Chapter 129

When the adventurer vanguard's flag fell for the third time and the battle line retreated like a receding tide, the hunters on the cliff finally moved.

There were no slogans, no light, only a gray ripple almost impossible to detect that radiated from the tip of Master Xiage's staff, instantly covering the entire east exit of the canyon.

"Silent Barrier: Shadow Veil Aria," all Dragon Tongue magic, distress signals, and even the morale-boosting effects of war cries that relied on sound were forcibly strangled in the throat at this moment.

Almost in the same second the barrier unfolded, Lady Tali disappeared from the edge of the cliff.

She transformed into a wisp of shadow thicker than the night, flowing down along the fissures of the rock wall. Her target was the patch of shadow at the edge of the battlefield that was the only one still rippling slightly within the Silent Barrier; that was Liana's hiding place.

The shadow below seemed to sense danger, suddenly contracting and deforming, attempting to merge into the shadow of a nearby Bailong Sect member. But it was too late.

Lady Tali's appearance had no physical form, only three intersecting black lines flashing and disappearing in the air.

That unnatural shadow stiffened abruptly, and subsequently "seeped" out a large amount of thick black blood exuding the aura of dragon veins, like a ruptured water bag.

The shadow quickly faded and dissipated, revealing a slender body within whose spine, carotid artery, and magical circuits had been precisely severed. Liana didn't even have time to show an expression of astonishment; her dagger had just slid halfway out of her sleeve.

The poisonous fangs in the shadows were pulled out in deeper shadows.

Barlem sensed the abnormality almost the instant Liana's life aura disappeared. He roared (though the sound could not travel ten meters) and tore an adventurer, armor and all, into two halves, his blood-red eyes suddenly casting toward the cliff direction.

"Rats! Come out!!!"

Responding to him was a dull roar that tore through the air.

Gru Tie-Shield chose the shortest path, leaping directly from the cliff nearly a hundred meters high.

During the descent, earth-yellow runes lit up simultaneously on his entire body's muscles and the surface of his heavy plate armor, the whole person seemingly transforming into a falling meteorite.

"Wrath of the Mountains: Star Fall"

He crashed heavily twenty meters in front of Barlem, the rocks around the landing point collapsing and lifting in a radial pattern, shaking five or six nearby Bailong Sect members until their bones and tendons snapped.

In the dust, Gru slowly stood straight, his rune warhammer "World Pillar" pointing diagonally at the ground. Before the hammerhead even touched the ground, the earth had already begun to tremble slightly.

"Legendary Warrior?" Gru spat out a mouthful of saliva stained with rock ash, "Come, let me see if your axe is harder than the iron slag in the mine."

Barlem's answer was a charge that tore through the air. His true weapons, two single-edged twisted red war axes, finally fell into his hands from behind, scorching blood energy steaming on the axe blades.

A collision of pure violence began. Every clash of axe and hammer erupted with visible shockwaves, shaking the surrounding combatants until their ears and noses bled.

Gru's tactics were devoid of any flair: take the hit, counterattack, and use the most barbaric strength to oppose the fury.

His defense was as firm as a mountain range, while Barlem's offensive was like a volcanic eruption. In a short period, neither could do anything to the other, but this was exactly the effect Fednan wanted.

While Gru entangled Barlem, Fednan made his move.

He had been standing on the cliff the whole time, but the longbow "Silent Confession" in his hand was already drawn full like a round moon. The bowstring vibrated silently, and the arrow left the string without a trace.

The first arrow pierced the center of the brow of a High-Level Dragon Tongue Mage who was attempting to use a magic scroll to break the Silent Barrier, interrupting his final spellcasting.

The second arrow shot through the palm of another mage who was holding a dragon crystal staff high, attempting to summon a phantom of a dragon soul. The magic dissipation rune attached to the arrow triggered a backlash, blowing the mage's upper body into a mass of purple-black arcane fireworks.

The third and fourth arrows left the string almost simultaneously, pinning into the backs of two Golden Radiance Temple priests respectively. What was attached to the arrows was not lethal damage, but a potent Shadow-Binding Spell.

The Bailong Sect's command and magical core were precisely paralyzed within ten seconds.

Only at this moment did Master Xiage truly join the battlefield.

He did not use dazzling elemental magic, but instead slammed his staff heavily onto the ground, chanting short, ancient syllables in the orc language.

"Law: Earth's Oblivion"

With him as the center, the ground instantly transformed into gray-white quicksand, and the range expanded rapidly. This was not ordinary quicksand, but an aging barrier that could absorb magic power, making anyone who stepped into it feel time accelerating and life rapidly withering.

The Bailong Sect members discovered in horror that their movements were becoming sluggish, wrinkles were crawling onto their skin, and the protective magic they attempted to cast dimmed and dissipated as soon as it touched the quicksand domain.

The battle situation was completely reversed within five minutes.

Having lost command, with magical support cut off, the strongest assassin dead, the Legendary Warrior pinned down, quicksand devouring life and magic power beneath their feet, and the terror of the dead rising again beside them, the Bailong Sect's morale collapsed.

Although the remaining adventurers did not understand what was happening, the instinct for survival made them erupt with their final strength, forming an invisible coordination with the suddenly appearing "reinforcements."

