The campaign to wipe out the rebels on Mulberry Sunset Isle could only be described as a wind sweeping away the last clouds. Before long, the rebel warriors who had hoped to buy time were crushed by the cavalry led by Gui Ji, the Blackwater Wolf King. The torrent of riders racing around them left their vaunted archery utterly useless. That dizzying whirl made it impossible to take calm aim at the charging enemy as they once had. Even when their wildly loosed arrows struck, these foes were nothing like the Sea Beast Fish Spirits they had shot before. Every one of them had thick hide and tough flesh; an occasional arrow left them seemingly unhurt, and they simply charged on. There was even an Ironhoof Rhinoceros in the enemy ranks bristling with arrows like a hedgehog or porcupine, yet it still thundered forward with its head down, as though the shafts sticking out of it were mere stalks of straw!
Thus the "mighty bows and powerful crossbows" of Nanba's three isles, long renowned throughout the ocean, lost almost all their force against these unprecedented enemies and became little more than playthings.
Had that been all, the rebels across the island would have been annihilated in moments. Just then, however, an unexpected change swept through the battlefield beneath the army's gaze.
The cavalry from the mainland plains swept unhindered in every direction. As they gradually approached the island's center, where the fleeing rebels were gathering, an enormous tower suddenly thrust up from underground. Several dozen feet across, it rose higher and higher until it pierced the clouds. Its base was cylindrical, but its outline grew more angular toward the top, ending in six corners riddled with openings. It looked like the sharply faceted arrow tower of a fortress.
No one