novelraw Chapter 364: Fight to the Death and Never Retreat
Chapter 364: Fight to the Death and Never Retreat
"For Daxia! Fight to the death without retreating!"
Tragic roars erupted along every section of the defensive line.
Countless Awakened soldiers formed battle formations, their Spiritual Energy light merging into a continuous shield, desperately holding back the onslaught of the Mist Creatures.
Heavy weapons roared deafeningly, reducing swathes of low-level Mist Creatures to dust.
Yet, in the sky and on the ground.
Those who truly decided the course of the battle were Daxia's top-tier powerhouses.
Figures streaked forward from the rear.
Some rode flying swords.
Others tore through space.
Still others transformed into elemental giants...They were Daxia's peak combat forces—the Ocean Realm powerhouses.
Calamity-level powerhouses had also arrived, like Mo Yuan, but Aberrants accounted for only a very small proportion.
Mo Yuan led from the front, hovering over the most dangerous breach in the southern defense line.
With a sweep of his hands.
Mist Energy annihilated vast stretches of mist and the monsters within.
Facing the siege of three Calamity-level entities alone, the very laws of reality thundered with his every move.
Zhang Daoxuan stood upon the eastern sea, a Bagua formation diagram swirling beneath his feet, channeling the power of heaven and earth as he fiercely clashed with a colossal octopus-like Calamity creature that was stirring tsunamis.
The border became a meat grinder.
As countless long-famed powerhouses shed their blood upon the battlefield.
In the relatively safe rear areas of Daxia, such as the headquarters of the Five Great Academies and some core cities, a group of young faces hailed as the hope for the future were firmly pinned down by a death order from the highest authority.
The core content of this order was succinct: All students currently enrolled in the five major Awakened academies who have not yet officially graduated are strictly prohibited from participating in this border war in any form. Violators will be treated as traitors!
Chu Zhou, Feng Jue, and other exceptionally talented students from the various academies could only anxiously watch the distant battle situation through the limited frontline footage urgently made available.
They clenched their fists, eyes filled with frustration and helplessness.
They yearned to fight alongside their compatriots, to use what they had learned to contribute to defending their homeland, but that icy command imprisoned them firmly within the safe zones.
Daxia's high command had made this seemingly heartless decision based on a painful lesson learned through bloodshed.
During the previous large-scale Mist Surge, Daxia had suffered a grievous experience.
Those promising genius students who had not yet fully matured often became priority targets for enemy snipers once they appeared on the battlefield.
The lunatics of the Transcendence Society, as well as those powerful Mist Creatures possessing considerable intelligence, understood all too well the importance of strangling the future.
They would spare no cost to carry out targeted decapitation strikes against these talents.
Therefore, even as frontline manpower grew desperately tight and the situation critical, Daxia gritted its teeth and issued this order.
They would rather endure immense immediate pressure to preserve the final embers for the nation, to protect the hope for the future.
These protected young people were the key to whether Daxia could endure through the long, dark years to come.
This was an investment in the future, paid for with the blood of countless predecessors.
On the battlefield.
Constantly, massive Calamity-level Mist Creatures let out unwilling howls under concentrated fire before their colossal bodies collapsed with earth-shaking force.
But likewise, Daxia's Ocean Realm powerhouses also continuously fell, exhausted after slaying enemies many times their number, or ambushed by even stronger entities, their blood staining the sky.
Their bodies and souls were devoured by the Mist Creatures.
Fallen!
Both Calamity-level Mist Creatures and Ocean Realm human powerhouses were perishing at an astonishing rate.
This was the heaviest loss of top-tier powerhouses Daxia had suffered in over three hundred years of the Mist's invasion of Blue Star.
The fall of every Ocean Realm powerhouse meant Daxia's backbone was weakened further.
The border fortresses were falling, soldiers were sacrificing themselves, powerhouses were perishing.
Blood stained the earth, dyed the seawater, and tainted the very sky.
The very survival of all Daxia hung by a thread.
Vermilion Bird Academy.
Feng Jue, Liu Ziming, and Xu Hao gathered together.
Like many senior students within the academy, a light screen, urgently activated through academy permissions, floated before them.
The screen played sporadic, brutal footage relayed from the border frontlines with delay and partial censorship.
Collapsing walls, exploding flames, blurred figures grappling with massive shadows, and the ever-present backdrop of gray-white mist.
"Damn it!"
Liu Ziming's eyes were bloodshot. "Are we just supposed to sit here watching? Watching our seniors fighting for their lives on the frontlines? Watching those monsters advance step by step?"
He suddenly turned to Feng Jue and Xu Hao. "If Brother Su were here... he would have charged up there long ago! And us? Are we just going to turtle up here?"
Xu Hao, who considered things more deeply than Liu Ziming, spoke in a low voice, "Liu Ziming, calm down. The order came directly from Daxia's highest authority... This isn't a game. It's too chaotic out there now. Those Transcendence Society scum are definitely watching. If we go out, not only would we not help, we might become a burden, targets for the enemy to use to tie down our teachers."
They understood the logic, but emotionally they couldn't accept it.
Xu Hao's gaze involuntarily drifted to the window.
His Life Soul had extremely strong functionality, serving as the team's eyes and escape route. In a large-scale battlefield like this, it should have been able to play a huge role... But now, he could only be trapped here.
Feng Jue wasn't looking at the light screen. He kept his head lowered, staring at his own open hands.
Those hands, with their distinct knuckles, contained formidable power. They had once fought side by side with Su Zhan, tearing through countless enemies. Yet now, these hands could only hang helplessly at his sides.
He recalled the scene of his last parting with Su Zhan, remembered Su Zhan's heavy words urging them to train hard.
They *had* been working hard, desperately improving themselves.
All in the hope that one day they could stand shoulder to shoulder with Su Zhan again, not like now, without even the qualification to set foot on the battlefield.
If they were strong enough, they could ignore that so-called protection order, could claim the right to rush to the battlefield.
If they were strong enough, they could be like those teachers fighting a bloody battle right now, becoming the bulwarks defending their homeland, not the ones being protected.
This sense of powerless protection was more suffocating to them than facing a powerful enemy.
The three of them were like three lion cubs locked in a cage, hearing the distant lamentations of their pride. Their fangs were sharp, their claws honed, yet they were trapped by shackles named 'protection,' left to pace anxiously.
For Feng Jue, Liu Ziming, and Xu Hao, this year should have been crucial.
As sixth-year students of Vermilion Bird Academy, they should have gathered with the top talents from the other four academies on the grand stage of the Five Great Academies Grand Competition, striving with all their might for the honor of their academy and their personal futures.
That was the highest hall to test the results of their six years of arduous cultivation, an important springboard to a broader future.
This earth-shattering Mist Surge sweeping the nation had changed everything.
The Five Great Academies Grand Competition?
In the face of the reality of the border constantly falling, it seemed so insignificant, and its current hosting had become impossible.