That prompt left Ye Tianxie puzzled, and he turned it over carefully… Why would the System go out of its way to announce that he had defeated a hundred Warrior’s Departed Spirits? Did a hundred kills bring out some other kind of undead, or trigger the next element of the quest?

Ye Tianxie’s guess did not come true. With a hair-raising sound and tremor running through the Ten Thousand Bone Ruins around him, another great swathe of Warrior’s Departed Spirits appeared in the far distance and came closing on him fast, carrying a heavy air of death and anger with them… and this time the number had plainly doubled again. A full hundred of them.

Is there no end to this… Ye Tianxie set his teeth, measured the distances around him by eye, and took up position at the dead center of the ring. A cordon a full hundred strong — it was fair to say this was the first time since entering the World of Fate that he had faced a hundred enemies alone. If these had been level 25 monsters he would have had a headache over it for a good while; a hundred level 20 monsters he could still take in his stride. Five levels’ difference, and yet one he could one-shot and the other he could not.

He used the same trick again. As that hundred-odd Warrior’s Departed Spirits closed, Yaoyao’s Mystic Spirit Cure one-shot a great swathe of them on the instant; and when the next wave closed, the crimson Wall of Vengeance opened with Yaoyao’s body at its center, driving every Warrior’s Departed Spirit that came near back out and devouring their lives without mercy.

A Warrior’s Departed Spirit had no true consciousness. The death-consciousness held up by a will to fight and to guard could only drive them to attack an intruder without stopping until they had killed it. And faced with the Wall of Vengeance’s repulsion and the powerful damage attached to it, they still charged forward without pausing… and at their movement speed, once thrown out they had no way of reaching Ye Tianxie before the Wall of Vengeance flashed again. So they were thrown out again and again, and fell in swathe after swathe, and the ones behind swarmed straight up over them, one rank pressing on where the last had fallen…

Today Ye Tianxie had been shown another of Yaoyao’s terrible capabilities… its extraordinary killing power against undead creatures. Meanwhile Xiaobei, with all its violent attributes, stood on the horse’s rump watching wide-eyed as rank after rank of enemies went down, with no chance to raise a paw at all.

The Wall of Vengeance held for twenty seconds at most. Under the Warrior’s Departed Spirits’ suicidal charging, the crimson barrier flashed a fifteenth time, and the last of them was driven out and fell outside it, scattering into a heap of battered armor.

“Ding… You have defeated two hundred Warrior’s Departed Spirits.”

It was another prompt counting off the undead he had cut down. Ye Tianxie had been thinking it over quietly for less than five seconds when the ground in the distance stirred again, and Warrior’s Departed Spirits appeared around him once more, advancing in a perfectly even step, carrying an invisible force of presence that shook the heart — and with one target, and one only. Ye Tianxie.

And the number was two hundred!

Two hundred… Ye Tianxie began at last to feel a little pressure. With his overall strength, the best way to defeat two hundred Warrior’s Departed Spirits with no danger to himself was to pick a direction, break out fast, and then attack in circles, cutting them down piece by piece. The earlier method was fast, certainly, but once he was surrounded the risk went up enormously.

Ye Tianxie hesitated a moment, and still did not move. He waited quietly for them to close. And as before, at exactly the right moment, Yaoyao’s Mystic Spirit Cure went off…

White light blazed, and thirty-odd Warrior’s Departed Spirits turned into one more corner of the Ten Thousand Bone Ruins. And at that moment Ye Tianxie finally moved too. He drove forward, and as he came up on the ranks of Departed Spirits he withdrew the Blood-Sweating Steed, and Yaoyao and Xiaobei with it. Dragon Shadow Slash went off abruptly, and he went straight through the packed wall of them trailing a streak of light like lightning, throwing up a string of red damage figures as he passed. The instant he came to a stop he wheeled, and the pitch-black Hour of Fate swung, carving out two black arcs one after another across the widest sweep it could cover, killing every Warrior’s Departed Spirit in the small patch in front of him.

Xiaobei’s attack power was outrageous and its ability in single combat was horrifying, but the way it attacked meant it was not suited to a group fight. Meow-Meow Step might be impossible to predict, but inside a dense crowd of enemies an evasion-and-ambush skill was so much dead weight. For its safety, Ye Tianxie withdrew Xiaobei along with Yaoyao… and what he meant to do was wipe out these two hundred level 20 Warrior’s Departed Spirits by himself.

In fact, with his current health and attack power, that was not so very difficult a task.

