The western Demon General's blade descended with enough concentrated force to crush the street beneath Haotian before the edge ever reached him. Abyssal cultivation ran along the heavy single-edged weapon in a dense layer that remained close to the metal instead of spilling wastefully into the surrounding district, revealing immediately that the General had no intention of beginning the duel with an uncontrolled display. Haotian watched the shoulders, hips, and feet driving the attack rather than fixing his attention on the blade itself. He waited until the General's weight had crossed the point where redirecting the strike would require fighting against his own committed momentum.
Cloud-Sundering Steps carried Haotian diagonally beyond the center of the descent without surrendering the space in front of the General. The heavy blade struck where he had been standing and drove through the paving, opening a fracture that ran beneath the road while broken stone lifted around the impact. Haotian remained close to the weapon side rather than retreating beyond its full reach, forcing the General to recover before another broad cut could be made safely. The first exchange had already shown him that the demon possessed enough physical control to make a reckless approach expensive.
The General released one hand from the embedded weapon and turned his body with the impact. His free palm drove toward Haotian's chest while his other hand pulled against the blade, making it clear that he had never expected the opening strike to decide the duel. Haotian stepped farther inside instead of withdrawing toward the range where the heavy weapon would become useful again. His own palm came forward as the General's attack reached him.
"Seraph Shatter Palm."
Their palms collided between them, and the compressed impact traveled through both men before the surrounding road reacted. Stone fractured beneath their feet as Haotian's force entered through the General's hand and drove toward the forearm, but the demon rotated his shoulder and redirected enough pressure through his torso to keep the limb from breaking. His hand was forced back several inches, yet his stance remained anchored well enough that his other arm tore the heavy blade from the paving at the same moment. The weapon came free trailing fragments of stone and dark cultivation.
Haotian saw the follow-up forming and changed his movement before the blade completed its turn. Thousand Mirage Steps disrupted the rhythm of his path, producing several plausible continuations that forced the General to decide whether Haotian intended to remain close, shift beyond the weapon arm, or withdraw through the debris. The demon did not chase the first image his perception presented, allowing the blade to sweep through the widest portion of the uncertainty instead. Haotian recognized the experienced response and abandoned the most direct opening rather than forcing an exchange simply because one had briefly existed.
The heavy edge passed beneath his arm. Haotian turned with it and struck the flat near the base of the weapon, changing its path just enough that the General had to widen his stance to keep control. The demon used that adjustment immediately, driving one foot into the fractured paving and forcing abyssal cultivation through the cracks already opened by his first strike. Haotian felt the energy gathering below rather than in the weapon and moved before the attack surfaced.
The road erupted behind him as dark force tore upward through the stone. Fragments struck the nearby military buildings and deepened damage already carved into their walls by the coalition's advance, but the General did not continue feeding the technique once Haotian had escaped its center. He drew the cultivation back into himself instead of wasting strength on an empty portion of road. Haotian noted the restraint while settling several paces away.
Around them, the western offensive continued without slowing to watch. Blue Sphere cultivators were already forcing another group of defenders away from a side road, Umbrel fighters moved through alleys the Abyss soldiers had failed to reclaim, and Pyrelith teams farther behind the frontline continued breaking every identified system that might help the stronghold reorganize. The General's gaze moved past Haotian only briefly, yet the glance was long enough for him to see that his arrival had not frozen the coalition around the duel. He turned back before the observation cost him an opening.
The next attacks came in shorter arcs. Rather than committing the heavy blade to another single descent, the General used diagonal cuts that could be shortened or redirected if Haotian entered past the strongest portion of the weapon, and each movement carried enough compressed cultivation that even a partial contact would tear through ordinary defenses. Haotian matched that caution with his own, using Cloud-Sundering Steps to alter angles and Thousand Mirage Steps whenever the General began reading the rhythm beneath those changes. Neither man gave the other an unnecessary exchange.
The third diagonal cut pulled slightly farther across the General's body than the first two. Haotian entered along the weapon side before the demon completed the recovery and drove his fist toward the exposed ribs. The General recognized what was coming and shifted his torso, but the distance had already disappeared. Haotian's knuckles reached the armor.
"Fist of Ruin."
Abyssal protection condensed beneath the plate at the moment of impact. Haotian felt the defensive layer compress before Fist of Ruin drove through it, but the General's earlier turn spread enough of the force across his torso to prevent the entire attack from entering one location. He slid backward across the paving rather than folding around the blow, his boots cutting shallow trenches while he maintained enough balance to keep the heavy blade between them. Blood appeared at the corner of his mouth when he finally stopped.
The General wiped it away with the back of his free hand without taking his eyes from Haotian. "You change methods every time the problem changes," he said, his breathing still controlled despite the damage beneath his armor. Haotian shifted his stance as the demon raised the blade again. "Using the wrong art because I already used it once would be pointless."
The General considered the answer for no more than a breath. "Then I'll stop giving you clean problems." His weapon moved again before the sentence had fully disappeared beneath the surrounding battle. Haotian did not answer because the blade already required his attention. Their conversation ended as naturally as it had begun.
The General's surviving elites used the renewed exchange to spread toward the coalition formations surrounding the duel. They had enough experience to understand that throwing themselves directly between Haotian and their commander would accomplish little beyond dying beneath attacks intended for someone stronger, so they moved instead toward the high-level cultivators controlling the neighboring roads. If they could widen the General's room to maneuver or open a route behind him, they could still change the strategic shape of the fight. Haotian's family recognized the same purpose.
