Chapter 158 Changes in the situation
Lanzhuo continent, north of the Jingguo Aili Mountains, the lost land.

Endless strong winds swept through the barren forest, making sharp whistling sounds. The sky was shrouded in an impenetrable fog, always gray. The sun was isolated outside the fog, the light was dim, and the oppression made people despair.

Cities and towns across the vast land had long since been reduced to ruins. Countless farmlands and forests had long since been eroded by the flames. Wildly growing mutant plants had destroyed houses and roads, covering any traces of human civilization with weeds, vines and thorns.

A beast that looked like a wild dog was walking through the ruins of an abandoned city. It was raining black rain and the ground was muddy. Its fur was soaked in mud and stuck to its body in clumps, making it look dirty and miserable.

With a soft snap, the beast’s front paw broke a leg bone exposed in the mud. It looked down, stretched out its front paw, moved a skull next to it, and watched it roll to the side along the ramp.

There were so many skulls and broken bones everywhere that the strange beast lost interest before the skulls stopped rolling.

The strange beast walked along the street covered with weeds and gravel.

It was quiet all around. Apart from the sound of wind and rain, there was no other sound.

Just as the strange beast nimbly jumped onto a low wall and followed the ruins of the collapsed house to leap onto half of the city wall, it suddenly seemed to have discovered something and stopped abruptly.

The strange beast turned its head and looked towards the north.

That was the depths of the Lost Land. Originally, the sky there was endless darkness. It was just leaden clouds that always pressed down on the mountains and ridges, and it was just lightning that never seemed to stop.

But at this moment, the sky seemed to be torn apart, revealing a huge crack. Endless green mist rolled in from the crack like a river descending from the sky and poured into the earth. After the mist landed, it rolled up again, rushed to a height of thousands of meters, and then spread in all directions like a tsunami.

In the center of this mist, a city that had never been seen before was looming. Half of it had already taken shape, while the other half was flowing out from the cracks in the sky like lava, and finally solidified on the ground.

With the appearance of this foreign city, the whole world seemed to have some kind of rejection reaction. The clouds in the sky were surging wildly, and there were lightning and thunder.

Da da da……

The ground began to shake violently. Cracks appeared in the earth. Ruins of buildings collapsed in the shaking. The fallen bricks, tiles and stones collided with each other or splashed in the mud and water, making dense noises.

As if sensing some kind of call, the four dark eyes on the beast’s head suddenly turned into four leaping ghostly flames. It raised its head and let out a crazy roar.

Afterwards, one after another, strange beasts and crazy puppets emerged from the forests, from the ruins, and from every different corner, joining the roaring ranks. Their numbers grew larger and larger, and eventually they filled the mountains and plains, so dense that they were too numerous to count.

At a certain moment, all the strange beasts and crazy puppets turned their heads to the south. Countless ghost flames were dancing in their eye sockets that looked like black holes, cold and strange.

******
Overnight, an invisible storm swept across the entire Lanzhuo continent.

As the sun moved westward along the east coast, waking the people living on this already shattered continent from their sleep, the news that came with the wind was like a seal, solidifying their thoughts and expressions.

This was the situation when Su Daoshan saw Yue Shifeng and the others. Everyone’s face was filled with fear, astonishment and disbelief…

The impact of this news was so great that after everyone met, apart from a few simple announcements, they didn’t know what to say and fell into endless silence. Even Yue Zhen’s furtive glances had become much more honest, with only fear and uneasiness in her eyes.

The group went out and prepared to go to the camp west of the city to inquire about the news.

Walking on the street, we found that the streets were full of people who were worried and talking about things. The air pressure was frighteningly low. Although the sun was shining brightly, we could only feel the bone-chilling cold.

Is the end of the world coming again?

This thought lingered in everyone’s mind.

Since the moment the apocalypse struck a hundred years ago, this once rich and vibrant world began to collapse. At that time, mountains and rivers broke apart, countless cities were caught in the turbulence of time and space, and the entire continent was left with only ruins and devastation.

Just as the world-destroying catastrophe was finally coming to an end, people in the ruins encountered the invasion of the You Clan.

In fact, if you calculate carefully, the invasion of the You clan lasted only about eighty years.

But the days of suffering always seem particularly long. In the silent eyes of many scarred old people, those days seem endless. They don’t even want to talk about how they survived.

