Chapter 467: The Clashing Domains & Corbin's Mercenary Opportunity

Morning light filtered through the high, frost-rimmed windows of the private estate in the upper district of Azure Fall City, casting pale golden beams across the thick velvet carpets and the bronze braziers still glowing with the embers of aged spirit-sandalwood.

Outside the courtyard walls, the crisp sound of iron shovels scraping snow off the stone avenues echoed across the fortress city as the seventy thousand soldiers of the border garrison began their morning drills under the new command of General Cui Hao. Inside the warm dressing chamber adjacent to the main bedchamber, Archmage Alaric Steele stood before a tall bronze mirror while adjusting the simple linen sash of his gray healer’s robes.

Behind him, Noble Consort Cui Yulan stepped up in her polished dark violet profound-steel armor, her long dark hair pinned into a neat martial crown by Imperial Consort Xian Zhao Mengxue and Imperial Consort Shu Su Xianye, who stood on either side of her wearing warm, fur-trimmed morning gowns of crimson and sapphire silk.

Cui Yulan reached out and smoothed the gray linen collar over Alaric’s broad shoulders, her silver eyes warm and attentive as she fastened a small silver medical insignia to his cloak.

“My brother General Cui Hao sent a runner at dawn, Master,” Cui Yulan said softly, leaning her cheek briefly against Alaric’s chest to breathe in the calming sandalwood scent clinging to his skin before straightening her posture. “Master Array Formulator Tian Yi’s engineers finished forging the thirty-six Earth-Sinking Copper-Jade Rods during the night. Today, the forward regiments march up to the western ridges of the Thunder-Claw Mountain Pass to drive the rods into the bedrock and test the outer edge of General Tokugawa Ieyasu’s lightning barrier.”

Zhao Mengxue stepped forward with a porcelain cup of hot ginseng-and-lotus tea, offering it to Alaric with both hands and a graceful smile. “Guildmaster Lin Ruoli and Chief Auctioneer Ya Su have already loaded fifty wagons of dry charcoal, insulated hides, and grounding salves for the ridge encampment. Every captain in the forward division knows that those supplies come directly from our pavilion’s generosity.”

Alaric accepted the warm teacup and took a slow sip, his ruby eyes looking over the three women. “Let General Cui Hao and General Sun Ba spend the first week driving the copper-jade rods into the western slopes and probing the outer curtain. The ‘Nine-Heaven Thunder-Wrath Formation’ that General Tokugawa left behind is anchored to the deep magnetic iron veins inside the pass. Surface grounding rods will bleed off the upper storm static, which will make the generals feel they are making steady progress—and reveal where Commander Ii Naomasa has positioned his secondary lightning relays.”

Su Xianye rested her soft hand on Cui Yulan’s armored pauldron. “Be careful up on those ridges, Sister Yulan. Even with thirty percent of the storm clouds grounded, the winter gales in the high pass are fierce.”

“With Master’s grounding amulet resting against my skin, the mountain wind is nothing more than a breeze,” Cui Yulan replied with a quiet, confident smile, patting the spot over her breastplate where the carved sandalwood pendant sat hidden beneath the steel.

An hour later, the heavy northern gates of Azure Fall City swung open with a deep groan of iron hinges.

Led by General Cui Hao atop his silver-armored scale-steed and General Sun Ba at the head of the Fierce Tiger Unit, twelve thousand vanguard troops, three hundred array engineers, and six scouting companies marched out along the snow-packed mountain highway toward the jagged northeastern peaks of the Thunder-Claw Mountain Pass.

Marching near the rear of the Iron-Wolf Scouting Unit, with his sixty-pound black-iron greatsword strapped across his mud-stained brigandine cloak, Corbin trudged through the ankle-deep snow with dark shadows hollowed beneath his pale blue eyes.

His plan the previous night to slip through the frozen stream culvert beneath the northern cliff of the pass had ended in bitter frustration before he even reached the grating.

When Corbin had crept down to the frozen stream bed at midnight wearing his newly purchased “Lightning-Insulating Void Cloak”, he had discovered that Commander Ii Naomasa—the ruthless deputy whom General Tokugawa had left in charge of the twenty thousand Rising Sun survivors inside the Thunder-Claw Bastion—had already welded three layers of electrified profound-iron bars across the subterranean culvert and released hundreds of starved, lightning-mutated river eels into the dark water beneath the ice!

Without a single System Point left in his account to purchase an array-melting talisman, and knowing that cutting through electrified iron bars with his greatsword would bring five thousand Red-Devil Samurai down on his head in thirty seconds, Corbin had been forced to crawl back up the snowy slope empty-handed before dawn.

‘Zero points, no allies in the barracks, and every back door into that pass welded shut,’ Corbin thought grimly as his boots crunched up the steep granite trail leading to the Three-Pine Ridge overlooking the pass. ‘Wait and watch. Sooner or later, General Cui Hao is going to push into that canyon, and when the real fighting starts, the chaos will open a crack.’

