Chapter 512: Bloody Battle at Zhenmo Pass: Swearing to Not Yield an Inch of Territory

This charge lasted for three days and three nights.

After three days of bloody battle, various corpses piled up like mountains, blood stained the earth black, and the stench filled the air. Black Qi corroded the land, and not a blade of grass grew outside the pass.

The Divine Power of the Star of Misfortune and the God of Plague was exhausted, and they were no longer able to sustain the deployment of the plague.

Yet the army of the Outer Realm Demon Race seemed endless, no matter how they fought, they could not be finished off.

The Prime Demon struck personally, and finally broke the defensive Great Array of Zhenmo Pass. The Demon Soldiers and the Great Tang Iron Cavalry clashed once again.

Li Shimin directed the defense on Zhenmo Pass, loading all the Cannons sent by Taishang Laojun to resist the invasion of the Outer Realm Demon Race.

For a time, circles of earth-shattering fire pits exploded in the Outer Domain, causing one large-scale attack after another.

"Where are the soldiers of Great Tang!"

"Here! Here! Here!"

"Behind us is the territory of Great Tang, the lights of ten thousand homes!"

"It is our parents, children, relatives, brothers, sisters, and dear friends!"

"If we let the Outer Realm Demon Race break into the city, our homes will be plundered by them! Our families and friends will all die in agony and become blood-food in their mouths!"

"Think of their faces; are you willing to watch them die in the mouths of the Demon Race, to be swallowed alive into their bellies!"

"We are not!!!"

The soldiers' answer was angry and passionate, their eyes filled with the determination to die and the conviction to defend their homeland.

"Good!"

"Then I ask you all to charge and kill with this General!"

Li Jing's throat was hoarse from shouting, but the military soul he ignited carried a wind of invincibility.

He pointed his blade outside the pass, his eyes like the rage of a tiger or lion, and shouted with the loudest voice, "Kill!"

"Kill!!!"

The Iron Cavalry charged, warhorses neighed, wolf smoke and dust rose everywhere, and battle cries filled the sky.

And outside Zhenmo Pass, there was war in the heavens, and slaughter on the ground.

Every splash of blood and every severed limb described the tragic intensity of the battlefield.

"Your Majesty! It is bad, Your Majesty, the Outer Realm Demon Race is charging the formation again!"

"Report—"

"Reporting to Your Majesty, the Cannons are almost used up."

"Report—"

"Reporting to Your Majesty, they have begun to attack the city gate, the city gate is about to collapse!"

"Report—"

As time dragged on and the Outer Realm Demon Race joined the Zhenmo Pass battlefield in endless numbers, the disadvantages of human strength gradually became apparent.

After all, the soldiers' physical strength was constantly being consumed; the consequence of not being able to replenish it in time was being slaughtered by the Outer Realm Demon Race and used as rations.

Li Shimin watched the soldiers suffer heavy losses, his chest filled with anger and heartache.

"Bring me my sword!"

"Your Majesty, you must not, Your Majesty."

"There is nothing I must not do. I am the Emperor of Great Tang; there is no logic in the Emperor enjoying leisure in the back while soldiers fight to the death."

"Your Majesty, the Outer Realm Demon Race is coming fiercely; you must preserve yourself and hold the rear, Your Majesty."

Li Shimin pushed the eunuch aside and casually drew the sword of a nearby Guard.

"If the soldiers are all finished fighting, where is there any rear left to guard!"

"Once Zhenmo Pass is broken, the price will be the destruction of the nation and the loss of our homes!"

"For the sake of the people of Great Tang, even if I die today! I must die on the battlefield!"

Without waiting for the eunuch to speak further, Li Shimin waved his arm and personally led troops to the foot of the city wall, right at the gate that was about to be breached.

"Boom—"

"Boom—"

"Boom—"

The city gate was being struck again and again, and it looked like it could be broken at any moment.

Li Shimin turned to look at the soldiers and raised the long blade in his hand.

"Soldiers! If the gate is broken, we still have our blades!"

"If the blades break, we still have our own bodies to forge a rampart of corpses to block them from invading our Great Tang!"

Li Shimin pounded his chest; that spirit was one of staking everything on a single throw, finding life in death.

"For the people of Great Tang, for the thousands of generations of our Huaxia!"

"In this bloody battle at Zhenmo Pass, we must hold if we can, and if we cannot, we must hold to the death with our lives!"

