I Am Immortal in Great Yu

Chapter 196: Chapter 82: Killing Trap

The wind howled, fires raged, and sand and dust billowed into the air.

The flickering, dim yellow firelight illuminated ferocious faces, vast swarms of vicious Earth Armor Centipedes, and glaring pools of blood.

”HISSSSS!”

”SQUELCH!”

”Ah! Monster! Stay away!”

...

The dense chittering of the Earth Armor Centipedes, the sound of their sharp carapaces slicing through flesh and splashing blood, the pained screams of the Iron Butcher army...

All these sounds intertwined, composing a symphony of death on the battlefield.

At this moment, only a dozen or so Earth Armor Centipedes remained by Fang Rui’s side, continuing to slay enemies and tear through the ranks with him.

The vast majority of the other Earth Armor Centipedes had long since been driven into a killing frenzy. Kicking up clouds of sand, they had charged into the camp and swarmed in every direction, killing on sight. The sharp armored plates on their flanks flared out like twin sabers, frantically reaping lives.

The Earth Armor Centipedes had gone berserk!

As for the Iron Butcher army, on the other hand...

Though over two thousand men remained, most were heavily wounded. Only eight or nine hundred were uninjured, and even they were still reeling from the evening’s devastating losses.

Men with no fighting spirit, soldiers with no will to fight—they were no different from sheep for the slaughter!

In fact, the soldiers’ weakness only fueled the Earth Armor Centipedes’ bloodlust, making them fight with twice their normal ferocity. A single centipede could be seen chasing down and indiscriminately slaughtering dozens of soldiers.

It was just like a few days ago when they had been the ones holding the butcher knives against the people of Changhuai City. Only now, the roles were reversed.

In the space of a mere hundred breaths, countless men had fallen in the Earth Armor Centipedes’ onslaught.

”Where are my elite guards? Spread out and counterattack! Annihilate these beasts for me!”

The Iron Butcher lived up to his reputation as a great general. Despite the surprise attack and his extreme disadvantage, he still managed to organize a counterattack, dispatching about half of his elite guards to divide and destroy the Earth Armor Centipedes.

The elite guards fanned out into the camp. After cutting down a few deserters to restore order, they rallied the remaining soldiers and charged back to counterattack the Earth Armor Centipedes.

The Earth Armor Centipedes’ carapaces were as tough as iron armor, and they could burrow underground, but they weren’t without weaknesses—such as their soft underbellies.

The soldiers quickly developed a strategy for dealing with the creatures: they quickened the pace of their attacks to prevent them from burrowing and looked for opportunities to flip them over and strike their vital points.

In just a few moments, they had already managed to slay four or five.

’It seems it’s only a matter of time before a proper army wipes out these Earth Armor Centipedes. But I never placed my hopes in them anyway. The only one I’ve ever truly relied on is myself!’

Fang Rui looked ahead at the Iron Butcher, who was advancing with his elite guards. Fang Rui continued forward, closing the distance between them.

”Formation!”

When they were just over fifty meters from Fang Rui, the Iron Butcher suddenly gave the order.

KLANG! KLANG! KLANG! KLANG!

Shields locked together, forming an impenetrable wall.

THUMP! THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!

Behind the shields, the elite guards marched in perfect unison. Though there were only a hundred of them, their advance carried the crushing momentum of an entire army.

’Here we are.’

Fang Rui reined in the Earth Armor Centipede he was riding, allowing the blood-crazed centipedes behind him—which were no longer fully under his command—to charge ahead and test the formation.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

The dozen massive, torrent-like Earth Armor Centipedes crashed against the shields, but it was like waves striking a reef; they couldn’t budge the wall an inch.

”Kill!” the Iron Butcher roared.

”Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill!”

From the gaps in the shield wall, specially-crafted longspears shot out. The Earth Armor Centipedes, their charge broken, had no time to retreat. Each was met with a volley of seven or eight spears, driving them back with hisses of pain.

”HISSSSS!”

The pain seemed to restore some of their reason. No longer running wild, they huddled around Fang Rui, their master, as if to display their misery.

”Enough. Come back!”

Fang Rui gazed at the impenetrable wall and its forest of spears, which was still advancing, pressing in to encircle him. With a light tap of his foot, he leaped from the back of the largest Earth Armor Centipede.

One slash.

CRACKLE! SNAP!

The longspears snapped in half, showering down like rain.

A second slash.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

The wall of iron shields exploded outward, sending rank after rank of elite guards flying with wretched howls.

’An expert of this caliber? The Upper Three Grades?! Damn it all! If it weren’t for the Mountain Collapse, if our Armor-Piercing Crossbows and Divine Wind Arrows hadn’t been destroyed...’

The Iron Butcher ground his teeth in frustration.

An army naturally possessed weapons capable of dealing with powerful individual Martial Artists. But nearly all of them had been lost in the Mountain Collapse, and he no longer had enough men to operate them anyway.

Otherwise, with his twenty-thousand-strong army intact and fully armed, he could surround and kill not just a warrior of the Upper Three Grades, but even someone beyond the First Grade!

”Hurl spears!” the Iron Butcher commanded again.

FWOOSH! FWOOSH! FWOOSH!

At his word, the elite guards surrounding him hurled their spears in a volley, filling the air with a piercing whistle.

”Disperse!”

With a swing of his saber, Fang Rui sent out a shockwave. A deafening crack echoed in midair, and the spears hurtling toward him tumbled to the ground.

And in that precise instant—the moment his old strength was spent but before he could muster new—

”Die!”

The Iron Butcher seized the opportunity. Wielding twin hammers as tall as half a man and as wide as millstones, he pounced like a ferocious lion.

In his hands, the colossal hammers moved with incredible speed, leaving afterimages in their wake and carrying the faint roar of wind and thunder.

This man, just like Li Xuantong, also possessed Innate Divine Power!

’Impeccable timing, but...’

At that thought, the Energy Network within Fang Rui’s body flared. True Qi coursed through him as he brought his blade around in a backhanded block, meeting the twin hammers.

BOOM!

Amid the deafening boom, Fang Rui’s body swayed. The Earth Armor Centipede beneath his feet shrieked as its legs sank half an inch into the ground.