Over the course of the next eight days—spanning the entire first week of the mountain offensive—the snowy ridges around the western mouth of the Thunder-Claw Mountain Pass turned into a roaring battlefield of iron and lightning.

On the first and second days, protected by the heavy tower shields of the Black Tortoise Shield Corps and the Fierce Tiger Unit, Master Array Formulator Tian Yi’s engineers used heavy iron pile-drivers to hammer all thirty-six Earth-Sinking Copper-Jade Rods twenty feet deep into the granite shelves flanking the canyon entrance.

The effect was visible within hours.

Thick ribbons of purple-black static electricity, which had previously danced wild and unchecked from the black snow-clouds to the magnetic iron spires along the first mile of the pass, were pulled sideways into the thirty-six glowing copper-jade rods and channeled harmlessly down into the frozen riverbeds below the ridge.

Encouraged by the thinning of the outer lightning curtain, General Cui Hao and General Sun Ba spent the third through eighth days sending rotating waves of forward scouting units and heavy infantry platoons five hundred yards into the mouth of the Thunder-Claw Mountain Pass to clear the snow-buried barricades and test the Rising Sun defense lines.

Every single day was a grueling clash of steel and thunder.

While the overhead lightning strikes in the first five hundred yards were reduced by a third, Commander Ii Naomasa did not sit idle behind the walls of the Thunder-Claw Bastion. Whenever the Celestial Dragon scouting units advanced past the first bend of the canyon, squads of the Rising Sun Empire’s Red-Devil Samurai Legion charged out from the magnetic rock caves along the canyon floor, engaging the scouts in ferocious close-quarters combat before retreating back behind the deeper curtains of the “Nine-Heaven Thunder-Wrath Formation”.

More troubling still, by the evening of the eighth day, a strange and dangerous complication brought the forward skirmishes to a sudden halt.

Inside the fortified timber command lodge built atop Three-Pine Ridge, General Cui Hao, Noble Consort Cui Yulan, General Sun Ba, and Master Array Formulator Tian Yi stood gathered around a row of straw cots where twenty veteran scouts and array engineers lay groaning in pain.

Unlike the soldiers from the previous week who had been struck directly by falling lightning bolts, these twenty men did not have a single burn mark on their outer armor.

Instead, their skin was pale and waxy as tallow, their fingers twitched with violent, involuntary spasms, and whenever they tried to circulate a thread of Battle Aura from their Dantians, a low humming sound vibrated inside their bones while dark blue veins bulged painfully across their temples and wrists!

“None of these twenty men were hit by a sky-bolt today, General Cui,” General Sun Ba said, his scarred face tight with concern as he held down a convulsing scout captain who was clawing at his own chest. “They merely stood within thirty paces of the third magnetic iron spire while trying to dig up a buried array stone! Within ten minutes of approaching that spire, their Battle Aura locked up inside their meridians, and half of them collapsed into the snow coughing up white foam!”

Master Array Formulator Tian Yi knelt beside the lead engineer, holding a cracked bronze geomancy compass in his trembling hands.

“It is Leyline Interference combined with Soul and Consciousness Degradation, General Cui, Noble Consort Cui!” Master Array Formulator Tian Yi said, wiping cold sweat from his forehead. “The thirty-six copper-jade rods we drove into the western ridge grounded the sky-thunder, just as Master Alaric predicted. However, in response, the deeper core of the ‘Nine-Heaven Thunder-Wrath Formation’ has shifted its draw downward into the subterranean magnetic iron veins! The iron rocks past the five-hundred-yard marker are emitting an invisible magnetic hum that scrambles a cultivator’s spiritual sea and causes their own internal Qi to curdle inside their vessels!”

General Cui Hao straightened up, his jaw clenched as he looked out the narrow timber window at the dark, howling canyon below. “Our camp apothecaries tried feeding them standard Spirit-Calming Pills an hour ago, and the men vomited them right back up. And my array scholars cannot even get close enough to the third spire to map the subterranean anchor points without their compasses shattering and their minds going blank!”

Noble Consort Cui Yulan looked at the twenty twitching scouts on the cots, then turned decisively toward her brother.

“Standard apothecaries do not understand how magnetic earth-veins interact with human meridians,” Cui Yulan stated, her crisp voice cutting through the gloom of the lodge. “Send an escort down to Azure Fall City at dawn tomorrow. Invite Master Alaric and his mobile medical unit up to Three-Pine Ridge. While he stabilizes these men’s spiritual seas, his knowledge of elemental grounding will allow him to observe the canyon’s leyline flow firsthand from the forward line.”

General Cui Hao’s eyes lit up with immediate relief. “You are right, Sister! I was hesitant to ask Master Alaric to brave the freezing wind up on this mountain ridge, but without his eyes on those magnetic spires, we are marching blind! I will send Commander Jin and fifty heavy cavalrymen at sunrise to escort Master Alaric’s carriage up the mountain road!”

