The room was the same, the people were the same. Compared to the first time he had met Zuo Qiu Mingyue here, nothing seemed to have changed. Yet Zhang Tie noticed that after more than half a year apart, Zuo Qiu Mingyue was still as graceful and lean as ever, his eyes bright—but at his temples, a few barely noticeable strands of white had silently appeared. Zhang Tie sighed inwardly.
The pressure borne by the old man before him, whose build was hardly imposing, was truly beyond what ordinary people could imagine. A man seated in his position faced the pressure of countless Devil Race Knights and Devil Race legions before him, while behind him converged the hopes of hundreds of millions throughout the empire. The Helan Mountains and Wei River line had now become the focal battlefield of this Holy War between humanity and the Devil Race. Even a man of iron would likely shatter beneath such pressure, yet the old man before him had not shattered. Having steadied Great Xia's western defensive line, he still stood here, straight-backed, calmly welcoming the coming storm.
Though Zhang Tie had not been on the front lines over the past half year, he knew all the same that the Devil Race army had been pressing forward step by step. The Devil Race legions and Knight forces were drawing ever closer to the Helan Mountains and Wei River line. Over the past six months, Zuo Qiu Mingyue had commanded the Knights of Xuanyuan Fortress and the frontline battle fortresses, using several brilliant instances of "Sawtooth Tactics." Leveraging the speed and aerial advantages of the flying battle fortresses, and coordinating with the frontline Knights, he had sliced the vanguard formations of the Devil Race army into a scattered mess, achieving enormous results. It was