novelbin Chapter 101 : Chapter 101
Chapter 101 : Chapter 101
Chapter 101: Run? Never—Kill Our Way Back!
“The Mother Crystal is important to us, but it is even more important to the monsters. This time, more than a dozen powerful Profound Rank monsters issued the command together.”
“They want to seize the Mother Crystal!”
Professor He was equally certain.
Guidance Officer Liu said, “If we do not activate Libra Space, they can protect the Mother Crystal, but the Profound Rank monsters will massacre our soldiers.”
“Commander Liang made the decisive choice to activate Libra Space. Before they went up, they ordered us to hold the Mother Crystal at all costs!”
“If the low-grade monsters break through, charge into the military district, and seize the Mother Crystal, then even if they kill every last Profound Rank monster, it will all be meaningless.”
“But if we can hold the Mother Crystal, they said they will do everything in their power to kill the Profound Rank monsters and come down to reinforce us.”
It was obvious that Guidance Officer Liu was panicking a little as well.
With a burden this immense resting on his shoulders alone, he truly felt overwhelmed.
Li Mu might only be a reservist, but he was currently the highest-ranking officer in the military district.
At the very least, he could discuss things with Li Mu, and that alone put him somewhat at ease.
At that moment, Professor He sighed.
“What a pity. Once the Mother Crystal leaves the Abyss, it starts losing its vitality. It cannot remain on the surface for long.”
“Otherwise, we could have moved it aboveground first.”
Li Mu did not respond.
There would not have been much point in doing that anyway. If the military district could not hold, the monsters would still chase it to the surface to seize the Mother Crystal.
And at that point, the world above would fall into even greater chaos.
Still, Li Mu said, “Guidance Officer Liu, we have no way out!”
“Direct us well and let us fight a hard battle!”
In truth, there was one final retreat route, but Li Mu did not mention it.
If things truly reached the last possible moment, he could try packaging up the Mother Crystal again and carrying it away in bird form.
Of course, the sky would then fill with flying monsters throwing themselves at him in a frenzy.
And in his bird form, he had very little combat power in the air. Fighting while constantly changing forms would make it overwhelmingly likely that he would fail to protect the Mother Crystal.
Moreover, he could not afford to fall into the endless monster hordes below.
That too would be a near-certain death.
Guidance Officer Liu nodded heavily.
“I’ve already sent requests for reinforcements to Linyuan and Bloodpool City.”
“Even at their fastest, they will still need two hours to get here.”
“The regional channels have all been set up as well. Civilian martial artists can coordinate through the channels too.”
“But our battle line has already begun to collapse sector by sector!”
By the time Guidance Officer Liu finished speaking, his tone had grown extremely grave.
That was precisely why he was panicking.
A battle on this scale had been dropped straight into the hands of someone who had only ever watched such things from afar, never truly commanded one himself.
And now he was somehow expected to tell exactly what spices had gone into the roast.
It was far too difficult.
From his perspective, the battle situation was already riddled with holes, and anxiety made his head throb.
Li Mu nodded.
“Do not panic. I believe in you!”
“I’ll leave this place to you. I’ll stay in contact the whole time.”
The moment Li Mu finished speaking, he did not pause for even an instant. Before he had even reached the doorway, he transformed into a bird and shot through the window with a whoosh.
Once he reached midair, he spread his wings with a roar and became an eagle, soaring straight into the sky as he flew toward the military district’s outer wall.
By then, the reservists had already taken position atop the wall.
Without orders from the command, they did not dare move recklessly. If they reinforced the wrong location, they might end up making things worse instead of better.
As Li Mu circled in the air, he saw flying monsters wheeling in the sky not far away.
Their grades were not high, only Second or Third Grade at most.
If they came too close, they would be cut down in an instant.
But their occasional dives at the Array Banner formation were still incredibly troublesome.
The city wall was extremely wide, broad enough for horses to gallop across, so even with more than a thousand people standing on it, it did not feel crowded.
Li Mu circled overhead in a wide loop.
Once he had a rough grasp of the situation, he immediately contacted Guidance Officer Liu in the command center.
“Guidance Officer Liu, the situation on-site is chaotic right now. I’m splitting the reservists into three groups.”
“Four hundred men per group.”
“Lu Chenfeng, Zhang Zhiwei, and I will each command one.”
“We will focus only on the Array Banners and reinforce any unit whose defensive line around its banner starts faltering!”
Guidance Officer Liu’s eyes lit up at once.
“Good! Good!”
He said it twice in a row.
Li Mu’s few words instantly gave him solid ground to stand on.
Just moments earlier, he had been completely overwhelmed.
The civilian martial artists were an enormous variable. Countless civilian fighters had flooded into the channels, asking in chaotic, overlapping voices where they were needed.
Just dividing those civilian martial artists into batches and assigning them to different sectors had already taken all his strength.
He also had to dispatch troops to defend the Mother Crystal zone.
And he had to keep track of the remaining effective forces at all times, monitor shifts in the battle, and determine how to deploy people where they were needed.
