Help was near... but a few minutes in combat felt like an eternity.
"DIE, BASTARDS!" roared Xuan Jinfeng, his voice soaked in pure killing intent.
The scream didn't just pierce the air—it was like a direct blow to the soul, a roar charged with rage, mourning, and war.
The recent casualties were still fresh in his mind.
Young members of his clan, disciples he had personally guided, dead before his eyes by the brutal fire of those strange artifacts. His fury was no longer containable.
The only thing that existed in his heart now was a burning thirst for vengeance.
The ground trembled beneath his step. His spear, covered in intense brown light.
With a scream, he unleashed a brutal strike forward.
BOOM!
The impact was like a beast's stomp. Part of the trench collapsed. Rocks, sandbags, and dirt were blasted into the air. A Vesper, too close to the epicenter, was caught in the shockwave and vanished into the cloud of dust and debris. His body flew uncontrollably, covered in gravel and blood. His condition was uncertain.
But there was no time to process it.
"IN THE TRENCH!!" shouted a Vesper.
The phrase activated trained reflexes: bolts clicked shut, sights were adjusted, triggers squeezed.
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
The shots rang out in unison… but the sound wasn't that of flesh pierced, but of projectiles bouncing off metal. As if they had fired at a steel wall.
Xuan Jinfeng was not unprotected. In his left hand, now glowing with dark brown light, he held his greatest treasure: a spiritual shield.
In his youth, while exploring an ancient cave left behind by a Foundation Establishment cultivator, he had discovered the legacy left behind. The weapon was incomplete—it had been forged to be a second-grade tool, designed to withstand attacks from Foundation-level cultivators, but the forging had failed, and the result was a first-grade shield... extraordinarily dense and durable, far beyond its classification.
Now, he wielded it with a fury that made the air around him vibrate. Every projectile that touched it rang with a deafening metallic clang.
Xuan Jinfeng roared again, and with spear in hand, he lunged toward the enemy line.
Xuan Tao and the other surviving cultivators had already joined the charge.
In a trench, close-quarters combat against a cultivator was a death sentence.
There wasn't enough cover. There wasn't a safe distance.
The Vespers kept shooting. Visibility was limited, the terrain narrow and chaotic. But that chaos didn't affect the cultivators.
At the front, Xuan Jinfeng burst forth like a demon under the shelter of his shield. The earlier rain of bullets hadn't broken through his defense entirely, but the cracks were visible, and the defensive glow was fading. Even so, it had been enough: he was already upon them.
With a roar that chilled the blood, he raised his spear, now wrapped in a more intense brown light than ever. He brought it down in a devastating strike on the nearest Vesper.
The tip pierced the black steel armor like paper, passing through the soldier's stomach and emerging from his back in a jet of blood.
There was no time to scream. Only death.
Beside him, Xuan Tao and the other two intermediate cultivators activated their sword techniques. Swords wrapped in white and blue light tore through the air, slashing.
The first Vesper struck fell backward without being able to react, the second barely raised his bayonet before being brought down.
Not even the tough black armor could withstand more than one strike from an intermediate-level cultivator. The first impact immobilized, the second shattered, the third annihilated.
The soldiers screamed, retreated, some tried to shoot at point-blank range, but to the cultivators, those movements were slow, desperate, useless.
Mortals couldn't keep up with cultivators.
In less than a minute, the ten soldiers stationed on the eastern flank had been reduced to just four. Wounded, covered in blood and dirt, they barely held their rifles.
Before them, Xuan Jinfeng and his men advanced ferociously. The cultivators' boots crushed the remains of the fallen with the same indifference a god steps on ants.
Death was no longer far away. It was knocking on the door.
The Vesper captain, his face stained with dust and his helmet dented from a previous blow, clenched his jaw and shouted with a ragged voice:
"THROW THE GRENADES, NOW!"
It wasn't an order. It was a roar of desperation.
The Vespers' trembling hands pulled out the G-1s.
At this distance, in a straight line inside the trench, throwing a grenade wasn't just a death sentence for the enemies approaching...
It was a sacrifice. A shared execution order.
They knew what was about to happen.
They knew the shockwave would reach them too.
But if they didn't do it, they would die anyway, pierced by the cultivators' weapons. If they were going to fall, they would do it fighting to their last breath… and take the enemy with them.
One by one, the safety pins clicked off with a clack that sounded louder than the gunshots.
The death projectiles flew...
and the world, for an instant, lit up.
The blast was powerful.
The air shattered with a roar of fire and shards of steel.
The G-1 grenades exploded in a hellish succession, and those carried by fallen bodies scattered along the trench triggered like a chain, in an unplanned but devastating reaction.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The ground shook.
The east line vanished in a whirlwind of dust and shrapnel.
Metal fragments flew in all directions, piercing sandbags, flesh, and bone alike.
The Vespers at the front died on the spot, without time to react.
