Chapter 216: The Gate Shatters, War Ignites
BOOM!
The last intact third-tier scaled beast slammed into the already tottering alloy door at full speed. The remaining main locking bolt let out a piercing, agonizing metallic groan before instantly snapping. Unrestrained, the massive door panel tipped violently inward along its sliding track and crashed heavily onto the tunnel floor, kicking up a massive cloud of dust.
The gate had fallen.
The gap suddenly widened to a size that allowed the behemoths to pass through. The foul wind, carrying spore dust, surged into the main city. The scaled beasts waiting outside did not hesitate. The Beast Commander's orders swept through the ranks in an instant. The remaining third-tier scaled beasts pressed forward at the very front, followed closely by the dense masses of ordinary scaled beasts, flooding into the city gate tunnel like a tidal wave.
"Detonate!" Scholar Su roared.
The demolition experts hidden in the tunnel's side compartments pressed the switches without hesitation.
A muffled explosion erupted inside the gate tunnel. A blinding white light flashed, and a scorching shockwave, carrying a massive amount of grayish-white neutralizing powder, swept outward in all directions. The first few scaled beasts bore the brunt of the blast, being blown over by the shockwave. The soft tissues beneath their scales were burned by the powder, eliciting waves of agonizing, piercing shrieks. The formation of the scaled beasts near the tunnel briefly stalled, and the momentum of their invasion was forcibly cut off for several seconds.
This was the sole purpose of the pre-buried explosives: to delay, not to annihilate.
Before the smoke and powder could even dissipate, the third-tier scaled beasts behind them had already stepped over the bodies of their fallen comrades to rise again. Enduring the excruciating pain of the burns, they resumed their advance deeper into the tunnel. Their bodies were coated in a layer of white powder, and their movements were slightly slower than before, but their killing intent had not diminished in the slightest.
Almost at the exact moment the city gate collapsed, the supreme ruler in the subterranean cavern transmitted a brief command.
Receiving the signal, the Spiderweb Ancient Being simultaneously detonated three high-level spore nodes hidden beneath the residential district of the inner city.
Weng—
A more turbid, chilling psychic wave rose from three different locations within the main city, intertwining with the psychic tide from the beast tide outside the city to form a massive net that enveloped the entire bastion. Black spores surged upward through ventilation pipes and crevices in the ground, spreading through the streets and alleys.
The inner city instantly descended into chaos.
Inside the shelter, countless civilians were struck simultaneously by high-intensity illusions. Some saw the ground beneath their feet cracking open, an endless rift swallowing everyone. Others heard the calls of their deceased relatives and went mad, desperately trying to break out of the shelter. Still others convulsed, trapped in continuous visual hallucinations, screaming as they crashed through the crowd. The military police squads stationed to guard the node areas immediately opened fire, killing the secondary mutated insects spawned by the spores, while simultaneously struggling to restrain the out-of-control civilians. Their already thin numbers were instantly stretched to the breaking point.
"All three spore nodes in the inner city have erupted. The military police squads are pinned down, and order in the shelter zone has collapsed!" Lin Yan quickly summarized the intelligence from both fronts, his voice taut. "The delaying effect of the explosives in the gate tunnel is fading. The third-tier scaled beasts are leading the advance inward once again. The Sharp-Sense Ancient Being is intensifying its psychic impact, and the coverage of the illusions is increasing."
The artillery crews on the city wall urgently swiveled their cannons to concentrate fire on the tunnel entrance. Piercing shells continuously smashed into the densely packed beast herd, black blood splattering as scaled beasts fell one after another. Yet, the herd behind them endlessly filled the gaps. The tunnel space was narrow, severely restricting the angle of the heavy cannons. Many shells could only graze the spines of the scaled beasts, drastically reducing their lethality.
The surviving soldiers quickly formed a temporary human wall inside the tunnel.
There were no steel plates, no sandbags—only people standing shoulder to shoulder, short blades pointing outward, facing the charging behemoths head-on. They had just endured wave after wave of psychic erosion. Many still suffered from throbbing headaches and intermittent blurred vision. Their paired wake-up code words were shouted until their voices went hoarse, yet no one took a step back.