That alone was enough to leave him utterly bewildered, never mind thinking about actual tactical arrangements.
Yet with only two brief statements, Li Mu had stabilized the entire situation.
Li Mu had conveyed one crucial truth: the Array Banners outweighed everything else.
Why had the battle been steadily deteriorating?
Because the Array Banners kept falling back. Most likely, one banner guard unit after another had suffered casualties, causing their combat power to plummet and forcing them to retreat.
And if two Array Banners became too far apart and the connection between them broke—
the consequences would be unimaginable.
By directly splitting off three rapid-response units to solve precisely this problem, Li Mu had naturally put Guidance Officer Liu greatly at ease.
Li Mu landed in front of the reservists at once and loudly ordered them to divide into three teams.
Each team would have around four hundred people, led respectively by him, Zhang Zhiwei, and Lu Chenfeng.
Li Mu would lead Team One, Zhang Zhiwei Team Two, and Lu Chenfeng Team Three.
The teams had only just been sorted when a mission came in.
“Team Three, reinforce Banner No. 17 to the southwest!”
“Received!”
Lu Chenfeng shouted excitedly.
He had never seen a battle on such a scale before, and far from frightening him, it only seemed to make him more exhilarated.
He leaped straight down from the wall, which stood more than ten meters high, and crashed into the ground like a cannonball, smashing out a huge crater.
Then he charged toward Banner No. 17 at full speed.
The members of Team Three behind him were no less fierce. One after another, they vaulted over the wall and dropped down.
Among the Abyss-Suppressing Army reservists, there were basically no Second Grades. At the very least, they were all in the early Third Grade.
Under Lu Chenfeng’s influence, every last one of them charged forward brimming with vigor, howling as they went.
The guard unit assigned to Banner No. 17 consisted of more than two hundred Abyss-Suppressing Army soldiers, and by now a quarter of them were already wounded.
The hundred or so who remained were trying to protect their injured comrades while resisting with all their might.
Even so, they were still being forced steadily backward by the monsters.
They were facing a kind of savage long-armed monster. Against those long claws, no tactic worked particularly well. They had no choice but to cluster around the Array Banner and endure the assault with defensive cultivation arts.
And those monsters seemed to understand how important the Array Banner was as well.
They attacked the soldier carrying it in a frenzy.
Almost anyone who took hold of the banner would soon be breached by the monsters and targeted with suicidal attacks that left them wounded.
At that moment, a soldier had only just taken the banner when a monster smashed him hard across the back, nearly knocking it from his grasp.
But right along the retreat path, a giant of a man over two meters tall came charging in like a storm.
He met the monster head-on and drove a punch straight into its chest.
The savage force instantly caved its chest inward.
The monster was blasted out of the defensive ring. Even if it did not die, it was grievously wounded.
Lu Chenfeng snatched up the Array Banner and shouted, “Hold the line! Reinforcements are here!!”
The soldiers who had been forced steadily backward looked toward the direction Lu Chenfeng had come from.
Their spirits surged at once.
Several hundred men were charging forward with battle cries.
Though they were all wearing school uniforms and were clearly reservists, their momentum was ferocious, not the least bit inferior to that of veteran soldiers.
Lu Chenfeng shoved the Array Banner into the clothing behind his back.
Then he tore off his upper garment, wrapped it tightly around himself, and bound it in place.
He slammed headlong into the charging monsters.
Green light swirled around him. When the monsters’ claws struck him, it was as if they had scraped across steel. Crying out miserably, they staggered backward one after another.
From the moment Lu Chenfeng strapped the banner to himself, he did not retreat a single step again, no matter how the monsters attacked him.
He stood rooted in place like the pillar that steadied a raging current.
By then, the main force had also arrived.
Spears and blades rose together, killing intent filled the air, and they began slowly forcing the monsters back.
Elsewhere, the guard unit assigned to Banner No. 29 had likewise begun to collapse step by step.
The Array Banner was retreating so quickly that it almost looked as though the monsters were chasing it in a full rout.
Just as it was about to fall so far back that it would lose its connection to the banners on either side, four hundred reservists in school uniforms came galloping in.
And the man at their head hauled his horse to a stop, then vaulted into the air, erupting with dazzling golden light that shone like a blazing sun.
For a moment, even the monsters’ attention was drawn upward.
Then a gigantic golden spear came plunging down from the heavens, driving straight into the horde that had been pursuing the retreating guard unit.
Wherever that golden light passed, clouds of blood exploded into the air.
The last trace of fear in the reservists behind him was pierced through by that single spear.
Their morale instantly soared to its peak.
After landing, Zhang Zhiwei did not move to take the Array Banner. Instead, he coldly spat out three words:
“Kill our way back!!”
Then, shrouded in golden light, he charged head-on straight into the monster horde.
And the reservists behind him had also arrived, following tightly at his back. Together, they became like the cutting edge of a sword, carving a bloody path straight through the monsters before them.