One of them didn't even have time to scream: his chest collapsed inward with a wet sound before crumpling lifeless.
Amid the chaos, the captain, eyes narrowed with fury and determination, stepped forward and threw himself over one of his younger men, shielding him with his body just before the explosion.
The blast tore him apart… but his human shield saved the younger one.
Trembling, bleeding, and with ears ringing, the younger Vesper fell unconscious.
The cultivators... did not fare better.
Xuan Tao was hit—shrapnel pierced his neck, side, and skull. His body fell lifeless, eyes filled with terror.
The others were dismembered, impaled, buried by the explosion. Neither their defensive techniques nor their cries of pain were enough.
Only Xuan Jinfeng emerged from the smoke.
His shield shattered, hanging uselessly from a mangled arm.
His face, blackened by dust and soaked in blood—his own and others'—trembled faintly.
He had no energy left. No strength.
The spiritual energy keeping him standing was a fragile thread, and his vitality bled out with every heartbeat.
His eyes, wide open, trembled with terror and confusion. He couldn't understand.
How was it possible?
How could mere mortals cause such destruction?
In front of him, the field was a vision of death.
Human fragments, thick smoke, ground blackened by gunpowder, blood soaking every corner.
The battle felt eternal, but it had all happened within minutes.
When reinforcements finally arrived from the west, led by Officer Jian Huo, the scene they found was neither victory nor defeat… but a silent field.
Twenty Vespers advanced across terrain still coated in dust and blood.
The marks of battle were fresh: shredded sandbags, grenade fragments embedded in rocks, fallen bodies—some unrecognizable.
Jian Huo walked at the front. His gaze was cold, but in his eyes was a shadow. This wasn't what he expected to find.
One of his men stopped abruptly.
"There's one here!" he shouted. "He's alive!"
The Vespers approached, giving immediate aid. He was badly wounded, but breathing.
But he wasn't the one Jian Huo looked at.
No.
A few meters ahead, collapsed among blood-stained rocks, was another body… different.
One that wore no armor, only robes torn by explosions and stained with blood.
Xuan Jinfeng.
His shattered shield lay beside him. His broken spear looked like a relic from another era. He was alive. Barely.
His chest rose with difficulty, and his gaze, though blurry, searched.
Searching for something.
Someone.
Jian Huo stopped in front of him. One glance was enough to know: that man would not rise. He would not fight again.
His body—broken.
And yet… he was still breathing. He was still there.
His spiritual energy was the only thread keeping him alive.
Xuan Jinfeng slowly turned his head, as if even moving his eyes was a struggle. His cracked lips trembled before air passed through them.
"...who are you?"
His voice was rough. Already drained of strength. He didn't ask with fear… but with the calm of someone who wishes to die without a single doubt remaining.
Jian Huo held his gaze. There was no mockery. No contempt. Only silence.
Then he spoke in a firm, almost solemn tone: "Vesper Special Forces. Astralis."
Xuan Jinfeng coughed blood. His body shook.
"You're… mortals…" he whispered, eyes wide with disbelief.
"How...? How can you have the power to kill… cultivators…?"
Jian Huo didn't answer right away. He looked around. He saw the corpses of his men. He saw the bodies of the cultivators. Blood mixed. Gunpowder and spirit. Flesh and steel.
Finally, he spoke in a low, steady voice, without arrogance or triumph:
"We weren't born with strength. We built it. Because in this world, if we didn't learn to defend ourselves... we would be killed"
Xuan Jinfeng's pupils dilated slightly, as if something inside him suddenly clicked into place. A truth so simple it hurt.
A dry laugh, almost silent, escaped his wounded lips. Barely a trembling gasp.
He looked at the sky, eyes open, fixed. And then he stopped breathing.
His face, once marked by fury, now showed only calm…
Jian Huo watched him a few seconds longer, in silence.
Then, he turned with firm steps, without looking back.
He raised his voice with serenity:
"Gather the bodies. Clean the field."
He paused briefly, his gaze sweeping across the battlefield, blackened by combat.
The smoke still rose in faint spirals, carried by the wind among the fallen.
The ground was stained with blood and gunpowder; the marks of fire and steel crossed the field like fresh scars.
The silence, after the storm, was dense. No screams remained, no footsteps.
Only the creaking of broken wood and the whisper of wind between the rocks.
Ten mortals. Eleven cultivators. Only one man remained alive…
If others were to learn of this battle… if the story reached the ears of others… all would react the same: disbelief.
A squad of mortals faced Eleven cultivators…
Only one mortal survived, gravely wounded.
Even one of the fallen was a cultivator of the eighth level of the Qi Cultivation Realm.
To many, it would be a miracle.
To others, heresy.
To some… a threat.
But it was no miracle.
To the Vespers, it was a deep wound.
To Astralis… it was a necessary blow.
One among many. Because this is how those who were born to be prey fight: they do not bow to their fate but choose to defy it, to resist it… and, in the end, to bite back.