Chapter 655: The Flames of War Rage
Humans would definitely not let the Demonic Air Ripping Eyes wreak havoc in the air.
A large number of offensive armored airships had more than one hundred cannons installed. These airships had blimps with a streamlined design, and they were light as well as highly mobile They continued patrolling the aerial supply line, and they launched repeated attacks at the Demonic Air Ripping Eyes.
Aside from having so many cannons that they looked like steel hedgehogs, these armored airships also had dozens of high-powered crystal horns on them. They kept playing exciting military songs that could motivate the people so that they could largely minimize the mental damages from the Demonic Air Ripping Eyes.
Sometimes, around five armored airships surrounded a Demonic Air Ripping Eye, and dozens of crystal horns were trained on that Demonic Air Ripping Eye. Then, the military songs would be blasted at full volume.
The mental and spirit energy fluctuations were enough to make the Demonic Air Ripping Eye suffer from a psychological backlash, and it would explode and die.
Besides, as transportation airships risked h.e.l.l and fire to reach Burning Island, most of the anti-aircraft machine guns and anti-aircraft artillery were built and stationed in place. The only things missing now were the artillery bases.
Deafening roars rose. As if the world had been turned upside down, burning rain rose from the ground to the sky, tearing the Demonic Air Ripping Eyes into shreds. Gas spilled out of their bodies, and they fled helter-skelter.
Naturally, however, the Demonic Air Ripping Eyes were not the only aerial forces in the monster civilization.
A large number of falcon-type and griffin-type monsters flew one thousand meters above the ground and glided above the clouds. They dived down swiftly, and their attack trajectories were basically perpendicular to the ground. Like ordnance penetrators, they rammed into the humans’ artillery bases, anti-aircraft machine gun bases, armories, tactical hospitals, forts, and other places where humanity’s firepower were gathered.
The motion itself was already enough to create shockwaves and several huge holes. Besides, there were lice, fleas, and other insect-type monsters hiding in the feathers. Their bodily fluids also carried strong venom and were highly acidic.
These swift attackers were something the airships could not stop.
Even if the anti-aircraft machine guns could rip them into shreds, their highly polluted carca.s.ses carried vermin that had fatal bacteria in them. These things spilled down like rain and fell on the humans’ heads.
If the monster horde was just made up of stupid creatures like thousands of Demonic Halberd Pigs, Iron Armored Rhinoceroses, and other such things, then led by a h.e.l.l Beast like the Tyrant Mammoth to launch simple and crude attacks at the humans’ iron defenses, then the humans could just hide behind the mine formations, automatic gun towers, electromagnetic towers, machine guns, and artillery bases while taking their lives at a relaxed pace.
Even if some of the st.u.r.dier beasts were able to tear down the humans’ iron walls and appear in front of the humans, they would definitely be exhausted and covered in wounds. They could not possibly be the humans’ opponents.
However, the greatest difference between the monster civilization and monsters was also their most terrifying aspect. The monsters in the monster civilization did not have a lot of their offensive and defensive parameters increase and become really st.u.r.dy or have really sharp claws. Instead, the monsters learned how to set up formations and have multiple types of soldiers in each squad.
For example, when this sort of large-scale monster horde launched a suicidal charge, they would first send aerial forces to create non-stop hara.s.sment, then fire off vermin and bacteria in the sky. This alone made things really hard for humans.
At that moment, Blade Dancer Gu Jianbo and Griffin Li Yingzi, along with a large number of Heaven Realm superhumans, were stationed at Burning Island. In fact, there was a Deity Realm superhuman who was qualified to lead an important department within the alliance of the five universities stationed there.
They could kill one h.e.l.l Beast with just one slash.
Yet, they could not instantly kill thousands of lice falling from the sky like rain.
These lice were definitely monsters, because they lived in a unique environment full of spirit energy, causing their evolution speed to be really quick, and they went through the process of genetic screening and biochemical modifications from the monster civilization. They were completely different things compared to their relatives on Earth.
As long as one monster-level louse jumped into a human’s clothes, it could begin feasting on their flesh and blood, and that alone could bring great pain to the human.
If a normal soldier without spirit energy protecting them was attacked by lice, they would soon foam at the mouth. Their muscles would twitch, and they would show symptoms of nerve poisoning, thus leading them to temporarily lose their fighting powers.
Even if humans wore airtight defensive clothes made of nanomaterial, the insects could still crawl in through the gaps. In fact, they used acid and their really sharp mandibles to tear holes in their defensive suits.
To get rid of the insect-type monsters that descended from the sky, the humans had to carry large and powerful insecticide sprays so that they could spray these sticky bubbles on themselves and their comrades at all times.
As such, it largely delayed the progress of them digging trenches, stationing artillery, and transporting ammunition.
Hence, the time gap between each use of the artillery became longer, and the roars from the artillery also became fewer and farther between. They could not completely cover the entire forest where the monster horde gathered.
However, compared to the current threat, the Demonic Air Ripping Eyes, falcon-type monsters, and insect-type monsters’ hara.s.sment was nothing.
To the humans who were fighting against time to construct their bases, the most problematic threat did not come from the sky. Instead, it was hidden around them right now.
Those were the undead.
The viruses and bacteria in the Other World were one hundred times more active than it was on Earth.
