Aspiring to the Immortal Path
chapter-635

If one traveled north along the Pegasus Mountains and then passed through that mountain range, one would come across a vast plain.

These were the illustrious Dongjin Plains.

The Dongjin Plains, vast and fertile, had been famous for their rich harvests. This place was rich in spiritual energy and had an agreeable climate, and many spirit plants had been grown here. It had once been the human country's most important resource in the rear.

But defeat after defeat and the loss of territory had turned what was the rear into the front line, and the plains known for their rich harvest became plains brimming with slaughter.

There were few rare creatures or spirit plants here. War robbed everyone of the desire to develop this area, and what replaced it was frenzied extraction and heedless destruction. There was only reaping and no sowing, so the amount of usable resources grew smaller and smaller.

In the eastern part of the plains was a small lake called Vanguard Lake. Its original name was "Three Branch Lake", but the war led its name to be changed, for right behind it was Dongjin Pass.

One of the three major frontline fortresses of humanity, Dongjin Pass!

This was a massive fortress that would have been impossible to complete through only manpower.

It was located on flat ground about seven kilometers away from Vanguard Lake. The entire city had been painted icy black, such that it looked like some squatting black behemoth from a distance.

Only when one got close would one realize how huge this "behemoth" really was. Its walls were a thousand feet tall, and to stand atop them and look down made one feel that one was looking down a cliff. These walls were seven and a half kilometers long and two and half kilometers wide, made entirely from an alloy of violet gold and Profound Metal, true walls of steel.

There were no gates in these walls. They had never been made to allow people to go through them. Anyone who wanted to get in had to enter through Immortal methods, including mortals.

Countless spell art marks, formation lines, and talismans had been placed on the walls, creating an enormous and complex superformation. It was made from 768 small formations, each formation having a different purpose. Any one of them losing effect would have minimal effect on the formation, but when they were combined, they were greater than the sum of their parts. One could say that they were the foundation of Dongjin Pass's defense.

There was no such thing as geographic advantage in Immortal wars, only formation advantage!

This mighty fortress had been enduring invasions from the fiends from the moment it was finished, experiencing test after test. Blood had painted the walls scarlet again and again, and spell arts had restored them to their original color again and again. But the soil underfoot remained a dark reddish purple.

―――――――――――――

Another fiend assault on Dongjin Pass was commencing.

Tens of thousands of fiends had gathered, and though they greedily stared at the walls, they didn't dare to draw close. The weakest of these fiends was at Mind Opening, and each group of one hundred fiends was led by a fiend general, the weakest of which was at early Transformation. If this were an ordinary human city, one of them could have destroyed it on their own. And behind the fiend army were three four-hooved, one-eyed beasts, standing a thousand feet tall.

Skyshakers!

Other than providing their own formidable combat power, these primal behemoths also served as the war drums of the fiend army. Their roars boosted the power of the fiend soldiers while striking fear into the hearts of humans.

On the backs of the three Skyshakers were three people, three fiend kings.

The large-bellied, bowl-faced one on the left was a Moonswallower Golden Toad, and his title was "the Heaven Swallowing King".

The white-faced, beardless scholar on the right was a Whitehair Bei, and his title was "the Venomheart King".

The blue-faced, long-nosed, large-bodied one in the center was a Bluefur Elephant, and his title was "the Colossus King".

These three great fiend kings looked at each other and nodded, and all the fiends that specialized in long-distance spell arts attacked in unison, countless spell arts pounding the walls in the distance. Wind, fire, and lightning filled the air above Dongjin and created bursts of rainbow light all across the walls. Without the protection of the formation, this wave alone would have doomed the walls.

The human army also put up a strong front.

The soldiers pulled back the strings on their bows and loosed their arrows, casting a large shadow over the earth with their deluge. These arrows were loosed by mortal soldiers, but they were using special Moonshot Bows with special Demon Slayer Arrows, and they were further empowered by the Heavenfeather Arrow Formation. These various boosts in power were enough to hurt any fiend below Transformation, particularly those that were not experts in defense. Although the damage would be small, the arrowheads were coated with powerful Immortal poisons that would severely weaken or kill anyone struck.

The fiends could not ignore the arrows, instead striking back with savage spell arts, not giving the chance for the arrows to fall. Most of the arrows were destroyed, but a few managed to leak through, falling upon those small fiends and making them howl in pain.

Long-distance exchanges were a necessary phase of a city assault. Fiends used this method to exhaust the formation's power, while human cultivators used the formation and the arrows to wear away at the spiritual power and numbers of the fiends.