On the morning of the ninth day, under a pale, wind-scoured winter sky, the heavy wooden gates of the Three-Pine Ridge encampment swung open to admit a column of fifty elite guards surrounding a warm, rune-insulated gray carriage and four supply wagons flying the emerald banner of the Jade Serpent Merchant Organization.

Stepping down from the gray carriage into the crisp mountain snow was Archmage Alaric Steele, dressed in his simple gray linen healer’s robes with a thick black-fox fur mantle draped over his shoulders and his plain wooden staff in his hand.

Following right behind him with medical chests and herb satchels were two of his quiet, sharp-eyed assistants—Fallen Fairy Mu Qing and Princess Hai Lan, both dressed in modest gray apprentice-physician robes with woolen scarves hiding their breathtaking faces from the common soldiers—while Noble Consort Cui Yulan and General Cui Hao walked out of the command lodge to greet him in person.

Thirty yards away, standing by the frozen log barricade where the Iron-Wolf Scouting Unit was sharpening their blades after morning sentry duty, Corbin paused his whetstone and stared across the snowy compound.

Beneath the rim of his iron half-helm, Corbin’s pale blue eyes locked onto the tall, composed figure in gray linen robes walking into the command lodge between General Cui Hao and Noble Consort Cui Yulan.

‘He actually left the city…’ Corbin breathed, his heart giving a sudden, violent thump against his ribs as his fingers tightened around the whetstone.

For the past month inside Azure Fall City, Alaric Steele had remained holed up inside his heavily warded private estate in the upper district, surrounded by layers of merchant guards, Censorate shields, and ten high-tier women. Getting within a hundred yards of him without triggering twenty alarms had been impossible.

Yet now, on the ninth day of the ridge skirmishes, the gray-robed monster had walked right out of his city fortress and come up to a cramped wooden military outpost perched on the edge of a warzone!

Over the next five days—from the ninth day through the thirteenth day—Corbin watched Alaric Steele’s every move across the ridge camp like a hawk watching a snake.

On the ninth and tenth days, Alaric remained inside the timber infirmary lodge, using warm silver needles and specialized “Spirit-Anchoring Lotus Drafts” to purge the magnetic stagnation from the twenty injured scouts, restoring every single man to his feet without breaking a sweat.

Then, on the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth days, accompanied by General Cui Hao, Noble Consort Cui Yulan, and Master Array Formulator Tian Yi, Alaric walked out onto the high stone observation bastions extending along the rim of the Thunder-Claw Mountain Pass.

Standing against the freezing wind in his gray robes, leaning lightly on his plain wooden staff, Alaric spent hours gazing down at the nine towering spires of dark magnetic iron-ore protruding from the canyon floor below, pointing out subtle discoloration patterns in the snow and instructing Master Array Formulator Tian Yi where the subterranean iron veins branched beneath the cliffs.

To every general and soldier watching on the ridge, Physician Alaric was simply using scholarly geomancy and medical theory to help the array masters spot the safe paths through the magnetic radiation.

To Corbin—who knew from his system’s previous deep-scan that this humble physician was a Peak Archmage holding a mutated Spirit-Lion physique—what Alaric was doing was clear as day.

‘He is mapping the subterranean anchor nodes so he can quietly untie the formation from the shadows without revealing his Archmage mana to General Cui Hao’s men,’ Corbin thought on the evening of the thirteenth day, crouching behind a stack of firewood crates thirty yards from the observation bastion as twilight settled over the pass. ‘And to trace the third anchor node tomorrow, he has to walk down into the Whispering Iron Ravine on the northern flank where the cliff overhangs block the view from this ridge!’

Just then, the heavy timber door of the command lodge opened, and General Sun Ba strode out into the torchlight with a parchment roster in his hand, calling together the captains and lieutenants of the six scouting units.

“Listen up, you lot!” General Sun Ba barked, his breath pluming white in the torchlight as Corbin and the other scouting officers stepped forward into a semicircle. “Over the past five days, Master Alaric and Master Tian Yi have mapped a dead-zone corridor running through the Whispering Iron Ravine on the northern lip of the pass, where the magnetic hum of the third spire is shielded by a layer of slate rock! Tomorrow morning—the fourteenth day—we are sending one elite scouting unit down into that ravine alongside Master Tian Yi’s surveyors and Master Alaric’s mobile medical detail to plant four ‘Earth-Sealing Jade Spikes’ directly into the base of the third spire!”

A nervous murmur ran through the gathered scouting captains.

“The Whispering Iron Ravine?” Captain Hu of the Grey-Falcon Scouts swallowed hard. “General Sun, that ravine runs within two hundred paces of the Red-Devil Samurai Legion’s forward watch-caves! If Commander Ii Naomasa spots our surveyors planting spikes at the base of the third spire, his samurai will drop straight down from the cliffs!”

