171: Chapter 171 Iron Wall City

The convoy had been driving across the wasteland for an entire night.

By the time a layer of grayish-white light appeared on the horizon, Ironwall City finally came into view in the distance.

It was a majestic border fortress in the truest sense of the word.

The city wall spanned the end of the Northern Territory like a solid mountain range cast in steel, lying silently between the wasteland and the flames of war.

The walls, hundreds of feet high, were pitch black, their surfaces covered in dense clusters of pockmarks from artillery fire, charred scars from laser burns, and gaping fissures smashed open by heavy mech artillery.

In some places, the city bricks had even been melted by explosions, congealing into layers of twisted metal scars.

Outside the city, the scorched earth was churned up, with the broken remains of mechs half-buried in the ground, shattered artillery barrels jutting diagonally out of the wasteland, and charred military flags flapping violently in the wind.

Viewed from afar, the entire Ironwall City looked like a scarred yet still roaring steel behemoth.

And the body of this behemoth was already covered in the marks left by blood and fire.

Lin Mo stood before the vehicle door, his gaze slowly sweeping across the battlefield-like city defenses, his expression darkening bit by bit.

The brutality here was far worse than he had anticipated.

Lin Mo was not the only one in the convoy.

Accompanying him this time were Shen Yi, as well as several key combatants who had previously fought alongside him in the secret realm: Ji Wuchen, Gu Yunting, Lu Chenzhou, and Ye Huangyi.

As the group stepped off the military vehicles, the atmosphere turned exceptionally quiet, even though no one spoke a word.

No one was joking or laughing.

Nor did anyone truly regard this journey north as a light support mission.

Because they had all seen what the front line looked like.

The true border was neither a training ground nor a secret realm.

People died here every single day.

And in this city, the matter of death had clearly become the most mundane daily occurrence.

Someone was already waiting at the city gate.

Leading them was a middle-aged man clad in heavy armor, tall and sturdy with a stern face, and a deep, old scar across his brow bone.

He was the Lord of Ironwall City, Yan Yue.

Behind him stood several high-ranking officials and garrison commanders of Ironwall City.

One of them sat in a wheelchair, his legs missing, clearly having been completely crippled, yet his eyes were still as sharp as knives; he was the former chief commander, Han Xiao.

Lin Mo stepped down from the front of the convoy and was just about to speak when Yan Yue raised a hand, stopping him first.

He glanced at Lin Mo and the others, his brows immediately furrowing.

"Halt!"

Yan Yue spoke, his voice low and carrying clearly suppressed dissatisfaction.

"Are you the reinforcements the Vice Hall Master requested from Lingwu City?"

Lin Mo's expression was calm: "Is there a problem?"

Yan Yue did not answer immediately, instead letting his gaze slowly sweep over the faces of those behind Lin Mo.

Young. Too young.

Even if their auras were not weak, and even if one could tell that each of them possessed the demeanor of a prodigy, in the face of a real border battlefield, these excessively young faces still instinctively gave him a sense of absurdity.

Han Xiao also looked up, his gaze sweeping over Lin Mo and the others one by one, before finally sneering.

"These are the reinforcements sent from the rear?"

"They look more like a few young people who haven't even seen blood yet."

Upon hearing this, Lu Chenzhou raised an eyebrow, wanting to say something, but was held back by Ji Wuchen raising a hand.

Lin Mo did not speak immediately, only quietly observing the City Lord and the garrison commander before him.

He could tell. This wasn't deliberate harassment. It was genuine disappointment, or even... the apathy born of exhaustion.

People who had held out here for too long no longer had the extra patience to welcome so-called prodigies.

Yan Yue took a deep breath, his tone turning a bit colder.

"Apologies, I know you may all be so-called geniuses, but this is not a trial secret realm."

"This is Ironwall City. We don't need geniuses! We need soldiers who can actually fight on the battlefield!"

"Do you have any idea? The West Federation's heavy artillery just blasted through our third line of defense yesterday, and early this morning, a swarm of drones crossed the border to harass us. Two outposts seventy miles outside the city have already been wiped out."

He paused, his gaze becoming even heavier.

The air instantly grew heavy.

Shen Yi frowned slightly, clearly not expecting the other party to be so blunt and unpleasant.

Ye Huangyi's eyes turned cold, and the spiritual fire in her palm flickered almost instinctively.

Lei Wanjun's expression was also not very good, and just as he was about to speak, Lin Mo gently raised his hand, signaling everyone not to move yet.

He looked at Yan Yue and asked calmly: "Then do you think we shouldn't have come?"

Yan Yue looked at him coldly, his gaze not yielding in the slightest.

"At the very least, it seems you've arrived late, and you've arrived in the wrong place."

"Ironwall City does not need a group of young people who have never been to the front line."

As these words fell, the atmosphere in front of the city gate plunged to freezing point.

In the distance, the air defense alarm suddenly sounded again.

Sharp, urgent, piercing through the morning mist like a knife.

The sound was like a string stretched to its limit, tightening painfully against everyone's nerves.

On the city wall, squads of garrison troops quickly ran to assemble, the crystal energy cannons on the defense towers began to slowly turn, and on the distant horizon, one could even faintly see clusters of black smoke approaching.

"Enemy attack."

"All personnel, fall back to defense."

As soon as the words fell, heavy footsteps echoed across the city wall.

Squads of garrison troops dispersed rapidly, the crystal energy turrets turned simultaneously, and the city defense barrier lit up in layers, driven by array patterns, like a massive light net forcibly stretched open, barely covering the entire Ironwall City.

Yet even so, everyone knew that this light net was unstable.

It had been riddled with holes by days of continuous artillery fire and surprise attacks, and it could completely collapse in the next wave of impact at any moment.

At the far end of the distant wasteland, black smoke swirled higher and higher.

The next instant, a row of blinding white light suddenly lit up the horizon.

Swish—swish—swish—!

That was not lightning.

It was the West Federation's long-range energy missile swarm.

Dozens of streaks of light, trailing long tails of flame, tore through the morning mist, flying in almost flush with the horizon at astonishing speed.

"Intercept!"

Someone on the wall roared.

More than a dozen crystal energy cannons fired simultaneously, blue-white beams slamming fiercely into the sky.

Boom!

Explosions rang out one after another.

Several missiles were detonated prematurely in mid-air, exploding into clusters of dazzling fireballs.

Yet three still made it through the interception net, smashing heavily into the defense tower area on the east side of the city.

Rumble—!!!

The entire section of the city wall trembled violently, dust and smoke rising into the sky.

Debris, metal, and flames, mixed with several screams, exploded simultaneously.

"The breach in the east defense line has widened!"

"Medical team, hurry!"

"The third artillery battery has lost contact!"

"The barrier array pattern has been cracked!"

On the city wall, cries of alarm instantly merged into one.