Chapter 113: Difficult March

After a month-long march, Sha Lu Te led the army to the Black Tooth Pass, which is the end of the canyon, but not the end of Sha Lu Te's march. After passing this trumpet-shaped pass, the road ahead became extremely tortuous and difficult.

Marching until the afternoon, the towering rock walls on both sides of the canyon gradually squeezed the sky into a thin dark red line. The Ogre scouts of the vanguard just reported that no large-scale demon activity was found ahead.

For Sha Lu Te, who has been on the battlefield for a long time, such sections prone to ambush are always to be carefully scouted and passed quickly. When the enemy chooses to act, no matter how well prepared he is, the damage will not be small.

Yesterday afternoon, the army had arrived at the pass. To prevent accidents, Sha Lu Te ordered to set up camp early to rest, and at the same time required to strengthen patrol efforts at night to prevent demons from taking the opportunity to sneak attack.

And dispatched a large number of scouts to scout and fire-test the cliffs on both sides. After repeatedly confirming that there was no danger, he ordered the entire army to put on armor this morning and maintain a combat formation to pass through here quickly. Although Ogres have better physical strength than humans, they also dare not march in armor.

When the Fang Legion passed through the pass first, the attack started from the rock wall itself. Countless petrified lizard demons disguised as rock tumors and moss. They suddenly lifted their camouflage and fell from the cliff nearly a hundred meters high.

These demons are small in size, but their shells are as hard as iron, and their falling momentum is comparable to a siege hammer. Their target is not the soldiers, but the giant hump-backed mountain lizards in the middle of the team carrying siege equipment and heavy supplies.

Several precious pack animals wailed and fell to the ground in the dull impact and bone-cracking sound, and were smashed together with the equipment on their backs, instantly blocking the already narrow passage.

Almost at the same time, the seemingly solid gravel ground on both sides of the troops collapsed violently, revealing a network of tunnels that had been dug out. A type of Abyssal creature called "Razor Worm Demon" surged out like a fountain.

They are the size of large hunting dogs, with sharp shell edges, good at high-speed crawling close to the ground, specifically attacking legs and feet. They do not seek to kill heavy armored soldiers, but frantically cut ankles and bite tendons, creating chaos and pain. Soldiers on the edge of the formation were instantly dragged down, and screams and metal scraping sounds mixed into a piece.

When the troops fell into chaos due to attacks from the front and back, the Abyssal throwing spear throwers and acid-spitting demons from rock wall crevices and caves began precise point-killing. Their targets were clear: officers, flag bearers, communication soldiers.

Spears soaked in corrosive mucus and acid balls flew from angles difficult to predict, several commanders trying to reorganize the team fell in response, the legion command system began to appear delayed, and the chaos intensified.

Sha Lu Te's roar instantly overpowered the noise: "Shield wall! Shrink to the center! Don't care about the head, clear the feet first!"

His judgment was extremely decisive, the "meteorite" on the head was one-time, and the insect tide under the feet was the source of continuous damage. The Ogre soldiers executed the order with amazing discipline, using giant shields and bodies to build a circular defensive line, protecting the fragile pack animals in the middle, and long-handled weapons stabbed out from the shield gaps, strangling the approaching Razor Worm Demons.

When Sha Lu Te personally led the personal guard to launch a counter-charge against the insect tide, trying to find the commander in the depths of the tunnel, all the demons retreated rapidly along the tunnels and holes on the rock wall like receiving a silent order.

Leaving only a mess on the ground, wounded soldiers, destroyed supplies, and a thicker smell of sulfur and blood in the canyon.

This attack was a cold warning from the darkness, every inch of land behind needs to be exchanged with blood. Sha Lu Te stood by the destroyed siege crossbow, watching the soldiers carrying the bodies of their comrades, his face gloomy. The road to Rock Fortress is longer and bloodier than he expected.

When Margash's call resounded through the Abyss Plane, the demons who truly responded to his conscription only slightly exceeded one-third of the total. The rest were either too far away, or out of reach; there was also a considerable part, out of disregard or hidden resistance to the authority of this Abyssal Lord.

The Rift Stone Continent is a typical epitome of this separatist situation. This continent is torn by crisscrossing steep mountains, and less than one-twentieth of the area is flat land suitable for cultivation.

The rest are craggy peaks, deep rifts, and barren plateaus. Such a cruel and stingy environment, even Margash, who is known for greed and desire for conquest, rarely had a strong desire for occupation; input and output, in the arithmetic of the Abyss, also seemed too disproportionate.

Therefore, a unique power vacuum and fragmented ecology were formed here. More than thirty demon lords of various sizes each entrenched in a valley surrounded by natural dangers or a basin with geothermal surges, forming warlords who attacked each other.

And more Abyssal creatures that rely on specific extreme environments to survive and multiply, such as the "Shimmering Cancer Worm Swarms" inhabiting mineral veins, "Thunder Wing Demons" soaring in lightning storms, and even "Flame Bound Demons" lurking in underground dark rivers, are countless, and they usually only owe allegiance to the leaders of their own groups.

Many of these demons were local creatures on the entire plane after it was swallowed by the Abyss, and their bodies were affected by the Abyssal laws, undergoing huge changes, but their ability did not have the chaotic disorder of Abyssal demons, and the fanaticism for destruction.

Not all demons originate from pure void. After the entire plane was swallowed by the Abyss, the local creatures that once lived on this land, under the pervasive erosion of the Abyssal laws, their flesh, soul, and existence essence underwent terrifying distortion, and finally fell into the ranks of demons.