Later, people retreated to isolated cities and made their final resistance.

Everyone is doing their best to persevere. Educating the next generation, passing on civilization, working hard to cultivate every inch of land, and rebuilding the living system with great difficulty…

I don’t know how many children have been driven to the training grounds to start training since they can remember. Then one day, they left the city with their companions to open up transportation channels, to fight against the crazy puppets, and to use their flesh and blood to block the direction of the You Clan’s advance…

Year after year, these children grew up and left. Some came back, but some never came back. The smiles of countless people were frozen on the day they left the city and waved goodbye to their loved ones. The lives of countless people were frozen at the age of less than 25.

The flash of swords, the shadow of sabers, blood, the setting sun…the vivid figures eventually turned into the sad calls of parents, wives and children and the silent names in the family tree during the New Year ancestor worship.

But humans have persisted in this way. Not only that, in recent years, people have gradually expanded their living space outside the city.

The last time the You Clan attacked a city was seven or eight years ago. The last time the You Clan attacked more than two cities in a row was more than a decade ago.

Everything is going in a good direction.

Even in the eyes of some optimistic people, perhaps in a few years, the You tribe will be swept into the dust of history, becoming a distant past in the memories of the elderly and a knowledge that young people in the future can only learn from books.

But no one expected that the You clan would make a comeback this time and capture eight cities overnight.

This result made everyone shudder.

According to statistics, the total population of these eight cities exceeds 1.5 million, of which Mingyue City in Beijing State alone has a population of over 350,000.

That city was the most famous city in the northeast of Jingguo and the core city of the surrounding area. After its fall, as many as six nearby small cities were affected. Two of them were already cut off from roads and news.

No one dared to imagine what a tragic scene it was – corpses everywhere, blood flowing, flames illuminating the sky, and countless people fleeing across the mountains and plains with their children… This is the picture in everyone’s mind.

But no matter how tragic the imagination is, I am afraid it is not even one percent of the real situation.

These eight cities all relied on the relatively sound systems of the three empires, and were able to grasp the situation at the first time. As for how many cities outside the three empires were lost, no one knew.

Everyone is still waiting for further confirmation of the news.

The group rode out of the west gate of the city, and wherever they looked, they saw a scene of chaos and disorder.

The west camp was being expanded in full swing. Countless soldiers were being transferred in groups, trucks loaded with supplies were lining up to enter the military camp, and messengers were riding horses back and forth on the road. The troops transferred from Chongguang City formed a long line in the wilderness, winding and endless.

There was a burst of rapid horse hoofbeats, and everyone quickly moved aside to the side of the road.

Six divine messengers wearing black robes of the Fengyuan Religion, surrounded by a team of city guard cavalry, swept into the city gate like the wind. The next second, a horn sounded on the city wall.

“The exorcism formation has been activated,” Lin Shuo from the Lin family looked up at the city wall, then cast his gaze towards a nearby obelisk, and said solemnly, “It should be doing a test.”

Lin Shuo is 23 years old this year. He was also a prominent figure among the children of Yishan City’s noble families. Later, he went to Qilingmen and is now a direct disciple of Qilingmen. Just like Su Daoyu, he came back from the sect yesterday. Because he is a child of a local noble family, he got a day off and could go home to reunite with his family.

Everyone followed Lin Shuo’s gaze.

After the horn sounded, a beam of light formed by eight white lights entangled like swimming dragons shot straight up to the clouds from the direction of the city. Immediately, the obelisk not far away began to glow.

Having lived in Yishan City since childhood, everyone is very familiar with the obelisks that can be seen almost everywhere. There are hundreds of stone towers scattered in and around the city.

These obelisks are not conspicuous. Each one is only about eight meters high. They are built with stones of different shapes. Some are grayish white, some are black, and some are brownish yellow. Basically, the color of the stone tower is the same as the color of the stones used for building. Many children of noble families climbed to the top of the tower, removed loose stones from the tower, or urinated on the tower when they were naughty when they were young. Of course, the final result was a beating.

At this moment, everyone saw that as the exorcism formation in the center of the city was activated, rays of light began to spread from these stone towers.

These vine-like light threads gave people the feeling that the stone tower was pulled out from deep underground. The light threads moved upward from the bottom to the top, gathered at the top of the obelisk, and then left the stone tower and flew into the air, flying towards the white light column that was rising straight into the sky in the city of Ji.