Ye Tianxie stopped driving forward and instead retreated at a nicely judged speed. There were plenty of enemies, but they had only the conviction to guard and to attack; having no intelligence was their fatal flaw. Knowing nothing but attack, they were very easily led along entirely at Ye Tianxie’s direction. The Departed Spirits’ movement speed was roughly the same as Ye Tianxie’s, and once he was up on the Blood-Sweating Steed he was leading them about by the nose. Three steps back, turn and attack, kill a small patch, fall back a short way again before more of them could pour in, and attack again…

Round and round like that, and after a minute thirty-odd Warrior’s Departed Spirits lay dead. Ye Tianxie looked rather glumly at the swathe of them still hard on his heels, thought back to the ease and comfort with which Yaoyao had killed these things in batches, and felt his grievance about having no area attack deepen by several degrees. He summoned Yaoyao, stopped retreating, and turned and charged into the ranks of the Departed Spirits himself.

Yaoyao’s Mystic Spirit Cure went off and cleared a vacuum ten meters across around them. Ye Tianxie swung the Hour of Fate as he pleased, using the Blood-Sweating Steed’s speed to break left and right through the enemy’s ranks with all the air of one rider worth a thousand men… when in fact, for all his attacking without a pause, one strike after another, he was clearing Warrior’s Departed Spirits more slowly than a single Mystic Spirit Cure every five seconds.

Yaoyao’s skills did not need it to close with the enemy at all. It stood on the horse’s back, well shielded against his chest, and with his astonishing judgment and footwork it was essentially never going to be hurt by a Warrior’s Departed Spirit.

“Ding… Your pet ‘Xiaobei’ has risen to level 6…”

“Ding… You have successfully defeated three hundred Warrior’s Departed Spirits.”

Half a minute later…

“Ding… You have successfully defeated four hundred Warrior’s Departed Spirits.”

Another whole wave of these Departed Spirits, which came on as though they cost nothing, was wiped out. Between Yaoyao’s Mystic Spirit Cure and the Warrior’s Departed Spirits’ habit of closing at full strength without ever once knowing what it meant to spread out, defeating those two hundred had taken less than three short minutes.

Never mind a party of twelve level 20 players — twelve level 30 players, every one of them a Priest, could not possibly have reached a speed as astonishing as that against enemies like these.

“Ding… You have killed four hundred Warrior’s Departed Spirits within five minutes, and have triggered the hidden branch of the ‘Bones of the War God’ quest — the Wrath of the Guardian Departed Spirits!”

As the prompt faded, a pressure like a mountain toppling and a sea overturning struck in from every direction… It was the iron air of a kind that exists only on a battlefield saturated with blood and with fighting spirit. That force of presence made even Ye Tianxie’s breathing suddenly difficult.

The unbearable smell of rot showed signs of thinning, as though even the air off those thousands upon thousands of bones had been pressed flat by this new one.

Battered armor and weapons whirled up and crossed through the air like sand thrown into the sky, and their rising left the ground bare of everything but bone — whole bones, broken bones, and the sight of them struck the heart.

Ye Tianxie’s scalp began to crawl… still Warrior’s Departed Spirits.

And a solid black mass of them!

When no more armor or weaponry rose, those battered pieces, silent for who knew how many years, had been forged into a formation of a particular kind… or rather, into an army.

An army a thousand strong!

The thousand-strong formation had closed into a perfect ring with not a gap in it, and at its center was Ye Tianxie, alone on his horse.

“Ding… Because you have killed four hundred Warrior’s Departed Spirits within five minutes, you have roused the anger of every dormant departed spirit in the surrounding region, and the undying will to guard and to fight has woken them. You will be facing their combined assault, one thousand strong. Good luck.”

Ye Tianxie: “……”

A thousand men attacking one — and the one being himself. The feeling of it sent Ye Tianxie’s heartbeat climbing beyond his control. The thousand-strong formation took its first step at last, and with that one step the earth shook and the mountains moved.

At the Heaven Soul Graveyard he had triggered a hidden quest branch by disposing of the departed spirit of the Heaven Soul mercenary corps’ commander too quickly — a branch that resurrected every member of the corps, and was several times harder than “Relic of the Mercenary King” itself. And this time, again for destroying the Warrior’s Departed Spirits too fast, a terrible hidden branch had opened for him.

If this had been an ordinary party of twelve, what shock and what despair would they have felt facing an enemy like this? Probably the best choice at this point — very likely the only choice — would be to use a Town Portal Scroll and get out immediately, before stepping inside their aggro range.

But if Ye Tianxie chose to run, he would not be Ye Tianxie.

He drew a long breath, swept his eyes around him, calculated how long they would take to close, then lowered his head and said quietly, “Yaoyao, it’s on you… Use everything you have, hold nothing back at all! With you here we can win — and win easily.”

Yaoyao raised its head, looked at Ye Tianxie with eyes like white crystal, and nodded gently.

(End of Chapter 216)