His command was like a clap of thunder.
All the soldiers still fighting, whether they were the Rodok Sergeant with their shields, the archers with their bows, or the Swadian Knight swinging their swords, instantly felt the doomsday aura emanating from the bloody phantom, an aura capable of destroying everything!
Just as the blood-red light in the jackal phantom's eyes intensified to resemble two miniature bloody stars, and the entire projection distorted and trembled due to extreme energy compression—
"Aaaargh—!!!"
A scream so shrill it twisted space ripped through the night sky!
The massive, distorted, blood-red projection, resembling solidified lava, instantly collapsed inward.
It was like a pricked bubble, yet it contained unimaginable destructive energy.
All the essence absorbed from the Undead Monster remains on the battlefield, along with its own remaining Abyssal Power, highly condensed into a fist-sized, dark-red energy core that radiated an aura capable of destroying heaven and earth!
Then—
"Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!—!!!"
That dark-red core, compressed to the extreme, foul and viscous like solid black blood, suddenly exploded.
There was no physical shockwave, only an infinitely spreading, absolutely silent, terrifying shadow.
Like thick ink dropped into a basin of clear water, it instantly stained everything.
This self-detonation of condensed death and Abyssal Power had no physical roar, yet it was more lethal than any explosion.
It spread at the speed of light; wherever it passed, light was swallowed, air was solidified, and sound was erased!
Almost simultaneously with Shen Mu's warning, he had pushed his spirit and will to their limits.
The immense Faith Power no longer guided the holy flame but transformed into the cornerstone supporting his manipulation of the rule data stream.
Countless cold, precise runes in the shape of "0" and "1", representing absolute order, flowed and extended rapidly around him, instantly weaving into an invisible and colossal data net that precisely covered the core defense system of the entire Long City wall!
At the core of the fortress, the towering ancient tree, a hundred meters tall, seemed to sense an impending catastrophe, and under the activation of Shen Mu's rule power, it erupted with an unprecedented verdant light!
Buzz—!!!
With the ancient tree as its root, the enormous wooden city wall covering the entire Long City wall instantly burst forth with brilliant dual-colored radiance!
Inside was the ancient tree's own accumulated boundless natural life force, transforming into a deep, condensed blue-green halo; outside was a golden light curtain, guided by Shen Mu's supreme will and formed from golden Faith Power, flowing with cold order runes!
Inner life, outer divine power!
The two streams of light perfectly overlaid and circulated!
The silently spreading dark-red shadow of death slammed fiercely into this incredibly tough protective shield!
"Sizzle—!!!"
Like a hot iron pressed onto ice, a teeth-grinding sound of energy annihilation echoed in every soldier's heart!
The ancient tree's emerald green light flickered rapidly and dimmed, and the surface of the city wall, composed of massive roots, groaned under the immense pressure; in some areas, the wooden wall, thicker than steel, and the activated thorns entanglement upon it instantly turned charred and withered!
The order runes flowing with golden Faith Power, however, shone brightly, constantly being impacted, twisted, and partially shattered, yet they struggled to hold on as new runes generated from behind!
Inside the barrier, all the defenders felt a suffocating sense of oppression, as if their souls were about to be frozen and torn apart.
But under this double protection, the destructive mental impact and energy annihilation were largely blocked!
However, the power of this core self-detonation was simply too concentrated and too violent!
"Crack! Crack! Crack!"
In the western outer section, where the shield resisted the impact most violently and had been most heavily damaged before, the seemingly indestructible surface of the Long City wall, covered by a protective layer woven from activated thorny roots, finally could not withstand the central point of this destructive force!
A large section of the thick root protective layer emitted a mournful cracking sound, and the massive roots broke inch by inch, charring into ashes!
The tough thorny vines instantly turned into dust!
A huge gap, more than twenty meters in diameter, with jagged edges, was starkly exposed beneath the bloody crescent moon and endless darkness!
A chilling aura of death instantly surged madly through the gap! As if the gates of hell had completely opened towards the Elf Forest!
Shen Mu stood on top of the barrier not far from the gap, the runes on his mithril heavy armor flickering intensely, and the data flow of rules around him like Wild Dance silver snakes.
Through the hideous gap, his cold, iron-gray eyes were fixed on the dark core of Long City to the west.