A wounded third-tier scaled beast broke through the powder zone, its bone spur thrusting straight at a soldier in the front row. The soldier did not have time to dodge and was pierced through the chest and abdomen. Using his very last ounce of strength, he wrapped both arms tightly around the behemoth's neck, preventing it from pushing forward. Seizing the opening, a comrade beside him drove his short blade fiercely into the scaled beast's eye socket. The beast thrashed wildly in agony, spinning in place with the corpse impaled on it, blocking most of the tunnel and temporarily halting the subsequent beast herd.
"Use the corpses to block the path! Do not let them scatter and rush into the streets!" the leading non-commissioned officer roared.
But the Beast Commander's tactics were extremely seasoned.
It did not let all the scaled beasts fight to the death in a single tunnel. It diverted a portion of the ordinary scaled beasts to search for other entry points along the outer drainage culverts and maintenance channels of the city wall. These passages were too narrow for the large third-tier scaled beasts, making them perfect for the infiltration of smaller scaled beasts. Once they emerged from the sides or the rear, the defenders' human wall would be attacked from both front and back.
"Watch the culverts on both sides! The scaled beasts are splitting off to bypass us!" Lin Yan intercepted the dispersed movement of thermal signatures at the first instance and warned loudly.
The non-commissioned officer immediately dispatched five soldiers, armed with grenades and short blades, to rush and seal the culvert entrances. The already thin human wall was left with even fewer men.
Deep within the cavern, the consciousness of the five ancient beings calmly appreciated the simultaneous chaos erupting both inside and outside the main city.
The Sharp-Sense Ancient Being maintained high-intensity psychic pressure, continuously draining the mental fortitude of the defenders and civilians. The Illusion Ancient Being constantly shifted its illusionary imagery, amplifying the fear brought by every casualty. The Spiderweb Ancient Being manipulated the surging spores to spawn more low-level mutated insects, creating more trouble in the inner city streets. The Beast Commander focused entirely on dispatching the frontline beast herd, executing a dual strategy of frontal assault and lateral infiltration, steadily compressing the defenders' space for survival.
The supreme ruler's consciousness slowly swept across the West Bastion.
The outer perimeter defenses had completely fallen, the main city gate was wide open, the inner city spore catastrophe had erupted, the defenders were divided and pinned down, and civilian panic was spreading. Humanity's remaining means of resistance were nearly exhausted. It did not order all its forces to press forward recklessly. Instead, it maintained its familiar rhythm of attrition, harvesting bit by bit, compressing bit by bit, denying the opponent any chance to catch their breath and regroup.
In the command hall, the colored blocks representing their controlled zones on the sand table were shrinking rapidly.
Scholar Su looked at the continuous casualty reports and the detection intelligence constantly transmitted by Lin Yan over the communicator. He knew in his heart that this battle had reached a desperate extremity. After a moment of silence, he made his final deployment.
"Order the tunnel defenders to conduct staggered, alternating retreats, establishing layered blocking lines relying on the corners of the streets and alleys," he said, his voice heavy yet resolute. "The military police must prioritize escorting civilians to the deepest core shelter pods. All remaining explosives are to be deployed on the main inner city roads to delay the beast herd's advance."
The orders were passed down layer by layer.
Hearing the command, the soldiers in the tunnel did not panic. The front-row soldiers fought fiercely with their blades to block the beast herd's charge, while the rear personnel retreated in an orderly fashion, regrouping at the first corner of the street to prepare for the next round of slaughter. The stench of blood drifted into the alleys of the main city's residential districts on the wind.
A third-tier scaled beast stepped over the piled corpses, walking out of the city gate tunnel and onto the main city streets. Raising its massive head, it let out a long, furious roar that echoed between the buildings. Close behind, more scaled beasts poured in. The black tide began to flood into the very heart of the West Bastion.
Sitting in the observation shed, Lin Yan's Sea of Consciousness continuously tracked the thermal signatures moving from all directions.
Old Zhou had fallen at the chokepoint. The first and second outer perimeter defenses had fallen one after another. The city gate had shattered, and spores were rampant in the inner city.
Now, the battlefield had shifted inside the city. The long war of attrition had finally burned its way to the place where the civilians were hiding.
