Total War

In the Firmament's spacetime, at Thunderclap Arsenal Base.

Black smoke blotted out the sky above the canyon.

Outside this steel camp, thick with heavy-industry pollution and the smell of machine oil, a double-track railway cast from refined iron stretched toward the far end of the wasteland.

The day-and-night roar of steam engines and massive lathes had become the only refrain in these mountains.

Lin Fan stood on a platform beside the tracks, his work clothes smeared with coal dust and oil.

A cheap hand-rolled cigarette hung from his lips. As he looked over the railway network spreading across the mountains, a contented smile slowly touched his lips.

[Ding! Base logistics infrastructure completion: 100%!]

[Prerequisites met! Congratulations, Host, on unlocking the industrial marvel—the Steam Heavy Armored Train!]

"Wooooo—!!!"

As the system notification faded, a shrill whistle erupted from the giant assembly workshop deep in the canyon, as though it meant to tear the heavens apart!

The earth shook. Loose stones pattered down.

Under the fervent gaze of two hundred soldiers of the new commoner army, a behemoth covered in several-inch-thick riveted rifled steel plating belched rolling black smoke. With a deafening ka-chunk, ka-chunk on the rails, it slowly emerged from the workshop's shadow into the daylight!

It was a multi-turret heavy armored train armed to the teeth!

At its front jutted a solid-steel cowcatcher like a giant guillotine, powerful enough to smash through a Martial Soul Avatar.

Countless firing ports crowded both sides of the train.

And atop the steel carriages, which stretched over a hundred meters, rose three heavy armored turrets capable of rotating a full three hundred and sixty degrees!

Mounted on each turret was a breech-loading rifled howitzer modified to its absolute limit!

Lin Fan planted one hand on the railing and leaped onto the steel leviathan's highest turret.

The wind whipped his coal-dusted hair into disarray. He took the cigarette butt from his mouth and flicked it against the cold, heavy barrel.

"Finally filled in the last missing piece of this lousy defense game."

Lin Fan gently stroked the gun. "Heavy artillery's biggest weakness is poor mobility. Now the cannons are on rails, that problem's gone! This thing's a mobile steel fortress that can tear across the battlefield at eighty kilometers an hour!"

"Come on, then! Let's see whether your health bars can take a pounding from my three rifled cannons!"

Spirit Hall, the Papal Palace.

Bang—!!!

The reigning pope, Qian Xunji—a man to whom all living beings were ants—had eyes red as blood. Fear had twisted his once handsome, imposing face into the visage of a ravenous demon.

"Madman... That Yu Xiaogang is a complete madman!!!"

Qian Xunji roared through the empty hall.

He stared at the armored train slowly pulling away in the intelligence report, and at the commoners who could wield destructive power without a trace of Soul Power.

Every new weapon Lin Fan cobbled together in those mountains slapped Spirit Hall's ten-thousand-year sacred rule, built upon Soul Master bloodlines, across the face once more!

This was no longer a slap in the face. He was digging up Spirit Hall's ancestral graves!

"We can't wait any longer! We can't let him develop further!" Qian Xunji raised the Pope Token, symbol of Spirit Hall's supreme authority.

Deep in the hall, beneath a statue radiant with the light of the Six-Winged Angel, Great Enshrined Qian Daoliu stood with his hands behind his back and watched his son's frenzy coldly.

He did not stop him. Even he, a Limit Douluo, had felt an uncontrollable shudder in his convictions when he saw that armored train.

"Pass down my supreme papal decree!!!"

Qian Xunji's voice pierced the Papal Palace and echoed over all of Spirit City.

"At any cost! Summon the Titled Douluo of the Elder Hall tonight!"

"Mobilize twenty Soul Douluo above level eighty! Assemble Spirit Hall's six thousand finest troops of the Ironclad Holy Knight Corps!"

"Every last one of you, march on Fasinuo Province! March on that wretched place called Tack Town!"

Fire that could burn everything to ash blazed in Qian Xunji's bloodshot eyes. "I want that wasteland, those deep mountains, and those lowborn wretches with their iron tubes wiped utterly from the face of this world! Leave not one alive!!!"

With the decree issued, the flames of war in both spacetime realms were stoked together to the brink of explosion!

The real world, above Tack Town in Fasinuo Province.

Black clouds hung like an overturned sea of ink, weighing on every heart.

The air was thick with suffocating Soul Power pressure and the smell of gunpowder.

Within the Firmament, Spirit Hall's army of gods and demons, led by Titled Douluo, had become streams of light that blotted out the sky as it marched toward Tack Town.

And at the edge of the massive pit in the real world stood the great powers facing one another—Chrysanthemum Douluo, Ghost Douluo, Sword Douluo Chen Xin, Thunder Douluo Yu Yuanzhen...

Every expert at the pinnacle of the continent clenched his fists at that moment, breathing harder than ever before.

They stared at the Firmament in the sky, not daring even to blink.

Everyone knew this was no simple campaign of extermination.

It was a colossal gamble that would decide the fate of Douluo Continent for the next ten thousand years!

In the Firmament's spacetime.

If Spirit Hall's army of gods and demons won and tore that armored train to pieces, the class rule of the old era could continue to cling to life. Those exalted Titled Douluo could go on living like gods among men.

But if... if Lin Fan's steel beast won...

If even Titled Douluo and an entire organized corps of armored knights fell to commoners' guns and cannons...

Then nothing in this world could stop the age of commoners from dawning!

Gods would be crushed beneath the treads of industry!

In that suffocating atmosphere, even the usually flamboyant Chrysanthemum Douluo could not help swallowing against a dry throat.

At the same time.

Atop the towering walls of Heaven Dou Imperial City.

Xue Ye stood alone on the battlements, gripping the cold bricks with both hands. He raised his head to watch the vast, clear image in the Firmament.

In the image, Lin Fan stood on the armored train's turret.

Under the horrified gaze of countless people watching the Firmament, Lin Fan lifted a High-Explosive Armor-Piercing Shell as thick as a grown man's thigh with one arm and smoothly pushed it into the rifled howitzer's breech.

Click!

The heavy breech slammed shut like a death knell for the old era.

Xue Ye watched the pitch-black muzzle rise slowly and aim toward the Spirit Hall army soon to appear on the horizon.

The imperial ruler who had once held the lives of hundreds of millions in his hands trembled violently at the lips, his eyes filled with endless despair.

"The war has begun..."

Xue Ye murmured to himself, his voice vanishing into the howling wind.

"The total war between gods and commoners... is about to begin."