Chapter 302 163: The Great War is Imminent (2)

'The City Lord... he's a true genius,'

the City Defense Army officer mused as he left the City Lord's Mansion. 'No wonder he's the City Lord. A mind like his is truly different from my own. I would never have thought of it that way. It's the same matter, but the way he expresses it changes the meaning entirely.'

...

Li Ziyu knew nothing about what was happening in the Underworld—that White Hair Pulan was launching a pursuit, or that a massive number of Demonized Creatures were about to burst forth and invade the Earth World. He was currently aboard his Undead Fortress, which was racing back to the Wraith Mountain Range at full power.

The journey was dull, so he decided to work on summoning the Alien Undead Corps.

He calculated the timing. He could reach the Wraith Mountain Range a little before the Cancerous Tumor Corps, but they would attack soon after. It was going to be a truly hard-fought battle, and he needed to prepare in advance.

His trip to the Underworld had yielded not only the corpses of Demonized Creatures, but also a vast number of Demonized Beast corpses. 'This is all great stuff,' he thought. 'It can be directly converted into Alien Undead.'

On the journey back, Li Ziyu formally established his Alien Undead Corps.

Alien Undead Corps Commander: Dark Skeleton. Vice Commander: Frenzied Skeleton.

High-ranking officers of the Alien Undead Corps: Physical Skeleton, Power Skeleton, Speed Skeleton, and Triple Enchantment·Skeleton Ox Demon.

Under this command were two main corps: the Alien Undead Corps and the Alien Beast Corps.

The Alien Undead Corps included Constitution·Bone Minotaurs (1,000), Strength·Skeleton Ogres (500), Strength·Skeleton Hill Giant Demons (500), Powerful Skeleton Giants (500), and Frenzy·Bone Jackal Wolfmen (10,000).

The Alien Beast Corps included Constitution: Skeleton Sharp Claw Burst Bears (50), Speed·Skeleton Saber-toothed Desert Lions (100), Speed: Wilderness Cheetahs (200), Frenzied Skeleton Giant Tusked Boars (10,000), Dark Skeleton Desert Wolves (30,000), and Plague: Desert Grey Rats (30,000).

The total number of units didn't reach the 100,000 of a standard Skeleton Undead Corps, but Li Ziyu had truly done his best. For this Alien Undead Corps, he had invested a total of nearly 1.1 million units of Soul Energy, sinking the majority of his personal fortune into it.

He firmly believed that an Alien Undead Corps like this would give the Cancerous Tumor Alliance Army a very big surprise.

"Boss, the intel," Zhang Peng said, walking in from outside and handing a piece of paper to Li Ziyu.

Zhang Peng also knew a great battle was imminent. He hadn't slacked off in the slightest, continuously scouting the Cancerous Tumor Corps, monitoring their movements, and reporting back to Li Ziyu.

Li Ziyu took the paper and looked it over. It recorded the troop types that had been identified within the Cancerous Tumor Corps. In addition to their conventional forces, there were also some special units—for example, enormous Giant Monsters controlled by goblins that could hurl massive boulders a great distance, and Lizardman Shamans who rode large lizards and could buff their Warriors.

To deal with the Undead, the three Races had apparently deployed all their elite forces. Units that were rarely seen had all been mobilized this time, for the sole purpose of completely annihilating the Undead and making a name for themselves in one fell swoop.

The Cancerous Tumor Alliance Army numbered between 350,000 and 400,000, though the exact figure was unknown. A significant portion consisted of mercenaries, most of whom belonged to Races with poor reputations. Publicly, they claimed to be a million-strong army.

"Heh, so they're really bringing out everything they've got to deal with me," Li Ziyu chuckled lightly as he read the report.

"After this battle is over, we should be the strongest power in this entire region," Zhang Peng commented from the side.

The three Races of the Cancerous Tumor Corps wanted to destroy the Undead, make a name for themselves, and thereby advance into the Central Zone. Coincidentally, that was exactly what Li Ziyu was thinking as well. As long as he annihilated their Alliance Army, he would have no rivals left in his remote corner of the Wasteland. He could then focus on a period of peaceful development before preparing to push toward the center or finding a path out of the Wasteland entirely.

Win, and the world is mine.

Lose, and I lose my life.

...

Under the cover of night, the Wasteland was as it always was. But tonight, the Undead gathering resources in the Wraith Mountain Range seemed particularly excited.

Our home has returned! The City Lord has returned! Our brothers have returned!

They could feel a familiar presence drawing ever closer—the presence of the place where they were born.

Sensing the change in the Undead, the living creatures of the Wraith Mountain Range fell deathly silent. They had been slaughtered into a state of terror. When these skeletons went on a rampage, they showed no mercy and fought to the death. However, the creatures also knew that as long as they didn't get too close or provoke them, the skeletons wouldn't go out of their way to cause trouble.

Bathed in Moonlight, the massive Undead Fortress emerged from the distant darkness, drawing near the Wraith Mountain Range.

DING!

[System Notification: You are approaching a resource point. Fortress Warehouse auto-linking... Link successful. Welcome back.]

Li Ziyu smiled when he opened the system and saw the notification. It really did feel like coming home. Gazing out the window of the main tower at the rolling mountain range in the distance, a familiar feeling washed over him.

In the eyes of outsiders, the Wraith Mountain Range was a forbidden land for the living, a cursed place where approaching meant death. But in the eyes of the Undead and Li Ziyu, this was no forbidden land. It was their place of prosperity, the home of millions of Wandering Souls.

Li Ziyu may have been gone for a while, but the Skeleton Undead hadn't been idle in the slightest. They did what needed to be done. Never mind how much ore, Stone, and bone had been collected from within the mountains—one only needed to look at the cleared patch of forest on the mountainside to know just how many resources they had gathered.