End of Chapter.
The last intact third-tier scaled beast slammed into the already tottering alloy door at full speed. The remaining main locking bolt let out a piercing, agonizing metallic groan before instantly snapping. Unrestrained, the massive door panel tipped violently inward along its sliding track and crashed heavily onto the tunnel floor, kicking up a massive cloud of dust.
The gate had fallen.
The gap suddenly widened to a size that allowed the behemoths to pass through. The foul wind, carrying spore dust, surged into the main city. The scaled beasts waiting outside did not hesitate. The Beast Commander's orders swept through the ranks in an instant. The remaining third-tier scaled beasts pressed forward at the very front, followed closely by the dense masses of ordinary scaled beasts, flooding into the city gate tunnel like a tidal wave.
"Detonate!" Scholar Su roared.
The demolition experts hidden in the tunnel's side compartments pressed the switches without hesitation.
A muffled explosion erupted inside the gate tunnel. A blinding white light flashed, and a scorching shockwave, carrying a massive amount of grayish-white neutralizing powder, swept outward in all directions. The first few scaled beasts bore the brunt of the blast, being blown over by the shockwave. The soft tissues beneath their scales were burned by the powder, eliciting waves of agonizing, piercing shrieks. The formation of the scaled beasts near the tunnel briefly stalled, and the momentum of their invasion was forcibly cut off for several seconds.
This was the sole purpose of the pre-buried explosives: to delay, not to annihilate.
Before the smoke and powder could even dissipate, the third-tier scaled beasts behind them had already stepped over the bodies of their fallen comrades to rise again. Enduring the excruciating pain of the burns, they resumed their advance deeper into the tunnel. Their bodies were coated in a layer of white powder, and their movements were slightly slower than before, but their killing intent had not diminished in the slightest.
Almost at the exact moment the city gate collapsed, the supreme ruler in the subterranean cavern transmitted a brief command.
Receiving the signal, the Spiderweb Ancient Being simultaneously detonated three high-level spore nodes hidden beneath the residential district of the inner city.
Weng—
A more turbid, chilling psychic wave rose from three different locations within the main city, intertwining with the psychic tide from the beast tide outside the city to form a massive net that enveloped the entire bastion. Black spores surged upward through ventilation pipes and crevices in the ground, spreading through the streets and alleys.
The inner city instantly descended into chaos.
Inside the shelter, countless civilians were struck simultaneously by high-intensity illusions. Some saw the ground beneath their feet cracking open, an endless rift swallowing everyone. Others heard the calls of their deceased relatives and went mad, desperately trying to break out of the shelter. Still others convulsed, trapped in continuous visual hallucinations, screaming as they crashed through the crowd. The military police squads stationed to guard the node areas immediately opened fire, killing the secondary mutated insects spawned by the spores, while simultaneously struggling to restrain the out-of-control civilians. Their already thin numbers were instantly stretched to the breaking point.
"All three spore nodes in the inner city have erupted. The military police squads are pinned down, and order in the shelter zone has collapsed!" Lin Yan quickly summarized the intelligence from both fronts, his voice taut. "The delaying effect of the explosives in the gate tunnel is fading. The third-tier scaled beasts are leading the advance inward once again. The Sharp-Sense Ancient Being is intensifying its psychic impact, and the coverage of the illusions is increasing."
The artillery crews on the city wall urgently swiveled their cannons to concentrate fire on the tunnel entrance. Piercing shells continuously smashed into the densely packed beast herd, black blood splattering as scaled beasts fell one after another. Yet, the herd behind them endlessly filled the gaps. The tunnel space was narrow, severely restricting the angle of the heavy cannons. Many shells could only graze the spines of the scaled beasts, drastically reducing their lethality.
The surviving soldiers quickly formed a temporary human wall inside the tunnel.
There were no steel plates, no sandbags—only people standing shoulder to shoulder, short blades pointing outward, facing the charging behemoths head-on. They had just endured wave after wave of psychic erosion. Many still suffered from throbbing headaches and intermittent blurred vision. Their paired wake-up code words were shouted until their voices went hoarse, yet no one took a step back.
