Chapter 243 The Demon King Desires to Slaughter the City
The meat grinder of the Jianghuai defense line is still running at full speed, while in the far north, the situation has completely slid into an abyss of out-of-control chaos.
Northeast Theater Command, Fengtian Fortress City.
The temperature here has dropped to minus forty degrees Celsius. The blizzard, mixed with the pungent smell of blood, has enveloped this heavy industrial megacity of five million people like an iron barrel, but also like a tin can about to be completely crushed by external forces.
Below the city wall, the corpses of the monsters had piled up to a height of over ten meters, almost level with the outer city wall. The beast horde behind them didn't even need to ram the city gate; they simply stepped over the corpses of their own kind, like a tide, over the city walls, and crashed into the human defensive positions.
"Hold on! Keep pushing the liquid nitrogen injectors up!"
On the city wall, a company commander covered in blood roared hoarsely. His right eye had been gouged out by a mutated bird, and it was haphazardly wrapped with a bloodstained bandage. Blood dripped from his chin into the gaps in his chest armor.
Several soldiers wearing heavy exoskeletons carried thick pipes and rushed up the ramparts. The pale white liquid nitrogen poured down like a waterfall, instantly freezing the dozens of mutated wild boars that had just charged up into ice sculptures. But before they could catch their breath, several sharp ice spikes shot out from the dark blizzard, piercing the chests of the soldiers with remarkable accuracy.
Those were snow foxes lurking behind the beast horde, firing sneak attacks. They were too clever; they specifically targeted human strongpoints and commanders.
The defenses are crumbling little by little.
Inside the highest command post of Fengtian City, the war zone commander-in-chief, Li Ming, stared intently at the holographic sand table, his eyes bloodshot. The red torrent representing the demonic beasts had completely submerged all the streets of the outer city and was advancing madly towards the inner city along the main roads.
"Commander, the third line of defense has fallen! The exoskeleton armor regiment has suffered over 70% casualties, and the soldiers with pseudo-spiritual roots who overclocked and self-destructed have wiped out the reserves!"
The chief of staff, his voice trembling with tears, reported the horrific scene at the front. In fifteen minutes at most, the inner city gates would be breached. There were a full five million civilians inside the inner city.
Li Ming's hands were trembling violently. He had been a soldier his whole life and fought countless tough battles, but he had never fought such a frustrating battle.
Humanity's prized artillery fire was like scraping the skin of those colossal beasts clad in double demonic armor. Humanity's prized tactics became utterly meaningless against the beast tides possessing overwhelming numerical superiority and commanded by a supreme demon king.
He turned his head sharply and looked at the red control panel in the center of the console, which was locked in place by a thick bulletproof glass cover.
That is a theater-level tactical nuclear weapon launch terminal.
"Bring me the nuclear bomb's safe." Li Ming's voice was hoarse, as if he had swallowed sandpaper, and each word seemed to be squeezed out from between his teeth.
Everyone in the command post gasped instantly, and the entire hall fell into a deathly silence.
"Commander, we can't use it!" The chief of staff knelt down with a thud, clinging tightly to Li Ming's leg. "The Kyoto Supreme Council hasn't issued final authorization yet! If we use nuclear weapons, this land will be ruined. We'll be sinners against all humanity!"
"I can't care about that anymore!"
Li Ming shoved the chief of staff aside, his eyes bloodshot, like an enraged lion driven to the brink of despair.
"Those bigwigs in Kyoto are sitting safely in their air-raid shelters; of course they can wait! But I am the commander of Fengtian City. My soldiers are dying outside, but the people inside the city are the ones I must protect. If we don't drop a nuclear bomb, these five million people will become food for those beasts!"
He strode to the control panel, drew his pistol from his waist, and smashed the bulletproof glass with the butt. Shards of glass cut the back of his hand, and blood trickled down his fingertips, dripping onto the cold control panel.
"I'll take the blame for disobeying military orders. Even if it means a court-martial and execution, even if it means my body and soul are destroyed, I'll send those long-haired bastards outside to hell first!"
Li Ming resolutely connected the supreme commander's key he carried with him and spun it hard.
The instruction has been issued.
In the deep underground well behind Fengtian City, accompanied by a violent mechanical roar, the heavy launch silo cover slowly slid open to both sides.
Three short-range intercontinental ballistic missiles, each carrying a 300-kiloton tactical nuclear warhead, streaked with blinding flames as they tore through the blizzard and soared into the sky.
Instead of heading towards the distant heart of the Changbai Mountains, the three missiles calculated their parabolic trajectories with extreme precision and plunged headlong into the densely packed area of the beast tide, thirty kilometers outside Fengtian City.
On this low-level battlefield where high-level cultivators had no chance of survival and humanity was cornered, humanity finally descended into utter madness, revealing its last, unreasonable trump card.
A ray of light, a million times brighter than the sun, suddenly erupted in the wilderness outside Fengtian City.
In that instant, heaven and earth fell silent.
The extreme heat and terrifying shockwaves swept across the frozen ground like a giant scythe of death.
The more than 30,000 mutated monsters gathered at the center of the explosion didn't even have time to let out their most instinctive screams. Their hard black steel armor melted into molten iron instantly, and then, along with their flesh and bones, they were instantly vaporized into nothingness by the high temperature of tens of millions of degrees.
