Ouyang Mingyue was miserable now. She had originally intended to use her trump card, the Desert Star, to launch a pincer attack and smoothly rout the Self-Defense Army.
But now, not only had everything come to nothing, the Self-Defense Army's counterattack had inflicted devastating losses on the Desert Star. What was she supposed to do now?
Return to Firmament City?
Or withdraw, abandon Firmament City, and pull the battle line back inland?
Yet the mere thought of the civil officials at court sent a chill down her spine. If she dared abandon Firmament City, they would probably point their fingers at her until she died. But if she did not abandon it, she and the hundreds of thousands of Cangling Kingdom soldiers might be trapped inside until they died.
Alas, now that things had reached this point, whom could she blame? It was not that she lacked courage. When the decision had first been made to invade Shenzhou, her million-strong army had swept all before it, seizing Primordial City and thousands of miles of surrounding territory with the speed of thunder striking before anyone could cover their ears. Those military achievements were real.
But, but everything that had originally gone so smoothly had changed completely after she encountered the Self-Defense Army.
Had she lost to Jiang Hao, she would have had nothing to say. But losing to that damned fatty left her utterly unreconciled!
Yet that was the reality. Even ten thousand grievances could not erase the fact that she had lost. Retreat!
Her only choice now was to abandon a city to preserve her forces. Otherwise, once the remaining hundreds of thousands of troops under her command were gone, there would be even less standing in the Self-Defense Army's way as it drove straight into the country.
As for