Lianhua reached the first elite before he had crossed half the distance. The demon carried a narrower blade than the General's weapon and attacked with quick changes of angle intended to catch Lianhua during the transition between steps. Cloud-Sundering Steps preserved her momentum through those changes instead of forcing her to stop and recommit each time the blade altered direction. The first cut passed behind her shoulder while the second reached only the space she had already left.
Her sword came upward through the opening beneath the demon's guard. "Voidpierce Sword Sutra."
Space tightened along the edge without spreading beyond the path Lianhua required. The elite placed a physical block in front of the sword and an abyssal barrier a short distance behind it, expecting the first defense to steal enough time for the second to absorb whatever force remained. Lianhua's blade struck the weapon and changed the relationship of the distance behind it before the supporting barrier could adjust. The secondary defense was forced to receive the sword earlier than its formation had been prepared to do.
The barrier bent inward. The elite turned hard enough to keep the sword from entering his torso deeply, but the edge still opened his armor and drew blood along the ribs. He did not retreat in panic, abandoning his damaged weapon line and stepping closer so that Lianhua would have less room to complete another sword cut. His free hand condensed abyssal cultivation around the palm as he attacked from inside her preferred reach.
Lianhua allowed Cloud-Sundering Steps to carry her weight beyond the first palm rather than contesting it through strength. The demon turned with her and began forming another defensive layer along his blade as he pursued. Before the reinforcement completed, Yueru's sword crossed between them. The attack did not aim for his body.
Yueru cut the convergence between the cultivation flowing through his wrist and the defense gathering along the weapon. The reinforcement collapsed before it fully settled, leaving the blade to receive Lianhua's next strike without the protection its wielder expected. Metal split near the guard. The elite's eyes shifted toward Yueru for an instant, but she was already moving toward another threat.
A second elite had entered the broader front and was forcing two coalition teams backward through raw cultivation pressure. Yueru changed direction toward him instead of remaining beside Lianhua merely to guarantee the first demon's death. The battlefield held too many dangerous enemies for several Lesser Immortal Lords to crowd around one target who had already lost the weapon structure protecting him. Lianhua continued the engagement alone.
The elite abandoned the broken blade and condensed abyssal force around both hands. He drove forward before Lianhua could widen the distance, using alternating palms to occupy the angles through which her sword would normally return. Cloud-Sundering Steps changed her position between the attacks while preserving the momentum needed for the next cut. She never moved farther away than the situation required.
When the demon overextended one shoulder, Lianhua's sword entered beneath the arm. "Voidpierce Sword Sutra."
Space tightened through the path of the cut.
The elite's body separated before he reached the ground.
Yueru met the second elite several paces deeper into the road. He had constructed an abyssal field around himself that connected to the surviving formation guards behind him, drawing support from their techniques whenever his own defense came under pressure. Attacking the field repeatedly would only force the soldiers supporting it to spend cultivation until either side exhausted the other. Yueru therefore ignored the visible thickness of the defense and examined the points where separate flows became one.
The elite attacked before she finished. A broad crescent of dark cultivation crossed the road, forcing the nearby coalition members to lower themselves behind defensive techniques while Yueru shifted beyond its center. She watched the field contract during the release and saw one of the supporting relationships become more exposed as energy left the outer layer. Her sword moved through that moment. The connection vanished.
The elite's field weakened along the left side. He tried to pull more support from the formation guards, but the adjustment exposed another convergence before the first one stabilized. Yueru cut that as well. By the time the demon understood that she was dismantling the relationships rather than fighting the power inside them, the surrounding field no longer behaved as one defense.
He abandoned it and charged her personally.
Yueru met the attack with her sword.
Farther along the same front, Xiangyin intercepted another of the General's elites before he reached the center road. The demon carried two hooked blades connected by a dark chain, allowing him to attack from beyond the reach expected of weapons held directly in the hands. He sent the first hook around Xiangyin's spearhead and changed the second toward her shoulder when she adjusted. Xiangyin ignored the blades themselves and watched the body controlling them.
The first hook passed near her shoulder. Rather than chasing it with the spearhead, Xiangyin placed the shaft into the returning chain and changed its angle while the weapon's own tension was still pulling it back toward the demon. The elite released additional chain to prevent the hook from being trapped and stepped forward to shorten the distance. That forward step brought him into the reach Xiangyin had wanted from the beginning.
Her spear thrust before his second foot settled.
The elite crossed both hooked blades and caught the spearhead between them. Abyssal cultivation surged through the metal as the hooks closed around the point, and the demon tried to slide along the trapped spear before Xiangyin could pull it free. Xiangyin did not retreat. She twisted her wrists and drove pressure sideways through the weapon.
One hooked blade groaned against the spearhead. The demon reinforced the lock and forced another step forward, trying to turn the trapped weapons into a contest of strength. Frost began forming along the chain behind him before he reached Xiangyin. Yanfei had entered the exchange without crossing into the line of her spear.
Cold traveled rapidly through the connected metal. The elite felt his fingers stiffening and released Fire cultivation through the chain to clear the frost, but Yanfei did not waste strength preserving the frozen layer once the counter had begun. The heat expanded links that had contracted only a breath earlier. Several cracked under the conflicting stresses.
Xiangyin drove through the weakened lock.