“That is why General Cui and I will be holding five hundred heavy shield-warriors of the Fierce Tiger Unit at the mouth of the ravine to cover your withdrawal!” General Sun Ba growled, glaring across the line of officers. “Well? Which scouting unit has the guts to take the point position tomorrow morning and earn double spirit-stone rations for the month?!”

Before Captain Hu or any of the other hesitating officers could open their mouths, Corbin took a full step forward into the torchlight and slammed his iron-gauntleted fist against his breastplate.

“The Iron-Wolf Scouting Unit volunteers to take the point, General Sun!” Corbin’s rough, gravel-edged voice rang out across the snowy yard.

Beside Corbin, Sergeant Zhao nearly choked on his own spit, whipping his head around to stare at Corbin with his one good eye wide with horror. “Lieutenant Mo! Are you—”

“Good!” General Sun Ba boomed, slapping Corbin hard on the shoulder pauldron before Sergeant Zhao could protest. “I knew Lieutenant Mo Chen had iron in his spine after seeing you hack down those ashigaru at the Sunken Fortress! Have your thirty men sharpen their blades and draw insulated leather boots from the quartermaster tonight. At dawn tomorrow, your unit marches at the front of the survey column right ahead of Master Alaric’s medical cart!”

As General Sun Ba turned and strode back into the lodge, Sergeant Zhao grabbed Corbin’s arm in the freezing dark, his voice shaking. “Have you lost your mind, Mo Chen?! Half our company died in the last two months, and now you volunteer us to march right under the noses of the Red-Devil Samurai?!”

Corbin pulled his arm free of Sergeant Zhao’s grip, his pale blue eyes gleaming coldly beneath his iron visor as he looked toward the warm yellow lantern light glowing inside Alaric Steele’s tent across the compound.

“Keep your voice down and pack your gear, Sergeant,” Corbin muttered. “General Cui Hao and Noble Consort Cui Yulan are staying at the main canyon mouth tomorrow to hold the center line against the Thunder-Claw Bastion, while Physician Alaric goes into that narrow ravine with only a survey squad and thirty guards. If an ambush hits that ravine tomorrow, we will be standing twenty paces from the man who holds all the secrets of this camp.”

‘Down in that ravine, cut off from the main army by three hundred feet of slate cliffs, Noble Consort Cui Yulan and his four hidden Arch-level women won’t be standing around him,’ Corbin thought, his pulse racing with cold calculation as he walked back toward the barracks. ‘When the Red-Devil Samurai attack the survey team tomorrow, I am going to pull my squad back at the critical moment and let the blades go straight toward his medical cart! Either he dies trying to keep up his weak healer disguise, or I force him to expose his magic in front of Master Tian Yi and the imperial surveyors—and catch a close-range imprint of his stolen bloodline on my Soul Stone!’

Dawn on the fourteenth day broke shrouded in thick, freezing white mountain fog that rolled down from the peaks of the Kurogane Range and filled the narrow, winding cleft of the Whispering Iron Ravine.

Because Noble Consort Cui Yulan and General Cui Hao had to lead five thousand troops of the Thunder-Spear Relief Force and the Fierce Tiger Unit in a noisy feint against the center of the Thunder-Claw Mountain Pass to draw Commander Ii Naomasa’s attention away from the northern flank, the war drums at the main canyon mouth began booming before sunrise.

Under the cover of those distant drums and the swirling gray fog, the special survey column slipped quietly into the mouth of the Whispering Iron Ravine.

At the front of the column marched Corbin and the thirty veteran scouts of the Iron-Wolf Scouting Unit, their boots wrapped in thick insulated hides crunching softly over the black iron-shale and crusted snow.

Twenty paces behind the scouts walked Master Array Formulator Tian Yi and eight imperial array surveyors carrying four three-foot-long “Earth-Sealing Jade Spikes” on wooden stretchers.

And right behind the surveyors—flanked by twenty elite Peak Martial King guards whom Noble Consort Cui Yulan had detached from her personal retinue to protect him, along with a compact, narrow-axle medical handcart pushed by two Jade Serpent orderlies—walked Archmage Alaric Steele in his simple gray linen robes and black-fox fur mantle.

Walking with unhurried, effortless grace across the slippery frost-covered shale, Alaric rested his right hand lightly on the top of his plain wooden staff while his ruby eyes took in the towering, jagged cliffs of dark magnetic iron-ore rising two hundred feet above the foggy ravine.

Through his Level 69 Peak Archmage perception, the subterranean world beneath the Whispering Iron Ravine was as clear as an open book.