The instability of carbon-based life forms was also one hundred times greater.
Even if they were cut to pieces, when viruses, bacteria, spores, and other parasitic life forms worked together, there was still a certain chance that they would turn into a completely different life form.
This was especially so when the monster civilization had managed to extract the essence of Blood Flowers and developed the new zombie virus. The transformation rate into the undead and brutality after they transformed was also much higher.
During the repeated skirmishes for Burning Island over the past seventy-two hours, humans had left behind nearly one thousand corpses on Burning Island.
As for the monsters, the number of carca.s.ses they left behind was one hundred times higher than that of humans.
A few hundred thousand bodies were splayed all over the rock, around Burning Island, and the gradual slope connected to the ground, but they were also covered by the dirt that flew into the air due to the explosions. They were mixed together with the earth, and it was hard to find where they were.
When their bodies were invaded by the microorganisms in the Other World, some parts of these carca.s.ses and corpses would rot away really quickly, and they would release a really thick miasma that looked like yellow and dark-green fog. It largely obscured the humans’ vision.
A large number of bodies also swelled up into bulging air sacs. In the end, with a loud bang, they exploded, and the fluid—infested with fatal viruses and microorganisms—spilled everywhere within hundreds of meters, splashing on the humans’ trenches and construction work.
Of course, quite a number of the thousands of bodies had red tentacles that were as flexible as aquatic plants stretched out of the thousands of bodies and bound the mangled corpses together. They connected their parts and made them fuse together to turn into deformed, twisted undead. The undead stood up with slanted bodies and let out fierce howls while they pounced on humans.
To harvest the valuable materials contained in the monster carca.s.ses and to get rid of the problem of the undead, humans sent a lot of manpower to clear the battlefield.
Superhumans held their weapons and prepared for battle by the side. Meanwhile, the harvesters used the fastest speed they could muster to cut up the bodies. The Red Dragon Army soldiers then carried liquid nitrogen sprays and flamethrowers to clean every inch of the ground.
The bad news was that there were really a lot of undead, and there was no pattern as to when, where, and in what manner they would appear.
No one knew just what sort of attacks these carca.s.ses bound together by the Blood Flowers would use to attack, and neither did they know how they could be considered to have fully killed these creatures.
That was why whenever they tried to kill an undead, they needed to spend more time, ammunition, and strength in comparison to killing normal monsters.
The good news was that the humans who died on Burning Island were true heroes. When they sacrificed their lives, their brains still remained at the moment they were fighting against their enemies and protecting their homes.
Even if those warriors were infested by zombie viruses and Blood Flower spores, once they became zombies, they could easily remember their ident.i.ties and missions when their comrades called out to them or when they heard the loud military songs.
Hence, this was something commonly seen on the battlefield.
When undead creatures with monstrous faces, sharp fangs, multiple limbs, and b.l.o.o.d.y tattoos all over their bodies tore apart the dark-green miasma and howled while they charged at the humans who were working hard harvesting the corpses, the ones who were the first to stop them were not superhumans or the Red Dragon Army soldiers, but the zombies who crawled out of the mountains of bodies and looked equally monstrous.
The medals these zombies wore had long since been ripped off.
They lost their breathing, heartbeats, and even 99% of their thought processes and memories.
However, the remaining 1% thought processes and memories shone like a beacon in the rage and storm churning in their minds, pointing them in their final direction.
Bizarre sounds came out from the zombies’ hole-ridden chests, and the sounds gathered together to form a twisted, strange rhythm.
They sang military songs that only they could understand while they pounced on the undead. Every piece of flesh on their bodies turned into sharp teeth as they bit down on the undead. They became untangled from each other and fell off cliffs that were hundreds of meters away from the ground. Their bones were crushed because of it, and they used their flesh and blood to leave behind an unerasable mark belonging to Earthlings in their brand new home.
Even though the main armies had yet to fight against each other head-on, devastating and tragic small-scale battles appeared in the air, on the ground, and on every front.
On the east of Burning Island was a slope that led straight to the ground. Even though this slope was considered to be steep if it was measured by Earth’s standards, to the humans whose mobility had been largely increased and to the monsters, this was the main road to the top of Burning Island, or at least, it was much better than the cliffs that were perpendicular to the ground. Those could be found on most spots of Burning Island.
Over the past seventy-two hours, more than ten waves of monsters wanted to climb up Burning Island through this slope.
As a result, they left behind thousands of carca.s.ses on the path.
It was this slope to become the main area for humans to clean and cleanse the undead.
They must seize every second they had to get rid of all the monster carca.s.ses before the monster horde launched a major attack. They dug trenches on the slope and set up anti-monster mines. They also set up high-voltage nets and electromagnetic towers. They even stationed an anti-aircraft machine gun base that was shaped like an arc on the top of the rock. This anti-aircraft machine gun base faced the slope.
When necessary, the anti-aircraft machine guns could fire everything in sight and used brute firepower to push the monsters who rushed up the slope down again.
The ones in charge of the gargantuan task of cleaning the battlefield were those in Agricultural University’s martial arts course. They were famous for the Ultimate Style and Beast Soul Style, had risen to power over the past two years, and could practically fight on equal grounds with Dragon City University’s martial arts course now.