Chapter 835: Chapter 13: The Bird Waiting Behind

As the main army of the Jade Land steadily advanced on the front line, continually squeezing the strategic space of the Freemasonry Church, the Gray Tower Witch Realm and the Thousand Sails Witch Realm, which had been biding their time at the border, finally showed their fangs when they saw that the Jade Land had broken the sturdy shell of the Freemasonry Church.

On the eastern line, the “Ashen Army” of the Gray Tower Witch Realm surged into the land of the Ancient Ruins like a flood breaching a dam. Wherever their army pointed its spear, the defensive forces the Freemasonry Church had set up in the Eastern Province crumbled almost instantly with barely any organized resistance.

The massive army of the Gray Tower advanced swiftly, capturing key towns like Rusted Iron Town and Black Stone City. Their elite Rune Swordsmen Army leveraged their high mobility, sweeping across the land and pushing towards the transportation hub in the heart of the Eastern Province, the Golden Grain Plain.

Along the way, everything was overrun in a panic, and the spoils piled up like mountains.

On the western line, the “Tide Fleet” of the Thousand Sails Witch Realm deployed massive amphibious war beasts, landing from Shattered Star Bay. Their “Wave Priests” summoned Water Elemental Spirits to clear the way, working alongside the well-equipped “Sea King Spear” infantry corps, advancing rapidly along the coastline.

The Freemasonry Church’s defense lines on the western shore crumbled like a sandcastle exposed to the scorching sun. Key locations rich in fisheries and Magic Pearl resources like Pearl Harbor and Seawind City quickly changed hands, and the banner of the Thousand Sails Witch Realm was soon flying on the walls of Camel Bell City, the commercial hub and trade center of the West.

The forces from both east and west advanced triumphantly, unstoppable as bamboo, piercing into the heartlands of the Ancient Ruins at an alarming speed, nearly bringing into view the outer defensive barriers of Freemasonry Church’s core ruling area, the Holy City Eden.

However, this all-too-smooth advance carried with it a strange aura of unease on this land shrouded in conspiracy.

Sigh Barrier, front-line camp.

This gigantic fortress known as the “Sigh Barrier” guarded the last natural barrier leading to the Holy City Eden. Its towering walls seemed to connect heaven and earth, inscribed with the fervent runes of the Freemasonry Church, appearing worn after months of fierce assault, yet still stubbornly blocking the forces of the Jade Land.

In the central command tent, the atmosphere was heavy and lethal.

The Holy Daughter of Light Julia bathed in a gentle Holy Light, with arcane energy glowing around the fingertips of Witch Master Jeraf from the Jade Tower. Witch Master Kalsa from the Witch Castle stood like an ice sculpture, exuding a forbidding chill. The top commanders from the Jade Land on the Eastern front had gathered there.

Standing by the sand table to report was the overall commander of this frontal assault, Blood Duke Mars of Orendale Empire, a distinguished military commander renowned for his iron fist and strategic foresight.

He pointed heavily at the Sigh Barrier model on the sand table, speaking with a steady voice imbued with irrefutable certainty, “Gentlemen, our army has successfully destroyed three outlying towns of the barrier and blasted its southeastern main wall.”

“The enemy’s morale is low, and their reinforcements have been cut off. Judging by our current rate of attack, it will take at most three more days to breach this line completely! Once this place falls, there will be no more strongholds to defend straight through to the Holy City Eden!”

The dawn of victory seemed within grasp, and the expressions of those in the tent slightly relaxed.

Yet at this very moment—

“Report—!”

A messenger stumbled into the tent without announcement, his face showing both surprise and urgency, kneeling hurriedly on one knee as he spoke: “Report to all commanders! Large unidentified armies have appeared simultaneously from the directions of ’Eagle Cry Canyon’ and ’Silent Plain’ on either side of the barrier! The banners… the banners are not from the Freemasonry Church!”

Almost as the messenger’s voice fell!

Witch Master Jeraf sharply lifted his head, his eyes flickering with arcane light; and the Holy Light around Saintess Julia momentarily paused as her brows furrowed; even Witch Master Kalsa, usually devoid of expression, had ice-blue eyes that turned sharply towards outside the tent.

All three of them clearly sensed a vast, unfamiliar, and immensely pressing Spiritual Field sweeping in from both east and west like a tidal wave, the intensity and quality of which was far beyond what a regular army could possess!

The atmosphere in the tent, once marked by pre-war certainty, dropped to freezing point.

Almost instantly as the messenger’s words and the abnormal Spiritual Field reached them, Kalsa and Jeraf’s figures disappeared from the tent like phantoms, without causing any air disturbance.

In the next moment, the two appeared high above the camp thousands of meters up in the sky, the biting winds automatically circling around their bodies’ surging force fields.

At the same time, opposite them, silently emerged a dozen figures, each exuding powerful secret skill fluctuations, forming two distinct camps, subtly forming a pincer formation against Kalsa and Jeraf.

One of them, an elderly man in a gray star pattern robe holding a withered wood Magic Wand, with a smile on his face that seemed kind yet carried an underlying arrogance, was the first to speak. His voice was like the grinding of stones: “Long time no see, Witch Master Jeraf, you haven’t changed a bit, it’s been a while indeed.”

Jeraf’s gaze instantly locked onto the speaker, his brow furrowing tightly, speaking in a deep voice, “Gray Tower Witch Realm, Mystical Wizard, ’Rock Speaker’ Bahr?” His gaze was sharp as knives, quickly scanning the individuals around the old man and another group on the side, each surrounded by moist mist, as he coldly called out a series of names:

“’Tide’s Grip’ Sarina… ’Mist Walker’ Hayden… ’Rune Sword Saint’ Reks…”

These names were none other than the well-known, highly respected Mystical Wizards from the Gray Tower Witch Realm and Thousand Sails Witch Realm!

Beside him, Kalsa, with ice-blue eyes that seemed almost solid with cold intent, skipped any pleasantries and directly asked coldly, her clear voice piercing through the air like an ice pick, clearly reaching the ears of every Mystical Wizard:

“Gray Tower Witch Realm, Thousand Sails Witch Realm, what do you mean by appearing here at this moment?”

The old man in the gray robe, Bahr, faced Kalsa’s near crystallizing icy questioning with an unchanged ostensibly kind smile, instead responding in a tone that was as proper as it was righteous, “Witch Master Kalsa. We are here, of course, in response to the Supreme Council’s call, to crusade against this land of Ancient Ruins classified as the Black Witch Domain, and against the illegal Black Wizard Organization, the Freemasonry Church, which is raging here and severely disrupting the order of the Wizard World. This is our duty and responsibility as members of the Council.”

His words sounded grandiose, as if they were the true bearers of justice.

The cold aura around Kalsa instantly became more frigid, and the water vapor in the air began to condense into fine ice crystals that fell rustling. Her ice-blue eyes gleamed sharply, mercilessly exposing the hypocrisy of his words, her voice like a polar wind scraping across every Mystical Wizard’s eardrums:

“Responding to the call? Duty and responsibility? What a colossal joke!”

“At the beginning of the war, when my Jade Land faced the full brunt of the Freemasonry Church’s forces alone, and sent out signals for assistance, where were you two Realms? Now, as this ’Sigh Barrier’ is about to be taken down by us, with victory in sight, suddenly you ’timely’ appear…”

Her words were like icy blades cutting straight to the core: “This is clearly taking advantage of the situation to seize the victory spoils, utterly shameless!”

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