Chapter 323 – The Tide Has Arrived

The effects of Fate Star Weaving are profound and mysterious. Not only are outsiders unable to perceive them, even when Isloria explains it verbally, others find it difficult to comprehend.

Mu Yuan understood.

At this moment, he could be called a little Isloria, faintly able to see the trajectories of fate stars and threads of destiny.

He knew exactly what was happening.

By observing the stars, Isloria had found threads of fate that could potentially affect Tianyuan Territory and were related to monsters. Using this, she locked onto her target through astrological means.

By influencing a specific fate star, she interfered with the destiny of the target Jackalwere, causing a slight deviation in its actions, then continuously amplified this deviation.

Perhaps the Jackalwere scout, until being slain by Bone Two in the dense forest, regretted its carelessness while delivering erroneous intelligence to Jackal Fang.

Such is the terrifying power of Fate Star Weaving!

Of course, this talent has significant limitations, which Mu Yuan discerned with just a few glances.

“First, Isloria was able to discover this Jackalwere and subsequently influence it because this Jackalwere scout had connections to Tianyuan Territory. The greater the connection, the easier it is for her to weave fate. Conversely, if there’s no connection at all, it becomes very difficult for Isloria to interfere, perhaps even impossible to begin with.”

“Second, the target of interference cannot be too powerful. Influencing a Fourth Order Peak Jackalwere expert is her current limit, and this effort consumed considerable energy. Yet in direct combat, such a Jackalwere expert wouldn’t last three moves against Isloria.”

The Fate Star Weaving talent contributes minimally to enhancing Isloria’s combat prowess.

But its utility in other aspects is absolutely formidable.

“Previously, we lacked intelligence on several monster tide routes and had to rely on the Winged-People Kingdom… but the monster routes provided by the Winged-People Kingdom aren’t entirely reliable either. After all, the Wilderness is vast, and they’ve been isolated from the world for many years.”

If even the Winged-People Kingdom struggles to locate all monster armies, then Tianyuan Territory faces even greater challenges.

They could only wait until monster tides reached relatively close positions before detecting them through various patrols and scouts.

Now, through Isloria’s Fate Star Weaving, they can inversely deduce the locations of monster tides and lock onto them one by one. This tracking method far surpasses any War Falcon surveillance or Black Crow reconnaissance.

This is the “offensive” application!

Fate Star Weaving also proves immensely useful in “defense,” as demonstrated earlier.

After all, Tianyuan Territory cannot conceal itself in a separate dimension like Featherfolk Valley. Even with multiple layers of concealment, there remains a small probability of exposure.

Now, through Fate Star Weaving, they can continuously reduce this small probability, lowering it to nearly zero.

“Can this be achieved?”

The idea is excellent, but whether it can be accomplished depends on Great Master Isloria.

Although Isloria is a 007 chosen workhorse, capable of doing the work of dozens, she cannot maintain stellar observations indefinitely. The consumption would be too great; even drained completely, she couldn’t sustain it.

Mu Yuan understood this clearly.

They needed to find a clever approach.

“Of course!” Isloria declared resolutely.She no longer served as a military officer, merely a civil official now. But since she had taken this role, she was determined to push every capability of a civil official to its absolute limit. Human modification, alchemy, astrological observation, divination, ritual arrangements—she had to master them all, and master them flawlessly. Without this, how could she firmly maintain her position as the Lord’s right-hand aide?

“I can use fate stars to set up a ‘probability defense system.’ This way, whenever monster scouts have any possibility of discovering our territory, the system will alert us. Then, we just need to do this and that, and then that and this…”

She spouted a great deal of technical jargon.

If a certain General were here, he would likely be utterly bewildered. But someone as erudite as Lord Mu naturally understood—he grasped about ninety-eight percent of it.

He was very satisfied.

Truly, she was the all-around talent of his household.

…

After Isloria evolved, Mu Yuan collaborated with her to quickly deduce the approximate locations of the monster armies.

Currently, there were twelve monster armies in total.

They were gradually converging, heading straight for Wolfhead Mountain.

Their sheer numbers were enough to send chills down one’s spine.

“The influence of Jackal Fang appears to be exceptionally vast.”

The good news was that Jackal Fang’s headquarters were still very far from their location.

Their area was like an interdimensional zone between two kingdoms, situated in the borderlands, far from the core.

The bad news was that with a single command, Jackal Fang could mobilize thousands of troops.

However, marching over long distances was no easy feat for monsters.

