Chapter 876: Exchanging Blows
“Great Chief!” The surrounding werewolves were shocked, but none of them dared to stop him. The Wolf King’s ferocity was as notorious inside the tribe as it was outside.
The king himself turned a deaf ear to the voices around him as he absorbed the ancestral power. The great shaman’s body trembled constantly as his face sunk in and his eyes became dispirited. The Wolf King only let go of the totem when the werewolf was almost unconscious.
The great shaman fell gasping to the floor and couldn’t clamber back up no matter what he did.
The Wolf King’s expression was frigid, his body suffused with a dark red glow as he glanced at the tribesmen around him. “I will not allow anyone to trample the glory of our tribe, the dead must be avenged! Now, let us go into battle, I will lead you as we tear our enemies apart! The ancestors are with us!”
“The ancestors are with us!” All the werewolf soldiers roared, and the army accelerated its march.
The great shaman in the vehicle was soon forgotten. If he couldn’t recover from this ordeal, the tribe would soon have a new great shaman. As the previous great shaman hadn’t managed to transfer his ancestral power, there was little difference between the remaining candidates.
With the ancestral power in his grasp, the Wolf King became even more aggressive and quickly lost the patience to keep on riding in the car. He shot toward Southern Blue on his own to check on the city defenses.
The atmosphere in Southern Blue right now was stifling and mournful. Little more than half of the people who had followed Song Zining into battle returned alive. Even with the advantage of a surprise attack, a subsequent ambush, and Qianye killing the enemy commander right off the bat, the casualty rate among the mercenaries was almost as bad as the enemy vanguard. From this, one could see how much of a fighting-power gap there was between the two parties.
Even for mercenaries who were used to slaughter and death, losing half of their forces was a bit too cruel. Almost every survivor had friends or family left behind on the smoking battlefield.
Nonetheless, morale did not decline despite the devastating outcome. On the contrary, everyone saw a glimmer of hope.
Before this battle, these soldiers belonged to the lowest rung of the mercenary world. Not to mention claiming victory over the Wolf King’s vanguard, half of them would have scattered from fright before they had even squared up for battle. If it wasn’t for Ji Tianqing’s threat looming over their shoulders, it wasn’t certain if Song Zining could even muster three thousand men for this skirmish.
After this great victory, everyone saw how well-versed Song Zining was in strategy, and how easily Qianye had claimed the werewolf count’s head. Yet, Ji Tianqing—who had played them half to death in the beginning—never took to the field, opting only to guard the city instead.
These simple mercenaries understood that following such people was their only hope.
This was when the victorious warriors, including experts like Frost Wolf, truly accepted their identity as Dark Flame mercenaries.
The returning soldiers required rest and treatment. Song Zining handed over these trivial duties to Guan Zhongliu who had rushed over after hearing the news. The man had led the city guard for many years and was thus quite familiar with support and logistics.
His arrival also signified a slight change in Ji Rui’s stance. Although the fatty never made a personal appearance, this meant that he had already taken half a step forward.
In the war room, Song Zining was locked in a frown, his expression lacking the joy of their first victory. He stared fixedly at the map as he marked out the military routes he had learned from interrogating the captives. Ji Tianqing stood with her arms crossed, silent and pensive.
The heavy death-toll was actually within expectations. Song Zining’s initial plan was to train the mercenaries through a series of battles, accelerating their maturation amidst the flames of war. Survivors of a battle would inevitably grow stronger and stronger. The neutral lands lacked a lot of things, but desperate people wasn’t one of them.
Song Zining raised his brows, saying, “Judging from the Wolf King’s style, he probably won’t wait patiently after absorbing ancestral power. He’ll probably come here to check on Southern Blue and fight it out first.”
Ji Tianqing rolled her eyes. “What’s the point of thinking about something so trivial, just scry him.”
Song Zining frowned. “I had a little… accident a couple of days ago. I can’t use divination arts for the time being.”
Ji Tianqing was rather surprised. She shot Qianye a glance and said angrily, “You guys just want to calculate this and that just because you have some skill, it’s only a matter of time that something will happen. Especially this guy, it’s best you don’t touch anything related to him, but you just won’t listen. Serves you right! Have you learned your lesson now?”
Qianye was startled. “What does this have to do with me?”
“You should know what you did!”
Qianye was even more puzzled, but he was more concerned with something else. “Are you okay?”
The seventh young master adopted his trademark calmness, saying, “It’s just a broken fan and some setback to my divination-related arts. It’ll probably go away after a few months, why worry?”
He said there was no need to worry, but Qianye knew that wasn’t the case. This period was a time for people at a lower cultivation rank to forge ahead, and a couple of months was enough for Qianye to open up yet another origin vortex. Song Zining’s cultivation had never lagged very far behind Qianye, but now he would need several months to recover—this went to show just how grave his injury was.
Qianye didn’t know much about divination arts, but he knew some basic principles at least. Generally, the more powerful the subject of divination or the more connected he was, the greater the price involved. With a character like Lin Xitang involved, it was no different from fighting an invisible battle.