Just three hundred yards ahead, where the narrow ravine curved around the base of the third colossal iron spire of the “Nine-Heaven Thunder-Wrath Formation”, a thick subterranean artery of magnetic star-iron joined the mountain leyline—and crouching silently inside six hollowed-out ore caves forty feet up the northern cliff wall, wrapped in heat-masking shinobi cloaks and holding their breath, were three hundred elite warriors of the Rising Sun Empire’s Red-Devil Samurai Legion and the Ghost-Blade Executioner Squad!

Alaric had sensed those three hundred ambushers from the moment he stepped onto the ridge three days ago.

More amusingly still, as Alaric’s gaze drifted twenty paces forward to the broad, brigandine-clad back of “Lieutenant Mo Chen”—who kept glancing back over his iron shoulder pauldron every thirty seconds toward Alaric’s medical cart while his left hand lingered near a concealed spatial pouch containing a faintly pulsing Bloodline-Mirroring Soul Stone—Alaric’s lips curved into a tiny, invisible smile beneath his fur collar.

‘So our little transmigrator rat Corbin survived the banquet by rupturing his own captains’ throats, and now he thinks volunteering for the vanguard in this ravine will let him use the Rising Sun samurai to test my disguise,’ Alaric mused calmly as he walked through the snow. ‘Let us see how much he enjoys playing bait when Commander Ii Naomasa’s executioners drop the net.’

The column reached the wide, bowl-shaped widening at the base of the third magnetic iron spire.

Above them, the hundred-foot spire of black iron-rock hummed with a low, bone-rattling vibration as streams of purple-black lightning arced through the upper snow clouds, though down at the base of the slate overhang, the magnetic pressure was muted enough for the surveyors to breathe freely.

“Here! Set the stretchers down right beside this quartz fault-line!” Master Array Formulator Tian Yi whispered excitedly, pointing his brass rod at four natural fissures at the foot of the iron spire. “Once we drive the four Earth-Sealing Jade Spikes into these fissures, the third spire’s subterranean draw will be cut in half! Lieutenant Mo—spread your Iron-Wolf scouts along the northern boulder line to watch the upper ledges while my men hammer the spikes!”

“Spread out along the boulders!” Corbin ordered in a low voice, leading his thirty scouts twenty yards forward toward the base of the northern cliff—while purposefully positioning himself and his men ten yards to the left of the main trail so that a wide, unobstructed lane remained open straight between the upper cliff caves and Alaric Steele’s gray medical cart!

Corbin rested his gauntleted hand on the hilt of his black-iron greatsword, his eyes fixed upwards on the dark, fog-shrouded ledges forty feet overhead while his left hand pinched the activation rune of the Ancient Bloodline-Mirroring Soul Stone inside his vest.

‘Come on, you Rising Sun dogs…’ Corbin thought, feeling the faint smell of oiled steel and charcoal filters drifting down from the ledges above. ‘Jump down and rush the surveyors and the medical cart!’

Clink. Clink.

The array surveyors raised their muffled wooden mallets and struck the first Earth-Sealing Jade Spike into the rock fissure.

At that exact instant, a sharp, piercing bone-whistle split the fog from the top of the third iron spire!

“Cut off their heads for the Lord General!”

From the six hidden ore caves forty feet up the northern cliff wall, three hundred warriors clad in blood-red lacquered armor and horned demon masks leaped down through the white fog like a flock of descending crimson vultures!

And before General Sun Ba’s heavy shield reserves waiting four hundred yards back at the mouth of the ravine could rush forward to reinforce them, four Rising Sun array priests standing atop the cliff rim slammed four black-iron grounding chains down across the narrow entrance of the Whispering Iron Ravine!

CRACK—ZMMMMM!

A wall of roaring, solid purple-black lightning dropped from the overhead “Nine-Heaven Thunder-Wrath Formation” right across the ravine entrance behind the column—cutting Corbin’s scouts, Master Array Formulator Tian Yi’s surveyors, the twenty Peak Martial King guards, and Alaric’s medical cart completely off from the five hundred Fierce Tiger heavy infantrymen outside!

“It’s a trap! They dropped the lightning curtain behind us!” Sergeant Zhao roared as the purple lightning barrier hissed and crackled fifty yards to their rear.

Up in mid-air, the three hundred descending warriors of the Red-Devil Samurai Legion and the Ghost-Blade Executioner Squad drew their weapons in unison.

Every single samurai wielded a three-foot-long, jagged black katana forged from Abyssal Spirit-Drinking Iron—cursed weapons known across the eastern seas as Spirit-Draining Blades!

“Protect Master Alaric and the surveyors!” the captain of Cui Yulan’s twenty Peak Martial King guards shouted, leading sixteen of his Peak Martial King warriors surging forward with golden halberds blazing to intercept the two hundred andforty Red-Devil Samurai diving toward the center of the ravine!

Steel slammed against steel with a sound like a thousand shattering bells.

