Cave Refuge

When the ammunition on the transport aircraft was all spent, who could have imagined that it only briefly held back the tide of small ancient creatures? Yet, so many more of these creatures kept gathering from all around.

With no alternative, the pilots could only return to base, planning to resupply before executing a second sweep.

If Zachary could have observed the situation of Kyoto’s city defense, he would have seen firsthand the vast gap between Kyoto and Pengcheng.

When the transport planes started heading back, the ground troops, following the plan established at the start, began to attack the designated targets.

The artillery bombardment of the second sweep killed countless small ancient creatures rushing toward Kyoto. Still, despite this, an unending stream of the creatures surged towards Kyoto like a tidal wave.

Even though each volley of artillery fire cleared an area of ground, it wouldn’t take long before the small ancient creatures appeared again, like the waves of the sea.

Today, the roar of artillery fire thundered through land and sky, and the ordinary survivors living in Kyoto had started evacuating away from the battlefield.

Regardless of status, all martial artists were conscripted. Body Tempering Realm Martial Artists were responsible for transporting ammunition, while Inner Breath Realm Martial Artists and above carried personal weapons, executing precision kills on the ’lucky ones’ that managed to breach the artillery fire.

Were it not for the monster siege and Imperial Court’s emergency conscription order, even those Energy Cultivation Realm Martial Artists living in Kyoto would have only just learned that there were at least several hundred of their seemingly mysterious peers in the city.

After several hours, it was unclear how much ammunition had been used up by Kyoto, but the difference in ground height inside and outside the city had grown to at least five meters, testifying to the immense scale of the city’s defense efforts.

From this disparity in height, one could gauge how much ammunition Kyoto had expended in the battle.

Maybe it was that most of the small ancient creatures around were already slain, but the numbers of the creature tide began to decrease gradually.

Just as the atmosphere in Kyoto’s Command Headquarters began to relax a bit, the ground started trembling along with a ’thud, thud, thud.’ It wasn’t an earthquake that was shaking the ground—it was the arrival of more gigantic creatures to the battlefield.

As these colossal creatures joined the fray, Zachary and the other survivors hiding in bunkers could distinctly feel the tremors unwittingly produced by the giant ancient creatures as they walked.

Facing such creatures, most people couldn’t help but feel an instinctual fear of their massive size.

Before these giants even got close to Kyoto, the Dongfeng Express company was already prepared to make a quick delivery. Following the orders from Command Headquarters, Dongfeng Express used their unique same-day service to offer the giants a welcome gift from the world of human civilization.

Dozens of ignited, massive firecrackers rushed towards these colossal creatures. One of the giants, seemingly undisturbed by the ’little flying sticks’ heading its way, even tried to bite one out of the air.

Except for the one whose throat was pierced by the missile, the other giants produced massive plumes of smoke when the rockets hit them, as their bodies reacted with the explosives.

Reality is anything but a show; the principle that smoke doesn’t mean injury doesn’t apply in real life.

Even with their massive size, the beasts were severely wounded after being struck by missiles. Even more terrifying was the creature that swallowed a missile whole—after it exploded inside, it spewed out chunks of its internal organs before collapsing dead on the ground.

Contrary to the movies where missiles only seem to tickle the giants, in reality, missiles can cause extensive damage to carbon-based life forms.

Apart from that ’unlucky’ creature whose belly exploded, the remaining giants, although they survived the first round of missile strikes, were in such a state that they certainly couldn’t withstand a second volley.

Strike the iron while it’s hot!

The person in charge at Command Headquarters was no soft-hearted individual; if a problem could be solved with missiles, he wasn’t foolish enough to send those Energy Cultivation Realm Martial Artists to the front lines to fight.

Within less than five minutes, the Dongfeng Express delivered its gifts for the second round.

Though the behemoths were not too smart, they weren’t stupid either. Having experienced a missile baptism once, they began to consciously try to dodge the missiles flying toward them during the second attack.

But let’s not even talk about modern missiles having the capability of auto-targeting; with their massive sizes, even if the missiles couldn’t track automatically, hitting their bodies would still be incredibly simple.

With the second round of missiles hitting their marks, wounds on the behemoths’ bodies were now deep enough to reveal bone.

Because the missiles struck head-on, many of the behemoth’s internal organs were exposed to the air, and although the creatures remained steadfastly upright, everyone knew that they wouldn’t live much longer.

Seeing that the behemoths, despite their severe injuries, had not fallen, the person in charge of command issued the order to launch a third round of missiles.

After the second round of missiles, the behemoths were as good as dead, with no need to waste more missiles; they simply had to wait a while, and the creatures would perish from excessive blood loss.

But the behemoths were too close to the Kyoto City Center by then, and if they were allowed to charge into it, the damage to Kyoto would definitely exceed the cost of the missiles.

Therefore, to be on the safe side, it was imperative to repel these behemoths outside of Kyoto.

The collision between modern civilization and ancient behemoths was indeed captivating, but there were still streams of small ancient creatures passing under the feet of the behemoths and rushing towards the Kyoto City Center.

As the appearance of the behemoths made carpet bombing no longer effective, many Inner Breath Realm Martial Artists came forth, one hand holding a Gatling gun and the other carrying an ammo box, while the behemoths grappled with missiles.

Although the barrage of fire was gone, the torrent of bullets still firmly slaughtered the small ancient creatures outside the warning lines.

However, unlike artillery fire which could blast small creatures to smithereens, although the small creatures were hit with bullets flying everywhere, their corpses still remained in place.

As the corpses of these small creatures piled higher and higher, even the relentless stream of bullets couldn’t stop the small creatures from inching closer to Kyoto.

As the small creatures pushed the frontline to the vicinity of the warning line pre-set by Command Headquarters, the Kyoto defense troops once again employed new weapons.

Hundreds of Inner Breath Realm Martial Artists shouldered launchers, firing pre-prepared white phosphorus grenades at locations not far away.

As soon as the white phosphorus grenades landed in the mountains of corpses, they immediately ignited a raging inferno, the fierce flames not only reducing nearby corpses to ash but also leaping over ten meters high, forming a wall of fire.

It was the appearance of this wall of fire that finally slowed down the assault of the small ancient creatures, yet many of them preferred to cross through the sea of fire; even as their fur caught flame, they resolutely charged towards Kyoto.

However, since the sea of fire had essentially cut off the path for most of the small creatures, those few that managed to rush through the flames were easily dispatched with pinpoint fire from Gatling guns wielded by the survivors.

The sea of fire on the ground acted as a natural barrier, temporarily keeping the small creatures at bay, while the behemoths started to teeter from the assault of three rounds of missiles.

This period was a rare chance to rest and relax since the beginning of the monster siege.

When those few behemoths, scarred from head to toe by the missiles, finally collapsed due to excessive blood loss, the ground trembled in several successive shocks.

With that, the monster siege came to a temporary pause.