The spearhead broke one hooked blade outward and entered the elite's shoulder. He twisted away before Xiangyin could drive farther, leaving blood across the edge as the point came free. Yanfei stepped around Xiangyin's rear flank and watched the demon pull the remaining chain into a tighter guard.
"Left," Yanfei warned.
"I see it."
Xiangyin shifted without looking back, and Frostfire crossed the space she had vacated. Cold wrapped around the demon's damaged shoulder before heat entered the same cracks, forcing the armor through another contraction and expansion while his cultivation struggled to protect the flesh beneath it. The elite stopped enough of the change to keep the plate from breaking apart completely. That effort left less strength available for Xiangyin.
Her next thrust entered below the sternum.
The demon tried to retreat while gripping the shaft with one hand. Xiangyin extended through the movement instead of rushing after him, maintaining the strongest portion of her stance while the spear followed the retreat. The point penetrated deeper before she finally withdrew. The remaining chain fell across the road as the elite collapsed beside it.
Shuyue stayed closer to the mixed formations as the General's presence spread through the district. Ordinary demons had felt their commander arrive and fought harder simply because one of the strongest figures in the western sector now stood among them, while coalition cultivators who had already endured hours of fighting felt the same cultivation as an additional weight pressing across their bodies. The pressure did not control anyone directly. It made fatigue, fear, and aggression easier to mishandle.
A Blue Sphere team near Shuyue began glancing toward Haotian's duel whenever the General's attacks shook the road. One cultivator shortened his next defense because his attention divided between the demon in front of him and the heavier battle behind it. Shuyue's Dao Palace of Virtues stabilized the emotional pressure while she moved closer to their line. Her voice remained calm enough to reach them without becoming another distraction.
"Watch the enemy in front of you. Haotian has the General, and looking over there won't help him." She struck an advancing officer before he could exploit the team's hesitation and added, "Keep your formation where it belongs." The Blue Sphere cultivators corrected their spacing and returned their attention to the fight directly ahead.
Yinxue faced a more organized attempt to change the battlefield. Two of the General's elites had recognized that directly joining his duel would accomplish little, so they began reconnecting scattered demonic units around a western crossroad instead. One elite held the advancing coalition while the other directed surviving formation guards into overlapping defensive positions behind him. If the structure stabilized, it could give the General an organized route through which to withdraw or receive reinforcements.
Yinxue attacked the forming structure before it became useful. Her first sword strike forced the outer barrier inward, while the second entered the relationship between two groups trying to overlap their protections. The elite responsible for the reconstruction noticed the weakness and moved to reinforce it personally. His decision preserved the formation and exposed his own position.
Yueru reached that opening after leaving the weakened field behind her to the coalition cultivators following her. Her sword cut through the supporting flow the elite had begun feeding into the formation rather than aiming directly for his chest. One entire section lost the reinforcement required to remain connected. The demon was forced to spend more of his own cultivation holding the rest together.
Yinxue attacked the space created by that correction. Her sword opened the elite's side before he twisted away, and blood ran beneath the damaged armor as he retreated behind another barrier. The second elite moved forward immediately to stop Yinxue from following. She changed target rather than allowing him to control the pace of the exchange.
The defender carried a heavy saber and used it to force Yinxue back from the wounded formation specialist. Every strike bought the demons another breath in which to restore their line, but the same defense pulled the elite away from the soldiers he had been protecting. Ziyue saw the widening space and raised her sword. Coalition cultivators near her moved before she needed to tell them why.
"Dao of the Sword — Tenfold Elements, Severing Arc."
The arc crossed the road at a lower angle than the one she had used in the previous chapter. Metal hardened the severing edge through the first barrier, Wind carried it across the width of the crossroad, and Lightning disrupted active inscriptions before the guards maintaining them could redirect enough cultivation to compensate. Fire entered the fractures opened by the strike, followed by Ice that contracted heated armor and destabilized the shapes carrying the surviving inscriptions. The half-restored defensive formation failed before it ever became complete.
Yinxue moved through the collapse.
The wounded elite tried to retreat behind another barrier, but there was no longer enough connected structure around him to make the defense useful. Yinxue's sword entered beneath his guard and passed through his chest. The second elite abandoned the crossroad before the coalition could surround him and moved toward the western General. Tianlan crossed from the eastern side before he reached the central road.
The two healthy Frost Rainbow Falcons moved above Tianlan as he lowered his spear. He could not see through their eyes and did not need to, because their positions were visible whenever he looked up and years of training had made their habits familiar to him. The elite approaching him released a broad blade wave meant to keep Tianlan beyond striking distance. Tianlan shifted around the strongest portion and continued forward.
"Ninefold Thrust."
The first thrust struck the demon's weapon instead of his body. The second arrived against the opposite side before the elite restored the original guard, while the third threatened the forward leg and forced him to shorten his stance. Tianlan changed the fourth toward the shoulder instead of repeating pressure against the same defense. The sequence adapted according to every response it produced.
The elite blocked again.
The fifth thrust came lower, the sixth attacked the weapon hand, and the seventh forced the blade far enough across the demon's centerline that the original guard could no longer be restored in time. Tianlan saw the opening before any fixed count mattered. His next thrust entered the abdomen.
The elite caught the spear shaft before Tianlan withdrew it.
One Frost Rainbow Falcon folded its wings and descended.
