Twin moons hung high in the sky, bright moonlight scattered beneath sparse stars. A large squad of Winged Devil knights—more than a hundred strong—flew overhead like a spectral shadow. In barely two hours, they had circled and patrolled the skies above these mountains twice.
Below the path of those Winged Devil knights, atop a gnarled old pine stubbornly growing from a cliff face, a tiny black beetle crouched amid a cluster of pine needles, looking up at the sky.
That little black beetle was naturally Zhang Tie's external incarnation.
This was Elephant Mountain County in Martial Prefecture, where Zhang Tie had emerged from underground and slain Devil Race knights that day. By the watery moonlight, Zhang Tie could even make out Elephant Mountain City in the distance.
In just a few months, everything here had changed.
By the end of January, all soldiers and civilians in the areas of Martial Prefecture, Blessing Province, and Silver Province within the Western Pacification Protectorate Theater that lay outside Devil Race-occupied territory had completed their evacuation. Only Great Xia's knights remained, holding the region west of the Helan Mountains with Xuanyuan Fortress at its core. Now, apart from Great Xia citizens in the fallen territories, scarcely any Great Xia soldiers or civilians could be seen in Martial Prefecture, Blessing Province, or Silver Province.
The clash between Great Xia and the Devil Race in the Western Pacification Protectorate Theater had gradually intensified, slowly reaching a white-hot stage. One only needed to look at the number of scouts and vanguard units dispatched by the Devil Race to know it.
When Zhang Tie had first arrived in the Western Theater, the Devil Race's scouting vanguards had consisted of one or two solitary Devil Race knights.
Three months ago, the number of Devil Race knights in their scouting