Whoooom—
A heavy horn sound cut through the silence of the snowfield, echoing over Lita’s head as if it wanted to stir her brain.
“Something’s wrong,” Shirley said, her face tense as she squeezed her horse’s belly with both legs, forcing it to speed up. Several Rangers also flicked their reins and accelerated. Even though Lita didn’t know what was happening yet, following their lead and speeding up seemed like the right move.
After advancing a few dozen more meters, one horn call subsided, then another rang out. A sense of unease began to spread in Lita’s heart and quickly infected the entire group. Shirley’s expression grew even more solemn.
Then came a rumbling from the other side of the Great Wall. The pony pulling Cecilia’s carriage immediately started whinnying restlessly. Lita stroked the mane on its neck several times, but still couldn’t calm it down.
Another loud crash followed. Snow on the buildings was shaken loose, turning into a scattered mist. This unnatural earthquake made Lita instantly guess that something bad had probably already happened.
“Something’s attacking the wall?”
Shirley’s voice and the third horn call sounded almost simultaneously. Lita noticed that the faces of the Rangers beside her were all uglier than ever before.
“Your Highness, the Fourth Princess! I’ll escort you only this far! Please keep yourself safe!” Shirley gritted her teeth, pulled the reins, and shouted loudly, then whipped the reins and galloped off. The four Rangers followed behind her, spurring their horses forward.
After the third call, the noise that had been drowned out by the horns surged into Lita’s mind like a tide. The camp within her sight had turned into a mess, though it was still somewhat orderly. Many soldiers who hadn’t even finished changing clothes were running wildly through the camp, all heading to the same destination as Shirley: that icy Great Wall.
“Lita, go help.” Cecilia’s stern voice came from inside the carriage.
“Lady Cecilia, what about you?”
“Even if we enter the camp now, I doubt anyone will serve us roast meat and hot water. It’s safest right here,” Cecilia replied. “The danger at the wall won’t reach the carriage for now. The carriage also has heating facilities. I’ll be fine. Helping them solve the trouble is the best protection for me.”
Lita nodded. The current situation didn’t allow for hesitation. Lita raised her sword and directly cut the harness connecting the still-trembling pony to the carriage. Then she mounted the pony and galloped toward the wall, following Shirley’s figure that hadn’t yet disappeared.
Lita did this partly to prevent the frightened pony from pulling the carriage away or overturning it, and partly to conserve energy when possible.
When Shirley saw Lita catching up on horseback, she first showed a slightly surprised expression, but upon seeing Lita’s drawn sword, she understood most of it. Then, disregarding any relationship between them, she gave Lita an order: “Over there, you can take the winch up to the arrow window. Then there will be ropes for us to climb over to the other side of the wall!”
Lita looked in the direction Shirley indicated. Sure enough, several large winches were working, with people climbing onto them one after another. Then a few soldiers in charge would turn the winches together, lifting the people up to the wall.
But judging by Shirley’s direction, her destination wasn’t those winches at all.
“What about you?” Lita asked.
“No time. I’m going straight up,” Shirley said. At the nearest ice staircase, she dismounted, lifted her foot, and dashed up the man-made icy path that looked daunting. Her flying Icefield Wolf Cloak made her look like a gray butterfly flapping its wings higher and higher.
The four Rangers followed closely behind, dismounting and quickly ascending the stairs. Lita followed with her sword. She climbed the extremely long staircase at her fastest speed, almost slipping a few times from losing control, until she finally reached the nearest arrow window.
It wasn’t so much an arrow window as a square hole carved through the wall, two and a half meters high and barely wide enough for three people to walk side by side.
Shirley leaned on one knee, panting heavily for a few breaths, then saw Lita land lightly behind her without even a flushed face or racing heart, followed by her Rangers. A bit more respect showed in Shirley’s eyes.
The soldier stationed at the arrow window immediately cried out in surprise when he saw Shirley: “Miss Shirley!”
“Spare the nonsense. What’s going on?” Shirley hurried forward a few steps.
“It’s the Alien Ghosts. They suddenly went mad and started attacking the wall. I don’t know more than that, but all the brothers who can move have been mobilized.”
As the soldier spoke, another violent tremor spread under their feet, sending fine ice powder falling from the low ceiling. Even though a thick layer of sand was spread on the ground, the soldier still nearly fell on his backside from the shaking.
“The situation is grim now. The Alien Ghosts have deployed far more forces than usual…”
Rather than listen to the soldier, Lita thought it better to see for herself. She stepped directly to the arrow window and looked down from a height at the battle below.
Dozens of meters below the wall, the first thing that caught Lita’s eye was a row of giants, each about six or seven meters tall. The giants held giant bone hammers made from some animal’s bones, repeatedly pounding the huge ice wall. Under their blows, only a few pieces of ice broke off, but if this continued, no one knew whether the wall might eventually crack open.