The demon released the spear and raised an arm over his head, reinforcing it with cultivation before the claws struck. The impact drove him sideways and forced his attention away from Tianlan long enough for the spear to be recovered. The Falcon climbed immediately instead of remaining on the ground where surrounding demons might trap it.
The elite used the bird's ascent to move toward the General again.
The second Falcon descended from the opposite direction.
Tianlan saw the approaching wings, adjusted his own attack away from the bird's path, and rotated the spear through the opening created by the demon's reaction. Rotating Spears redirected the elite's weapon before the spearhead came around toward the chest. The demon blocked the point but lost the stability of his stance under the combined pressure.
The Falcon struck his back.
Tianlan's spear entered from the front.
The elite collapsed between them, and Tianlan withdrew the weapon without lingering over the body. One Falcon climbed while the other curved toward the eastern route, each resuming its independent coverage of the battlefield. Tianlan looked once toward Haotian and the General before returning to the enemies still approaching his own section. His father did not need another spectator.
The western Demon General sensed his escorts disappearing while another series of attacks carried him across the broken road. His weapon remained dangerous enough that Haotian could not simply ignore the blade and enter at will, but the demon's surrounding support was being removed faster than he could change the duel. He saw Lianhua return to the coalition line after killing her opponent and felt the cultivation of another elite vanish near Tianlan. His expression did not change, yet the structure of his attacks did.
The General drove the blade into the paving again. This time abyssal cultivation spread through the fractures in several directions, using cracks created by their earlier exchanges as channels through which force could surface unpredictably around Haotian. One eruption began forming to the right, another gathered behind him, and a third waited farther ahead where an obvious escape path remained open. The demon had stopped giving Haotian a single attack to solve.
Cloud-Sundering Steps changed Haotian's angle before the first eruption reached the surface. The second formed beneath the point toward which his momentum seemed to be carrying him, forcing another correction before his foot landed. Thousand Mirage Steps fractured the prediction behind that response, but the General did not follow one false continuation. He began destroying the safe ground around all of them.
The road erupted repeatedly. Stone lifted in jagged sections as Haotian crossed the changing gaps, and the General adjusted faster each time he saw how the movement arts altered the path. He was not learning Cloud-Sundering Steps or Thousand Mirage Steps, but he did not need to understand their internal circulation to recognize patterns in where Haotian could safely place his weight. By the fifth eruption, the number of clean routes had narrowed considerably.
Haotian extended the Dao of the Universe into the paving beneath him. The attack stopped appearing as separate eruptions and became one network, abyssal cultivation moving through existing fractures and redistributing pressure according to which branches remained open. Every burst drew from relationships connected back to the General's blade. Haotian had no reason to keep solving the branches individually once the underlying structure became visible.
He stepped toward one of the fractures.
The General saw the apparent mistake and fed more power into the channel.
Haotian altered the relationship before the force surfaced.
The abyssal flow met resistance where the General expected an open route and diverted into neighboring cracks already carrying pressure in the opposite direction. The demon tried to correct from the center, but Haotian pushed the imbalance farther and forced several channels to collide beneath the road. Their own cultivation ruptured the network.
The resulting explosion occurred between them rather than beneath Haotian. Broken stone and dark force rose across the street, obscuring both men from the ordinary fighters nearby. The General tore his blade free and crossed it before himself as fragments struck the weapon and armor. Haotian entered through the debris before the demon regained a clean view.
Heaven-Piercer Step erased the opened distance. Haotian reached the General before the heavy blade returned to a useful angle, his fist already drawing power into a compact path. The demon rotated the weapon horizontally and received the strike against the flat. Haotian's fist landed.
"Fist of Ruin."
The blade bent under the impact. Abyssal reinforcement flowed through the weapon quickly enough to keep the metal from breaking, but the General was driven backward across the road while his heels tore trenches into the fractured stone. He held the blade between them instead of allowing the force to fold it into his body. Haotian followed before the movement ended.
The General released the weapon with one hand and caught Haotian's wrist.
Haotian's other palm moved immediately.
"Seraph Shatter Palm."
The General met it with his free hand, and the collision broke his grip on Haotian's wrist while driving both men apart. Haotian landed with the impact traveling through his forearm but no deeper, while the General stabilized several paces away with more blood visible around his mouth. His physical strength and cultivation control were both far beyond the officers Haotian had killed during the earlier assault.
The General wiped the blood from his chin. "You could have forced more power into those attacks." His breathing had become slightly heavier, but his voice remained stable. "You're still choosing how much this street can survive."
Haotian looked briefly at the coalition formations fighting on both sides of the duel. "My people are standing on it."
The General understood immediately. "Then I should make that inconvenient."
He moved before Haotian answered.
The heavy blade came from below, forcing Haotian to change height before a horizontal cut followed through the space where his torso would have been. Haotian twisted over the first attack and descended inside the second, driving one hand toward the General's shoulder. The demon shortened his grip and abandoned the full arc before it completed. The pommel drove toward Haotian's face.
Haotian caught the wrist and struck beneath the elbow with his free hand. The General released a burst of cultivation through the arm, breaking the grip before Haotian could damage the joint. The blade came down from close range. Haotian shifted beyond the edge, but the abyssal force following it still clipped his shoulder and tore through the outer layer of his clothing.
The impact opened a shallow wound. Haotian landed with enough control that the contact did not alter his stance, but the General immediately aimed the next cut toward the same shoulder. Rather than giving ground, Haotian stepped closer until the strongest portion of the weapon passed behind him. His hand struck the demon's chest before the blade could be shortened again.