The monsters a short distance away were thrown into the air by the overwhelming shockwave. The powerful air pressure directly shattered their internal organs into a pulp. Blood rained down, mixed with radioactive dust.
Three enormous mushroom clouds, carrying deadly radiation and an aura of destruction, slowly rose into the night sky, illuminating the entire icy wilderness as if it were an apocalyptic hell.
On the walls of Fengtian, the surviving soldiers lay prone behind their bunkers, feeling the violent tremors of the earth and the scorching heat that washed over them. When they peeked out and saw the devastating scene in the distance, they were stunned for a few seconds before bursting into heart-wrenching cheers and cries of anguish.
"Blow these bastards to death! Blow them up!"
The soldiers embraced each other, some crying and laughing in the mud. The shadow of death that had weighed on their hearts for days and nights, almost driving them mad, was finally temporarily dispelled in the light of the nuclear explosion.
Standing before the floor-to-ceiling windows of the command post, Li Ming watched the three mushroom clouds rise. His tense body finally relaxed, and a bitter smile appeared on his lips. He knew the city had been defended. The main force of the beast tide of over 100,000 men had been wiped out in an instant. Even if more demonic beasts followed, they could not possibly organize such a large-scale attack in such a short time.
His life came to an end, but the five million people survived.
However, the cheers from the city walls lasted for less than two minutes.
A chilling pressure, more terrifying than a nuclear explosion and seemingly capable of freezing the entire world along with its soul, suddenly surged into the sky from the depths of the distant northern snow-capped mountains.
The pressure was incredibly fast, traversing hundreds of kilometers and enveloping the entire city of Fengtian in just a few breaths.
The soldiers on the city wall suddenly noticed that the snowflakes falling in the air had stopped falling and were now frozen in mid-air. The high temperature and surging blast wave generated by the nuclear explosion had been forcibly stopped twenty kilometers outside the city by this extremely powerful force of extreme cold, and could not advance even an inch further.
Even the edges of the three mushroom clouds that were slowly rising were beginning to condense large patches of frost, as if even nuclear radiation was about to be frozen.
Immediately afterwards, a deep voice, as cold as the deepest hell, filled with boundless rage and terrifying mental shock, exploded in the minds of everyone in Fengtian City.
"Insects. You're asking for death."
Li Ming's smile froze completely. He looked up in horror at the sky through the floor-to-ceiling window.
Ten thousand meters above Fengtian City, a thick layer of radiation clouds was torn apart by a violent surge of spiritual energy. A gigantic, ice-blue tiger phantom, obscuring all starlight and carrying a terrifying spiritual pressure capable of destroying everything, slowly descended upon Fengtian City.
That was the Nascent Soul stage tiger king from Changbai Mountain, who had just established his kingdom.
It originally sat atop the snow-capped mountain, coldly watching its army reap the spoils of humanity's defenses. In its eyes, this was a hunt, a one-sided feast of humans stripping away their pseudo-spiritual roots and steel armor.
But it never expected that these fragile two-legged sheep, which it regarded as prey, actually possessed terrifying weapons capable of wiping out tens of thousands of elite demons in an instant. Even it, having broken through the Nascent Soul stage, felt a sense of dread from the depths of its soul at that light and heat.
If humanity continues to use this weapon, no matter how large its demon army is, it will be blown to ashes.
This weapon that threatens its monarchy must be completely eradicated.
"How dare you use such filthy things to harm our fellow countrymen?"
The Tiger King's voice was filled with extreme cruelty and rage, and his huge vertical pupils stared intently at the steel behemoth below.
"Since your iron lumps are so powerful, then I will personally step in and crush this city, along with you two-legged sheep, into ice shards. Five million people in one city will be just enough to accompany my dead sons in their burial."
The enormous, icy blue tiger claws were getting closer and closer.
Under this terrifying spiritual pressure, the steel buildings throughout Fengtian City began to groan and creak under the strain. Glass shattered, and cars on the streets were crushed into metal discs by an invisible force.
The city-protecting formation, built with countless resources, couldn't even withstand a second of the enraged attack from the Nascent Soul stage demon. It instantly became covered in cracks and emitted a piercing wail.
The technology of mortals and the lingering power of nuclear weapons appear so powerless and pale in the face of true celestial demons.
Li Ming closed his eyes in despair. He had lost his gamble. Nuclear weapons not only failed to bring a final chance of survival, but also enraged the Demon King, who had been unwilling to act directly due to his status, bringing irreparable destruction to the city.
Once high-level combatants enter the fray without any restraint, it becomes a one-sided massacre.
The soldiers on the city wall didn't even have the strength to raise their guns. Under that extremely cold pressure, the blood in their bodies was freezing little by little. They could only watch helplessly as the tiger claw that was enough to flatten the entire city crashed down from above.
At that critical moment, when five million people were about to be wiped out.
In the distant direction of the Kunlun Mountains, high in the sky.
when.
A distant, ancient bell, seemingly traversing countless ages and carrying the irresistible will of Heaven, quietly tolled throughout the entire Earth.