At least for now, the Great Wall was still steadily guarding the safety behind.
At the feet of the giants, countless shadows surged. Under Lita’s Night Vision, she could clearly see what they were: humans—or rather Corpse Ghosts, the same things as the Corpse Ghost girl she had seen before. Only these were far moreç‹‚æš´, wildly swinging elongated sharp claws, leaving scratches of varying depths on the soldiers who had already rushed to the front or on the ice wall.
Behind the human Corpse Ghosts was a giant mammoth about five meters tall, its body covered in a layer of pale blue ice powder, with varying degrees of damage on its hooves and flanks. From its lifeless pupils, it was clear that this mammoth was also a Corpse Ghost.
On the mammoth sat a burly man with pale skin. His height wasn’t as exaggerated as the six- or seven-meter giants, but based on Lita’s estimate, he was well over two meters. A set of shiny bone armor and a huge battle axe in his hand made him look like some tribal chieftain—though ordinary tribal chiefs wouldn’t make armor from human bones.
Although this man was the smallest among the non-human Corpse Ghosts—though two meters could hardly be called small—he gave Lita an extremely dangerous vibe. As Lita studied him, the man on the mammoth also raised his eyebrows and looked toward Lita at the wall.
Just that one glance made Lita feel as if she had been through a blizzard. The chill was far more biting than walking through the snowfield for days.
“Alien Ghost.” The name rang in Lita’s heart.
Before Lita could think further, an even larger tremor came. Only then did Lita notice the true source of the vibrations. She should have noticed earlier, since the target was so huge, but the limited view from the wall prevented her from seeing him at first.
He was also a giant, but nearly ten times taller than the ones Lita had seen. Pale skin wrapped around the most exaggerated muscles Lita had ever seen. He was slowly raising a fist large enough to hold two Alien Ghosts sitting on mammoths, and smashing it toward the wall.
Sure enough, the vibrations felt even outside the camp struck again. This big guy was also an Alien Ghost.
But he just looked exaggerated. Lita had plenty of ways to deal with such clumsy big things.
While Lita observed below, the creaking sound of the winch grew closer. A few soldiers hurriedly descended from the winch and rushed past Lita.
“Lower the ropes. You go down,” Shirley glanced behind her and immediately ordered.
“Miss Shirley, what about you?”
“I have my own way,” Shirley said, leaping out of the window. The steel-spiked soles of her boots scraped against the huge ice wall, leaving a long shallow white mark. Several Rangers followed Shirley, using their gloves and spiked shoes to create friction on the ice wall to slow their descent.
Lita naturally didn’t want to be outdone. She jumped straight out of the window. When she tried to stab her silver longsword into the ice wall, she found it as hard as a solid block of obsidian. Her first attempt didn’t even pierce it.
Lita flung her cloak, covering her forearm with the fur. The Succubus’s nails replaced the sword, leaving a long scratch on the ice wall to slow her fall. Before landing, she had already lost sight of Shirley, but below were all enemies. She just needed to fight.
The moment she set foot on solid ground, her elongated nails returned to normal. Her silver longsword gleamed with cold light as she directly sliced off the heads of the nearest Corpse Ghosts.
This stunning series of moves made a soldier exclaim, “Who is she?!”
Immediately someone shouted, “Who cares who she is! She’s here to help us! Have you ever seen a Corpse Ghost in a fur cloak?”
Lita cast those voices aside. With each swing of her sword, the moment she entered the battlefield, she cleared out an empty space, greatly reducing the pressure on the soldiers resisting the Corpse Ghosts’ assault. Good. With her previous experience fighting swarms of insects, cutting down humanoid creatures was now even smoother.
But while killing one insect from a swarm left a swarm still there, Corpse Ghosts simply couldn’t be killed. Even after she beheaded them, their bodies still lunged at her with sharp claws, forcing her to add two more strikes.
Lita noticed that other soldiers prioritized attacking joints over hearts or heads. As long as they lost the ability to resist, even if they were still alive, it didn’t matter much. Lita imitated them, and her pressure immediately lessened.
But these ordinary humanoid Corpse Ghosts were manageable. The giants—or more precisely, the Corpse Ghost giants—were troublesome. Though they looked roughly human, they were no different from living siege beasts. Damaging their joints to completely immobilize them was no easy task.
Swoosh—
A giant crossbow bolt shot out from an arrow window, piercing straight through the giant’s chest. But the giant only staggered a few steps, then angrily swung its bone hammer toward the arrow window that had just fired. A scream rang out. Several soldiers climbing down ropes from the arrow window were crushed into pulp, leaving barely noticeable traces of red on the wall.
The battle situation was growing increasingly dire.