they had all been alive and well.
This put a damper on Su Chen’s spirits.
Most of those who had died were low-tier cultivators, and some of the shuttle drivers weren’t even Origin Qi Scholars. They made up more than half of the casualties that the Boundless Sect had suffered.
The Meteor Formation in particular, which had served as the defensive line during the battle, suffered the greatest destruction.
Of the other two hundred thousand or so casualties, the Boundless Sect’s disciples didn’t even account for one-tenth of those deaths, and a majority of those disciples had been outer court disciples.
The difference in strength between the Seven Kingdoms and the Boundless Sect was now becoming fully manifest.
The Seven Kingdoms had originally thought that, as the ones who had established the human race’s system of rule, that their performance during the battle would exceed the Boundless Sect’s.
This result, however, gave them a rude awakening.
Perhaps the Boundless Sect’s disciples weren’t as disciplined as the soldiers of the Seven Kingdoms, but they cultivated similar techniques and practiced fighting in the same system. Their compatibility in battle was exceptional, and their foundation was extremely deep. Unsurprisingly, their formation was far stronger than that of the Seven Kingdoms’.
At its core, this was an example of the new replacing the old.
The Boundless Sect represented a completely new system that was far more suited for the era they lived in, and it was full of vitality and newness.
The results of this battle fully attested to this.
Those who still clung to bloodlines had nothing to say when faced with such a result.
They couldn’t even accuse the Boundless Sect of slacking, because ever since the battle began, they had occupied the positions least protected by the Meteor Formation. In other words, they had taken the most dangerous spots, yet they had suffered one-tenth the casualties and dealt ten times the damage.
These numbers put the other soldiers to shame.
No one was able to take any issue with the Boundless Sect anymore.
This was exactly what Su Chen had been hoping would happen.
If he wanted to unify the human race under one banner, any blood spilt should be spilt fighting an external enemy.
The moment that the humans defeated the Harpies would be the moment that they could truly assume ownership of the continent.
After reading through the report, Su Chen issued an order similar to the one Eternal Night had given. “It’s time to execute the Supernova Project. Issue this command: Anyone who is not injured should do their best to harvest resources, refine medicine, and repair shuttles and Origin Tools. Three days from now, our duel at the Skywild Plains will begin!”
Both the Harpies and the humans scattered upon being given these commands. They began to scour the untamed wilds that had once been occupied by the Beasts, refusing to leave even a single stone unturned. For the sake of victory in the upcoming battle, and for the sake of determining the rightful ruler of this continent, both sides were doing their utmost to recover and increase their strength. At the same time, they began to plan for the trump cards that the other party might possess, preparing to strike from the shadows.
Three days later, both groups set out for the Skywild Plains once more.
On the same day.
At Owl Country’s border.
The dust had just settled on an intense battle.
Gu Qingluo and Zhu Xianyao were floating in the sky. Beneath Zhu Xianyao knelt a Demonic King.
The Crow Skyking.
“We finally succeeded!” Zhu Xianyao cried out with excitement.
This was the most powerful creature she had ever enslaved before, one that would eventually become a Sovereign. She had even used a Lifesource Candle.
“We should hurry back and prepare for the upcoming battle now,” Gu Qingluo said softly.
Her Sky Armor fluttered in the wind, giving her a heroic, majestic appearance.