Ten alchemy cannons stood in a row inside the factory. Each was over three meters long, with an incredibly thick barrel engraved with blue runic circuits. The carriages featured a four-wheel structure with hydraulic spades at the base, which, once deployed, would bite firmly into the ground.

  Standing behind the observation window of a bunker, Lin Yuan rapped the barrel with the back of his hand. The metallic echo was muffled, suggesting the barrel wall was at least five fingers thick.

  He opened the system panel and pulled up the ammunition parameters.

  [150mm High-Explosive Fragmentation Shell: Explosion radius 15 meters, effective kill radius 25 meters. Fragments can penetrate Bronze-tier magical shields.]

  "Enough," Lin Yuan muttered, closing the panel and looking out the window.

  Dawn hadn't fully broken. A sliver of gray light bled from the eastern horizon, and the silhouette of the steel walls emerged from the darkness.

  He issued orders through the system radar. Twenty Berserkers moved silently, dragging the ten cannons into the hidden bunkers on both sides of the barbican.

  This barbican was part of the original design of Bckwind Fortress—an eighty-meter-wide, one-hundred-twenty-meter-long enclosure fnked by inner and outer walls, with gates at both ends. Lin Yuan had turned it into a kill box.

  The cannons were split into two groups of five. The bunker walls were equipped with retractable steel shutters that blended seamlessly with the stone walls. Once the shutters rose, the cannon muzzles would have full coverage of the barbican.

  Lin Yuan looked around the space. It was a standard "pocket" trap.

  He patted a Berserker’s pauldron. "On my command, open the gate. Only the left leaf, halfway. Keep the opening to about three meters."

  The Berserker nodded in silence.

  Next was the camoufge.

  Lin Yuan had the Berserker cover the Gatling guns on the walls with ragged tarps, leaving half a barrel exposed here and there to look like discarded junk. The number of guards was reduced by three-quarters, leaving only about twenty leaning zily against the battlements, acting half-dead.

  Bck sludge was smeared over the base of the walls to hide the metallic sheen. From a distance, it looked like a crumbling stone wall battered by the beast tide.

  Karl stood at the bunker entrance, looking up. "Master, this looks a bit too pathetic."

  "If it doesn't look pathetic, they won't take the bait," Lin Yuan replied.

  He pulled an old cotton robe from a derelict barrack, its cuffs frayed and stained. He put it on, snapped a wooden stick to use as a cane, and turned in a circle. "How do I look?"

  Karl’s lips twitched. "Like a refugee."

  "Perfect."

  One and a half days passed.

  During this time, the mining golems never stopped. The ore reserves kept climbing. The five hundred Shadow Assassins maintained their patrol net within a thirty-kilometer radius.

  On the afternoon of the second day, a scout report arrived.

  Northwest, thirty kilometers. A rge force of cavalry was fast approaching.

  Lin Yuan stayed behind the observation window. The radar showed three thousand red dots. The vanguard consisted of elite Wolf Cavalry—riders in Bronze enchanted armor atop massive Gray-Maned Wolves.

  They were fast.

  An hour ter, the sound of cws hit the ground like rolling thunder. Three thousand wolves running together created a continuous roar. The "sickly" guards on the wall didn't move an inch.

  Lin Yuan looked out. The cavalry halted five hundred meters away. A rider in silver enchanted armor stepped forward, the wolf-head crest of the Bart family embzoned on his chest.

  Knight Captain Griffin.

  He raised a parchment scroll, his voice amplified by magic. "Listen up! I am Griffin, Captain of the First Knights under Earl Bart! By order of the Blood Knight, I am here to take over this fortress!"

  "Lin Yuan! There is a fifty-thousand gold bounty on your head from the Imperial Lin Family! Your own father signed the warrant! Alive for ten thousand, dead for fifty! Want to guess why you’re worth more dead?"

  "Because a living waste still needs to be fed!"

  The riders behind him erupted in ughter.

  Lin Yuan coughed, his voice sounding weak and raspy. He hobbled out of the bunker, leaning on the battlement. "Lord Griffin... the beast tide just passed. Too many have died... Can you give us a few days to pack?"

