Chapter 476: The Meat Grinder

Billions of creations screamed at the same moment.

The sound could not be described in words.

It was the screech of metal, the clash of flesh, the shriek of energy, the very cry of space itself as elements collided.

It coalesced into a wave capable of shattering souls, sweeping outward from the center of the battlefield, forcing even the seventh-rank sorcerers hovering high above to instinctively reinforce their mental defenses.

The war of the cannon fodder legions had begun.

From above, the once-deadly gray-white wasteland was now covered by two distinct "tides" of color.

One surging forward was the alliance of the Chaos Cult and the Tower of Annihilation.

Crimson flesh beasts moved like living mountains, their surfaces dripping with pus and arcs of electricity, each step cracking the earth.

The gray-white bone legion marched in silence, cold soul-fire flickering in their eye sockets, their bone weapons inscribed with runes of annihilation.

Hovering midair were countless mutated flying units—some like skinned bats, some like fused eyeballs and tentacles, others mere shifting shadows.

The vast majority of these cannon fodder units ranged from third to fifth rank, but their numbers—were beyond counting.

They came like a true tsunami, overwhelming the Plane Nuolun Workshop's frontline with sheer quantity.

Before them stood a steel Great Wall, formed by a hundred interconnected black metal fortresses.

On the fortress surfaces, hundreds of millions of defensive runes flickered at fixed frequencies, forming a translucent pale-gold energy shield from base to summit.

The shield was not thick—even seemed thin—but its coverage was immense.

Connecting and overlapping at each fortress as a node, the energy fields resonated together, forming a supermassive composite defense array spanning thousands of kilometers.

The cannon fodder flood of the Chaos Cult and the Tower of Annihilation slammed into this "wall of light."

The front-line tens of thousands of flesh beasts began disintegrating the instant they touched the shield.

Skin carbonized, muscles dissolved, bones shattered—they were erased from existence by the energy contained within the shield.

But this was only the beginning.

Behind them, more cannon fodder units surged forward in endless waves.

They rammed with their bodies, blasted with energy breaths, detonated themselves in attempts to tear open gaps in the shield.

Each attack caused ripples across the shield's surface, making the energy readings of the corresponding fortresses spike violently.

Yet the fortresses were not merely passive defenders.

The instant the cannon fodder legions entered range—

"Fire."

The command was transmitted through the mental network to every fortress's control core.

The next second.

The entire steel Great Wall awoke like a monstrous beast, its countless eyes opening across its body.

Hundreds of firing ports opened simultaneously on the wall of each fortress.

Behind each port stood a specially designed "medium elemental disintegration cannon."

Their power was less than the super-heavy main cannon operated by Gao Jie Ming, but they fired faster, consumed less energy, and were better suited for clearing vast numbers of low-rank targets.

BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM!!!

Thousands upon thousands of beams rained down like a storm from within the protective shield.

The sight was like the entire frontline suddenly sprouting countless glowing spines.

The beams struck precisely within the densest zones of the cannon fodder army.

Each hit carved out a "blank" of dozens of meters in radius within the enemy ranks.

All units within the blast radius—regardless of form or rank—unless they reached sixth rank—were reduced to fundamental particles by the disintegration beams.

But this still could not halt the hundreds-of-billions-strong tide.

More cannon fodder units quickly filled the gaps created by the attacks and pressed forward.

They reached the shield's edge, steadily draining its energy reserves.

The shield's glow began dimming at a visible rate.

And at that moment, the Plane Nuolun Workshop's cannon fodder legion moved.

But they did not charge out beyond the shield.

Because they did not need to.

"Let them in."

Dionysus Spencer's voice echoed in the senior sorcerer's private channel: "If we keep draining like this, our energy reserves won't hold. Open a few gaps in the shield, let the cannon fodder flood in—we'll play mole."

The order was executed swiftly.

On the pale-gold shield's surface, several "weak points" suddenly appeared.

The cannon fodder of the Chaos Cult and the Tower of Annihilation surged in like sharks scenting blood.

Naturally, the units that had been frantically assaulting the shield now turned toward the breaches.

And then they collided head-on with the prepared Plane Nuolun Workshop cannon fodder legion.

The black giants silently raised their tower shields, crushing the invaders into narrow zones, then mowing them down with battle-axes.

The shadow warriors became flowing black walls, swallowing, assimilating, and transforming every intruder into new shadow matter.

Other sorcerers' constructs, elemental beings, and modified beasts each deployed their strengths, engaging in bloody close-quarters combat within the "alleyway zones" between the fortresses.

This was a pure exchange of quantity versus quality.

Every moment, tens of thousands of cannon fodder units died.

But the Plane Nuolun Workshop's frontline held.

Because the "gaps" opened in the shield were limited in size, only a finite number of cannon fodder units could squeeze in at once.

Inside the frontline, the cannon fodder units had higher average ranks, greater individual strength, and enjoyed artillery support from the rear fortresses, shielded from direct assaults by high-rank enemies.

More importantly—

Above the cannon fodder battlefield, in the domain of "high-rank cannon fodder" and "high-rank sorcerers," the Plane Nuolun Workshop was not losing ground.

Fortress Seven, Third Artillery Control Room.

Gao Jie Ming sat before Operation Panel 09, eyes closed, beads of sweat forming on his brow.

His consciousness was deeply linked to the No. 3 turret of the fortress's external "super-heavy elemental disintegration cannon."

Sorcerers used a rotation system when operating the turrets.

Operate the cannon, fire, exhaust your spiritual power, disconnect, then let the next sorcerer take over and fire again.

The exhausted sorcerers rested nearby to recover spiritual power.

At this moment, the No. 3 turret was charging.

Through the turret's perception runes, Gao Jie Ming "saw" the targeting zone.

It was a region fifty kilometers behind the cannon fodder battlefield, where a cluster of fourth-rank Chaos Cult cannon fodder units was assembling.

Roughly thirty thousand giant beetle-like units, under the command of several fifth-rank sorcerers, prepared for a new charge.

"Lock on."

Gao Jie Ming silently willed it in his mind.

Inside the turret, over seven million runes ignited in unison.

Vast quantities of elemental energy were drawn from the fortress's temporary elemental reservoir, channeled into the turret's core "transformation array," stripped of their properties, purified, compressed, and finally transformed into pure "disintegration" force.

This process required an astronomical amount of spiritual power to run the transformation array.

A normal fifth-rank sorcerer, operating such a cannon alone, would exhaust his spiritual power after one shot, needing at least several minutes of rest and spiritual recovery elixirs to regain minimal mobility.

Hence the rotation system.

For lower-rank sorcerers, multiple individuals were required to operate a single cannon just to fire once.