Yet the moment the golden Battle Aura of the imperial guards collided with the jagged black steel of the enemy’s Spirit-Draining Blades, a sinister dark-green runic glow flared along the blood-grooves of the samurai katanas! Instead of rebounding off the guards’ superior Peak Martial King aura, the Spirit-Draining Blades sucked thirty percent of the surface Battle Aura straight out of the golden halberds on contact, locking the twenty imperial guards in a fierce, entangled melee in the center of the clearing!

And on the left flank—where Corbin had intentionally left a gap in the boulder line hoping the remaining sixty elite Ghost-Blade Executioners would bypass his scouts and charge Alaric’s medical cart—Commander Kuroda, the Early-Stage Martial King leader of the Ghost-Blade Executioners, looked down from mid-air with cold, veteran tactical eyes.

Commander Kuroda was not an idiot. Why would he charge past thirty armed scouts with exposed backs to attack an unarmed physician standing beside a wooden handcart when he could slaughter the flanking scouts in ten seconds and then encircle the imperial guards from behind?!

“Ghost-Blade Executioners—ignore the baggage cart!” Commander Kuroda barked in mid-air, pointing his jagged black Spirit-Draining Blade straight down at Corbin’s head! “Six-Paths Spirit-Severing Wheel—slaughter the scouting unit on the rocks first!”

Sixty elite Ghost-Blade Executioners—led by Commander Kuroda and five Peak Grandmaster and Early-Stage Martial King captains—curved their descent in mid-air and plunged straight down onto Corbin and the thirty men of the Iron-Wolf Scouting Unit!

Corbin’s eyes widened beneath his iron helm as his clever plan to use Alaric as bait blew up in his face in half a heartbeat!

“What?! Why are all sixty of them coming at us?!” Sergeant Zhao screamed as four Ghost-Blade Executioners landed on the boulder above him and slashed down with their jagged black blades!

Corbin roared in fury, wrenching his sixty-pound black-iron greatsword off his back and swinging it upward with both hands!

Because Corbin’s greatsword was a slab of unrefined black iron wrapped in pure, condensed “Desolate Heaven-Cleaving Sword Intent” rather than loose external Battle Aura, the Spirit-Draining Blades could not easily suck his Sword Intent away.

CLANG—CRUNCH!

Corbin’s massive blade smashed through the katanas of the first three Ghost-Blade Executioners, shattering their demon masks and hurling their broken bodies into the snow!

Yet around him, the common scouts of the Iron-Wolf Scouting Unit were being butchered in seconds. Every time a scout raised a steel broadsword infused with Grand Martialist Qi to block a Spirit-Draining Blade, the black katana drank the Qi out of the scout’s arms in a flash—leaving the scout suffering instant Alchemical Meridian Stagnation and Physical Vitality Necrosis as his muscles shriveled and the blade sheared through his throat!

Within ten breaths, twelve scouts lay dead in the red snow, and Corbin, Sergeant Zhao, and the eighteen surviving scouts were driven backward until their backs were pressed flat against a vertical, twenty-foot wall of slick black slate rock!

“He is using Sword Intent instead of Battle Aura!” Commander Kuroda shouted, wiping a splash of blood from his iron mask as he and his five fellow Martial King and Peak Grandmaster captains locked their footsteps in a hexagonal ring around Corbin! “Link the six Spirit-Draining Blades! Six-Paths Spirit-Severing Wheel—drain his Dantian through the ground and take his head!”

CLANG!

Commander Kuroda and the five captains drove the tips of their six Spirit-Draining Blades three inches into the iron-shale rock as they charged forward in a spinning six-man wheel!

A terrifying, twenty-foot vortex of black, spirit-sucking vacuum force erupted across the rock floor, locking Corbin’s boots in place while six jagged black blades whistled simultaneously toward Corbin’s neck, heart, ribs, and knees from six blind angles—while ten more executioners raised heavy repeating crossbows on the boulder behind them to fire a volley of poisoned iron bolts toward Master Array Formulator Tian Yi and Alaric’s medical cart!

Trapped against the vertical slate cliff with Sergeant Zhao bleeding at his feet, Corbin tried to swing his heavy greatsword around to block all six Martial King blades at once.

He was half a second too slow.

The spirit-sucking vacuum of the “Six-Paths Spirit-Severing Wheel” dragged down on his injured left shoulder, and Commander Kuroda’s jagged black katana was already six inches from slicing straight through the side of Corbin’s neck!

[System Warning: Lethal Strike Incoming! Host’s Evasion Path Blocked by Cliff Wall. Survival Probability: 2.1%!]

‘No—! I can’t die here in a ditch to a nameless samurai captain!’ Corbin’s pupils shrank to needles as the cold black edge of the Spirit-Draining Blade touched the frost on his neck-guard!

Forty yards away across the foggy clearing, standing calm and untouched beside his gray medical handcart while pretending to hold a bandage roll over a trembling surveyor’s arm, Archmage Alaric Steele looked at the ten crossbow bolts flying toward Master Array Formulator Tian Yi and the six blades about to take Corbin’s head.