As hundreds of light threads gathered from obelisks all over the city, the white light column was like a giant umbrella with its umbrella spread open.

“Be careful.” Following Su Daoyu’s reminder, everyone subconsciously closed their eyes.

And the next second, everyone discovered that even through the eyelids, there was a dazzling white light in the eyes.

This white light lasted for about thirty seconds before gradually reducing its intensity. After a while, everyone carefully opened their eyes little by little.

In the field of vision, the entire Yishan City, including the direction of the garrison fort outside the city, has been covered by a white light curtain. The world is white. Whether it is the people around, trees, city walls, stone towers or houses, they have all become a hazy gray-black shadow. The original color is as if washed away by the white light.

It took a long time before everyone regained their sight.

Even though they had seen the exorcism formation being activated when they were young, they were still shocked when they saw it activated again.

The light curtain emitted by the exorcism array has no effect on humans. But for the ghost clan, alien species and crazy puppets who carry the power of ghost flames, this white light is as terrifying as the flames of hell.

As soon as a normal mad puppet enters the range of the exorcist array, its body will be severely burned. In the mildest case, its skin will be torn and its body will be charred black, while in the worst case, it will be directly turned into ashes in the white light.

Even if some powerful You tribes can resist the burning of white light, their strength will be greatly affected. Under normal circumstances, the combat effectiveness of You tribe soldiers in the exorcism formation is less than one-third of the usual!

It is no exaggeration to say that if Fengyuan Sect had not discovered and created the exorcism array from the miracle left by the God of Creation Lanzhuo, the human race would have been extinct long ago. It is precisely because of the exorcism array that the human race has survived to this day. These arrays are not only the last line of defense of the human world, but also the foundation of human society since the new century.

but……

“Tell me, how did the You Clan break into those eight cities?” Yue Shifeng looked up at the light curtain in the sky and said in disbelief, “According to history, an exorcism formation can hold off the You Clan for at least twenty days. And it would take the You Clan being willing to pay any price, regardless of casualties, to break through.”

He turned to look at everyone: “But now, they have captured eight cities overnight. It can’t be that there are problems with the exorcism formations in these cities, right?”

Everyone looked at each other with heavy expressions.

This is what makes everyone anxious.

Moreover, even if we put aside the exorcism formation, these cities, like Wen’an City, had already mobilized troops for defense as soon as the mist appeared. The entire defense system had been verified by decades of war. Although it was not exactly the same as Wen’an City, it was definitely not much different.

However, this system, which everyone believed was impregnable, collapsed at the slightest touch. How could this not make people panic?

In the crowd, Su Daoshan looked up at the sky quietly.

“Damn it, it’s so hard to survive in this world!”

******
Hundreds of knights in bright armor, like clouds of fire, rushed into the Chongguang City camp at the speed of light.

Wei Zhifei, a tall man with a messy beard, stepped off his horse and strode into the central army tent. In the huge barracks, dozens of military staff were busy working. When they saw Wei Zhifei coming in, they all stood up and saluted with their chests puffed out.

“Marshal.”

The commander of the Fiery Army, Wei Zhifei, waved his hand with a sullen face, signaling everyone to go about their business. He led seven or eight officers to the table in the middle with a huge map spread out on it, and cast his eyes on his deputy, Song Yuanfeng, who came over to greet him: “How is it?”

“Han Luheng reported that there was no unusual movement in Kelunburg last night,” Song Yuanfeng said solemnly, “He has already sent more people overnight to keep a close watch. He has also ordered scouts to expand their reconnaissance range to a radius of 300 miles…”

As he spoke, he handed a piece of intelligence to Wei Zhifei: “This is the news that has just been sent back. The south of Wen’an City and the northwest of Kelun Fort were the first to discover the movements of a large number of crazy puppets and strange beasts. Other directions have also gradually detected unusual movements.”

Wei Zhifei took a look at it and said with gritted teeth: “Damn it, I knew it wouldn’t be that simple!”

Intelligence shows that currently, a large number of crazy puppets and strange beasts have appeared around Wen’an City and Yishan City in Xiazhou. However, because most of these crazy puppets and strange beasts are still concentrated in the deep mountains and old forests, it is extremely difficult to detect and count them, so it will take more time to find out the specific number.