"Not one inch of Great Tang territory shall be yielded!"

The soldiers' mettle was ignited, and morale soared. Their eyes were uniformly filled with the conviction to fight with their lives and trade them. To trade one for one was not a loss, and to trade for two was a gain.

"Not one inch of Great Tang territory shall be yielded!"

"Not one inch of Great Tang territory shall be yielded!"

"Not one inch of Great Tang territory shall be yielded!"

With the military soul ignited and such a conviction, the Great Tang Iron Cavalry would surely forge ahead, invincible in battle.

"Boom—!"

The city gate was broken.

Li Shimin gripped his blade tightly, his eyes fixed on the Outer Realm Demon Race.

"Kill!"

"Kill!!!"

As the Emperor of Great Tang, he led the charge himself.

The Qi of fortune upon his body prevented the Outer Realm Demon Race from harming him, while the great blade in his hand, accompanied by the sound of flesh being sliced open, claimed an Outer Realm Demon Race life with every strike, sending heads rolling to the ground.

The Prime Demon observed the battlefield at Zhenmo Pass the entire time; he understood that the fundamental reason for the soaring morale of the Great Tang soldiers was that the Tang Emperor had personally led the expedition.

If the Tang Emperor were to die, morale would inevitably plummet.

Thus, he condensed an Innate Demon Artifact in his hand—a great bow—and aimed it at Li Shimin.

Carved upon this great bow were demonic beasts never before seen in the Inner Realm, each with a ferocious face and eyes glowing with bloodthirsty red light.

As he drew the bow, those ancient demonic beasts condensed into long arrows, all aimed at Li Shimin.

Li Shimin sensed the crisis and likewise looked toward the Prime Demon.

"It was you who nearly took the life of my An'er."

In the eyes of the Prime Demon was contempt for the Human Emperor; even with the Qi of fortune upon him, he was still nothing more than a mere mortal.

A mortal's physical body could not possibly withstand the power of an arrow from his hand.

To be safe, the Prime Demon drew three arrows with this bow, all of them aimed directly at Li Shimin.

"You may go to see her now."

The Prime Demon also assumed that Tang An could not have escaped such an explosion, and perhaps she had already perished in that battle.

Even if Nuwa had rescued her, she would currently be suffering from wounds too severe to heal, and would be completely powerless to stop the fall of Zhenmo Pass.

Rage rose in Li Shimin's heart; facing the incoming arrows, he gripped the hilt of his blade, held it vertically, and shattered the first long arrow that reached his face.

Immediately following, the second one was slashed by his blade and sent flying onto the city tower.

The final one came too fast; he had no time to slash it away, nor time to dodge. Only a "squelch" sound was heard as the arrow pierced flesh and struck straight into his heart.

Li Shimin looked at the blood gushing from his chest and used his blade to hack the arrow shaft in two.

"Come again!"

The Prime Demon frowned, not expecting that a Human Emperor, having been struck by his arrow, would only suffer minor flesh wounds and not be killed.

"You father and daughter are truly interesting."

"Since you can withstand one arrow, let me see if you can withstand ten thousand."

The Prime Demon drew his bow again, condensing a dense, sky-filling swarm of sharp arrows before him.

And the target of these arrows was Li Shimin alone.

If they were all to be fired, one could imagine the fate of Li Shimin's physical body.

Yet Li Shimin did not fear death at all. "Come!"

Seeing this, the soldiers grabbed their shields to form a shield wall, protecting Li Shimin behind them.

"Hmph."

The Prime Demon let out a cold snort, his eyes filled with contempt for the insignificance of human life.

The Human Emperor indeed possessed the Qi of fortune and was hard to kill, but these soldiers stepping up was nothing more than throwing their lives away for nothing.

"Since you insist on dying together, then die."

He released the bowstring, and ten thousand sharp arrows surged toward the city gate, bearing down directly on Li Shimin and the soldiers.

"Die?"

A familiar female voice appeared abruptly in this world.

"It seems I truly have the constitution of a protagonist; even my entrance is perfectly timed."

From within the River of Time, Tang An arrived in a long red dress, followed by Sun Wukong and the others, as well as Jiuyue, who had transformed into her true form.

"At a time like this, we really should have some intense background music."

Since there wasn't any, she would just turn on the speakers and provide it herself.