Chapter 40: Expert
A flash of joy crossed the chieftain's heart. It seemed that these ordinary people were nothing more than a facade, looking grand on the outside while being hollow within. Perhaps he could take the county town of Xiaji without suffering the casualties he had anticipated.
By then, tens of thousands of residents throughout the city would become a feast of flesh and blood, allowing his ghostly army to spawn even more powerful ferocious ghosts, and perhaps even wicked ghosts.
At that time, his ghostly army would grow even stronger!
Just as the chieftain was calculating, thinking victory was within his grasp, he suddenly heard the sound of drums rolling in.
The drumbeats carried a distinct rhythm, steady and powerful, stirring the blood of anyone who heard them and igniting an urge to shout aloud and charge into battle.
A sudden jolt gripped the chieftain's heart: "Not good!"
Before he could react, he saw that the once-wavering morale of the common people had miraculously stabilized once again.
Furthermore, someone tossed an unknown substance into the seemingly dying bonfires. In an instant, the bonfires erupted with a deafening roar, their flames soaring high and blazing fiercely once more.
"Fire! Fire! Fire..."
At the command, hundreds of archers emerged from behind the ignited bonfires. Using the flames, they lit the tips of their arrows and loosed them in a volley into the darkness.
Ordinarily, mundane flames would have been instantly extinguished within such a dense concentration of gloomy, nether-world mist.
However, the fire on these arrowheads was no ordinary blaze; it carried a faint scent of sulfur—it was precisely the Triple-Essence Thunder Fire compounded by Wang Zhenling.
Instantly, hundreds of long arrows streaked into the dark mist like falling stars, and it became immediately apparent that quite a few ghostly entities were about to be wounded.
Yet, the chieftain shouted in a booming voice: "Shields!"
The nether energy surrounding the rows of ghost soldiers gathered before them, transforming into shields that intercepted the flaming arrows entirely.
Just as it seemed the rain of arrows might fail to injure even a single ghostly entity, the moment the arrows made contact with the nether-energy shields, the shields themselves caught fire.
The ghosts were terrified, and even the chieftain was taken aback: "These are not ordinary flames! They must be specifically targeted at us ghosts... I wonder which of the Sixteen Netherworld Flames this belongs to?"
Lacking a physical body, the chieftain's thoughts flashed with extreme rapidity, and he immediately issued a command: "Sever!"
In an instant, the ghost soldiers severed their connection with the nether-energy shields.
The flames momentarily consumed the shields, but having lost their link to the ghost soldiers, the fire quickly died out.
Only a few ghost soldiers whose reactions were too sluggish—failing to sever their nether energy in time—watched in horror as the flames crept from their shields onto their ghostly bodies, setting their very forms ablaze.
Several ghost soldiers shrieked miserably as they burned, resembling heaps of firewood until, bit by bit, their souls were incinerated into nothingness!
"Charge! Leave no living soul behind!" the chieftain ordered.
The army pressed forward, regardless of whether a mountain of blades or a sea of fire lay ahead.
Right behind the regular ghost soldiers, swarms of frenzied sinful ghosts, no longer able to restrain themselves, broke through the neat formations of the vanguard ghost infantry and surged toward Xiaji County.
"Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh..."
Another volley of fire arrows was unleashed.
Although these sinful ghosts were fanatical and utterly devoid of the fear of death, they lacked the strict discipline and rigorous training of the chieftain's personal guard.
As the fire arrows rained down, these sinful ghosts made no attempt to defend themselves, merely charging blindly forward.
In the blink of an eye, dozens of ferocious ghosts were ignited by the flames and burned until their souls scattered.
However, the even more powerful ferocious ghosts possessed terrifyingly dense nether qi that billowed around them like mist; with a single sweep of their energy, they extinguished the Triple-Essence Thunder Fire and continued their charge!
By this point, there was definitely no time left to prepare another volley of arrow rain.
The archers behind the bonfires were seen retreating in haste!