"Dragon Vein Collapse."
The General's armor remained intact.
The technique moved beneath it.
Haotian felt the first internal pathway strain and begin collapsing, but the demon recognized the nature of the attack quickly enough to redirect cultivation away from the contact point. Instead of allowing the disruption to spread toward several major routes, he sacrificed the circulation through smaller channels and forced the redirected energy through pathways that could barely tolerate it. Blood burst from his mouth under the internal strain.
The General drove his forehead toward Haotian's face. Haotian turned aside, taking the demon's shoulder instead as the impact forced them apart. They separated by several paces before the General stabilized. His breathing was heavier now.
"You attack the circulation itself," he said.
"Armor doesn't reach that deep."
The demon changed his cultivation before attacking again. Instead of allowing large quantities of power to travel through a few stable internal paths, he divided the flow across several smaller circulations and accepted the additional strain required to maintain them. The method was less efficient and would exhaust him more quickly, but it reduced the risk that another Dragon Vein Collapse could shatter one central pathway and trigger a broader collapse. Haotian recognized the adaptation immediately.
The General was learning during the duel.
Haotian expected nothing less from someone who had survived long enough to command a major front of the war.
Around them, the General's remaining elites were losing every attempt to reopen the western road. Lianhua had rejoined the Sword formations after killing her opponent, while Yueru and Yinxue prevented surviving Abyss officers from assembling another stable defensive line behind the duel. Xiangyin and Yanfei pushed through the space left by the chained-weapon elite, and Ziyue's broader Sword attacks forced neighboring formations apart far enough for mixed coalition teams to enter between them. The area the General needed if he wanted to reorganize was disappearing.
Shuyue felt the demons' confidence changing. Their General's arrival had initially strengthened them because they assumed his presence would reverse the western collapse, but enough soldiers could now see that Haotian remained standing while the General's elites vanished one after another. Confidence turned first into uncertainty and then into increasingly desperate aggression. Several formations began attacking harder without coordinating those attacks better.
Some attempted to force their way toward the duel. Others tried creating openings behind the General as though instinct alone had told them he might eventually require somewhere to retreat. Shuyue saw a Blue Sphere unit begin following a group that deliberately gave ground toward a side street. She moved close enough for her voice to carry over the clash of weapons.
"Stay on the road. They want you stretched out behind them." Her cultivation through the Dao Palace of Virtues reinforced the discipline behind the instruction while the team stopped its pursuit. "Umbrel can take the side route. Your formation stays here."
The Blue Sphere cultivators obeyed. Umbrel fighters slipped between the buildings and disappeared after the retreating demons instead. The main road remained intact.
Liora received another group of wounded as the battle intensified. One cultivator arrived with burns across the left side of his torso and tried remaining upright while a Veridian healer examined the damage, his jaw clenched hard enough to make his answer unnecessary. Liora looked once at the depth of the injury and pointed toward the rear. "You're done on this front. Go through Creation before the deeper tissue starts failing."
The man started to protest. Liora shook her head before he finished. "You can come back when the healers inside say you can, but you're not turning this into permanent damage because you want another ten minutes here."
He stopped arguing.
Another wounded cultivator sat nearby with blood covering one sleeve while a healer checked the arm beneath it. The attack had missed the major meridians, so Liora reinforced the damaged muscle and sealed the worst bleeding without wasting strength trying to restore every torn fiber on the street. "Keep it close to your body and use the other arm if something reaches the rear," she instructed. "Otherwise, you walk back and let it heal."
The healing area continued operating according to that practical rhythm. Some wounded returned to formation after stabilization, others went back through the Dao Palace of Creation, and the healers spent cultivation where it preserved life and future fighting ability rather than chasing perfect restoration under battlefield conditions. The stronger duel nearby did not make ordinary wounds less important. It made the support structure behind the army more necessary.
Tianlan returned toward the eastern road after killing the elite who had tried to pass him. One Frost Rainbow Falcon landed briefly on the edge of a damaged roof while the other remained in the air, each covering a different approach rather than clustering near him. Tianlan did not call the resting Falcon down. He needed them watching the battlefield more than he needed them at his shoulder.
A surviving demonic officer gathered several soldiers beneath the damaged roof and tried moving toward the General's rear. Tianlan crossed their route with his spear already leveled. The officer raised a weapon and ordered his men to spread around him. Tianlan attacked before the formation finished.
"Ninefold Thrust."
The first thrust targeted a soldier rather than the officer, forcing the man to retreat into the cultivator beside him. The second struck toward another defender on the opposite side, widening the disruption before the third reached the officer's guard. Tianlan used the fourth and fifth to stop two soldiers from closing around his flanks, then returned the sixth toward the officer's weapon hand. The seventh forced that weapon downward and opened the shoulder.
The spear entered.
The officer twisted quickly enough to keep the point from reaching anything immediately fatal, but the weapon passed through the shoulder and broke the structure of his guard. Tianlan withdrew before the surrounding soldiers could trap the shaft. The Falcon on the roof opened its wings.
Its descent forced two demons to lower themselves away from the sudden pressure. Tianlan used the change in spacing and rotated the spear through one weapon, struck another man across the jaw with the shaft, and brought the point back toward the wounded officer. The demon retreated instead of accepting the second attack.
Tianlan did not chase him down the road.
The officer wanted movement toward the General.
Tianlan wanted the route closed.