There, the darkness was even more viscous, the surging black mist licked the wound as if alive, and the aftermath of the phantom's self-detonation seemed to be brewing a deeper, more terrifying tranquility.
A huge threat had been pained, its trump card exposed, but its deadly fangs seemed to have only just truly emerged from the Bottomless Abyss.
The true reckoning was far from over.
The night was still terrifyingly deep.
Inside the barrier, every soldier looked at the huge gap, at the surging black mist and the flickering, re-activated emerald green soul flames within it, all gripping their weapons tightly, their hearts heavy, no longer feeling any joy of a great victory, only a deeper solemnity.
They all knew the battle had to continue.
The huge gap, surging with a chilling aura of death, was like the fanged maw of hell opening towards the world of the living.
After a brief, suffocating silence, a new tide indeed appeared!
However, this surging terrifying tide caused the defenders, who had just experienced the phantom's self-detonation impact, a sense of startled… ease?
As Shen Mu had warned, the response from Long City's core was an even more violent impact.
Countless Undead Monster, even more bizarre in form and with more twisted and hideous bone structures, seemed to squeeze out of the swirling black mist, emitting sharp, grating sounds and hollow hisses, scrambling to rush towards the newly formed rift!
Their numbers were even larger than the previous elites, like a collapsing mudslide, surging with an aura of destruction.
Among them were segmented Skeleton covered in bone spurs like enlarged poisonous scorpions, aggregate monsters composed of countless tiny skulls, and swift-moving hunting Skeleton that moved on all fours with mandibles like giant guillotines…
But strangely, as the Rodok Sergeant roared and raised their tower shields, and the Vigia and Wood Elf archers reflexively shot arrows like rain, and the Holy Tree Knight, their mithril longswords gleaming with holy light, prepared to meet the charge, something unexpected happened.
These newly surging, seemingly more terrifying Undead Monster were as fragile as rotten wood!
Arrows covered in holy flames easily pierced their seemingly hard bone armor, bringing forth large amounts of burning bone fragments; when the Rodok Sergeant's halberds chopped down, the resistance encountered was far less than that of ordinary black iron Skeleton, like splitting dry firewood; when a Holy Tree Knight swung a sword, with the burst of power, several monsters in front instantly shattered into dust, purified with unusual thoroughness!
The intensity of the battle suddenly dropped a level.
The soldiers quickly transitioned from initial solemnity and desperate fighting to an efficient clearing mode.
The arrow rain became more rhythmic, no longer requiring precise aiming at vital points; the melee soldiers' frontline was as solid as a mountain, and every chop caused far more casualties than expected.
"…Something's wrong!" Shen Mu's cold voice echoed from the barrier's observation post, his gaze piercing through the chaotic battlefield outside the gap, like the most precise scanner.
As the soldiers felt at ease, his vigilance climbed to its peak.
He saw it more clearly.
Although these attacking monsters varied in form, in the depths of their eye sockets, beyond the core of the emerald green soul flames representing undead power, there was a faint but incredibly tenacious dark-red spark, like a brand!
This spark was different from the violent dark-red demonic light in the eyes of the previous Abyssal phantom; it was smaller, more dispersed, yet like a maggot in the bone, it parasitized the most fundamental soul fire of these Undead.
At the same time, an extremely faint but incredibly clear scent of corrupted sulfur, originating from the same source as that dark-red spark, mixed with the heavier stench of the dead and the coldness of the black mist, was clearly captured by Shen Mu's incredibly keen mental power.
"The stench of the Bottomless Abyss…" Shen Mu's thin lips under his visor uttered cold words.
This was definitely not the aura of Long City's Undead themselves!
It came from the Bottomless Abyss, the most prominent characteristic of Abyssal Demons!
In a flash of lightning, all the clues connected in Shen Mu's mind.
The Abyssal projection's desperate self-detonation just now, on the surface, was to inflict casualties on the defenders, but it was more like a signal, or a… sacrificial ritual!
It detonated its remaining power and the accumulated power of the defeated Undead, forcibly tearing open a gap in the barrier!
And the subsequent surge of this massive but weak so-called terrifying tide was not a conventional attacking force at all.
They were puppets directly infected and accelerated by the Abyssal Will!