‘If Master Tian Yi dies here, General Cui Hao loses his chief engineer,’ Alaric thought lightly. ‘And if my little treasure-hunting pig Corbin gets his head lopped off before he leads me to the Flame King Feng Xiao and the Rimefrost Imperium’s secrets on the other side of the pass, who is going to do my legwork in the snow?’

Alaric did not raise his hands, nor did he chant a single syllable or release a single spark of visible elemental light from his body.

Instead, as he stepped half a pace to the left to shield Master Array Formulator Tian Yi’s shoulder, Alaric gently tapped the blunt wooden tip of his plain healer’s staff two inches down against an exposed white quartz root protruding from the frozen shale beneath his boot.

Through the tip of his wooden staff, masked completely by the natural magnetic roar of the third iron spire twenty yards away, Alaric sent an invisible, pinpoint pulse of Peak Archmage spatial-and-earth manipulation straight down through the subterranean fault line of the ravine:

“Subterranean Leyline Shift: Four-Inch Fault Tilting” and “Magnetic Vein Inversion”!

Fifty yards away at the base of the northern slate cliff—at the exact microsecond Commander Kuroda’s katana was half an inch from severing Corbin’s carotid artery—the solid granite-and-shale bedrock beneath the boots of Commander Kuroda and his five spinning captains suddenly dropped and tilted four inches to the right while the subterranean magnetic pull of the cliff wall reversed polarity!

To every warrior in the ravine, it felt like nothing more than a sudden, violent natural tremor caused by the massive magnetic iron spire humming overhead!

Yet that four-inch tilt of the stone floor and the sudden magnetic yank on their heavy iron-plated Spirit-Draining Blades threw the synchronized footwork of the “Six-Paths Spirit-Severing Wheel” into total chaos!

Clang—screeech!

Instead of slicing through Corbin’s throat, Commander Kuroda’s black katana was yanked three inches upward by the magnetic pulse of the rock wall behind Corbin, slamming deep into the solid slate cliff two inches above Corbin’s iron helmet and wedging fast in the stone!

At the same instant, the other five captains stumbled as their boots slipped on the suddenly tilted shale—causing two of them to slash their own comrades’ shoulder armor with their Spirit-Draining Blades!

And forty feet above them, triggered by Alaric’s subtle magnetic inversion along the quartz fault-line, the ten poisoned crossbow bolts flying toward Master Array Formulator Tian Yi were pulled sideways in mid-air like iron filings drawn to a lodestone, clattering harmlessly against the face of the third iron spire—right before three massive, blinding bolts of purple-black heaven-lightning from the overhead “Nine-Heaven Thunder-Wrath Formation” discharged straight down into the magnetic fault line occupied by the forty reserve Ghost-Blade Executioners on the northern boulder!

BOOOOOOOM!

A deafening thunderclap shook the entire Whispering Iron Ravine!

Thirty-five Ghost-Blade Executioners standing atop the iron-rich northern boulder in their conductive metal armor were struck squarely by the three redirected bolts of purple heaven-lightning, exploding into flying charred armor plates and smoking ash in a single heartbeat!

Pinned against the slate wall with Commander Kuroda’s blade stuck in the rock two inches above his ear and the five enemy captains stumbling off-balance right in front of his chest, Corbin did not waste a tenth of a second questioning the miracle.

Survival instinct roared through his limbs.

“Die!” Corbin bellowed, swinging his sixty-pound black-iron greatsword in a ferocious, point-blank horizontal figure-eight!

SHING—CRACK!

The pale silver arc of his Sword Intent sheared straight through the necks and waists of the five stumbling, off-balance captains before they could pull their feet out of the shifted shale, sending five helmeted heads flying into the snow!

Before Commander Kuroda could wrench his wedged katana out of the slate wall above Corbin’s head, Corbin reversed his grip on his heavy greatsword and drove the blunt iron point straight up through the bottom of Commander Kuroda’s chin, bursting out the crown of his helmet!

[System Notification: Host Has Slain 1 Early-Stage Martial King (Commander Kuroda) and 5 Peak Grandmaster Executioners!]

[Bounty Credited: +18,000 System Points!]

Across the center of the clearing, seeing Commander Kuroda and forty of their elite executioners wiped out in three seconds by a freak lightning discharge and the greatsword-wielding scout lieutenant—and seeing General Sun Ba’s five hundred Fierce Tiger heavy shield-warriors smashing through the weakened outer lightning curtain at the mouth of the ravine as Master Array Formulator Tian Yi’s men hammered the fourth Earth-Sealing Jade Spike into the spire base—the remaining Red-Devil Samurai blew a frantic retreat whistle and scrambled back up their grapple lines into the high cliff caves!

Within two minutes, the ambush was over.

