Extra Two: Battle at the Border [Bonus Chapter for Good Brothers]

"The Fourth Soul Engineer Corps has reached its designated position."

A crackling mechanical voice came through the communicator, breaking the heavy silence hanging over everyone.

Xu Wenjun looked at the comrades who had followed him for most of his life. Their mottled white hair reflected silver in the faint dawn light, yet the warm morning glow on their faces left his heart somewhat cold.

Originally, the units under elite Soul Engineer Corps like theirs, who had advanced through drugs, could retire and return home after another two or three years of service, living out the bleak, short, yet still longed-for retirement that awaited them.

Their retirement benefits were not low. Perhaps that was because their old age would not last long? Bodies enhanced by drugs had long since been worn down by the arduous life of military campaigns.

Perhaps some enhancement serums had minor side effects, but those were destined to be unaffordable for someone at his rank of captain.

"This Time's transfer order is strange."

Having survived many small-scale battles, Xu Wenjun possessed the intelligence network of an old soldier.

Everyone remained silent. Some even closed their eyes, seizing the time before the operation to rest. They knew it was strange, because every unit around them was full of fucking "familiar faces"!

All the old scout teams under the border legions, veterans who had spent their lives walking between life and death and were about to retire, had been deployed here!

"Talking won't help. Think about how to stay alive."

At last, a Soul Master with a mechanical arm spoke up.

Bzzzt!

The communicator crackled. Xu Wenjun opened it and saw that the combat orders had arrived.

"The combat mission is here."

He glanced at everyone, and under the gaze of thirteen pairs of dead eyes, Xu Wenjun could not help but let out a breath of relief.

"We're not cannon fodder. Our mission is to protect the Soul Tool artillery position directly behind our location."

"We'll only die a little later."

The man with the mechanical arm adjusted his prosthetic. He had lost his natural arm during a mission to defend an artillery array.

Defending an artillery array came with an unspoken requirement: before the artillery array withdrew, they were not allowed to retreat.

Ignoring the veteran's dispirited words, Xu Wenjun led his fourteen-man squad to spread out and establish defenses at the eleven o'clock direction from the rear artillery array, using it as their center. The other directions were covered by other squads.

Of Xu Wenjun's fourteen men, only he was a fifth-level Soul Engineer; the rest were third- or fourth-level Soul Engineers. By the standard of regular national armies, where most troops were around two or three soul rings, Xu Wenjun's group unquestionably counted as elite.

In fact, among the four Soul Engineer Corps and more than five thousand Soul Masters mobilized by the Sun Moon Empire this time, most were elites.

BOOM!

A flash erupted in the distance, followed by a tremendous roar that swept toward them.

It seemed they were not the first wave. Xu Wenjun's squad all breathed a sigh of relief.

He lit a cigarette, then tossed the matchbox to the man with the mechanical arm. Xu Wenjun remembered that the man had lost his arm to the blade of an agility-type Soul Master while trying to pull him to safety.

Guarding an artillery array was generally rather dull. For some lucky ones, their artillery array would not fire a single shell until the war ended.

To powerhouses at the Titled Douluo level, artillery arrays were merely slow-moving toys. But to Soul Masters below the Soul Saint level, they were the most terrifying weapons of destruction.

Of course, that "slow-moving" was only relative to Advanced Soul Masters.

Sizzle!

Xu Wenjun stubbed out his cigarette and called everyone into action.

The order had arrived. They were to follow the artillery array as it began advancing.

On the front-line battlefield, Amid the thunderous barrage of Soul Tool artillery shells, Sun Moon Empire soldiers wearing simple mechanical Exoskeleton Armor charged forward close behind the barrage.

Along the Way, they constantly drew Soul Tool blades and swords, beheading and finishing off enemy Soul Masters who had been maimed by the bombardment.

Swish!

Another slash took off a head. Then, with a backhanded motion, he drove the bloody blade beneath his arm and into the Sneak Attack attacker's chest. He lowered his head to evade the dying enemy Soul Master's slash, then turned and pressed his elbow against the back of the blade, decapitating the enemy from below.

Soul Masters possessed all manner of strange abilities. Only a beheaded Soul Master was a good Soul Master.

Tai Di gazed toward the distant horizon through the gaps in his metal visor. The smoke of war pressed the rising sunlight back down, while Soul Power and killing intent raged beneath the high sky amid flying Flesh and Blood.

The barrage continued to creep forward, and the soldiers around Tai Di passed him as they charged onward.

He did not actually like the battlefield, nor did he like killing. But he had to admit that he longed for the land beyond the sky. He dreamed of claiming that vast, fertile territory.

More and more veterans stopped nearby and looked up at the beautiful artillery fire streaking overhead.

BANG!

A brilliant red firework bloomed in Tai Di and the others' eyes, blazing with its most dazzling color.

"Artillery cover, retreat!"

The artillery fire overhead visibly began to thin out. Tai Di and the others' Infiltration Squad began to fall back. At this time, anyone who lagged behind would be blasted to pieces by their own artillery.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

The Second Artillery Array began firing, sending a massive barrage of shells past Tai Di and the others' heels toward the enemy formation gathering again.

