The dragons continued flying onward. Their enormous, scorching bodies burned the high-altitude storm clouds into vapor, sending it billowing skyward and leaving a clear, broad passage through the clouds. They passed through the Gallic Empire's central Steel Ridge Province, once the empire's most important metal-producing region. Not only was it rich, but the miners' sons who lived there were naturally fierce, brave, and warlike, making them a major source of recruits for the Gallic Empire's Imperial Guard.
But today's Steel Ridge Province had become a battlefield where the other races and the undead faced off.
On the western side of Steel Ridge Province, the beastmen had established a massive camp stretching three hundred miles. This camp held several million inherently savage beastmen and half-beastmen. From there, they could attack Berely and the surrounding provinces to the north at any time, or drive straight south in an invasion, directly threatening the Holy Mountain's flank—or simply charging into the densely populated southern regions of the Western Continent.
Yet the beastmen's strategic ambitions had been utterly shattered by the hundreds of millions of undead troops stationed less than a hundred miles away, likewise stretching for hundreds of miles across the eastern part of Steel Ridge Province. An immense undead army numbering in the hundreds of millions stood packed in neat ranks across the east of the province. These undead could launch an attack on the beastman army at any moment, pinning the beastmen here so completely that they could not move at all.
According to the military reports Lin Qi had received recently, the beastmen's secret envoys had repeatedly requested an audience with the commander of this undead army. But every time, the mastermind behind it all, the Dragon Witch King, had beaten the beastman envoys until their backsides blossomed before throwing them