133: Chapter 133 Fifty Thousand Heavy Armor, the Limit

At the end of the first year, more than three hundred sets of profound armor were sent back to the Casting Workshop due to blood pattern overload, and over seventy armored soldiers had their Meridians injured by the recoil force.

Once such problems appeared on the battlefield, the Formation nodes could be forcefully breached by the enemy.

The five thousand finished sets were still one complete modification away from large-scale deployment.

The Foundry Master led people to stay in the Shura Field, inspecting the damaged profound armor set by set, and engraving every overload location on the back of the armor plates.

The Formation Hall adjusted the nine blood patterns, reducing the proportion of recoil borne by the shoulder and chest armor, and then channeled the excess power into the leg armor and the ground.

The Alchemy Pavilion checked the Meridians of the injured armored soldiers, re-divided the load-bearing standards of the Qi and Blood Formation according to their cultivation, and prevented soldiers with lower cultivation from bearing excessive impact.

Wang Shan did not interfere with the technical modifications.

Every day, he only did one thing: leading five thousand armored soldiers to assault the upper limit of the military Formation's endurance, and then sending the wear-and-tear records into the Hundred Arts Hall.

Wang Mu came every ten days to check the wear and tear. Seeing the scrapped quantity, he would cut a batch of invalid training, forcing Wang Shan to rewrite the training plan overnight.

The two argued for over a decade, yet the Formation's wear and tear decreased with each argument, and the xueming mysterious armor also adapted to the combat style of the Immortal Martial Legion.

In the sixty-fifth year of the Divine Kingdom, five thousand sets of profound armor endured ten consecutive rounds of Purple Mansion heavy artillery bombardment, and the Formation nodes always maintained integrity.

Once the artillery fire ceased, the Shield Soldierss were still able to form up and advance.

The blade soldiers and spearmen could also use the armor's recoil to discharge the impact, and the Formation remained unaffected.

Wang Shan inspected the array circle by circle, and finally signed his name on the acceptance ledger.

The Casting Workshop immediately increased its production speed to eight thousand sets per year.

At the same time, Wang Mu began expanding the Main Battle Army.

The original twenty thousand personnel were all converted into officers and backbone, and thirty thousand recruits were selected from various cities.

Recruits were required to at least reach the Late Stage of bone-refining or Qi training, and pass four evaluations: military Formation cooperation, weighted marching, Divine Soul suppression, and battlefield discipline.

In just the first round of selection, applicants exceeded four hundred thousand people, and the evaluation camps outside the Twelve Study Cities had no vacant spots for months on end.

Many young people grew up listening to the battle reports of the Asura expedition. The names of Wang Shan and Wang Mu were engraved on the academy's war history wall, and joining the army had become a glory pursued by the younger generation of the Divine Kingdom.

Wang Mu did not lower the standards due to the number of applicants.

After layers of screening among the four hundred thousand people, only thirty thousand were ultimately left to enter the Main Battle Army.

Those who failed were not directly repatriated.

Those with outstanding Formation talent entered the Formation Maintenance Team, and those skilled in fire control were chosen by the Artillery Battalion and the Alchemy Pavilion.

Those who lacked physical strength but excelled in calculation were assigned to the General Logistics Desk and the Military Supplies Department, replenishing the war system with a new generation of manpower.

Wang Shan was responsible for training the thirty thousand recruits. On the first day, he sent all of them into the Shura Field, demanding that everyone complete donning armor and forming up under the pressure of Soul Power.

Thousands of people collapsed that very day.

The Medical Cultivator Camp was busy from morning till night. After confirming that the injured were physically unhindered, they had them take Medicinal Pills and finish their military rations, before sending them back into the array.

Wang Shan stood before the array, leaving only a single sentence: "The battlefield will not specially reserve rest time for you. If you cannot stand today, do not enter the Main Battle Army tomorrow."

Three months later, those who voluntarily withdrew exceeded two thousand people.

Wang Mu filled the gaps from the reserve list, and the training standards were not lowered.

In the seventieth year of the Divine Kingdom, the thirty thousand recruits were finally able to complete the Immovable Wisdom King Army Formation in the Shura Field, and the Qi and Blood of the fifty thousand people also began attempting to connect.

After the military Formation's scale expanded, the old nodes could not bear the Qi and Blood gathered by fifty thousand people, and the first complete operation burned out twelve Spirit-Gathering Formation Plates.

The Formation Hall rebuilt the Formation foundation overnight, dismantling the single core into thirty-six sub-Formations, which were then uniformly dispatched by the Central Army General Desk where Wang Mu was located.