He held the ground and allowed the Falcons to control the space above it.
The western Demon General saw the same battlefield while exchanging another series of attacks with Haotian. His elites were dying, organized roads behind him were narrowing, and the coalition had not stopped destroying infrastructure simply because he had reached the front. He could no longer reasonably believe that defeating Haotian here would automatically restore the western district. Even victory would leave him standing inside a sector whose command structure, supply lines, and internal routes had already been torn apart.
His objective changed.
Haotian noticed it in the feet before he saw it in the blade.
The General's attacks stopped forcing Haotian toward the western road. Each recovery placed the demon slightly closer to an eastern route leading deeper into the fortress, and every heavier cut began opening space in that direction rather than closing around Haotian. He was still trying to hurt Haotian whenever the opportunity appeared. He was simply no longer fighting for possession of the district.
Haotian allowed the intention to develop rather than immediately announcing that he had seen it. The General released another diagonal cut and followed with a broad horizontal wave that forced nearby cultivators to defend against the residual force. He used the widened space to glance toward his surviving elites. His decision had become complete.
"Break contact," the General ordered. "Reach central command. Tell them the western sector is lost and the army is already past the breach."
The instruction confirmed exactly what Haotian had read from his movement. The General had understood that accurate information was now more valuable than another prolonged exchange, because the surviving Demon Generals could still change the entire battle if they stopped responding as isolated sector commanders. One surviving elite immediately disengaged from Yueru while another abandoned a defensive group and moved toward an elevated route. Ordinary officers nearby began shifting in the same direction even though most did not yet understand the reason.
The coalition reacted as soon as the retreat became visible. Umbrel cultivators moved toward side routes, Celestara fighters crossed the elevated paths, and Blue Sphere formations tightened the main road rather than charging blindly after every demon who turned away. Haotian stepped forward as the western General brought the heavy blade between them. His voice carried clearly across the distance.
"You're not leaving."
The General adjusted his grip. "Then stop me."
Haotian moved.
Cloud-Sundering Steps changed his angle before the first defensive cut could settle. Thousand Mirage Steps fractured the General's attempt to track the continuation, and Heaven-Piercer Step erased the remaining distance once the demon committed the blade toward the wrong path. Haotian reached the General's chest before the heavy weapon returned. His fist drew close to the armor.
"Fist of Ruin."
The demon crossed one forearm beneath the blade and received the strike. Armor collapsed inward as the General slid backward, but instead of fighting the movement he allowed Haotian's force to carry him closer to the eastern route he wanted. The choice was immediate and intelligent. Haotian followed before the retreat completed.
The General drove his blade into the paving.
Abyssal force exploded outward in every direction.
The street vanished beneath a surge of dark cultivation and broken stone, forcing coalition cultivators on both sides to defend themselves while the General turned through the center of the destruction. Unlike the underground network he had used earlier, this technique was not meant to catch Haotian with a precise eruption. It existed to create temporary separation.
The deeper road opened behind him.
One elite reached it.
Umbrel cultivators emerged from the surrounding shadows before he crossed the first intersection. The elite killed one attacker and wounded another, but the exchange stopped his forward movement long enough for Yueru to reach the route. He began forming a technique meant to clear the alley.
Yueru cut the convergence before the attack completed.
The dark force collapsed around his weapon.
Umbrel fighters closed again.
The elite disappeared inside the exchange.
Another escort reached an elevated walkway and nearly crossed beyond the coalition's immediate control. A Celestara cultivator struck from above and forced him down onto the roof beneath the path, where he rolled through broken tiles and regained his feet. Tianlan's second Frost Rainbow Falcon was already descending toward him.
The demon raised both arms.
The Falcon struck.
Roof tiles exploded beneath his feet, and the structure sagged beneath the impact.
Tianlan reached the neighboring building and drove his spear through the damaged edge before the elite recovered. The demon caught the spearhead between both hands and forced cultivation around his palms to keep the point from entering. Tianlan pushed without overcommitting.
The Falcon attacked again.
The elite released one hand to defend himself.
The spear entered his chest.
The western General sensed another escort vanish and drove farther through the storm of his own technique. Haotian reached the edge of the eruption without trying to force his body through the most destructive portion. The Dao of the Universe opened through his perception and revealed the attack's broad appearance hiding a much simpler structure. One central flow from the General's blade still fed the expanding wall.
Haotian altered that connection.
The continuous eruption broke into several independent surges.
Gaps appeared.
Cloud-Sundering Steps carried him through the first, while Thousand Mirage Steps prevented the General from anticipating which second opening he intended to use. By the time the outer wall of dark force collapsed behind him, the Demon General had already reached the deeper road. Haotian emerged after him.
The demon turned and saw him coming.
For the first time, the General's expression changed before his stance did. There was no fear in it, but the recognition was unmistakable: the retreat route had not produced enough separation, his elites were nearly gone, and Haotian had followed through the strongest technique he had used to create distance. His eyes narrowed as the remaining options compressed.
Haotian's movement had changed as well.
Until then, he had selected techniques independently according to the immediate problem in front of him. The General had seen different movement arts, palms, fists, internal disruption, and Dao manipulation appear whenever the circumstances favored them, with no requirement that one technique lead naturally into another. Now Haotian's body settled into a different rhythm.
