Chapter 38: The Intent to Assassinate

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He looked up at the sky. The bright heavens of a quarter hour ago were now buried beneath dark clouds. The massed clouds hung oppressively low, with faint silver serpents twisting within them, as though a torrential downpour might break at any moment.

The deputy general’s expression grew even graver. He turned to look beyond the city walls. Though he did not know what manner of demon commanded the demon army, all the signs clearly indicated that it possessed a profound understanding of humanity. It was not merely an intelligent demon; it had certainly taken part in battles of offense and defense against mankind.

The lowering clouds over the city were plainly part of some preparation. He simply did not know whether they had been summoned to counter the fire oil.

An indescribable feeling rose within the deputy general’s heart. It was as though lighting the flames would bring about some tremendous crisis. He could not say exactly what it was, but he was certain that the danger was connected to the fire.

The demons had already stormed the walls. After all, there were only a little over three hundred soldiers, divided among the four sides. With fewer than a hundred men stationed on each section of wall, how could they both keep firing and defend against the enemy? Before long, cries of battle rang out everywhere. The attendants of the two generals began rushing from one place to another to contain the crisis, hacking into the demons in a desperate melee.

Suddenly, a thunderous crash rang out. The deputy general, standing atop the city tower, felt the ground beneath his feet shudder violently. Looking down, he saw several rhinoceros demons directly below, straining together to ram the city gate with a massive tree trunk. After only a few blows, the gate was already tottering on the verge of collapse.

Naturally, the deputy general would not allow them to breach the gate so easily. He reached out, seized several spears beside him, and swept them downward. They shot through the air with incessant whistles, streaking like lightning.

Blood burst from the bodies of the rhinoceros demons, and their agonized howls rose one after another. Yet their hides were thick and their flesh tough, while the spears in the deputy general’s hands were not weapons he commonly used. They could wound, but not kill. Urged onward by the demon officers behind them, the rhinoceros demons cried out in pain but did not stop, continuing to swing the enormous tree trunk against the gate again and again.

The deputy general sighed inwardly. In the distance, the demon reinforcements had begun to move toward the walls. Nearby, the entire base of the city wall was already swarming with demons, climbing upward in an endless stream. It seemed the defenses were about to collapse completely.

The deputy general clenched his teeth and suddenly ordered those beside him, “Light the fire!”

“Light the fire!”

“Light the fire!”

The command was relayed into the distance in an instant. As flaming arrows were shot forth, a raging inferno erupted beneath the walls. Demonic soldiers rolled across the ground, engulfed in flames. At the sight, the human soldiers burst into a fierce cheer that seemed to shake the heavens.

A tremendous roar came from among the demons. At its sound, the demon soldiers immediately began to flee. Some of the demons on the walls simply leapt down, scrambling and rolling as they retreated with their bodies ablaze. Then, several hundred paces from the city wall, a strange mist began to pour forth, pressing toward the fleeing soldiers.

Those who rushed into it while still on fire were immediately extinguished. Though many demons had been burned until their flesh split open, their lives had been spared.

The fire oil killed a considerable number of demons, nearly a thousand, but the losses were hardly devastating to the demon army. These lesser demons were nothing more than the most common and expendable cannon fodder. No matter how many died, their deaths would never attract the attention of the demon hierarchy.

Fed by the oil, the flames roared higher, spreading in an instant along the entire foot of Blackfire City’s walls. Great tongues of fire also erupted across many sections of the battlements. The soldiers saw only vast clouds of black smoke rising to blot out the sky and sun. Countless fine ashes, stirred up after the flames consumed everything, drifted through the air, their stench enough to induce vomiting. Their ears were filled with the crackling and bursting of the inferno.

The deputy general looked up. The dark clouds remained, yet there was still no sign of rain. He began to doubt his earlier guess. Could it be that the demons had summoned the rain clouds for some purpose other than extinguishing the flames?

He shook his head. He still could not understand what was happening. For now, all he could do was wait—for the demons’ next move.

When the deputy general finally grasped the significance of this situation, he suddenly felt despondent. The circumstances before him had already exceeded his understanding. The entire attack was shrouded in an eerie, grotesque atmosphere that left him utterly baffled.

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His body swayed slightly. The last attendant beside him immediately had someone bring over a wooden barrel and set it down so that he could sit and rest. This attendant had served at his side for many years, and this was the first time he had ever seen the deputy general in such a state. It was not exhaustion, but a kind of bewildered confusion—an expression that suggested deep thought mingled with unease.

There was another name for this feeling.

His heart was in turmoil.

The deputy general’s heart had already fallen into disorder.

After waiting for the ash in the air to thin, he looked out across the walls. The entire battlement had been burned pale, and the demons’ remains had all been reduced to heaps of charred black flesh. The surviving demons had withdrawn far beyond the flames. They neither charged nor retreated, simply standing motionless in silent watch.

The soldiers who had survived on the walls began glancing at one another, joy appearing on their faces as they rejoiced at having escaped death. But the deputy general’s attendants immediately began shouting orders, telling them to push the demons’ remains from the battlements, ready their weapons, and prepare for the battle to come.

The flames were still raging, and there was a long while yet before they would die out. Thus, although the attendants urged the men on, their voices held little impatience. For once, they were in remarkably good spirits.

The fire continued for nearly half an hour. Just as it gradually began to weaken, a sudden peal of thunder drew the attention of everyone within and beyond Blackfire City.

The flames were nearly extinguished. At that very moment, the demon commander finally stirred the thunderclouds he had been brewing for so long and began gathering the rain.