During the second operation, the vanguard's Qi and Blood connected smoothly, but the rear guard was half a beat slow.

Just as the Wisdom King phantom condensed, its waist dissipated along with the disruption of Qi and Blood flow.

Wang Shan dismissed six transmitting commanding officers on the spot, readjusted the military flags and bugles, and forced all battalions to act relying on military orders under the condition of restricted Divine Thought.

The legion spent another eight years to make the fifty thousand people advance and retreat together.

Whenever any node was damaged, the surrounding three battalions could take over to bear the pressure.

During these eight years, the xueming mysterious armor completed full-army deployment.

All the old armor was sent back to the Casting Workshop, converted into protective equipment used by the Artillery Battalion and the logistics team.

Two hundred Purple Mansion-grade rune heavy cannons also completed their second round of modification. Blood essence ore was added to the cannon bodies, and their load-bearing capacity during continuous firing was enhanced several times over.

Shell production was dispersed to the Twelve Study Cities.

If any city was damaged, the remaining workshops could make up for the production, and the military supply system no longer relied on a single region.

The production of the mad blood battle pill also increased year by year.

After refining the Grand Commander's vital essence blood to the end, the Alchemy Pavilion found a method to replace core Materials with blood essence ore marrow.

The effect of the alternative Medicinal Pill was slightly weaker, but it could be stably mass-produced.

Every peak-realm officer was assigned three pills, uniformly sealed in portable medicine boxes.

Wang Mu strictly prohibited taking them during routine training.

Only when the military Formation's core was damaged, or when encountering a cross-tier powerhouse, could officers open the boxes in accordance with wartime orders.

In the eightieth year of the Divine Kingdom, the population exceeded thirteen million.

The second urban districts of the Twelve Study Cities were all opened, and the number of apprentices in the Hundred Arts Hall exceeded one million.

The canopy of the enlightenment bodhi tree already covered the entire Hundred Arts Hall.

Three hundred and sixty enlightenment positions were demarcated beneath the tree, and each position was rotated according to merit and projects.

The younger generation of Formation Masters began to take over the maintenance of the Spiritual Veins, and Alchemists could also independently preside over high-grade Pill Furnaces, so the older generation finally did not have to hold multiple positions concurrently.

The Foundry Master still guarded beneath the bodhi tree.

He did not stop at the single achievement of the xueming mysterious armor, but instead dismantled the incomplete Law of Slaughter into new weapon Formation patterns.

After the first batch of blood-patterned longspears and heavy shields were sent into the military camp, the longspears' armor-piercing ability was enhanced, and the heavy shields could also recoil against the enemy's weapons upon impact.

Wang Shan tried the new shields and, rarely, did not withhold the samples, only having the Casting Workshop prioritize re-equipping three thousand Shield Soldierss, while the Artillery Battalion and Cavalry were temporarily ranked behind.

Learning of this matter, Wang Mu made a special trip to check the general military supplies ledger, confirming that Wang Shan had not jumped the queue privately, before approving the allocation of the second batch of Materials.

"What kind of look is that in your eyes? When has I, Wang Shan, ever snatched military supplies?"

"The three blade marks on the first set of xueming mysterious armor are still left on the armor-testing platform. If you have forgotten, I can have people move it over."

Wang Shan turned around and left the Ancestral Court, only dropping a sentence after walking down the steps: "That's called testing the armor for them, it cannot be considered snatching."

In the ninetieth year of the Divine Kingdom, the fifty thousand-strong Immortal Martial Legion completed its first full-system drill, with the Heavy Armor Army, Artillery Battalion, Sword Qi Battalion, and logistics Formation towers dispatching simultaneously.

The target of the drill was an uninhabited mountain range in the north.

The Formation Hall set up a three-layered defensive Formation in advance, with its intensity set according to the defense standards of Early Stage Golden Core enemy forces.

The first round of artillery fire shattered the outer Formation barrier, the Sword Qi Battalion severed the Spiritual Vein nodes, and the Heavy Armor Army immediately advanced, dividing and besieging the simulated defending troops in the mountains.

The logistics Formation towers followed the main force, laying supply nodes every hundred miles they advanced, and damaged profound armor and Formation Plates could be replaced on the same day.

The drill lasted for seven days, and the fifty thousand-strong army traversed a three-thousand-li mountain range, breaching nine positions without a single fault in military orders throughout the entire process.

Wang Mu recorded two hundred and seventy-six problems in the general ledger, most of which were concentrated on the reaction speed of recruits when facing Golden Core coercion.

Wang Shan took away the problem list, sent the corresponding battalions back into the Shura Field, and didn't even let them attend the celebration banquet.