A wounded third-tier scaled beast broke through the powder zone, its bone spur thrusting straight at a soldier in the front row. The soldier did not have time to dodge and was pierced through the chest and abdomen. Using his very last ounce of strength, he wrapped both arms tightly around the behemoth's neck, preventing it from pushing forward. Seizing the opening, a comrade beside him drove his short blade fiercely into the scaled beast's eye socket. The beast thrashed wildly in agony, spinning in place with the corpse impaled on it, blocking most of the tunnel and temporarily halting the subsequent beast herd.
"Use the corpses to block the path! Do not let them scatter and rush into the streets!" the leading non-commissioned officer roared.
But the Beast Commander's tactics were extremely seasoned.
It did not let all the scaled beasts fight to the death in a single tunnel. It diverted a portion of the ordinary scaled beasts to search for other entry points along the outer drainage culverts and maintenance channels of the city wall. These passages were too narrow for the large third-tier scaled beasts, making them perfect for the infiltration of smaller scaled beasts. Once they emerged from the sides or the rear, the defenders' human wall would be attacked from both front and back.
"Watch the culverts on both sides! The scaled beasts are splitting off to bypass us!" Lin Yan intercepted the dispersed movement of thermal signatures at the first instance and warned loudly.
The non-commissioned officer immediately dispatched five soldiers, armed with grenades and short blades, to rush and seal the culvert entrances. The already thin human wall was left with even fewer men.
Deep within the cavern, the consciousness of the five ancient beings calmly appreciated the simultaneous chaos erupting both inside and outside the main city.
The Sharp-Sense Ancient Being maintained high-intensity psychic pressure, continuously draining the mental fortitude of the defenders and civilians. The Illusion Ancient Being constantly shifted its illusionary imagery, amplifying the fear brought by every casualty. The Spiderweb Ancient Being manipulated the surging spores to spawn more low-level mutated insects, creating more trouble in the inner city streets. The Beast Commander focused entirely on dispatching the frontline beast herd, executing a dual strategy of frontal assault and lateral infiltration, steadily compressing the defenders' space for survival.
The supreme ruler's consciousness slowly swept across the West Bastion.
The outer perimeter defenses had completely fallen, the main city gate was wide open, the inner city spore catastrophe had erupted, the defenders were divided and pinned down, and civilian panic was spreading. Humanity's remaining means of resistance were nearly exhausted. It did not order all its forces to press forward recklessly. Instead, it maintained its familiar rhythm of attrition, harvesting bit by bit, compressing bit by bit, denying the opponent any chance to catch their breath and regroup.
In the command hall, the colored blocks representing their controlled zones on the sand table were shrinking rapidly.
Scholar Su looked at the continuous casualty reports and the detection intelligence constantly transmitted by Lin Yan over the communicator. He knew in his heart that this battle had reached a desperate extremity. After a moment of silence, he made his final deployment.
"Order the tunnel defenders to conduct staggered, alternating retreats, establishing layered blocking lines relying on the corners of the streets and alleys," he said, his voice heavy yet resolute. "The military police must prioritize escorting civilians to the deepest core shelter pods. All remaining explosives are to be deployed on the main inner city roads to delay the beast herd's advance."
The orders were passed down layer by layer.
Hearing the command, the soldiers in the tunnel did not panic. The front-row soldiers fought fiercely with their blades to block the beast herd's charge, while the rear personnel retreated in an orderly fashion, regrouping at the first corner of the street to prepare for the next round of slaughter. The stench of blood drifted into the alleys of the main city's residential districts on the wind.
A third-tier scaled beast stepped over the piled corpses, walking out of the city gate tunnel and onto the main city streets. Raising its massive head, it let out a long, furious roar that echoed between the buildings. Close behind, more scaled beasts poured in. The black tide began to flood into the very heart of the West Bastion.
Sitting in the observation shed, Lin Yan's Sea of Consciousness continuously tracked the thermal signatures moving from all directions.
Old Zhou had fallen at the chokepoint. The first and second outer perimeter defenses had fallen one after another. The city gate had shattered, and spores were rampant in the inner city.
Now, the battlefield had shifted inside the city. The long war of attrition had finally burned its way to the place where the civilians were hiding.
End of Chapter.