"Wang Lan, what are you trying to do?" Wu Shaohua turned his head to glance at Wang Lan.

"Being played like this? If we don't get even, it wouldn't be quite in line with my usual style," Wang Lan replied.

"Don't act recklessly. Our mission is to rescue the trapped Royal Guard and Princess Aier. Besides, we don't know T's strength. Rashly attacking their base could easily lead us into an ambush."

"I got it. I was just asking casually."

The map from the Kingdom of Ice and Snow showed the target in the dense forests southeast of the kingdom. The Royal Guard had set out immediately after learning the support team's plane was attacked. While searching the estimated crash site, they encountered an ambush by T.

In an area riddled with landmines, exchanging fire with terrorists wielding firearms severely limited their mobility. If the Royal Guard members had strength comparable to the academy's support team, these so-called ambushes would be as ineffective as trying to stop a car with one's arm.

But even the Kingdom of Ice and Snow's most elite Royal Guard members were, at best, equivalent to students from an ordinary Star Martial Academy in Jade Country. Out of a force of one thousand, their average strength was only at the Star Cloud Stage, with barely a dozen experts at the Galaxy Stage or higher. For a nation's ultimate fighting force, they were pitifully weak.

They landed on the outskirts of the target area. Pathfinders, consisting of Sense-type Star Martial Warriors and Earth Attribute Star Martial Warriors, took the lead, heading directly into the target zone to search.

Eight hundred Royal Guard members were scattered across a five-square-kilometer area, forming a defensive perimeter against surprise attacks from all directions.

The barriers erected by the Earth Attribute Star Martial Warriors could withstand ordinary rifle fire but not the precise shots of distant snipers. Even when hidden behind an earthen wall, an armor-piercing sniper bullet could easily penetrate it and lodge in an Earth Attribute Star Martial Warrior's chest.

"Nine o'clock position—" A Star Martial Warrior fell dead. The nearby Royal Guard commander roared.

"We're on it!" a three-man squad yelled in response.

"We'll cover you! Brothers, clear the way with Star Martial Skills!"

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! The Royal Guard launched a barrage of Star Martial Skill attacks into the dense forest before them; flames, water pillars, and lightning bolts flashed.

The three-man squad moved stealthily towards the sniper's suspected position. In less than ten minutes, the trio reached it, nine hundred meters away. A brown-camouflaged blind blended seamlessly with the cold, damp earth.

"Found you!" one of them roared. Fueled by rage, he transformed into a streak of light and charged the blind.

"Kewei, come back!" the captain yelled urgently, but it was too late. The squad member's war saber plunged fiercely downward, only to meet empty air. He ripped aside the camouflage, revealing an empty position.

BANG! Just as the squad member realized it was a decoy, a bullet shot from behind, piercing his chest.

"Damn it!"

"Three o'clock!"

The remaining two immediately leaped through the tree branches, covering dozens of meters in mere moments.

BANG! The captain had just leaped when a bullet shattered the branch behind him.

"Found you!" Fire blazed in the captain's eyes as he stared intently in the direction the shot originated.

The enemy sniper, likely realizing he was no longer at a safe distance from the two Royal Guard members, hastily abandoned his cover and sprinted away.

But how could an ordinary person's speed compare to that of Star Martial Warriors, whose physical conditioning was superhuman? The sniper hadn't gotten far before a whistling sound cut through the air behind him.

The sniper dove forward, but a wind blade grazed the back of his head, tearing away a piece of flesh and drawing blood.

With a pained grunt, the sniper rolled over and drew his pistol. Before he could fire, another wind blade whistled past his throat.

The pistol slipped from his grasp. The sniper's body twitched briefly, then stilled.

"You damned bastard! You killed five of our men!" A guard, overcome with fury, charged the sniper's body, drawing his war saber to hack at the sniper's neck.

"Jier, what are you doing?"

"I'm going to take his head to avenge our brothers!" he roared, swinging the war saber down fiercely.

"Don't move—"

BOOM!

The moment the war saber struck, the sniper's corpse suddenly exploded. A fierce fireball erupted, and the shockwave sent Jier flying.

"Damn it!" Xiao Ke slammed his fist against a nearby tree trunk in anger.

Even in death, the sniper had booby-trapped his body. Touching the corpse would trigger a tripwire connected to a grenade.

These were no ordinary terrorists; they were clearly world-class elite soldiers.

How could ordinary armed militants possess such potent combat capabilities and terrifying tactical acumen? Even with the limitations imposed by a minefield and the enemy's long-range firearms, they shouldn't be able to overwhelm a group of Royal Guard members whose average strength was at the Star Cloud Stage.

Only the special forces of a few major powers could achieve this.

Only the best of the best, soldier kings selected from tens of thousands and forged through brutal training, could possess such high-level combat skills and formidable fighting power.

They had been ordered to search for the crashed support team. However, before they could even approach the target area, terrorists attacked them. Right from the outset, a dozen Star Martial Warriors were picked off by snipers.

The pervasive landmines restricted their ability to spread out and engage in guerrilla warfare. They could only hunker down in one spot, defending against stealth attacks from all directions. This was the seventh sniper they had managed to kill, yet these seven snipers alone had inflicted thirty casualties upon them.