For this reason, this early-stage battle was neither grandiose nor intense, only the bursts of rainbow light on the walls adding some color to this battle.

After more than a hundred spell art salvos, the protective light on the walls of Dongjin finally began to dim.

The protective formation was still operating, but it was now difficult to stop the fiends from forcefully breaking through it. Of course, this didn't mean that the humans were powerless. But just like how the fiends didn't send in their entire army, the humans couldn't invest everything they had against this level of attack.

Most importantly, the protectors knew what the fiends had come here for and what they needed to do.

Upon seeing the formation dim, the Venomheart King chuckled. "We can begin."

"Raaa!"

The three Skyshakers let out heaven-quaking roars.

These roars made the hearts of all the soldiers tremble, some of them even falling on their butts and pissing their pants. Those of weaker will failed to endure and fell from the walls, and to fall from these walls of one thousand feet in height would have one end up as meat paste.

On the other side, the fiends let out frenzied howls and began to charge at the walls.

Instantly, they tore off that civilized mask and showed that most savage side of war.

The vast number of fiends charged at the walls, their height unable to stop the frightening strength of the fiends. Some of the fiends simply needed to jump to reach the top of the walls, where they tore through the formation. One of them immediately shot over to a human soldier and stuffed him into its mouth, noisily chewing away. The delicious flavor made it so excited that it forgot where it was, and a moment later, several hundred arrows pierced through its chest, the powerful poison causing this fiend to pay for its arrogance with instant death.

More fiends rose to the air, excitedly shouting as they lunged at the human soldiers.

At the same time, atop a distant wall, a general wearing a purple cape waved his hand, upon which countless cultivators behind him flew at the fiends. They were fewer in number than the fiends, but they had been biding their time until now, and they now unleashed all their prepared spell arts.

With one salvo of spell arts, nearly one hundred fiends died.

But the fiends weren't that easy to deal with.

The counterattack from the fiends quickly followed, and a bloody battle began to play out on the walls of Dongjin Pass.

Blood rained down from the sky, the frenzied slaughter fully exposing the cruel nature of war.

But such scenes could not move a veteran fiend king or general. For them, this was only the appetizer.

A new recruit trembled as he watched the intense battle. Looking up at the sky, he muttered, "They can't break through, they can't break through."

A veteran next to him shot him a look of disdain. "Of course they can't break through, but that's not even their goal… What they want is life, blood, and slaughter!"

For the fiends, each battle was actually a hunt, and the bodies of the human soldiers were the finest spoils of war. As for the humans, they used mortal soldiers to hold down the fiends while the cultivators used this opportunity to kill the fiends. They couldn't stop the fiends from eating humans. All they could do was kill as many fiends as they could until the fiends reached their limit and started to retreat.

Both humans and fiends understood what was going on, which was why the fiends didn't send in the entire army and the humans didn't entirely rely on the formation. Both sides satisfied a few of the other side's desires, getting a little back in return. In all this, the lives lost were just insignificant numbers.

Even cultivators could die for the sake of war, so why would mortals be an exception?

The new recruit was stunned by the veteran's words.

"You're saying that the government drafted us to fill the stomachs of these fiends?" he asked in disbelief.

"What else could it be for? How many fiends do you think you can kill with just a bow and some arrows? They're fiends, fiends with spirit power! Brat, you think you're smart? This is a cultivator war. In a war like this, a mortal makes a contribution if they can loose a few arrows and serve as bait so that the cultivators can get an opportunity to make a kill. All people like you and me can hope for is that they kill swiftly and brutally so that the fiends retreat faster. All we can do is try our best to survive," the veteran said to the recruit while lying in a pile of bodies.

Fiends were all around them, and as the soldiers couldn't retreat, some of the smarter ones played dead. This recruit was lucky enough to follow a veteran, joining him in mixing into a pile of the dead and listening to his lessons on how to survive on the battlefield.

"But we'll still die, right?" the recruit said.

The meat of the recently dead was still fresh, and fiends weren't exactly picky.

"That will depend on your luck," the veteran replied.

As he spoke, a tiger-headed hawk fiend descended from the sky, grabbed the veteran, and flew up into the sky.

"NO!" the recruit shouted, but he could only watch as the veteran disappeared.

A moment later, a cat fiend rushed onto the walls and charged at the recruit.

Just as the sharp claws were about to tear through his body, a large hand suddenly protected him.

With a swat of the hand, the cat fiend was crushed into a pancake.