Chapter 1022 — The Rising Wind
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 4
The seventh flash rose from somewhere above a mountain peak in the direction of Winterhold. After a brief delay, a mushroom cloud of irregular shape billowed up at the edge of the plain, and a sickly white torrent of magical turbulence poured outward from its base, burning and annihilating everything in its path, while a deafening roar rolled across heaven and earth as if it could shake the mountains themselves.
Then a colossal body tore through the rolling heat and smoke. Cracks had opened all over its armor, and rust-colored gas spewed from the fissures; molten lava flowed beneath the giant's feet. It raised its head, and deep within the hollow helmet two dark crimson flames leaped as it gazed far off toward a certain high mountain — one minute earlier, the position on that mountain had unleashed the seventh Annihilation Force.
In the next second, a chaotic, frenzied cascade of sound erupted from within the giant's helmet — a war cry beyond human comprehension, perhaps — and then it raised its arm high. A longbow took shape in its hand in an instant. It aimed at the distant peak, drew the bow with a gallantry and ferocity that all the mortals of the world could only begin to imagine, and a blood-red arrow appeared from nothing upon the string.
Then the giant loosed the string. The enormous blood-red arrow split the air and struck the distant mountain almost instantly — and above that mountain, layer upon layer of heavy barriers sprang up at nearly the same moment. The blood-red arrow slammed into their surfaces, and with a piercing shriek like the sky itself being torn apart, the overlapping barriers were punched through one after another in what seemed an instant, and a vast explosion swallowed the entire mountain.
The white beam of light that spanned heaven and earth above the peak flickered violently several times, then was extinguished entirely within the rising cloud of the blast. At the foot of the mountain, great swaths of Typhon's camps, awash with streams of magical light, dimmed one after another as though devoured by darkness — anyone looking down from the sky at that moment would have seen a vast hollow torn open in the magical network of hundreds of thousands of transcendents that covered the whole Winterhold region, a sight to strike dread into the heart.
In the Hall of Arcana, the voice from the transmission crystal carried a faint tremor: "The Blackthorn Mage Corps has been wiped out! Node Seven has failed! Magical flow deviation at nine percent!"
The hall fell silent for a single second, and then a calm, level voice sounded through the cavernous Hall of Arcana:
"Continue."
……
On the far side of the standoff, in the opposing lines, the terrible spectacle between the mountains of Winterhold and the plain stunned the mind of every witness — the great spheres of light that kept surging upward, the giant striding head-high through the torrent of magic, the mortal defense lines going dark one after another — it was like a painting of the end of days, and even at a considerable distance it was enough to shake the heart.
The dragoon scouts, from a closer range, sent back clearer images — while carefully keeping a safe distance, they had captured sharp footage of that cold, uncontrolled god advancing relentlessly under the continuous bombardment of the Annihilation Force.
Amber stood beside Gao Yang, eyes wide as she stared at the distant scene projected by the arcane-net terminal before her. Only after a long while did she finally let out an exclamation: "They actually had something that terrible hidden away..."
"This is Typhon's 'full national strength'..." Gao Xi said slowly and in a low voice. "Truly... impressive."
At the same time, a thought welled up in his heart: if Luo Yan Augustus had not chosen the path of a bloodless victory and had simply declared war on Ansus from the start, Ansus would surely have been finished long ago, wouldn't it?