Chapter Forty-Four: A Bitter Struggle

"Kill!"

With a thunderous roar from the chieftain, the next instant, thousands of arrows blotted out the sky, tearing through the void from the tribal ramparts and plunging into the onrushing beast tide.

With a succession of sharp sounds, arrows instantly pierced through one fierce beast after another, striking their vitals and felling them where they stood. Even those not killed outright were slowed by the force of the arrows embedded in their flesh, their momentum broken, only to be trampled into pulp by the stampede from behind.

In the blink of an eye, hundreds of beasts had been slain.

On the high walls, every tribal warrior was composed and unwavering, loosing arrow after arrow in relentless volleys. The continuous thunder of bowstrings and hissing arrows echoed like muffled thunder rolling across the field.

Yet they were far from exerting their full strength, holding back deliberately, deploying only three or four layers of their secret wave-stacking archery technique. In this way, even low-ranked warriors could fire hundreds of arrows in succession, while mid-ranked warriors could let loose several hundred more. If they unleashed their full power, exhaustion would claim them in just a dozen arrows, their vital energy spent.

For Yi Tian’s Reincarnation Squad, the battle was effortless. Returning from the mountains, Yi Feng, Yi Shan, Yi Li, Yi Kuang, and Yi Hong had all broken through to become seventh-rank warriors, their strength multiplied severalfold. Before them, the rampaging beasts were utterly feeble.

Yi Tian’s arrows flashed like lightning, each shot claiming a beast’s life with flawless precision. Not even the most dangerous beasts could escape their aim. Especially as the captain, Yi Tian’s speed was inhuman, arrows pouring down like an automated hail of bullets, slaughtering vast swathes of beasts in his sector and piling up corpses until they formed a wall of flesh and blood. In his direction, no beast advanced even half a step.

Yet the tribal stone wall stretched over a thousand yards, and the beasts attacked from every angle. In areas where the warriors were weaker, some beasts broke through to within fifty yards of the wall, then forty, thirty, twenty...

Near Yi Tian, several sections had also been breached, the slaughter curtain of arrows failing to hold.

"Support! Don’t let the beasts reach the stone wall!"

A late-stage seventh-rank warrior on their stretch of ramparts called out. Immediately, his arrows rained down on the approaching beasts, pinning them to the ground, killing some outright, while others writhed and howled in agony.

Yi Tian, Yi Feng, Yi Shan, and the others began to support the flanks as well.

One arrow after another split the air, felling beast after beast, swiftly clearing the ranks of those that had broken through.

The terrifying slaughter wrought by Yi Tian’s squad left those who knew them—like Yi Kai, Yi Hong, and the fathers of Yi Feng and the others—so stunned they nearly forgot to keep firing. Only now did the warriors around Yi Tian realize just how formidable his team had become, far surpassing their prowess at last year’s coming-of-age ceremony. Their arrows fell in unbroken succession, efficiency and ease matching the high-ranked warriors.

Yi Tian’s gaze was electric, covering a range of fifty yards in all directions. Whenever a breach formed in the defensive line, his firepower descended, sealing it instantly; any beast that crossed the line fell to his arrows.

He relied purely on his physical strength, using only half his power to unleash arrow shots weighing over ten thousand pounds. Not even the most dangerous beasts survived a single shot.

On the land ahead—hills and streams alike—thousands upon thousands of beasts surged toward them, unafraid, as if possessed by madness. The towering stone walls of the Yi Tribe stood like a reef against crashing waves.

Beneath the walls, rivers of blood flowed, countless beast corpses trampled into gore, the earth stained red. But as the bodies mounted, forming hills of flesh, it became clear that, at this rate, the corpse mounds would rise to meet the walls themselves, allowing the beasts to storm straight into the tribe—a dire prospect indeed.

The tribe’s warriors were unparalleled at range, but their close-combat strength diminished sharply. If they were not master archers with such devastating ranged power, but rather ordinary fighters practicing martial techniques, the casualties against this endless tide would have been catastrophic.

For now, the stone walls held, and not a single tribesman had fallen.

The beast tide had raged for nearly an hour. Relentless waves crashed against the tribe, while in the distance, monstrous beasts the size of hills watched hungrily, withholding their attack and instead driving the lesser beasts forward.

Over this hour, many warriors had become too exhausted to draw their bows, their energy depleted. Even as they strove to conserve their strength, exhaustion was inevitable. They withdrew to the rear, drawing on spirit stones to restore their vital energy and ease their bodies’ fatigue, hoping to return to battle as swiftly as possible.

Using spirit stones to recover vital energy had once been a luxury, unthinkable in the past. But now, all restraint was gone.

Three or four hundred earth-ranked warriors withdrew at once, leaving gaps in the defense. Many beasts reached the foot of the wall, battering it, sending shards of stone flying.

The warriors on the wall felt the tremors beneath their feet. Yet, these stragglers were quickly shot down. Still, these breaches recurred, again and again.

There were simply too many beasts. Even with the support of Yi Tian and the high-ranked warriors, it was impossible to stop them all; some always reached the wall and attacked it.

Fortunately, the wall was not just tall but also immensely thick—at least ten feet—impervious to all but the most savage assaults.

Yi Tian looked out over the distant plains. He saw vast herds rampaging across the land, tens of thousands, perhaps over a hundred thousand, converging on the tribe, while others bypassed it to surge toward Black Dragon City and surrounding castles, towns, villages, and manors.

Across the Black Dragon territory, the beast tide swept in like a calamity.

Yi Tian’s arrows flew rapidly, each shot piercing space and felling another beast. By now, at least four or five thousand beasts had died by his hand alone—equivalent to the achievements of dozens or even hundreds of warriors.

Yet after thousands of shots, his arms began to numb, pain setting in as his stamina waned. If not for his formidable physique, he’d have collapsed long ago. Ordinary seventh-rank warriors, even if careful with their strength, would need to unleash five or six thousand pounds of force to kill a beast at fifty yards, using their vital energy for the wave-stacking technique. At best, they might manage a few hundred to a thousand arrows before exhaustion overtook them.

Yi Tian activated his Pure Yang Art, letting streams of pure yang energy course through him, steadily dispelling his fatigue. He slowed his rate of fire.

Beneath the wall, the slain beasts numbered at least forty or fifty thousand. The earth resembled a hellscape, the stench of blood wafting for miles around. The iron arrows expended surpassed a million—an astronomical sum.

"No matter how many we kill, it’s never enough. I’m almost out of strength," Yi Feng muttered bitterly beside him.

Yi Shan and Yi Li said nothing, their shots steady and powerful, each arrow bringing down a foe. Their pace was slower than Yi Tian’s, but their endurance far outstripped the reckless, early onslaught of Yi Feng.

"We’ve only destroyed a third of the force besieging us, but the tribe is nearly spent. If this continues, we won’t hold out much longer," Yi Hong observed, glancing at the exhausted faces of the warriors atop the wall, their volleys slowing, the situation growing dire.

Ahead, nearly a hundred thousand beasts remained, with the monstrous ones yet to move.

At that moment, in the distance, the behemoths finally stirred. With earth-shaking roars, hundreds and thousands of the colossal beasts charged, driving the remaining tide of a hundred thousand forward.

Should these monsters reach the walls, destruction was certain, and the tribe would be thrust into its final, mortal crisis.