The dark clouds above the firmament churned violently, silver serpents darting through them as thunder rolled in waves. Water droplets rapidly condensed, then fell from the highest rain clouds. Yet beneath the entire formation, the lowest layer of black cloud was unnaturally dense. It intercepted every drop descending from above, storing the water within itself and allowing none of it to fall.

The color of that lowest cloud grew ever deeper. It pressed lower and lower as countless raindrops fell into it from the sky, only to vanish. Human and demon soldiers alike stared blankly at the cloud, bewildered and at a loss, with no idea what was about to happen.

The spectacle lasted no more than the time it took to burn a stick of incense. Then, without warning, the center of the black cloud exploded with a deafening boom. A sheet of white radiance poured down from midair, carrying such a volume of water that it surpassed even the flow of an ordinary stream.

The white torrent descended straight onto the city wall, which had been heated red-hot by the flames.

Hiss—

Amid a billowing cloud of dense white vapor, the wall let out a groan of agony. Then it began to creak and grind. The section struck by the downpour suddenly twisted. The soldiers standing atop it felt as though they had been cast upon a ship, and then the ground vanished beneath their feet as they plunged straight down.

The wall had collapsed from the sudden alternation between extreme heat and cold.

The second attack began.

Unlike the probing assault before, this time the entire demon army surged forward. Braving the torrential rain, they poured toward the city like a flood. Though the black fire could burn upon the surface of water, it could not withstand the water falling from the heavens. It was soon extinguished completely, and before long, the city echoed with waves of slaughter and screams.

Without the protection of the walls, the human soldiers were nearly defenseless before the demons. What was more, the garrison of Blackfire City was far inferior to the true soldiers of the Western Frontier. Even the Six Uglies, who had been tempered in blood and fire and had developed a fierce fighting spirit, were still lacking in strength.

The human forces dwindled rapidly. Faced with the demons’ full-scale assault, the soldiers chose to withdraw into the city and engage in street fighting. Blackfire City’s streets were intricate and narrow, making them ill-suited to the demons’ enormous bodies. This had been the tactic first proposed by the Thick-Browed Marquis-General. He had simply never expected the second wave of the attack to force them into it so soon.

Even the deputy general himself had retreated into the city, where he now fought the demons face-to-face.

At that moment, Six Uglies was moving through the city. He had revealed his true demonic form, though he had made himself slightly taller, transforming into a medium-sized macaque. Demonic energy surged around him, radiating an aura utterly different from that of mankind.

His gaze was fixed on the deputy general, who was fighting the demons a hundred paces away.

The deputy general’s attendants had been scattered in the fighting. At present, only two remained near him. Yet he fought with astonishing ferocity. The corpses of demons had piled around him like a mountain, and countless wounds marked his own body, but none had diminished the speed or strength of his attacks. Each flash of his blade claimed the life of a lesser demon.

A faint smile touched Six Uglies’ lips. He did not approach. Instead, he climbed onto the eaves of a nearby building, crouched there, and quietly waited for the deputy general’s final fate.

War was not a matter of showing off one’s strength, nor an outlet for personal will. If the deputy general died at the hands of the demons, Six Uglies would not intervene. He cared whether his opponent lived or died, but he did not care who dealt the fatal blow.

A large swarm of horsefly demons suddenly flew through the alley. They kept so low that their bodies were level with the rooftops. Quite a few lesser demons noticed the one crouching there, but the dense demonic aura radiating from Six Uglies kept them from acting rashly. They merely buzzed greetings before darting past without stopping.

However, a demon centurion following close behind came rushing over. Perhaps confident in the depth of his demonic power, or perhaps relying on the authority of his rank, the blister-beetle demon suddenly shouted at Six Uglies, “Why are you shirking the battle? Whose command do you serve?”

A faint murderous glint passed through Six Uglies’ eyes. His nose twitched slightly as he replied, “Go do your own duty. Do not disturb me.”

“How dare you speak to me like that! Do you even know who I am?”

Six Uglies’ indifferent attitude instantly enraged the blister-beetle demon. With a furious shout, he charged forward, poised to attack.

“Whoever you are, shirking battle is a crime punishable by—”

Before he could finish, Six Uglies suddenly sprang into the air and closed the distance between them in an instant. The iron staff in his hand pierced through the blister-beetle demon’s chest like a spear. Just as the demon opened his mouth to scream, Six Uglies’ other hand clamped around his throat. With a sharp crack, he tore the entire head from the body.

Fear and terror filled the blister-beetle demon’s eyes, but it was already too late. Six Uglies stared directly into them for a moment, waiting until the light faded completely, then casually tossed the corpse to the ground as though discarding a piece of worthless rubbish.

Suddenly, with a bang, another demon centurion burst forth from a different direction. He witnessed Six Uglies tossing aside the corpse, and the smile on his face instantly froze. He let out a sharp scream and lunged forward.

At the sound, several other lesser demons appeared around the rooftop, preparing to attack as one and kill this unknown demon on the spot.

Six Uglies had come to deal with the deputy general, but that did not prevent him from striking at demons as well. The instant he sensed their killing intent, he pounced. The iron staff in his hands blossomed like a black crescent moon, sweeping around him and sending entire clusters of lesser demons flying.

In the blink of an eye, not a single living demon remained on that stretch of street—not even the demon centurion.

Six Uglies walked to the corpses and reached into one of them, extracting its demon core. But at that very moment, his body suddenly stiffened. He rose and held the iron staff horizontally before his chest.

An overwhelming sense of danger swept over him. It was as though sharp thorns pricked his back, leaving his entire body cold.

Six Uglies began to retreat step by step, every nerve alert, moving backward with measured caution.

Then, from the distance, a snow-white figure slowly entered the alley, advancing with tiny, unhurried steps.

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