Filled with hatred for the living and greed for the flesh and blood of mortals, the sinful ghosts could not bear to watch the archers fall back.
They frantically accelerated their pace, leaping forward.
Yet, at that exact moment, the bonfires exploded with tremendous booms.
The piles of firewood were blasted apart, sending countless fiery splatters flying everywhere, instantly engulfing the hundreds of sinful ghosts who had lunged to the very front.
When the fireworks-like blaze finally dissipated, at least two-thirds of those hundreds of sinful ghosts had vanished. The rest had been reduced to ashes in the inferno!
At this sight, even the sinful ghosts—creatures that knew no such thing as fear—began to tremble.
They stared ahead at the overlapping rows of roaring bonfires...
If they were to force their way through all of this, gods only knew how many more ghostly entities would perish!
Even the chieftain hesitated at this moment.
He had originally assumed that Wang Zhenling was at the end of his wits, relying merely on ordinary fire and the collective sea of blood-qi of the populace to fend off his ghostly army.
Yet now, it was clear that Wang Zhenling had not arranged ordinary fires at all, and the situation had become deeply troublesome!
Even so, the chieftain remained confident that he could breach the city and feed upon the flesh and blood of all its inhabitants.
However, if he did so, his losses would be catastrophic, and seizing the Spirit Vein Yushu afterward would become an uphill battle!
🏔️ "It seems we cannot brute-force this... Heavenly Envoy Zhang, you have seen the current situation. Why don't you make a move, kill the leader, and capture the enemy?"
The chieftain, standing a mile away, looked past the distance to fix his cold gaze on Wang Zhenling, who sat high atop the city wall, and spoke to the Heavenly Envoy.
"I never expected this Wang Zhenling to be so foolish as to dare stand in our path. Since that is the case, I shall go and slay him!"
Heavenly Envoy Zhang sighed softly, his entire body soaring into the air like a great roc as he lunged toward the city of Xiaji.
In a place saturated with such intense flames and blood-qi, even someone of his caliber dared not let his primordial spirit leave his body unguarded.
He had no choice but to use his physical body to cross the distance and execute Wang Zhenling!
Yet, he was certain of one thing: the moment he decided to kill Wang Zhenling, that man was a dead man!
"Formidable... The Heavenly Dao Sect truly has an abundance of masters..."
The chieftain muttered to himself in secret admiration.
He watched as Heavenly Envoy Zhang swooped out like a great roc. Without even touching the ground, the man beat his arms and soared through the sky like a giant bird, spanning a full mile in a direct flight straight toward Wang Zhenling.
Such a feat was nothing short of miraculous.
Even Wang Zhenling, standing atop the city wall of Xiaji, could not help but wear a look of genuine admiration in his eyes: "What a powerful primordial spirit! At the very least, he must be at the Divine Concealment realm... or perhaps even the Divine Nether realm!"
The physical body is heavy and turbid. Without refining the mortal vessel to achieve a golden, jade-like constitution, one naturally cannot fly.
This Heavenly Envoy was naturally no exception. One must know that attaining a golden, jade-like body required one to be at least a master of the Earth Immortal realm.
Humans, ghosts, deities, and the heavens—the four ranks of immortals!
Those who cultivate to the Soul-Exiting stage may be called Human Immortals.
Whether it is the Divine Sprouting stage, all the way up to Divine Concealment and Divine Nether, they all fall within the category of Human Immortals.
Ghost Immortals who attain sainthood have initially broken free from the shackles of life and death, achieving absolute freedom and leisure.
And Earth Immortals stand yet a step above Ghost Immortals!
If this emissary of the Heavenly Dao Sect truly was an Earth Immortal master coming to slay a mere nobody like Wang Zhenling, it would undoubtedly be an effortless task.
And if an Earth Immortal genuinely came to take his life, Wang Zhenling would see no need to resist; he could even say he would die without a single regret—nay, he could even call it an honor to die by such hands!