97: Chapter 97 Taking the Initiative

"Leave the fortress?"

Assistant Chen Feng's eyelids twitched wildly, his newly grown right arm clenching involuntarily.

He hurried after Li Zhengyang: "Minister! The ironclad rule of the Great Xia for a century has been to hold our ground and await reinforcements! Our branch has just been torn apart, the defensive barrier array isn't even effective yet, and you want to take these few hundred people outside the walls? That's suicide!"

Zhao Yi was also anxious, stepping in front of Li Zhengyang to block his path: "Minister, Assistant Chen Feng is right! The situation outside the walls changes in an instant; who knows what might be lying in ambush behind those scouts!"

These veterans had been licking blood off the blade in the Northern Territory for over a decade; the tactic carved into their bones was to hold to the death.

Close the gates, activate the arrays, and fill the gaps with their lives.

Fight outside the walls? Those four words did not exist in their understanding.

Li Zhengyang stopped.

He looked at Zhao Yi and Assistant Chen Feng blocking his way, then swept his gaze across the hesitant veterans in the hall.

"Clang!"

Li Zhengyang lifted his foot and kicked over a weapon crate.

"Are the blades in your hands meant for cutting air? Today, I want you to plunge these blades directly into the throats of the demons!"

A single sentence left Zhao Yi and Assistant Chen Feng speechless.

Lei Hu stood to the side, his eyes turning completely red.

He snatched up a thunderstorm warblade from the ground, the arcs of electricity on the blade's body surging up his arm.

"The Minister is right!" Lei Hu roared: "I've had enough of this bullshit! Let's do it!"

Li Zhengyang didn't waste any more words; he pushed past Zhao Yi and walked straight to the control console for the fortress gate.

Assistant Chen Feng wanted to stop him, but pulled his hand back halfway.

"Beep! Highest authority confirmed. North Gate, opening."

Rumble!

The ground of the entire Pojun Division branch began to tremble.

That hundred-meter-high gate, forged from tens of thousands of tons of black iron and tightly shut for who knows how many years, slowly slid open to the sides.

Outside the gate.

The demon scouts responsible for testing firepower and gathering intelligence were clinging to the blind spots of the fortress, preparing to climb inside through the previously collapsed gap.

Hearing the commotion, the scouts all stopped what they were doing.

The leading fifth-rank demon leader raised its head, its eyes full of confusion.

What was going on? Had these humans lost their minds? In the past, even if there were only a few demons outside, the Pojun Division would keep the gates tightly shut and set up heavy machine guns to fire wildly.

Today they were just here to scout the situation; why did the gate open on its own? Was it broken?

The gate opened wider and wider.

The gray mist dissipated, and the demons finally saw the scene inside the gate.

Behind the gate stood a dense mass of five hundred Pojun Division veterans.

All wearing black scale armor, holding thunderstorm warblades in their hands.

The young man standing at the very front held a dragon spear inverted in his hand.

Five hundred pairs of eyes stared straight at the demons outside the gate.

The scout leader's heart jolted violently, and it instinctively took half a step back.

Li Zhengyang spun the dragon spear half a circle at his side with one hand, pointing it straight at the demons outside.

"Abolish the old rules!"

Li Zhengyang's voice exploded in the ears of the five hundred veterans.

"From now on, kill your way out for me!"

The slight hesitation that had originally been in the minds of the five hundred veterans instantly vanished, replaced by a rush of hot blood at the stimulation of that sentence.

"Kill!!!"

Lei Hu was the first to go wild.

He couldn't wait for the gate to fully open; he turned sideways and squeezed hard through the gap, raising his warblade high and hacking directly at the nearest demon.

"This one is mine! Nobody steal it!"

Following Lei Hu's charge, five hundred fully armed Pojun Division veterans roared and rushed out of the fortress gate.

Before the first demon could react, Lei Hu's blade had already arrived.

It instinctively raised its arm to block.

In the past, this kind of standard-issue Pojun Division warblade couldn't even scratch its bone armor.

Slish!

The arcs of electricity on the thunderstorm warblade instantly surged.

The blade sliced through the bone armor without encountering any resistance.

That arm covered in bone spurs was neatly sliced off with a single stroke!

The piercing power of the thunder poured directly into the demon's body, paralyzing it so completely that it couldn't even scream.

Lei Hu slashed backhanded.

Pfft!

The demon's head flew straight into the sky.

"Die!" Lei Hu grinned wide, turned his blade, and lunged at the next target.

This was a one-sided slaughter.

The demons, which were originally extremely troublesome and relied on their recovery abilities and bone armor to grind down human martial artists, had met their match today.

The black scale armor made the demons' claws fail, not even breaking the skin.

And the thunderstorm warblades in the veterans' hands cut through demons like cutting watermelons, added to the surge in blood energy after the bone-growing pills cleansed their tendons and marrow.

These Pojun Division veterans had completely gone berserk.

"Don't steal mine! I saw that one first!"

"Old Zhao, you've gone too far! You hacked your blade down and smashed the demon core too; who does that count for!"

The atmosphere on the battlefield had completely gone off the rails.

There were no tearful partings, only cursing and swearing over who would get the kill.

Nearly a hundred demon scouts were completely stunned by the beating.

The fast ones turned and ran, the slow ones became corpses on the spot.

But could they escape? The veterans' eyes were red with bloodlust, and they were faster than the demons.

In just ten minutes.

On the wasteland within five kilometers outside the fortress, not a single standing demon could be found.

The demon scouts were slaughtered to the last, with none escaping.

The air was filled with the black blood of the demons and the burnt smell of thunder strikes.

The veterans were panting, digging for demon cores all over the ground.

The lightning on their blades was still dancing, and every face was brimming with fanaticism.

Li Zhengyang stepped out, looking down at his subordinates who were cleaning up the battlefield, nodding with satisfaction.

This was the team he wanted.

"Lei Hu, have you finished counting!" Li Zhengyang shouted from his high vantage point.

Below, Lei Hu was covered in blood, carrying a large cloth bag, shouting excitedly at the top of his lungs: "Report, Minister! Counting complete! A total of one hundred and seven! Not even a fly escaped!"

"Very good!"

Li Zhengyang didn't pull up the holographic map.

The radar swept over; everything within five kilometers was clean.

But he slid his finger to zoom out the map scale.

Two hundred kilometers due north, there was a large patch of blackened thermal red spots.

That was the outline of a massive complex of buildings, and also the source direction from which those demon scouts had just fled.

On the map, that location was marked with four large characters.

Mad Demon Fortress.

It was precisely the territory of the Mad Demon Clan.

Li Zhengyang reached out and tapped heavily on that red dot.

"Brothers."

The veterans below, who were wiping their blades, all looked up in unison.

"Today's warm-up is over."

Li Zhengyang pointed to the north, "Two hundred kilometers ahead, Mad Demon Fortress. Today, we are going to wipe that place out."