BANG!

A tremendous boom came from afar, and a mushroom cloud slowly rose.

Less than half an hour after the battle began, more than a hundred men from the First Artillery Array perished in a sympathetic detonation.

Beautiful trails of fire repeatedly streaked over his head, and Xu Wenjun's heart gradually turned cold.

"I heard you've got a wife?"

"With me half-dead like this, I told her long ago to remarry."

The one-armed man snuffed out the cigarette in his hand. The fiery ember left no trace on his face.

"I remember I had a daughter. If she hadn't been carried off by some beast back then, she should be old enough to run errands now."

The news had reached him in the army through a letter entrusted by someone from his hometown. Xu Wenjun silently activated all of his Soul Tools.

"I don't like dying in such obscurity, as if I'd never existed in this world at all."

"You're right. The Empire can be rotten as shit sometimes, but that doesn't change the fact that it gave me hope—let a guy with only Rank Two Soul Power become a Soul King."

Even if the price had been draining away his future.

"When I was little, my mother told me that if you couldn't become a Soul Master, even having a decent-sounding name was a luxury in this society."

"No wonder a big man like you has such an artsy name."

The one-armed man smiled. His voice entered Xu Wenjun's ears, while his head rolled to Xu Wenjun's feet.

When Xu Wenjun saw the enemy's eight Soul Rings in that final moment, his last struggle was nothing more than a joke.

Yet, as his vision gradually darkened, a flash of white light appeared, and everything turned to ash.

Artillery arrays would generally rather sell off their guard squads than self-detonate, unless their duty was to serve as bait and self-destruct.

The White Tiger Legion's high-level combatants had been drawn away, so...

Boom! Boom! Boom!

The massive Third Artillery Array erupted in fury, pouring shells without restraint onto the White Tiger Legion, whose formation had been repeatedly and precisely disrupted by the Infiltration Squad without their notice, causing them to unconsciously cluster together.

At the same time, a fierce battle also erupted amid the ruins of the Second Artillery Array.

With the enemy's high-level combatants separated and tied down, the Sun Moon Empire's Soul Engineer Legion used flexible battlefield maneuvering to keep the enemy at the ideal attack range at all times.

After several exchanges, this Star Luo Empire border legion was nearly shattered by this unfamiliar style of warfare.

Only when the Star Luo Empire's Titled Douluo arrived and displayed the overwhelming might of a Titled-level powerhouse on the battlefield for the first time did the Sun Moon Empire's forces abandon the encirclement and gradually retreat.

So this was the power of a Titled Douluo?

Tai Di struggled to wriggle amid the wreckage of his shattered armor. In just one exchange, six of his Soul Rings had been blown apart, and his internal organs had been smashed to pieces.

Hope the compensation for holding back the enemy is a little higher... He felt as though his life was beginning to flash before his eyes.

Step. Step. Step...

That Douluo with mismatched pupils stopped before his head.

With every bone in his body broken, he did not have even the slightest strength to turn his head.

From the corner of his eye, he saw the man bend down and pick up the communicator he had dropped.

Then, with a bang, an enormous foot crushed his vision.

From beginning to end, the Sun Moon Empire used its information advantage to exploit the Star Luo Empire's Shortcomings. For the first time, the communications network formed by communicators allowed long-range strikes to appear on the battlefield at scale. However, in the face of the Super Douluo who had rushed over to reinforce them, the Sun Moon side chose to avoid the edge of his strength for now.

Overall, however, the Sun Moon Empire suffered around fifteen hundred casualties while nearly wiping out the renowned White Tiger Legion, inflicting more than three thousand casualties upon them.

Of the Sun Moon Empire's losses, five hundred had been caused by the enraged White Tiger Duke.

Such a terrifying casualty ratio brought no excitement to the Sun Moon Empire's upper ranks. Instead, it made them even more fearful.

The detailed data for the Battle Soul Instrument had long since reached the Sun Moon Empire's emperor. The more he learned, the more terrified he became of Chen Fu, who could condense every program function into chips with utterly exaggerated performance.

Douluo Continent's backward Soul Tool knowledge was simply incapable of recognizing just how absurd that man had become!

They also had a Soul Engineer with a metal-manipulation-type martial soul, but that was completely different!

The violent machinery controlling an entire continent began to operate, and vast numbers of troops began pressing toward the Star Luo Border.

Although the outbreak of conflict had been abrupt for every nation, it was still acceptable for the relatively Psychologically Prepared Sun Moon Empire. It was just that many plans had not yet been completed, leaving them somewhat constrained when facing top-tier combatants.

But the Sun Moon Empire did not dare leave any more time.

If given the chance, perhaps they would have the honor of clashing with the Super Domain Mental Network created by [Youlan].

Of course, that was assuming [Youlan]'s future achievements did not crush their confidence first.

Bonus chapter for good brothers [Dou You Hen Gao Hen Gao] [Da Yu s Zhi Shui] [Xue Sheng Deng Feng] [Shu You 1327] (ω｀)