The transition was subtle enough that an inexperienced cultivator might have missed it. The placement of Haotian's feet, the alignment between the hips and shoulders, and the circulation beneath every movement began preparing not merely the next attack but the one after it. Every ending became a beginning. The individual answers the General had been studying became one connected martial system.
The demon noticed.
His blade rose across his body. "Your rhythm changed."
Haotian did not explain why.
The first strike began.
"Fist of Ruin."
Haotian entered through the edge of the General's guard and drove the first strike into the heavy weapon instead of the body behind it. The demon reinforced the blade and allowed the force to move through his arms rather than trying to stop it completely, but the impact shifted the guard several inches outward. Haotian did not reset his stance after the strike. The movement through his shoulder and hip had already prepared the next transition.
Heaven-Piercer Step carried him into the opening without being spoken aloud. The movement shortened the remaining distance before the General could restore the blade to center, placing Haotian inside the strongest range of the weapon while the momentum of the first strike still occupied the demon's arms. His hand changed shape as the next attack emerged from the completed step. The General twisted to protect the exposed side.
"Void Fang Rend."
The third strike tore across the outer abyssal protection rather than meeting the armor through direct blunt force. A sharp line opened through the defensive layer, and the General shifted cultivation toward the damaged section immediately. Haotian's circulation had already changed again before the repair finished. His stance remained connected to what followed.
"Bloodlash Howl."
The fourth strike entered through the weakness left by Void Fang Rend. Force reverberated through the damaged defense and into the General's torso, making the blood already gathered in his chest surge under the pressure. The demon coughed as he brought the heavy blade around from below. Haotian lowered his body beneath the return.
"Soulbreaker Dive."
The fifth strike drove upward through the General's centerline from the lowered position. The demon caught part of it against his forearm, but the collision lifted his guard and forced his weight farther toward the rear foot. Haotian followed the change rather than allowing him to settle. The sixth strike came from the balance he had just disturbed.
"Graviton Sever."
The General's connection to the ground changed under the impact. His planted foot no longer carried his weight the way he expected, and the stance he had prepared for the next counter weakened beneath him. He reacted by forcing the blade down as an anchor and releasing cultivation through the weapon. Haotian's next strike was already arriving.
"Hellpulse Eruption."
The seventh attack burst outward at close range before the General's anchored position became stable. The heavy blade shifted in the broken paving, and the abyssal force meant to reinforce his stance dispersed through an angle he had not intended. He tore the weapon free rather than allow it to become a liability. Haotian rotated with the opening.
"Shadowbane Twister."
The eighth strike twisted through the defensive layers the General tried to rebuild around himself. Instead of simply destroying one protection, the attack forced two portions of the demon's own cultivation against each other and made the correction consume more strength than it should have required. The General retreated one step to separate. Haotian remained inside.
"Demon's Jaw Crush."
The ninth strike closed through the damaged guard from opposing lines of force. The General crossed both arms beneath his weapon and absorbed enough of the impact to keep his chest from collapsing, but the defense drove his elbows inward and stole the space required to attack immediately. Haotian's next motion entered before the arms reopened. The sequence had given the demon no place to recover.
"Heaven's Dismantle."
The tenth strike attacked the structure beneath the defense rather than its visible strength. The General felt the relationships holding his guard together fail under him, and the heavy weapon shifted out of alignment despite the cultivation he forced through it. Haotian stepped into the exposed center. His palm was already moving.
"Seraph Shatter Palm."
The eleventh strike shattered what remained of the immediate guard. The General released one hand from the blade and struck barehanded toward Haotian's throat, accepting the loss of the defensive position in exchange for a chance to break the sequence. Haotian turned past the counter without stepping outside the rhythm. The twelfth strike came from the same rotation.
"Requiem Fang Barrage."
The first impact struck the shoulder. The second entered the ribs before the General finished moving away from the first, and the third drove into the damaged section of armor across the chest. Additional strikes followed through changing angles that forced the General to defend without ever rebuilding the same guard twice. He retreated through the barrage rather than allowing one point to absorb everything, but Haotian's advance remained connected to him.
"Voidlock Spiral."
The thirteenth strike changed the retreat itself. The space and pressure around the exchange tightened through Haotian's control, shortening the distance the General gained from each backward movement and forcing his escape path into a narrower relationship. He tried to cut outward with the heavy blade. The weapon did not regain enough room.
Haotian entered against the altered circulation the General had created earlier to protect himself from Dragon Vein Collapse. The demon had divided power across smaller pathways to prevent one major route from being crippled, but that adaptation had forced several minor circulations to operate under greater strain for the entire duel. Haotian had felt those stresses during every later exchange. The fourteenth strike targeted them.
"Celestial Vein Rupture."
The force entered through the General's defense and struck the already overburdened internal pathways. Several ruptured before the demon could redirect again, and the divided cultivation that had protected him earlier became a liability as multiple smaller circulations failed simultaneously. Blood burst from his mouth and ran down his chin. His cultivation fluctuated for the first time since the duel began.
The General roared and forced more power through what remained. The heavy blade came down with enough strength to end the entire sequence if Haotian accepted the exchange carelessly. Haotian's body changed angles inside the connected rhythm, allowing the weapon to miss by less than the width of his shoulder. The fifteenth strike entered as the blade passed.
"Thousand Cross Fang."
The assault struck through successive lines before the General could decide which one required the greatest protection. Armor split along the shoulder, then across the side, while abyssal defense flickered over the chest and failed to settle before another impact moved elsewhere. Each strike was less important alone than the fact that none allowed the demon to restore a complete defense between them. The General's body accumulated damage faster than his cultivation could stabilize it.