"Fighting a Formation set up by our own people is even worth celebrating? When we truly trample down a legion presided over by a Golden Core powerhouse, come back and eat this meal."

No one in the army complained.

The records left from the battle of the Xiuluo Fragment were displayed on the war history wall, and they knew very well how much pressure cross-tier enemies would bring to the military Formation.

In the ninety-fifth year of the Divine Kingdom, the fifty thousand-strong legion drilled once again.

Wang Mu personally simulated the Golden Core Divine Thought impact, and the armored soldiers in the Formation did not experience large-scale confusion.

After the xueming mysterious armor purified the Divine Soul impact, it sent the remaining Soul Power into the Immovable Wisdom King Army Formation, instead helping the Wisdom King phantom maintain itself for a longer time.

The thirty-six sub-Formations could rotate on their own, and the Artillery Battalion, Sword Qi Battalion, and Medical Cultivator Camp also had independent protection; a single attack could no longer interrupt the entire war system.

Wang Pingan always presided over the firmament, observing the changes everywhere in the Divine Kingdom, and also bearing the civilization feedback brought by the growth of his subjects' strength.

After the Immortal Martial Legion completed its equipment deployment, the feedback power continued to grow along the divine core, and his first-rank divine fire was also pushed to the peak of his current cultivation.

After a hundred years of sorting out the 180,000 square kilometers of territory, the mountains, rivers, and river channels were completely finalized, and all newly added mineral veins and Spiritual Veins were connected to the Ancestral Court's main array.

The Soul Power of the Northern Nether Earth flowed southward at night, and the Spiritual Qi of the southern spiritual fields returned northward during the day, so the Yin and Yang cycle no longer had any obvious blockages.

The Creation Pool had already become a part of the main Spiritual Vein.

The pool water nourished various cities, and the average Aptitude of the subjects also surpassed the generation born a hundred years ago.

In the one hundredth year of the Divine Kingdom, the last batch of population statistics was sent into the Ancestral Court, and fifteen golden scrolls unfolded simultaneously on the high platform.

Fifteen million subjects.

The Twelve Study Cities were all put into use, the various departments of the Hundred Arts Hall completed their expansions, and the production of food, Medicinal Pills, armor, and shells could all support long-term campaigns.

The Immortal Martial Main Battle Army expanded from twenty thousand to fifty thousand people, with all members equipped with the third-generation xueming mysterious armor, and peak-realm officers equipped with the mad blood battle pill.

Wang Mu and Wang Shan still remained at the Half-Step Golden Core and Half-Step Martial Grandmaster stages.

They had not broken through their realms for a hundred years, and their accumulated spiritual power and Qi and Blood were already approaching their own carrying limits.

Tens of thousands of Purple Mansion Cultivators and Martial Masters had also stayed in the peak realm for many years.

Once the Divine Kingdom's territory and Law continued to grow, they would be able to launch an assault towards the Golden Core and Martial Ancestor realms.

Formations, heavy artillery, Sword Qi, heavy armor, and logistics completely integrated into one.

The fifty thousand-strong army was already able to detach from the Divine Master's dispatch and independently complete an expedition.

Wang Shan stood before the Martial Dao Holy City, fifty thousand armored soldiers divided into thirty-six military Formations, their dark red armor surfaces paving a battle line that stretched endlessly beneath the sunlight.

Wang Mu stood at the Ancestral Court's general platform, with all the Formation nodes across the 180,000 square kilometers completely presented on the general map, and not a single out-of-control area could be found anymore.

The Casting Workshop stopped expanding production and transitioned to routine maintenance.

The Alchemy Pavilion sealed its hundred-year reserves, and the Twelve Study Cities also completed the inventory of wartime supplies.

On the tenth external day, Wang Pingan withdrew his time authority, and the hundred years of time surging within the Divine Kingdom reconnected with the outside world.

The feedback transmitted from the divine core pushed him to the peak of first-rank cultivation, the divine fire filled every existing Law pattern, and his own accumulation was complete.

The 180,000 square kilometers of Spiritual Veins were completely stabilized, Spiritual Qi and Soul Power completed the Yin and Yang rotation, and the Divine Kingdom's foundation entered the ranks of the first-rank peak.

There was still a long way to go before reaching the 3 million square kilometers of territory, 30 million population, and the birth conditions for Golden Core and Martial Ancestor required for the second rank.

Wang Pingan looked toward the borders of the Divine Kingdom.

A hundred years of accumulation had turned into legions, cities, and population. The next step was to find a new battlefield for this fifty thousand-strong Immortal Martial Legion, and seize enough Origin to support the Divine Kingdom's ascension.