Rise of The Demon General-Chapter 697. Three Lord Stage Rulers Against the Holy Mother
Hou Huang, Huang Ti, and Dim Loog stopped in their tracks after that first exchange. They had been told how fearsome Mu Qin was, but deep down, they never truly put it to heart.
All three of them had enjoyed being at the pinnacle in their respective territory for far too long. They didn’t have worthy opponents. Even when they fought against each other, the chance of winning and losing wasn’t absolute. They all had a fighting spirit that told them that as long as they exerted enough effort, they had a chance to win.
After that one exchange, they no longer had the same thought. They were reminded of their old selves when their cultivation levels were still low. Sometimes, obstacles were simply unpassable, no matter how much effort was put into overcoming them. This was one of those times.
Hou Huang started to regret her haughtiness. Perhaps she should have listened to Echos’ young king’s proposal and retreated rather than stay and fight. That regret, however, quickly evaporated when she saw Mu Qin’s mocking smile. The Holy Mother hadn’t moved from her spot at all. Even after she repelled their assaults, she showed no sign of attempting any counterattack. Hou Huang understood then that Mu Qin deeply underestimated them.
This burned her blood. She gritted her teeth. The fear she felt earlier gave way to anger. She wasn’t going to let off this woman, who had dared to ridicule her.
"King Huang Ti! Let’s do it!" Hou Huang exclaimed.
"Ready yourself, empress!" Huang Ti responded. He flew behind Hou Huang and started accumulating his aether. Sand seemed to come out of him, and it whirled around him.
Hou Huang didn’t stay idle. She pumped her aether into her whip. The flexible whip turned rigid, transforming it into a ridiculously long needle. She pointed this needle at the sky. Metal plates materialized along the crimson needle. They merged into a humongous blade that reached for heaven.
"I don’t believe you won’t dodge this!" Hou Huang exclaimed.
"We will see," Mu Qin replied casually.
Hou Huang wasn’t angered by Mu Qin’s mocking response. She was counting on it. While her colossal blade was forming, Huang Ti’s sand swirled into the blade. The silver metal blade slowly turned golden from all the sand coating it.
After they met Zhang Daofeng and learned his secret involvement with the Sima Clan, they continued to meet with each other and discussed how to prepare themselves for the coming conflict. During the discussion, the subject of their elemental affinities came up. Huang Ti excelled in the earth elements, while Hou Huang was strong with the metal elements. Earth elements supported the metal elements. Hence, the two of them started practicing elemental support so they could perform combination attacks.
Their current arts were one of the results of their training.
"Haaa...!" Hou Huang brought the colossal blade down. The blade had been completely covered by golden sand.
The golden blade emitted an incredible aura as it descended. The space that it passed by seemed to erupt and turned into an empty void. Even the air itself was cleaved into nothingness. While its destructive power was impressive, its speed was not. It descended slowly, so slow that Mu Qin couldn’t resist the temptation to display another mocking gesture.
She brought one hand to her mouth and yawned.
Hou Huang and Huang Ti should be enraged by that display, but they were not. They smiled instead.
When the colossal blade was halfway, the sand on its rear part started to explode. This explosion provided the blade with a sudden speed boost.
Hou Huang and Huang Ti wouldn’t have bothered to train elemental support if their fusion art was so easy to dodge. The first part of the attack was to gauge the enemy’s movement. If the enemy dodged, the sand explosion would adjust the slash direction following the enemy’s movement while giving the slash a sudden boost. Whether the enemy dodged or stayed, they would be in for a surprise.
Mu Qin was indeed surprised by the sudden change, but not flustered. She lifted the hand she used for yawning earlier. The hand collided with the incoming colossal blade, and a massive shockwave radiated out.
"Ngghhh...!!" Hou Huang could hardly believe the result. Her colossal sword stopped dead in its tracks. This heavy attack still couldn’t force Mu Qin to move from her spot.
While on the surface it seemed that Mu Qin could lightly parry this attack like the previous ones, there was indeed a crucial difference. Her face didn’t show the same coolness as before. A frown was seen on her expression.