  Griffin surveyed the walls: junk-covered scrap metal, pitted walls, and a handful of pathetic guards. The scouts were right—this pce was trashed.

  "Mercy?" Griffin drew his enchanted sword, the Bronze Aura glowing. "Open the gate. Hand over all materials, mana crystals, and that ancient relic. Then cut off your own head and serve it on a ptter. Then, I might consider sparing the old and the weak."

  Lin Yuan coughed again, stooping low. He waved weakly toward the gatehouse. "Karl... we can't fight them. Open the gates."

  Karl turned the winch. The left gate creaked open halfway. A three-meter gap appeared—just wide enough for two wolves to enter side-by-side.

  "Charge!" Griffin shouted. "Whatever you grab is yours! Treasure and crystals for the first ones in!"

  The Wolf Cavalry surged forward. The formation compressed into a line to squeeze through the gap.

  Griffin entered st. As his wolf stepped onto the stone floor of the barbican, its cws slipped slightly. He looked down—there was a thin yer of oil on the stones.

  He didn't care.

  More and more riders filled the space. Five hundred... one thousand... fifteen hundred.

  The eighty-by-one-hundred-twenty-meter space was packed tight. Knees pressed against knees.

  On the wall, Karl smmed the winch shut. A half-foot thick iron portcullis crashed down, severing two wolves caught in the gap. The exit was sealed. The fifteen hundred riders inside were cut off from the fifteen hundred outside.

  "What's happening? Open up!" someone screamed.

  Griffin looked up and saw the "weak" young man standing straight, no longer leaning on his cane. A chill ran down his spine.

  The steel shutters of the bunkers on both sides slid up with a screeching sound. Ten bck muzzles—thick enough to fit a human head—slid out, their blue runes glowing intensely.

  The barbican went deathly silent.

  "Fire," Lin Yuan said calmly.

  Ten cannons roared simultaneously. They didn't fire shells, but balls of compressed blue-white energy.

  The shockwave bsted the debris away from the bunkers. The 150mm high-explosive shells nded in the dead center of the crowd.

  The sound was so immense it instantly deafened everyone. Then came the light. Five-meter-high pilrs of fire erupted. Anything within fifteen meters—riders, wolves, armor—was vaporized. Fragments tore through Bronze-tier armor like paper.

  Within two seconds, all ten shells had nded. The barbican became a furnace.

  "Fire again."

  Another ten shells.

  The pilrs of fire overpped until the entire barbican was a sea of blue-white fme.

  Three minutes ter, the noise stopped. Thick smoke and the stench of burnt flesh filled the air. The stone floor was shattered, revealing the frozen earth beneath, now cratered.

  There were no bodies. Only charred metal fragments and bone shards fused with the stone.

  Outside the gate, the remaining fifteen hundred riders were in shock. The Gatling guns on the walls shed their camoufged cloths and began to spin.

  Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat!

  A storm of lead swept down upon the broken survivors.

  Lin Yuan stepped out of the bunker. He didn't approach the gate but looked down from above.

  [Recover combat debris in the barbican area?]

  "Confirm," Lin Yuan said. A blue light swept the area, recycling the remains into resources.

  A Shadow Assassin materialized beside him. "One survivor left, as ordered."

  Griffin was leaning against a corner of the iron gate. Both his legs were gone from the knees down, charred to the bone. An assassin pressed a recording crystal into his hand, a bde at his throat.

  Lin Yuan’s voice came from above, cold as ice. "Look at me. Record this for your 'Blood Knight'."

  He held up one finger. "Tell Bart that his three thousand vanguard are now cinders and a pair of legs. He is next. I’ll be waiting here for his army of a hundred thousand. Tell him not to be te, or there won't even be ashes left to bury."

  The assassin released him. Griffin was dragged and thrown out of the gate into the snow. The portcullis smmed shut, and the fortress once again looked like a pathetic, broken ruin.

  Griffin crawled north through the snow. He looked at the recording crystal—the image of the young man in the old cotton robe, standing amidst the desotion, finger raised.

  Back in the factory, Lin Yuan pushed open the rolling door. The cannon barrels were still ticking as they cooled.

  On the system radar, two hundred kilometers to the north, a much rger mass of red dots was slowly gathering.