The northern mine sat at the far northern edge of the Fifteenth Firmament, buried inside a desolate vale. The darkness before dawn pressed over the entire vale. The stars had gone dim, and the moon was smothered behind a sheet of clouds.
The air carried a cold, damp bite. Frost spread across the ground, catching what little light there was and flashing silver-white.
Towering cliffs rose on both sides of the vale. They stood bare and stripped clean, not a blade of grass growing anywhere on them.
A gigantic pit had been carved into the valley floor. It stretched hundreds of yards across and hundreds of yards deep, like some enormous mouth thrown open at the sky.
The walls of the pit were riddled with mine tunnels. Each one was black clear through, the bottom nowhere in sight. Every so often, wind pushed out from inside, carrying the mixed stench of rot and dust. A screen of light had been set around the mine.
That was the Tribunal’s Saintlight Ward.
Dense layers of sigils crawled across the screen of light. In the darkness, they flickered like countless eyes, watchful and alert.
Outside the screen of light, celestial cultivators were out on patrol duty. Every 100 yards, there was a squad. Ten men to each one, their cuirasses bright, their spears sharp. Their footsteps landed in perfect unison.
In the stillness of the night, the sound carried with unnerving clarity.
At the center of the mine stood the stone hall. That was the captain of the guard’s post.
The stone hall had been built from black rock. Square and severe, it had no windows, only a single iron door.
Two celestial cultivators in the True Immortal Realm Level Four stood at the doorway of the stone hall. One on the left. One on the right. They might as well have been stone statues. They wore golden cuirasses, with longswords hanging at their waists. Their eyes swept the surroundings like hawks.
Inside the mine, hundreds of ragged cultivators were working. Some of them had already been at it the entire night. Their eyes were webbed with blood, and their faces had gone as pale as paper.
Every one of them wore black chains on their bodies-soul-shackles. Those chains had been forged from ancient cold iron. Sealing sigils covered them from end to end. They were arcane implements made specifically to suppress the spirit. Once the chains locked on, spiritual power stopped moving. After that, a person could only be butchered at someone else’s convenience.
One end of each chain was fastened to a prisoner’s wrists and ankles. The other end was fixed to iron stakes at the cave mouths, leaving them able to move only within a set range. Their clothes hung off them in tatters.
Underneath, their bodies were all jutting bone and skin.
Some carried pickaxes and hacked at the ore, each blow against the rock letting out a dull, heavy thud. Some shoved ore carts through the mine, the loads so heavy the straps had carved deep bloody grooves into their shoulders. Some sorted the stones by hand, their palms and fingers sliced open by the sharp edges until flesh and blood blurred together.
No one said a word. The only sounds were picks striking rock, mine carts rolling with a drawn-out creak, and, every now and then, a cough or a low groan drifting through the dark.
Dust hung in the air with the stink of blood and sour sweat mixed into it so thick it turned the stomach.
A young cultivator dropped to the ground. His eyes were shut tight. His face had gone paper-white, and his cracked lips had split and bled.
He had gone three days without rest. The chains around favonovel.com had cinched so hard favonovel.com could barely draw breath.
“Get up!” A celestial cultivator strode over and drove a kick into his waist. “Quit playing dead!”
The young cultivator let out a muffled grunt and struggled to push himself up, but his body no longer answered him. He collapsed again. His forehead smashed against the rock, and blood poured out at once.
“Trash!” The celestial cultivator yanked the whip from his waist and lashed it across the young cultivator’s back.
Barbs lined the whip. One strike tore the skin open and ripped the flesh underneath.
The young cultivator clamped his teeth together and didn’t make a sound. He was used to it by now.
In this place, crying out only brought more lashes. There were no tears in his eyes. Only emptiness. The kind that came after torment had been dragged so far that even pain no longer seemed to reach him.
Hadrian lay in ambush behind the hillock outside the mine with 500 beast-race warriors.
The darkness before dawn gave them the best cover they could ask for. The beast-race warriors lay flat against the ground with animal hides draped over them, blending into the earth itself.