Dim Loog stole a chance to strike at this moment. He revealed a second weapon, a white bow. The bow’s color and features were the same as his spear. That’s because they were made of the same materials and by the same blacksmith. Both weapons were of low-tier runic grade.
The white bow didn’t need a physical arrow. It could form one using its user’s aether. An arrow made of light came into existence as Dim Loog pulled the bow’s string. When he released the string, the arrow shot forward like a beam. The arrow itself grew in size as it flew. By the time it reached its target, it was more than ten meters in length.
Mu Qin used her other hand to receive this arrow of light. The arrow exploded upon collision.
A second explosion followed the first. This second one shattered Hou Huang’s colossal blade. The air around Mu Qin was filled with fragments of metal, sand, and light particles. When all the elemental dust subsided, Mu Qin was visible again. No apparent injury was visible on her. However, she had moved a few meters away from her original position.
She chuckled. "That was... noteworthy. It has been some time since I have had decent opponents in this surface world. I guess I don’t mind letting you entertain me before I dispense your punishment."
Hou Huang was pissed by the remark. "We are not entertainers...!"
She rushed forward and slashed her whip. Multiple metal blades spun around her. Huang Ti’s sand imbued these metal blades, turning them golden. Their sharpness and speed increased. Circling them, Dim Loog used her bow to fire arrows of light from afar.
Mu Qin no longer insisted on staying in one place like before. However, she remained defensive. She moved, dodged, and blocked, but never retaliated. It was clear that she wasn’t serious about this battle.
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A large army appeared near Saint’s Rest. This army was the combined forces of the Kazhan Army and the First Demon Army. Xin Wuming and Fen Nu led this army.
"Are you sure we should attack this city instead of reinforcing our allies at Farghous’ camp?" Fen Nu asked.
"General Amon sent me a message telling me to attack, so I’m here to attack," Xin Wuming replied. "What was the order in your Grand Chief’s message?"
"Assist the First Demon Army," Fen Nu answered.
"There’s that, then," Xin Wuming said.
"I remember the report said that the last time this city was attacked, it mobilized almost its entire population. How are you going to fight against that number?"
"Don’t worry. This is not the first time the First Demon Army has fought against a force vastly outnumbering us," Xin Wuming said while pointing somewhere.
Fen Nu looked at where he was pointing and saw the soldiers of the First Demon Army organizing themselves into a long, straight line facing the Saint’s Rest’s main gate. Behind these soldiers, the Yuanxu Cannon also lined up. The battle puppet came to the front of the soldiers and lay flat on the ground.
"What’s with that thin line formation? You will get punched through easily," Fen Nu remarked.
"Just ready your troops and wait for the signal," Xin Wuming said.
"You truly admire your boss, eh? You even take after his condescending way of talking," Fen Nu said sarcastically.
Xin Wuming didn’t take it the way she intended. He said, "I try my best to."
He then left her to check the army’s formation. He could see that the soldiers on the wall of Saint’s Rest were already aware of them. Those soldiers must be waiting for them to come close to the city wall. Unfortunately, he was going to disappoint them.
"Have you located its weak points?" Xin Wuming asked Yi Chaisan.
"I have," Yi Chaisan answered. She had learned the Eagle Eye, so she didn’t need to rely on other soldiers to study the faraway engravings anymore. "The engravings are a bit more sophisticated than the ones used in Kazhan, but they are still much simpler compared to the ones used in Khode. It shouldn’t take long for these many Yuanxu Cannons to take the barrier down."
"Good. Let us begin then!" Xin Wuming ordered.
The Yuanxu Cannons started firing soon. The elemental balls slammed into the city’s defensive barrier and exploded. The chain elemental explosions caused the barrier to tremble fiercely. The cannons fired nonstop, forcing the words of power powering the barrier to expend its energy to the fullest.
Despite the never-ending bombardment. The soldiers inside Saint’s Rest stayed put. They were either underestimating the cannons or were unclear about what to do.
An hour after the bombardment started, the barrier was down. The elemental balls flew into the city. They destroyed the houses near the wall and killed anyone who happened to be in the blast zones. The city gate opened then, and the city defenders rushed out.
