After activating the blood-red seal of Divine Baptism, Zhang Tie triggered the Invisibility Mirage Pearl and waited quietly in a vast cave on the mountain that had once been home to brown bears.
Night had just fallen. In the distance, Coldwater City seemed to have quieted into desolation, but the nighttime struggle between the Human Allied Forces and the Holy Alliance Empire had only just begun. Both sides had committed large numbers of troops to the ruined city. Bloody, ruthless slaughter went on without cease. With darkness obscuring the ground, neither side's aerial cavalry could make out the situation below, while the Human Allied Forces' special operations squads had mixed completely into the Holy Alliance Empire's troops like pine nuts scattered through bread.
The occasional figure of a Winged Devil flew across the skies above Coldwater City. Concealed within the clouds, they would emerge from time to time to scout the city or observe the movements of the Human Allied Forces' main camp south of Coldwater City. Even when a Winged Devil occasionally flew lower, it would never dare descend below three hundred meters. At that range, the Human Allied Forces' heavy crossbows could pose a lethal threat to them.
Before Torch Oil was invented, ground weapons—especially bows and crossbows—posed little threat to Winged Devils. But after its invention, and especially after an endless stream of Torch Oil weapons had been produced, explosive flame arrows that turned into balls of fire in midair became the nemesis of Winged Devils, leaving them defenseless. Any ordinary Winged Devil whose speed in the sky was no greater than that of the bolts could be shot down. Once those bolts were fired and exploded in midair, they became a vast rain of fire. Once that fiery rain touched the body, it would not go