Previously, everyone was scattered across different regions, left to guess whatever they could about Toji Hisami’s capabilities.
Yet no matter how wildly they speculated, nobody could have anticipated that Toji Hisami’s actual strength would be this terrifying.
After all, Toji Hisami had brought along only fifty Xuanwu Guards and fifty elite warriors for this entire expedition!
"Just how many forces remain stationed back in the Jiuzhou Territory?"
"Those outsiders must be agonizing over whether the Jiuzhou Territory even needs to worry about defending against the upcoming foreign invasion!"
Elara felt a sense of absurdity just pondering the thought.
The power gap was already so monumental that it defied conventional comprehension.
This realization only served to solidify Elara’s resolve to seek permanent shelter under Toji Hisami’s banner. It was the sole viable path of survival for any lord within the Sacred Realm.
In this trial, making an enemy of Toji Hisami guaranteed nothing short of absolute annihilation!
"Let the wind spirit answer my call, transforming into sweeping blades to cleanse the earth!"
Channeling her complete reservoir of spiritual power, Elara held her scepter aloft as it erupted in a dazzling brilliance, summoning emerald wind blades across the vault of the sky.
Immediately following Lin Yifei’s devastating bombardment, a second wave of systematic harvesting commenced!
Massive numbers of Montenegrin soldiers were cut down like stalks of wheat before a swinging scythe.
Sensing imminent defeat, the commander of the Black Mountain Army yanked a pitch-black sword from his scabbard. The blade radiated a chilling, malevolent undead aura.
The cursed black sword instantly eroded the commander’s remaining vitality, draining the color from his face until it became corpse-white.
Elara’s expression shifted as she watched him plunge the blade deep into the earth.
"Undead Awakening!"
A rippling circle of ash-white kinetic shockwaves erupted outward from the black sword, sweeping across the terrain in all directions!
Every single corpse caught within the shockwave shuddered violently before lurching upright with jerky, rigid movements.
Their flesh withered away at visible speeds, while faint, sickly green soul fires ignited within their hollow eye sockets.
Necromancy! A mass resurrection of the dead!
Elara had not anticipated that the enemy retained such a desperate trump card.
Caught off guard by the sudden counter-surge, she and her accompanying mage detachment found themselves instantly encircled by the resurrected undead of the Black Mountain Army.
In the distance, the heavy-armored lord who had been sniped down first by Lin Yifei jerked upright from the ground.
His physical form had undergone a monstrous metamorphosis; his steel plate armor and raw flesh had fused into a single entity, while his overall stature had swollen to giant proportions.
"You forced my hand!"
"Elf! I will slaughter you first today, and then I will march to obliterate Jiuzhou!"
The commander of the Black Mountain Army emitted a hoarse, rattling roar, his aura rapidly degenerating into pure necrotic decay.
It was evident that the black sword was no ordinary artifact, but a deeply cursed weapon of ruin.
Its necromantic properties were a direct manifestation of that curse: the fallen were instantly warped into obedient undead thralls, while the living were infected by its miasma.
The tactical situation on the battlefield flipped in a fraction of a second.
Simultaneously, the churning waters of the adjacent Yudai River exploded outward as aquatic soldiers bearing webbed gills and scales surged onto the banks.
They timed their assault perfectly, seizing the exact moment Elara was isolated and surrounded by the undead Montenegrin forces...
The commander of the Black Mountain Army, whose consciousness had not yet completely dissolved into the void, witnessed the water-dwelling reinforcements and experienced a sudden moment of clarity.
It dawned on him instantly that the upper echelon of the Sacred Realm had never pinned all their hopes exclusively on his faction.
They had maintained a hidden, secondary insurance policy all along.
And now, that backup plan was actively materializing.
The commander’s expression darkened completely; the violent fluctuation in his emotional state accelerated his final conversion into a true spirit of decay.
Soul fire completely replaced his eyes, and a swarming cloud of black, poisonous insects burst forth from his throat, hovering around him like a suffocating shroud of dark fog.
Over three hundred water tribe warriors spilled out from the Yudai River, flanked by towering water elemental giants.
Led by a bald, scarred chieftain, this aquatic contingent lunged directly toward Elara’s position.
Their primary objective was clear: assassinate Elara.
As for the distant Jiuzhou forces, the water tribe commander harbored no delusions of engaging them.
"Kill Elara and fall back immediately!"
The aquatic leader raised his weapon high, his trailing soldiers roaring their agreement in unison.
Just as the decisive turning point of the skirmish seemed locked in place, a flash of brilliant light descended from the sky across the opposite bank of the Yudai River.
"By sacred oath, we protect!"
"The vow claims the heart!"
A fierce, imposing figure broke out of the mist riding a magnificent unicorn, trailing arcs of crackling lightning behind her like a descending Valkyrie!