However, these "acquired demons" often have subtle and critical differences from the "native demons" born directly from the bottom of the Abyss.

They still retain some habits of the original creatures, morphological memories, and even shadows of community structures. More importantly, they lack that fanaticism for pure chaos and indiscriminate destruction rooted in the Abyssal origin.

Therefore, within the Abyssal camp, these "transformed demons" are often regarded as second-class existences that are not pure enough, neither detached from the order of light, nor have they fully embraced the chaos of darkness, on the narrow bridge between two cliffs, forever suffering from tearing and torment.

For Sha Lu Te, the origin or residual instincts of these demons are meaningless. In his military logic, there is only a simple and cold equation: whatever blocks the road to Rock Fortress is an "obstacle"; whatever is an obstacle must be crushed and cleared.

Whether they were once birds, beasts, or native races of this place, at this moment they only represent one thing, the resistance that needs to be leveled by his legion, pity or understanding, has no place in front of the battle axe.

And in the eyes of these locally transformed demons, the Ogre army under Sha Lu Te is a hateful invader. They may not have fanatically served the Abyss, but guarding the valleys, rifts, and nests they inhabit is an instinct derived from the deepest part of twisted life.

This disciplined, iron-torrent-like army is systematically destroying the world they are familiar with. Thus, resistance is no longer out of loyalty to the Abyss, but out of a desperate counterattack mixed with anger.

After ten days of climbing mountains and ridges, Sha Lu Te's legion passed through the narrow rock path called "Skull Crushing Corridor" by the locals, and the view suddenly opened up, and at the same time, they immediately fell into deeper danger.

They stepped into a huge, nearly elliptical structural basin, 210 kilometers long and nearly 70 kilometers wide. The edge of the basin is a nearly vertical, hundred-meter-high black basalt cliff, like the inner wall of a giant bowl, cutting the sky into a depressing circle. This place is called "Craggy Rock Basin."

The only entrance is the natural crack on the northwest side of the basin that Sha Lu Te's legion just passed through, a natural crack with a width of only thirty people walking side by side.

According to the Harpy scout report, a crack on the cliff on the southeast side of the basin, which local demons call "Weeping Blood Throat," is the only exit, but the demon lord entrenched here does not seem to intend to give way.

The bottom of the basin is full of craggy sharp stone forests and bottomless ground rifts. The ground is dark red, covered with a layer of hard, vitrified lava shell, obviously the product of violent geological activity in ancient times.

Nowadays, there are still several places continuously gushing hot steam containing sulfur from the ground rifts, forming natural smoke barriers and line-of-sight interference zones. The ground is scattered with countless huge, pale giant biological bone fossils, which are half-buried in the ground, forming additional obstacles and potential cover.

In the center of the basin, there is a boiling, dark green water pool emitting a pungent acid smell, the pool water is corrosive, and the steam is also toxic. Some twisted plants adapted to the Abyssal environment grow around the water pool.

Tentacle-shaped, blood-sucking vines that capture small creatures; thorny bushes full of metal-like spikes that can reflect magic energy; and huge fluorescent fungi that emit hallucinogenic spores. These are not decorations, but part of the demon environment.

The cliffs around the basin are full of caves of various sizes and artificially chiseled trestle roads and platforms. These are obviously the results of long-term management by the demon lord entrenched here.

At the highest giant cave entrances, one can faintly see simple but sturdy catapults, ballista positions, and preset slide grooves for rolling down giant rocks or pouring corrosive liquids.

Between the stone forests and ground rifts, one can see rough low walls and trench systems, which are not for long-term defense, but to divide and mislead the formation of the attacking side.

"Report Marshal, according to the data provided by the Shadow Intelligence Agency, the demons we encountered should be Rock Cliff Demons. They are the monkeys of this plane. After being polluted and eroded by Abyssal laws, their intelligence and bodies have undergone distortion. We caught a live one, which can be effectively communicated with."

Sha Lu Te carefully examined the captive caught by the Harpy. He saw that he was about two meters tall, his physique was unusually burly, his body was covered with dark gray horny skin, and his tail was thick and powerful.

His hands and feet were unusually wide, and his fingers (toes) evolved retractable black metal-like hooks, which could easily pierce into rocks. The palms and soles of the feet have suction cup-like flesh pads, providing extra adhesion on wet rock walls, and the spine is hunched forward when walking normally.

"Stop the whole army! Set up camp on the spot—"

Sha Lu Te's roar overpowered the echo of the basin, shaking between the rock walls. He reined in his mount, looking at the ferocious stone forests and towering cliffs all around. Experience told him that the danger here far exceeded expectations and could not be broken in a day.

"Build the fortress solidly! Bury the fences deep, dig the trenches wide, and the sentry towers must be set up tonight!" He turned off his saddle, his iron combat boots stepping on the dark red rock shell.

"Centaur light cavalry, take the squadron as the unit, and increase the frequency of patrols. Keep your eyes open for me, keep your ears erect, any shadow on the rock wall, any strange sound in the ground rift, are not allowed to be let go!"

He walked to a slightly higher stone platform, looking at the darkening sky and the cave shadows on the cliffs that were like staring at them.

"That group of 'monkeys' is more familiar with every shadow here than we are." His voice lowered, but let every legion commander hear clearly, "In this kind of godforsaken place, if you take one wrong step, what you hear will be the funeral song of the entire army." ===== CHAPTER 114 =====