The dark-red sparks in their eye sockets were precisely the mark of Abyssal Power eroding and ultimately replacing the Undead's own soul fire!
Abyssal Demons were using this evil method to crudely extract the last nutrients from Long City, this land of death!
"They are using death… sacrificing death!" Legolas also noticed the anomaly; his keen perception, unique to a child of the forest, made him more sensitive to the Abyssal aura.
He stood beside Shen Mu, his emerald eyes fixed on the dark-red flickering corpses on the battlefield below: "I feel… a terrifying will, beyond the wailing of the forest, is forcibly twisting the death laws of this land… It is 'extracting'!"
A flash of understanding crossed Shen Mu's cold eyes.
He understood the enemy's true purpose this time—this seemingly grand attack was essentially a suicide mission!
Abyssal Demons needed more death, needed these accelerated cannon fodder to rush towards the barrier's blades, and then transform into purer death power!
A portion of this power would return to the naturally dissipated energy field of this dead land, but the part infected by the demon seed… the energy released when they were killed, with that sulfurous stench, like countless trickles, was being drawn by an invisible force, converging towards the swirling core black area in the west!
On the battlefield, the soldiers quickly cleared most of this wave of monsters.
They died too easily, so much so that this great battle ended quickly.
Corpses piled up like mountains in front of the barrier, but the soldiers' expressions were filled with confusion and vigilance, not the fatigue of victory.
"Resolved?" A Swadian Knight wiped the dirty black ash from his mithril armor, looking incredulously at the empty area outside the gap, "These things… why do they feel like they're made of flimsy paper?"
"They are just… bait! Or fuel!" An elderly Wood Elf ranger's voice trembled: "My Lord, the forest's sorrow is intensifying… deep within that core, something is… accelerating its hatching! These quickly eliminated puppets are making that thing faster!"
His words were like ice piercing into the heart of every soldier who heard them.
The soldiers looked up at their Lord.
Shen Mu still stood on the observation post, his mithril heavy armor reflecting a cold gleam in the burning light of the barrier.
He did not relax due to the brief respite; instead, he faced the direction of Long City's core to the west, which resembled a solidified dark Bottomless Abyss, his entire body's muscles in a state of extreme vigilance.
Yes, the feeling of sending them to their deaths was exceptionally strong.
All of this was just to accelerate the birth of that thing!
The Abyssal Demons, using the last essence of the city's Undead and the very slaughter of the defenders as nourishment, were cultivating an unimaginable monster in the fertile soil of death!
The barrier fell into a brief silence, with only the occasional popping sound from ignited Undead remains, along with the suppressed warnings of the Wood Elf and the low groans of the ancient tree's roots from pain.
Suddenly, from that core darkness, which seemed to swallow even starlight, came a dull, enormous sound, like thick leather being torn!
"Thump—!!!"
The sound was not loud, but it carried a soul-piercing impact, clearly echoing through every root and every soldier's heart within the barrier.
The sulfurous stench in the air instantly intensified several times, carrying a nauseating, bloody odor, as if from the most defiled part of life's end.
In that immense darkness, it seemed as if two colossal, dark-red eyes, larger and deeper than before, burning with absolute chaos and primal hunger, were slowly opening.
The Abyssal Demons' creation had completed its final incubation!
"Awoo—"
With a roar that sounded like a wolf's howl, yet contained a deeper evil and endless greed, erupting from the profound darkness of Long City's core, the entire battlefield seemed to have its throat suddenly choked by an invisible giant hand.
A sudden change occurred!
The dense black mist, which had previously enveloped everything, carrying the stench of the Bottomless Abyss and a stagnant deathly stillness, seemed to be endowed with will by that roar, surging violently, and then—with a speed that defied physical laws, it rapidly contracted towards the city's core, like a receding tide!
In just a few dozen breaths, the concentration of the viscous, almost solid black mist around the Long City barrier and even within the visible range of the entire Elf Forest drastically decreased, rapidly becoming thinner and sparser.
The sticky oppressive feeling and the pungent sulfurous stench also rapidly diminished.
Below the barrier, the Undead Monster army, which had just been rushing into the gap one after another, instantly became rigid and chaotic!
The dark-red sparks in their eye sockets, like maggots in the bone, flickered violently at the same time, then suddenly extinguished, like candle flames forcibly drawn away.