The purple lightning curtain across the ravine entrance collapsed into harmless sparks as the third iron spire’s subterranean draw was severed by the four jade spikes, and General Sun Ba’s heavy infantry poured into the clearing to secure the perimeter.

Standing amidst the smoking corpses and severed heads at the base of the northern slate cliff, Corbin leaned heavily on his blood-dripping black-iron greatsword, his chest heaving like a bellows as cold sweat and melted snow ran down his face.

He looked at the deep gouge in the slate wall two inches above his head where Commander Kuroda’s blade had mysteriously veer-struck the stone.

Then he looked down at the four-inch step-fracture in the granite bedrock beneath the dead captains’ boots, and up at the scorched northern boulder where three bolts of array lightning had conveniently struck the enemy crossbowmen at the exact second they fired toward the surveyors.

Slowly, Corbin turned his head and looked forty yards across the clearing.

Over by the base of the third iron spire, Archmage Alaric Steele was kneeling calmly in the snow beside his gray medical handcart, wrapping a clean linen bandage around the scraped forearm of a young array surveyor while speaking in a gentle, soothing voice.

There was not a single ripple of elemental mana in the air around Alaric. Even Corbin’s passive system radar showed zero active spell signatures coming from the physician’s body.

Yet as Corbin’s eyes dropped to the bottom of Alaric’s plain wooden staff—which was resting casually against the exact white quartz fault-line that ran straight across the ravine floor to the northern slate cliff and the scorched boulder—a chill deeper and more suffocating than anything Corbin had ever felt in two lifetimes crept up his spine.

‘He didn’t cast a spell through the air…’ Corbin stared at the white quartz vein connecting Alaric’s wooden staff to the shifted bedrock under his own boots, his mind reeling in sheer, cold bewilderment. ‘While twenty Peak Martial Kings and three hundred samurai were screaming and swinging blades in the fog, he just tapped his walking stick against a rock root forty yards away… tilted the mountain bedrock by four inches to save my neck, and used General Tokugawa’s own lightning array to fry forty ambushers without a single person in this ravine realizing he even moved!’

Why had Alaric Steele saved him?

Did Alaric still not know that “Lieutenant Mo Chen” was Corbin—and simply saved the vanguard scout lieutenant to keep the northern flank from collapsing onto the surveyors? Or was the monster playing with him like a cat batting a mouse back away from a cliff edge just to watch it run a little further?

Corbin could not tell. And that uncertainty terrified him more than a blade at his throat.

“Lieutenant Mo! What a tremendous double-cleave against those six samurai captains!” General Sun Ba’s booming voice broke Corbin’s trance as the bearded general strode over through the snow and clapped a heavy iron gauntlet onto Corbin’s shoulder. “Even Master Alaric over there just remarked to Master Tian Yi that without your Iron-Wolf unit holding the northern boulder when that lucky earth-tremor hit, the surveyors would never have finished driving the fourth spike! Come on—bring your wounded back to the ridge lodge! Noble Consort Cui Yulan and General Cui Hao have hot wine waiting for the vanguard!”

Corbin forced his stiff, blood-spattered face into a respectful nod beneath his iron helm, sheathing his heavy greatsword as he watched Alaric Steele step back into his warm gray carriage at the center of the cheering column.

An hour later, as the victorious scouting division marched back through the timber gates of the Three-Pine Ridge encampment with the third spire of the “Nine-Heaven Thunder-Wrath Formation” permanently crippled behind them, Noble Consort Cui Yulan stepped out of the main command lodge in her dark violet armor.

While General Cui Hao and General Sun Ba loudly congratulated the surveyors and handed out spirit-stone vouchers to the cheering troops in the yard, Cui Yulan walked straight past the celebrating officers to the door of the gray carriage.

As Alaric stepped down from the footboard, brushing a stray flake of snow from his fur mantle, Cui Yulan’s cold silver eyes swept over him from head to toe to confirm that not a single speck of dust had touched his robes—and then softened with an unmistakable, radiant warmth that made the soldiers standing nearby marvel at how deeply the fierce Border Marshal respected the camp’s chief physician.

“The third spire’s draw collapsed right on schedule, Master Alaric,” Cui Yulan said, keeping her voice formal for the guards twenty paces away while her fingers brushed lightly and affectionately against the back of his hand under the shadow of his wide linen sleeve. “I have had the charcoal braziers in the inner lodge lit and fresh spirit-sandalwood placed on the coals so you may warm your hands from the ravine mist.”

Alaric looked down into her shining silver eyes, feeling the faint, eager tremor of her pulse where her fingers touched his wrist, while out of the corner of his eye he saw Corbin standing rigid and bewildered among the mud-stained scouts by the barracks gate.

“Lead the way, Noble Consort Cui,” Alaric replied with a calm, gentle smile, falling into step beside her as they walked toward the warm, sandalwood-scented lodge. “Now that the northern flank of the pass is open, we have the rest of the afternoon to discuss where to drive the next spike.”