Qianye knew very well that he was linked to many people—Lin Xitang, Zhao Weihuang, Nighteye, the Black-Winged Monarch, etc. If Song Zining was really divining his matters, it would pose a great risk no matter how skilled he was.
He wanted to speak but didn’t really know how to word it. Song Zining looked soft on the outside, but his nature was actually like Qianye, resolute and unyielding. No one could dissuade him from something he had decided upon.
“Let’s not talk about this, if the Wolf King arrives ahead of time…” At this point, Song Zining broke into a frown. Normally, he would analyze the situation and perform divinations to verify the theory. But now, he felt less confident without his usual process.
“Enough, let me do it!” Ji Tianqing tossed a black jade token onto the table and said after a glance, “He’s already on the way.”
Song Zining heaved a sigh of relief, feeling more assured with the guidance of fate. His eyes sparkled as he said, “We must let him come but not let him leave, we must deal a heavy blow to him in one battle.”
Ji Tianqing couldn’t help but interject. “He left his army behind, so he’s probably here to sound us out. He’ll turn tail and run immediately once things go south for him. If the Wolf King was so resolute, he wouldn’t have submitted to Zhang Buzhou.”
“We’ll have to rely on Qianye to make him fight us to the death.”
Qianye frowned. “How should I do that?”
“How should I know? This depends on you. The battle will only become more difficult if the Wolf King retreats and joins his army.”
Qianye couldn’t even say anything before Song Zining patted him on the shoulder. “Take your time to think about it, I need to make some arrangements.”
Ji Tianqing said before leaving, “Think faster, the Wolf King will arrive very soon.”
The duo left Qianye alone in the room. Judging from their tone, it seemed like they wanted him to taunt the enemy and make him fight to the death. Nonetheless, hurling abuses was never Qianye’s strength, and even after a long while, he still hadn’t figured out how to go about it. Seeing that it was almost time, he stepped out and headed toward the defensive line on the walls.
The sky was filled with dark clouds as a black speck shot toward Southern Blue from yonder horizon. In the blink of an eye, the speck had arrived within one kilometer of the city and the Wolf King’s figure came into view. He looked down at the city from above with undisguised killing intent in his eyes.
Once the Wolf King’s silhouette became stationary, two cannon turrets in the city spun about accordingly and locked onto the intruder.
The divine champion’s brows twitched ever so slightly as he sensed the ballistae locking onto him. What he saw inside the city was a scene of chaos—it would seem the damage of the recent battle hadn’t healed just yet. However, the origin power of the city was revolving as one, and there were numerous powerful auras hiding within them. Apparently, they were all ready to do battle.
The Wolf King’s expression sank when he found that the defenses here were tighter than he had expected. Additionally, the arrangement of troops looked like they were preparing to rely on the city’s defenses to repel attacking experts.
The Wolf King became hesitant for a brief moment. Song Zining was also in the city at this moment, and this person was even more famous than Qianye. The Wolf King had been going through the former’s lifetime achievements in recent days—although they were few in number, he couldn’t help but find them quite shocking.
The Song clan might seek revenge in full force if this seventh young master were to fall in battle. Although the Wolf King had no fear for his own safety, it would be a painful blow to him if his long-term assets in the empire were uprooted.
Now that he was here, though, he couldn’t just go back without a fight. In the end, the king decided that he would still kill Song Zining if the fellow wasn’t sensible.
He had just made his decision when he saw a certain figure rise up from Southern Blue. Who else could it be but Qianye?
He pointed at the Wolf King and roared, “Wolf King, why tuck your tail in now that you’re here? Let us fight.”
The Wolf King felt belittled by Qianye’s words. He revealed his true form with a snort, conjuring a dark red projection behind him that towered dozens of meters above. It was like a giant spirit of the night, looking down on the entirety of Southern Blue.
After revealing his true body, the Wolf King simply raised his voice in a bid to shake the opponents’ will, especially Ji Rui. Such a massive projection moving in sync with the main body wasn’t a method a sub-divine-champion expert was capable of.
Ji Rui was cowardly and afraid of trouble. It was possible that he would be cowed into hiding after noticing the Wolf King’s power. That way, Southern Blue would lose one of their core fighting powers.
He had just finished posing and hadn’t even uttered any threats when Qianye’s figure shot forward at the speed of lightning, throwing a thousand-ton punch toward his chest.
The furious Wolf King retaliated with a punch of his own.
The impact from the clash was much greater than the Wolf King had expected. Qianye's punch was not much weaker than his own, in fact. He let out a groan and couldn’t help but take a small step back.
Qianye only slid back about ten meters, his eyes full of disdain as he gazed coldly at the Wolf King. Then, he turned around and flew back into Southern Blue.
A clamor broke out in the city with countless people glancing and pointing at the Wolf King.
Overcome by a bad feeling, the Wolf King looked back to find the massive projection slowly disintegrating. Qianye’s single punch had actually dispersed his illusory image!