Through Asun’s vision, Mu Yuan saw that during the advance, monsters would occasionally break away from the tide, howling as they charged into the surrounding forests and vanished without a trace.

Some monsters would even start fighting mid-run, two creatures pouncing on each other, tearing and biting until blood splattered everywhere.

After all, the vast majority of monsters were mindless and chaotic.

Jackal Fang could control and command monsters through special means, but maintaining that control over time was difficult.

Nevertheless, during the tide’s advance, high-ranking Jackalweres gathered batch after batch of monsters from various locations. The monster tide was moving southward, with some dispersing and others joining in, but the overall scale showed no signs of shrinking.

Compared to monsters, living forces faced far greater challenges when traveling long distances—a hundred times more difficult, at the very least.

Even if a Lord could assemble an army of a hundred thousand, they would face wave after wave of monster attacks during the march. They might not make it a few hundred miles before collapsing from the strain.

In fact, when experts from the Pioneer Group ventured deep into the Wilderness, they rarely brought large armies. Alternatively, they used the Lord’s Mark to store a group of elites. The larger the team traveling outside, the more likely it was to attract monster tides.

“The number of monsters is overwhelming. Now that we’ve pinpointed their exact locations, why not whittle them down a bit first?”

Mu Yuan entered the Scepter of Heavenly Authority and opened the stored spell list.

He had a total of eighty spell slots.

Night Concealment Illusion was stored once (20); Thousand-Prism Mirror Reflection was stored twice (10×2); the legendary-level Nine-Headed Roaring Thunderflame Dragon was also stored twice (10×2).

He had originally intended to craft a third Thunderflame Dragon spell, but after some thought, he canceled the process. Instead, he took action himself, using his own spells as a foundation. Over the course of two and a half hours, he created and fused a large-scale spell that occupied ten spell slots.

—World-Falling Skyfire!The destructive potential of this large-scale spell falls far short of the previous generation’s Thunderflame Dragon… after all, it was hastily crafted by Mu Yuan in a short time. Yet it possesses its own advantages—its coverage area is significantly broader.

“Next…”

He swiftly manipulated the Scepter of Heavenly Authority, a miracle building, using his authority as Lord.

「Select coordinates (XXX, YYY), activate Ultra-Long Range Skyeye.」

A surging tide of monsters instantly appeared within the observation range of the Heavenly Eye.

Within this scope, the Heavenly Eye detected no high-energy reactions from the Legendary Realm. This came as no surprise to Mu Yuan.

He continued his operations.

「Beep~」

「Initiating ultra-long range strike. Deploy large-scale spell ‘World-Falling Skyfire’ in this area?」

「Confirm!」

In an instant, hundreds to thousands of kilometers away from Tianyuan Territory, the sky abruptly turned scorching red, clouds burning like fire.

One after another, intensely blazing orange-red heavenly flames, resembling small meteors, descended from the heavens and crashed into the earth.

“What is that?!!”

Ordinary monsters continued their charge, but the high-ranking Gnolls hidden within the monster tide—those guiding and commanding—nearly had their eyes pop out of their sockets.

Their consciousness and intuition screamed at them: danger, extreme danger!

Run!

The intelligent Gnolls and other creatures, driven by survival instincts, immediately broke away from the monster tide and scattered in all directions.

But they soon realized the heavenly flames descended too rapidly, their coverage impossibly vast.

Wherever they looked, blazing orange flames consumed everything.

They couldn’t escape the area engulfed by the heavenly fire!

Boom! Boom! Boom! ×10086—!

The earth trembled as skyfire erupted in wave after wave, orange fiery surges swallowing both land and sky, devouring horde after horde of roaring monsters.

This was skyfire of extreme heat, shattering mountain rocks before melting them.

The high-ranking intelligent monsters within the tide desperately fled, dodging the falling heavenly flames while cleaving through the raging firewaves before them.

After all, World-Falling Skyfire was a large-scale spell emphasizing ‘massive area coverage,’ lacking somewhat in single-target burst power, making it uncertain whether it could eliminate a Fourth-Order Expert.

Yet despite its shortcomings, when the sky ceased raining orange flames and the crimson clouds slowly receded, over 99.9% of the monsters below had perished.

Countless intelligent Gnolls failed to escape.

Such was the terrifying might of the skyfire.

With a single strike, the largest contingent of the southward monster tide was annihilated here.

…

“This is the trump card of the living factions—a super spell capable of striking across vast distances. Not long ago, Guyā fell to a similar spell.”