Since when could ordinary humans take down Star Martial Warriors at a five-to-one ratio—with the Star Martial Warriors being the five, and the ordinary human being the one?

Star Martial Warriors were never meant to fight their own kind, so their use of firearms wasn't encouraged. Some countries even explicitly restricted Star Martial Warriors from using them. Guns were considered tools for ordinary people; Star Martial Warriors were expected to focus all their energy on Star Martial Skills.

This led to the current situation where Star Martial Warriors rarely use firearms. Against an external enemy, this specialization was perfectly complementary. However, when Star Martial Warriors faced ordinary people proficient with guns, the scales of victory weren't as heavily tilted in their favor as they might have imagined.

This was true even though Star Martial Warriors were far superior to ordinary people in all other aspects.

"Xiao Ke, how is it?"

"That sniper's dealt with, but Jier and the others..."

"Damn it! We've been ambushed here. Who knows what's happening with the Princess..."

"We don't need to worry about the Princess! She's the War God of our Kingdom of Ice and Snow! A top-tier warrior at the Star Sea Stage! If the Princess were here, she could slaughter this bunch of bastards all by herself."

"Do you think the support team from Jade Country... could they all have been wiped out? Otherwise, this battle has been raging for nearly two hours. Why haven't they followed the sounds to us?"

"I heard this support team has thirty Star Sea Stage powerhouses! My God, thirty Star Sea Stage powerhouses... all annihilated? I can't even imagine it."

"But if they weren't wiped out, why haven't they followed the sounds and reached us by now? Could it be... they turned back?"

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! Suddenly, a series of violent explosions thundered in the distance, like the rumbling of the earth or the roar of a colossal beast.

Then, just as suddenly, the gunfire around them intensified, as if in a final, desperate frenzy.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! On the Royal Guard's perimeter, a rapid series of explosions erupted, like a string of firecrackers.

"Commander, what's happening? This doesn't sound right!"

"Is that... landmines exploding? Could someone have chained them together and detonated them?"

"Reinforcements are here! Earth Attribute Star Martial Warriors, quickly, reinforce the defenses! Reinforce defenses!"

"Commander, we have more reinforcements? We're the last of the Kingdom of Ice and Snow's forces... Wait, are you saying..."

"The support team from Jade Country. They've arrived."

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! The explosions drew rapidly closer, and the distant gunfire began to subside.

Suddenly, the world around them was bathed in crimson light.

The Royal Guard members all looked up in unison, witnessing a scene they would never forget.

A colossal red Array materialized in the sky, seeming to cover the entire heavens. Its bewitching crimson light spilled over the land. Then, a voice like that of the God of Heaven thundered from above.

"Heavenly Fire Extinguishing World!"

From within the crimson Array, clusters of terrifying, blazing red meteorites rained down from the sky.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

All the Guard members stood dumbstruck, staring blankly as a rain of fire descended, consuming everything within a five-hundred-meter radius in its fiery maw.

Those brief thirty seconds felt like an eternity. When they snapped back to reality, only scorched earth remained in their field of vision.

In just thirty seconds, the surrounding hundreds of meters had been transformed into a hellscape of molten lava. This must be the power of a god, right?

To students from Star Martial Academies like Wang Lan, this was merely an S-class composite Star Martial Skill, albeit one with a larger area of effect and greater power. It certainly wasn't astonishing enough to be mistaken for divine intervention.

But the people of the Kingdom of Ice and Snow were different. They couldn't even conceive of such a ceiling of power, let alone have heard of it. The most potent force they knew was their princess's 'Ice Snow kingdom'.

The visual impact of the 'Ice Snow kingdom', which could cover hundreds of meters in ice and snow, paled in comparison to this cataclysm that transformed hundreds of meters of forest into a molten hellscape. If Princess Aier wielded power closest to a god's, then this had to be the work of a god themself.

SWOOSH! SWOOSH! SWOOSH! With a few swift movements, a twelve-member rescue team materialized before the stunned crowd as if stepping out of the very void.

Wang Lan glanced at the group of dazed individuals. Some stared with mouths agape, their jaws practically unhinged. He turned to Wu Changfeng and asked softly, "Have they been hit with an Illusion Technique?"

"Doesn't look like it," Wu Changfeng replied. "Their heart rates are quite fast. People under an Illusion Technique usually have slower heart rates."

"Hey! Are you the Royal Guard? Is Princess Aier here?" Wu Changfeng produced a translation device and called out to the group.

"Ah? You're the support team from Jade Country, right? Heavens be praised, you're still alive! We are the Royal Guard of the Kingdom of Ice and Snow, under orders to search for and rescue the Jade Country support team! Is it just you few? Did the others... perish?" A Royal Guard member proficient in the Jade Country's language quickly recovered his senses and hurried forward to ask.

Since someone here speaks Huaxia, this will be much easier.

"Our plane wasn't shot down by a missile; we managed to land successfully. We had just arrived in Ice City when we learned you'd been ambushed. At your King's request, we came to escort you back. Also, where is Princess Aier?"

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