Lacking support and with his mind already in chaos, Barlem's offensive gradually showed signs of fatigue, while Gru's defense remained as steady as a mountain. Finally, after one all-out confrontation, Barlem was shaken until his arms went numb, leaving his center wide open.

Gru's warhammer took advantage of the momentum to sweep the war axe aside, and a shield bash devoid of any flair smashed heavily into the opponent's chest. The dull sound of bones shattering could be faintly heard even within the Silent Barrier.

Barlem flew out, spraying blood. Before he even landed, three pitch-black daggers had already nailed into his heart, throat, and the back of his head simultaneously from three different shadow angles, like poisonous snakes choosing their prey.

The battle ended completely within one standard hour.

Over three hundred Bailong Sect members were wiped out, with not a single survivor. The adventurer side suffered heavy casualties, and most of the survivors were mentally collapsed or lay on the ground severely wounded.

Fednan's team quickly and silently cleaned up the core spoils: Barlem's war axes, Liana's shadow cloak, and several High-Level dragon crystals.

They did not have any communication with the surviving adventurers, and did not even leave behind any identifiable traces.

Before the dawn fully arrived, the four had already withdrawn from Molten Throat Canyon via a pre-scouted secret path, as if they had never appeared.

When the scouts sent by Giske approached cautiously, all they saw was a deathly silent slaughterhouse, as well as the thick, inseparable smell of blood in the air and the faint, residual pressure belonging to Legendary magic.

…………

"Re—Report to the Marshal! Something big has happened!" The messenger practically stumbled into the command tent, his armor covered in mud and grass clippings, his voice hoarse from urgency.

"Molten Throat Canyon... everyone from the Bailong Sect is dead! There are corpses everywhere, and the blood is flowing enough to stick to your boots! Lord Ye Kemu has already led a team to blockade both ends of the canyon and ordered me to report back at top speed!"

The air inside the tent suddenly solidified.

"—What?!" Giske stood up abruptly from his iron chair, his heavy body knocking over the map scroll on the table. His eyes contracted to needles in an instant, subsequently erupting with terrifying ferocity.

"Which wild dog dares to run wild on my battlefield?! And they killed the guests the Great Duke personally 'invited'—"

He grabbed the heavy black stone teacup at his side and smashed it hard on the ground! The loud sound of the teacup shattering echoed in the tent like a thunderclap, fragments and scalding tea splashing everywhere, with several pieces even flying past the messenger's face.

"Investigate!" Giske's voice was like an iron wind scraped from the abyss, hammering onto the ground word by word: "Dig three feet into the ground and investigate for me! I want to know which death-defying scumbags dare to play this kind of dirty trick under my nose!"

His chest heaved violently, as if he were truly completely enraged by this sudden turn of events, his bloodshot eyes sweeping over everyone in the tent, including those expressionless "ally representatives."

"Pass the order to Ye Kemu," he gritted his teeth, every word seemingly ground out from between his teeth: "Not a single corpse is allowed to be moved, not an inch of traces is allowed to be destroyed!

Send all the 'Soul Sniffers' and 'Bloodstain Retracers' over there! I want them to dig the culprits' shadows out of the blood mud within three days—"

He smashed his fist heavily onto the heavy iron-wood table, shaking the daggers on the table up by half an inch: "And then, I want to personally pull their intestines out and hang them on my battle flag pole to dry!"

The tent was deathly silent. Only the sparks in the brazier crackled, reflecting Giske's ferocious profile due to "fury," and—

Fednan's slightly lowered eyelids, Gru's white knuckles tightly gripping his warhammer, Master Xiage's motionless staff, and that faint, almost non-existent, cold arc at the corner of Lady Tali's lips.

They watched this thunderous rage silently, as if watching a play with a script already written.

And the Marshal on the stage was performing "loyalty" and "anger" to the fullest.

…………

On the Butage Basin battlefield, the smoke and sulfur stench had not yet fully dissipated, but the tone in the air had already changed. From the devastating thunder and collision of metal, it turned to the sound of wood knocking, the buzzing of sawing, and the work songs of pulling cables.

Under the orders of the Legion's supreme command, this newly captured land was rapidly transforming from a battlefield into a massive and efficient inland fleet shipbuilding base.

The riverbanks were systematically cleared, widened, and reinforced. The twisted lairs and battlefield ruins originally occupied by demons were leveled, replaced by rows of neat log slipways extending into the water.

Large numbers of Ogre soldiers, now temporarily shedding their heavy armor and putting on wear-resistant leather aprons, were carrying out earthwork and infrastructure construction with astonishing efficiency under the foreman's command.

Their discipline was fully displayed in the project: the logging team precisely felled specific tree species upstream, and the transport team flowed incessantly like worker ants, dragging huge logs back to the base.

And what truly gave all of this soul and direction were the dozens of Lizardman craftsmen on the high ground of the river beach.

"Sha Lu Te, your people need to speed up the progress. The Ogres can't hold out here for long; we spent fifty days just clearing the demons."

"Yi Luo Ge, you're the one with so many issues. Do you think I don't know time is tight? If you can't supervise the construction yourself, go watch from the side."