Over a hundred kilometers away, a Jackal Sage wearing a long bone necklace observed from afar through some skill.

“However, this super spell’s destructive power is noticeably weaker than the one that killed Guyā. Evidently, such super spells are indeed limited resources for the living factions, depleted with each use.”

Having interacted with numerous surviving living factions and personally destroyed many, they understood all too well how these beings relied solely on fading ancestral legacies to survive.”But we must be wary, the forces of living beings still possess that Nine Dragons super spell. No, since they dare to face us directly, they likely still have reserves to deal with us.”

Another Legendary Realm powerhouse, also the commander of this operation, the Blackwing King, spoke up.

He was a Jackalwere with pitch-black fur and a pair of massive black wings on his back. Merely standing there, he radiated an aura of ominousness.

A third Legendary powerhouse chimed in, “But the fool Ancient Fang died due to his own carelessness—arrogant and stupid. Now that we’ve concealed our tracks, the forces of living beings have no chance of locating us. Besides…

“Besides, we still have the special treasure, the Space Urn. This artifact, obtained from a destroyed ancient civilization, is truly useful. Once we deploy the Space Urn, it creates an isolated and highly stable space. Even if we slip up, with the Space Urn in hand, the Nine Dragons spell cannot harm us.”

“Indeed, even if some attacks can tear through space, they absolutely cannot breach the stable barrier formed by the Space Urn, unless it’s an ability specifically targeting space. But spatial abilities, ha, how rare they are. Treasures with spatial power are exceedingly scarce.”

A fourth Legendary Realm powerhouse spoke.

It seemed someone remained silent.

But whether speaking or silent, none of them cared about the monster tide annihilated by the World-Falling Skyfire.

Even if the tide included some high-ranking Jackalweres who could be considered their own kin, in the eyes of these Legendaries, they were no different from cannon fodder.

If cannon fodder could reveal some of the living beings’ tactics, it was worth it.

…

Mu Yuan had only one shot of World-Falling Skyfire to deploy.

Crafting this spell wasn’t difficult, but projecting it over an ultra-long distance relied on the Heavenly Eye, which had limited uses.

However, this single World-Falling Skyfire served a highly strategic purpose, far beyond just wiping out one monster tide.

After the World-Falling Skyfire was launched, Jackal Fang began dispersing the advancing monster tide to avoid another mass annihilation.

As the monster tide scattered, the number of creatures the World-Falling Skyfire could kill in one strike significantly decreased, but many monsters also spread into the surrounding mountains and forests.

As they moved south, the scale of the monster tide inevitably shrank gradually.

“Is this the human Lord’s strategy? Admittedly, their approach isn’t wrong. The ability to annihilate tens of thousands of monsters in the blink of an eye is terrifying, but…”

But the sheer scale of the monster tide is even more horrifying!

During their usual reconnaissance, they hadn’t felt it much, but at this moment, standing on the mountain and gazing at the surging tide, they realized how insignificant they and their forces were.

Even if the number of powerhouses in their Winged-People Kingdom increased tenfold, they would still be insignificant before this black tide!

A Winged-People powerhouse sighed.

Elsewhere, a massive figure, wearing a Stealth Orb, watched from afar.

Though his form was enormous, his presence was faint. His eyes blazed with golden light, capable of seeing dozens of kilometers away.

This was a giant.

A living giant.

He stared at the rolling monster tide in the distance for a long time before murmuring softly,

“My King, we did not choose to confront the Monster Overlord head-on out of cowardice. This was the right choice.”

In yet another location,A figure with pointed ears, hidden among the treetops, gazed into the distance and let out a faint sigh.

…

The commotion of Jackal Fang commanding a vast army was immense, awakening secluded and deeply hidden forces in the surrounding regions. They had no choice but to pay attention to this battle.

On Wolfhead Mountain, one general after another from the Tianyuan Territory arrived.

Atop a certain peak, Dolai sat cross-legged, holding a manifested Space-Tearing Seal in each hand. A dark spatial vortex slowly rotated behind it, while a massive serpent, its head and tail connected, coiled and uncoiled in mid-air.

With a slight parting of its lips, it devoured the energy of heaven and earth in a Whale Swallow.

Having stepped into the legendary realm for over ten days, Dolai had not only mastered proficient spatial abilities but also upgraded its previously common Moves.

Everything was in place, awaiting General Dolai’s grand slaughter.

Mu Yuan looked out beyond the mountain.

The sky gradually darkened as a black tide surged forward.

(End of Chapter)