Behind her, dozens of elite warriors on horseback deployed their matched blades to the left and right, condensing a brilliant golden-red aura.
Though the elite swordsmen were not conventional cavalry, under Lyra’s vanguard leadership, their synchronized momentum replicated the devastating impact of a heavy knight charge.
The unexpecting water tribe warriors spun around in panic, only to have their heads cleanly sheared from their shoulders as their formations scattered in all directions.
Wherever the razor-sharp blades passed, everything was sliced cleanly apart!
Marta, wearing a short bow at his waist and wielding a gleaming scimitar, charged close behind Lyra.
At that moment, Lyra spurred the silver-white unicorn to break off from the main momentum, handing over the interim command of the vanguard to Marta.
As a Moon Knight, Marta radiated an aura resembling a spiraling wind cone.
[Cavalry Charge Active!]
[The ancestral combat charge of the centaur lineage grants a +50 bonus to output power while mounted, alongside a 50% increase to ranged strike precision.]
Regrettably, the elite swordsmen were not orthodox cavalrymen; though Marta’s skill activation rippled through the ranks, they did not execute a traditional mounted charge.
Instead, they functioned like an industrial razor, slicing diagonally across the flank of the water tribe’s formation with mathematical precision!
In a single breath, forty long swords carved out a dense lattice of waning-moon blade arcs, slicing the water tribe vanguard into pieces before they could even emit a final scream.
The massive water elemental giants were violently hacked into harmless mercury-like particles that dissolved into the mud.
Faced with this catastrophic reversal, the water tribe chieftain wore a look of unmitigated shock.
Yet the next instant, Marta was already upon him.
The centaur reared upward, his iron-shod hooves glowing with condensed kinetic light as he delivered a devastating kick directly into the chieftain’s chest.
The impact caved in half the leader’s shoulder and ribcage, inflicting grievous internal trauma.
Before the chieftain could recover, a flashing scimitar swept past.
Marta roared as he plowed through the remaining ranks alongside the swordsmen.
In a single, fleeting cross-engagement, over half of the water tribe force was wiped out...
Transforming their long-planned ambush into a humiliating farce.
On the opposite flank, the fully corrupted undead commander of the Black Mountain Army directed a swarm of venomous black insects toward Elara.
Concurrently, a wave of mindless undead lunged from all directions, ignoring casualties entirely to swarm the defenders.
Elara and her remaining mages hastily erected overlapping defensive barriers to shield themselves!
In the rear, the elven archers fired frantically, desperately attempting to blast a corridor of escape for their lord.
Toji Hisami remained entirely unperturbed, not even bothering to unseal the Strange Book.
Lin Yifei held his fire as well; following his previous extreme exertion, his muscles lacked the residual stamina to mount another immediate barrage.
Both men merely watched the unfolding scene. Behind the undead Black Mountain commander, a devastating thunder prison abruptly detonated!
The silver-white unicorn materialized out of the mist, carrying Lyra, who held a long spear aloft. The shaft was wrapped in dense, writhing serpents of blue electricity!
At that moment, she truly resembled a female God of Thunder incarnate!
The undead black mist mobilized by the enemy commander failed to even approach within striking distance of the unicorn.
The auspicious, divine aura innate to the mount possessed a natural suppression effect against all undead entities!
Furthermore, lightning had historically served as the ultimate nemesis of all negative, corrupting auras!
Boom!
Lyra hurled the lightning spear with blinding force, detonating it in tandem with the innate thunder-domain ability of the silver unicorn!
The commander of the undead Black Mountain forces was instantly pulverized into gray ash, while the surrounding shockwave atomized the nearby undead thralls.
Reeling from the lifted pressure, Elara’s forces successfully punched through to reunite with their lord.
Elara raised her scepter instantly, projecting a blinding cross of holy light.
The beam struck the cursed black sword, which was still pulsing with residual death energy!
A pair of malevolent eyes suddenly snapped open across the surface of the black blade. The instant Elara met that gaze, she felt as though she had been struck by a massive siege hammer.
A stream of blood trickled from the corner of her mouth!
Those spectral eyes shifted past her, locking their gaze directly onto Toji Hisami in the distance.
A strange, anomalous metaphysical force attempted to establish a targeted lock on Toji Hisami through the air, but a mysterious aura instantly bloomed from within Toji Hisami’s person.
The blessing of his mysterious ancestral heritage, the mysterious seal, quietly manifested.
The hostile calculation intended to pin down Toji Hisami abruptly lost its anchor point, dissipating into nothingness.
The spectral eyes etched upon the black sword lost their remaining cohesion, casting one final, lingering look of malice toward Toji Hisami before vanishing entirely without a trace...
Witnessing the sequence, Toji Hisami frowned slightly.
An instinctive intuition warned him that something deeply profound, and potentially dangerous underlay, this entire encounter...