Their breathing was so light it was almost impossible to hear. Their eyes shone in the dark, bright as a pack of wolves at night.
Hadrian lay at the very front, watching the screen of light over the mine and the celestial cultivators on patrol duty through a gap in the grass. His fingers traced lightly over the dirt as favonovel.com counted the gap between each patrol.
“About thirty minutes…” favonovel.com said under his breath. “They change shifts once every thirty minutes. When they switch out the screen of light weakens for an instant. That’s when we move.”
He turned his head and looked at the beast-race warriors behind him.
“Brothers, we’re not going there to die today. We’re going to save people we break in, draw the celestials attention then pull back. Don’t get bogged down. Don’t chase glory. Come back alive.”
None of the beast-race warriors spoke. They only tightened their grip on the arms in their hands.
Hadrian drew in a deep breath before roaring. “Kill!”
All 500 beast-race warriors charged down the hillock at once. They surged toward the mine like a flood. Their footfalls hit so hard the ground itself seemed to tremble. Their battle cries ripped apart the silence before dawn, like thunder, like a mountainside collapsing.
“Skywolf Tribe!”
“Kill!”
“Kill! them all”
The celestial cultivators went white.
“Enemy attack! Enemy attack!”
“It’s the Skywolf Tribe! The beast race is coming at us!”
“Quick! Report to the commander!”
The celestial cultivators on patrol duty hurriedly formed ranks.
Golden holy radiance flared in the dark like dozens of suns. They leveled their spears and went to meet the beast-race warriors head-on.
The two torrents crashed into each other. Metal slammed against metal. Roars, screams, and the crack of shattering bones tangled together and rang through the entire vale.
Hadrian charged at the very front. His war axe spun in his hands, and every swing took a life.
One swing of the axe, and a True Immortal Realm Level Two celestial cultivator split clean down the middle. Blood burst out in a hot spray and splashed all over Wolfhowe.
The second swing cut three celestial cultivators in half at the waist. Their upper bodies tore away from their lower halves, and their guts spilled across the ground.
The third swing caught the first wave of reinforcements the captain of the guard had sent out. The axe-light swept through them, and seven or eight men were blasted backward, blood bursting from their mouths.
Blood covered Wolfhowe from head to toe. Some of it was his. Most of it wasn’t.
His eyes burned so fiercely they looked like a volcano that had just been split open, fire pouring out with no sign it would die down.
“Come on! Come on!” favonovel.com roared. His war axe crashed down and split the celestial cultivator in front of favonovel.com in two, shield and body together.
The beast-race warriors charged behind Wolfhowe like a pack of wolves, savage and out of control.
One of them was a young beast-race warrior, only True Immortal Realm Level One. This was his first time on a battlefield. Both his hands shook, but his eyes shone bright.
He stayed on Wolfhowe’s heels and kept hacking enemy after enemy down with the bone axe in his hands.
Three cuts opened across his body. Blood ran straight down him, but favonovel.com didn’t give a single step. He couldn’t. His brothers were behind him.
There was also an old beast-race warrior, a True Immortal Realm Level Three expert, with a scar running from his forehead all the way down to his chin. He had clawed and crawled his way through battle for thousands of years. There were more scars on his body than cloth on his back.
He moved without hurry. Every swing of his axe landed with exact, deadly purpose. His eyes were cold, cold as winter ice.
The celestial cultivators had numbers on their side, but the beast race’s sudden assault had hit them too fast. Their formation had already been smashed apart. They were each fighting on their own, with no way to put up any real defense.
Golden holy radiance slammed into blood-red axe-light in the air, and every collision broke out with a deafening blast. The ground blew open into crater after crater. Broken stone sprayed everywhere, and dust rolled out thick across the field.
Outside the mine, the ward rocked under the beast race’s assault, ready to collapse at any moment. Cracks spread through it like a spiderweb, racing in every direction.
The golden screen of light flickered bright and dim, bright and dim again, like the last candle flame shivering in the wind.
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