But according to the most rough estimate, the total number of crazy puppets in both directions is no less than 50,000.

This is serious.

Normally, the mad puppets were scattered. When each city cleared the mad puppets around the roads, the most they encountered were only a few hundred. Thousands of mad puppets were already considered a large group. A ban order had to be issued and troops had to be mobilized to clear them before the caravans could be allowed to pass.

Once the number of crazy puppets reaches tens of thousands, it becomes a crazy puppet tide.

The most terrifying thing is that if the initial detection alone shows no less than 50,000, it usually means that the scale of the Mad Puppet’s movement is likely to reach 100,000. Later, as more detailed intelligence is returned, the number may increase significantly. 100,000, 200,000… just thinking about it makes people’s scalp tingle.

Wei Zhifei’s face turned pale, he turned around a few times, gritted his teeth and said: “We can’t let the crazy puppets gather together.”

He immediately waved his hand, called an officer behind him, and ordered, “Notify all regiments to dispatch Battalion B and Battalion C to carry out the cleanup, and the militia will assist in the logistics cleanup…”

“Yes, sir.” The men followed the order and left.

Wei Zhifei stood in front of the map, frowning, his eyes constantly moving between Wen’an City and Kelun Fort. The fall of eight cities last night brought him great pressure.

Song Yuanfeng asked worriedly, “Any news about those cities? How were they lost?”

“The courts of various countries are now convening an emergency meeting. Fengyuan Sect, major super sects and demon hunters have all sent strong men to investigate, but there is no specific news yet.” Wei Zhifei shook his head and said, “The people who can be contacted only said that the You Clan suddenly rushed into the city, and almost no one knows how it was lost…”

“Is there something wrong with the exorcism formation?” Song Yuanfeng asked.

“The headmaster of Fengyuan Sect has sent a message that it is not a problem with the exorcism array. All the exorcism arrays in the world are integrated. If there is a problem with the exorcism array in a city, the headmaster will also know about it,” Wei Zhifei said with half-closed eyes. “Now I guess that the biggest possibility is that the You Clan has a way to deal with the exorcism array.”

“Deal with the Exorcist Formation?” Song Yuanfeng frowned. “Unless the Ghost Clan can remove the Ghost Flame power in their bodies, they won’t be able to enter the range of the Exorcist Formation at all.”

As he spoke, he narrowed his eyes slightly: “Could it be a demon cultivator…”

Wei Zhifei nodded and said, “This is also the direction of suspicion at the moment. In the past few years, there have been more and more refugee camps outside the city, and it has gradually become a trend. People in the court were happy to see this happen. Firstly, it is convenient for them to do some shady things in private, and secondly, the current system of aristocratic families and sects makes them somewhat wary…”

As he spoke, he snorted coldly, “In this regard, you only need to look at the people in the Investigation Bureau to know. In order to investigate the case fifteen years ago, they secretly cooperated with many demon sects. With the overt connivance and support of these people, the total scale of the refugee camp has increased by more than ten times compared to ten years ago. Moreover, the relationship is complicated. Those who intervened are not only the demon sects, but also many righteous sects and families.”

Song Yuanfeng nodded. As a field force, the Fiery Army had a lot of dealings with refugee camps. He was aware of many situations.

It is no exaggeration to say that the refugee camp has become the fifth largest force besides the imperial court, noble families, clans, and the military. And because of the complicated interests, the influence of the refugee camp is growing.

The refugee camps can get a lot of information that cannot be obtained in the city. Things that cannot be bought in the city can also be bought in the refugee camps. Even if you want to establish contact with a certain court or sect, using the refugee camps’ channels is even simpler and more effective than using the orthodox channels.

All this, in turn, means that the erosion of the urban-based human world by refugee camps has become pervasive.

Under such circumstances, if the You Clan used the aliens’ control over the refugee camp to set up in advance and secretly destroy the exorcism array, it is indeed a possibility. Such speculation is at least easier to accept than the You Clan suddenly breaking the exorcism array.

“No matter if he is a demon cultivator or not, I cannot take this risk.” Wei Zhifei gritted his teeth, turned around and gave an order, “Notify all the major sects in Wen’an City and Yishan City that it’s time for them to take action. From today on, clear all refugee camps within a radius of 300 miles! In addition, implement special control in the city. No matter who they are, arrest all suspicious people!”

“Yes!”

(End of this chapter)