The next day.
The sky had only just begun to brighten.
A ground-shaking tremor came from the direction of the Royal Capital.
From several miles away, the Earl's soldiers could already see the black flood sweeping toward them.
It surged like a tsunami, as if it would swallow the whole world.
"Su Changge, can the ten thousand soldiers under your command and those trenches outside the city really stop an army this large?"
Xue Qinghe stood atop the camp walls, gazing into the distance with Su Changge, Pufferfish Douluo, and the Thirteenth Princess.
Staring at the endless black flood, she couldn't help drawing in a sharp breath.
She felt a twinge of regret. Why had she believed Su Changge's nonsense last night and agreed to fight a decisive battle here against the coalition of the Third Prince, the Fifth Prince, and the Seventh Princess, at such an inopportune time and place?
If they lost, wasting two months and countless resources would be the least of her worries.
But if word of this got back to the empire and reached the ears of the royal family's political enemies, she would lose face on a grand scale.
"Your Highness, rest easy!"
"Even if I were reckless, I wouldn't take my own forces and send them to their deaths, would I?"
As they spoke, the coalition army had already advanced to within two miles of the camp.
The Earl's soldiers had long since made their preparations in orderly fashion, following the plan they had rehearsed!
The Musket Cavalry were all mounted, ready to strike the enemy's flanks at any moment.
Three thousand musketeers had taken up positions in the trenches, waiting with their three-rank firing formation.
Three thousand sword-and-shield soldiers stood a hundred meters outside the camp, ready to provide support at any moment.
Behind them stood one hundred and eighty Divine Fire Thunderbolt Cannon V2.0s, calibrated for height and range... their firing range already covering the battlefield.
At the front of the enemy army,
the Third Prince, the Fifth Prince, and the Seventh Princess stood before their troops. To their left and right were seven or eight Soul Douluos and twenty or thirty top-tier Soul Masters at the Spirit Saint level.
The lineup was nothing short of magnificent.
With the hundred thousand troops arrayed behind them,
if their supplies held out, they would have enough strength to challenge Jialing Pass.
"Your Highness, should we gather a few squads of high-ranking Soul Masters and send them to break through the enemy lines?"
"With a flimsy defense like that, we could sweep away the enemy ahead in half an hour!"
Gazing at the soldiers of Murong Earldom ahead, two Soul Douluos from the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Clan leaned down and spoke softly.
Their tone was casual, but anyone could hear the disdain in their words.
"No. It's not your turn to act yet. Our true enemy isn't my Thirteenth Sister... If we take the initiative too soon, someone else will reap the rewards."
Seventh Princess Alice seemed pleased by the eagerness of the two Soul Douluos from the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Clan.
Across the entire Haagen-Dazs Kingdom, who besides Alice could get the Upper Three Sects' Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Clan to openly take her side?
After a brief discussion, the coalition army's central guards remained in place while the vanguard and both flanks—some seventy to eighty thousand troops in all—charged toward the Earl's camp the moment the war horns sounded...
"Kill!!!"
The roar of tens of thousands of soldiers raised billowing waves of bloodlust.
An ordinary civilian would have been scared to death at the sight alone.
As the enemy vanguard drew closer and closer to the trenches, the three thousand musketeers raised their Matchlock Muskets and aimed ahead.
At that moment, Su Changge, standing atop the camp walls, suddenly swung his hand down.
All one hundred and eighty Divine Fire Thunderbolt Cannon V2.0s unleashed their deathly roar almost simultaneously.
Whoosh... Boom!
Seeing the dark shapes hurtling through the sky, the coalition army paid them no heed, assuming the enemy was hurling stones with catapults.
In such a situation, retreating was usually the stupidest choice.
Only by pressing forward, past the catapults' blind spot, could they hope to survive.
Yet the instant those dark shapes struck the ground, the coalition soldiers realized they had been wrong—terribly, disastrously wrong.
With a sharp, piercing howl, the unknown projectiles tore through one heavily armored cavalryman and infantryman after another. Then, the moment they hit the ground, they burst into flames...
Roaring fire, scorching heat, and flying copper shrapnel turned the area within ten meters into a living hell.
Witnessing the carnage firsthand, the top fighters and trusted retainers on the Third Prince's, Fifth Prince's, and Seventh Princess's sides were utterly stunned. So were Xue Qinghe, Pufferfish Douluo, and the Thirteenth Princess, standing beside Su Changge.
What on earth was this scene before them?
As far as they knew, no weapon of war could unleash such terrifying power or cause such immense destruction...
"W-what in the world is that?!"
"Could it be a Soul Tool?!"
Fifth Prince Zoki was nearly scared out of his wits. His face pale, he stared at the scene and let out a terrified scream.
But what could such a senseless cry possibly change?
Amid the countless horrified stares of the coalition army, those unknown weapons of war roared once more.
One cannonball after another tore through the sky like blades from heaven, raining down upon the tens of thousands of coalition soldiers who had launched their attack.
"Damn it... Don't stop! Charge! We'll only survive if we make it through!!!"
By the time the one hundred and eighty Divine Fire Thunderbolt Cannon V2.0s had fired their tenth volley, and the coalition army had suffered nearly twenty thousand casualties, the vanguard finally reached the edge of the trenches.
Before the coalition's vanguard could catch its breath, a dense hail of gunfire rang across the plain.
The elite soldiers in heavy armor and their warhorses fell in rows like autumn rice beneath the scythe, struck by specially made spiral steel bullets.
Seen from above, they resembled an ocean receding with the tide.
No matter how many times the coalition army charged, they couldn't cross that chasm.
Watching seventy or eighty thousand coalition troops lose more than half their number in a mere ten-odd minutes, Xue Qinghe could no longer stay put.
She hurried forward and gripped Su Changge's shoulders tightly with both hands.
"Su... Chang...ge!!! Those things you call cannons and Matchlock Muskets—what are they?!"
"These are the little toys you mentioned?"
As Pope Bibi Dong's daughter and someone who had spent so many years as the Crown Prince of the Heaven Dou Empire, her breadth of vision... surpassed that of 99.999 percent of the people in the world.
If Su Changge had twice as many cannons and Matchlock Muskets, they would be powerful enough to breach Jialing Pass!
Wherever their blades pointed, nothing could stand in their way.
In an emperor's hands, they would be strategic weapons capable of overturning the balance of power across the continent.
"Y-Your Highness, please calm down. Calm down."
"I know what you're thinking."
"But strictly speaking, there's nothing especially high-tech about these things. If they're used on a large scale, sooner or later the enemy will manage to copy them..."
"If Your Highness is interested, I can give you all the blueprints for making these little toys."
Seeing Xue Qinghe's face drawing closer and closer, Su Changge kept backing away.
If it had been Qian Renxue herself, he might well have leaned in of his own accord...
But he couldn't handle a man.