He forced himself forward rather than continuing to retreat. One arm abandoned the blade and reached for Haotian, attempting to turn the exchange into a grapple where the chained strikes would lose the space required to develop. Haotian had already entered the sixteenth transition. His palm passed inside the reaching arm.
"Abysswalker's Brand."
The sixteenth strike landed against the center of the damaged armor.
The General stopped.
For a fraction of a breath, the force did not appear to do anything beyond the impact itself. Then the accumulated relationships created by the preceding strikes settled through the demon's body, and the cultivation he had been forcing through damaged pathways responded unevenly across every place Haotian had already broken. The General's hand closed on empty air beside Haotian's shoulder.
He understood that the sequence had reached something beyond another ordinary strike. He could not know where the martial system came from, who had created it, or how many techniques remained beyond what he had already endured. What he could recognize was that Haotian had stopped fighting through separate answers and had entered a complete progression whose later attacks were using the damage established by the earlier ones. That observation was enough.
"So you were still holding back," the General said through blood.
Haotian's breathing remained controlled. "I was using what the fight required."
The General's eyes stayed on him. He did not ask for an explanation he had no reason to expect, and Haotian offered none. Whatever this martial system was, the demon needed only to know that allowing it to continue would kill him. He abandoned defense.
Both hands drove forward as the General released everything he could still force through his damaged circulation. Abyssal cultivation surged outward without the restraint he had maintained through most of the duel, because preserving the street or his own meridians no longer mattered. The attack carried his remaining strength directly toward Haotian in an attempt to break the sequence before whatever came next. His body was already tearing itself apart under the expenditure.
Haotian did not retreat.
The connected rhythm carried upward through him.
He rose above the forward surge, not as a separate movement chosen to evade the General's last attack but as the beginning of the seventeenth strike. The damaged road dropped beneath him while abyssal force tore through the space his body had occupied. Haotian turned through the ascent and brought every preceding transition into the descent.
The Demon General looked up.
His arms crossed.
The remaining abyssal cultivation gathered into one final defense over his body.
Haotian descended.
"Sovereign Fang Collapse."
The seventeenth strike came down through the General's defense with the accumulated momentum of the completed sequence behind it. His crossed arms broke first, followed by the remaining protective layers and the crushed plates across his chest. The force continued downward through the body rather than exploding indiscriminately into the coalition formations surrounding the road. Haotian drove him into the paving.
Stone collapsed beneath the General.
A crater opened through the intersection, fractures spreading outward until they lost enough force to stop short of the nearby coalition lines. Dust and broken fragments rose around Haotian as the last pressure of Sovereign Fang Collapse settled into the target. The surrounding cultivators felt the impact through their feet but were not consumed by a release meant for the demon alone.
Haotian landed at the edge of the crater.
The western Demon General lay at the center.
His heavy blade had fallen several paces away, half buried beneath broken stone. One arm rested at an angle the joints could no longer support, while the armor across his chest had been driven inward until the metal no longer resembled the protective plate it had been. Abyssal cultivation flickered weakly through the damaged body.
The General remained conscious for several breaths. His eyes found Haotian above him, but whatever strength remained was no longer enough to lift his body or rebuild the circulation Sovereign Fang Collapse had shattered. He had seen the seventeenth strike finish the sequence being used against him. He had no way to know that an eighteenth existed beyond it.
Haotian did.
Creator's Banishment remained unused.
The General had never required it.
The demon's breathing shortened as the last stable cultivation supporting his organs began failing. His gaze shifted once toward the road beyond Haotian, where coalition formations were still moving instead of gathering around the crater. The sight appeared to settle the final understanding of what his death meant more clearly than anything Haotian could have told him. The western district would continue falling after he was gone.
The General's head settled against the broken stone.
His cultivation disappeared.
The powerful presence that had weighed across the western front vanished with it.
For a moment, nearby cultivators on both sides felt the absence more clearly than the battle around them. Several coalition soldiers looked toward the crater, while demonic troops farther down the road faltered when the pressure belonging to their commander simply ceased to exist. The pause lasted only as long as Haotian allowed it. He turned toward the road ahead.
"Keep advancing. The western sector isn't finished."
A Blue Sphere officer near the frontline repeated the command at greater volume. "Forward formations, continue the push. Nobody gathers around the body." The mixed teams corrected almost immediately, moving past the edges of the shattered intersection while stronger cultivators covered the temporary gaps created by the crater. Victory over one General did not empty the fortress.
Lianhua reached Haotian before the frontline moved entirely beyond him. She did not stand directly in his path or sheath her sword, because demons still occupied the neighboring streets and nothing about the situation justified treating the road like a place for a family reunion. Her attention went first to the tear across his shoulder. The wound had already stopped bleeding heavily.
"Can you continue?" she asked.
"Yes. It's shallow."
Lianhua examined his movement long enough to make sure the answer matched what his body was doing. "Then I'm taking the left road with the Sword formations. They're retreating toward another defensive position." Haotian looked toward the same route and nodded. "Don't give them time to finish it."
She moved before another exchange was necessary.
Yinxue passed several moments later with coalition cultivators already following her into the widening western road. "The next intersection is opening," she said without stopping completely. Haotian shifted aside so the formation could move past him. "Take it before the defenders gather behind it."
Yinxue acknowledged him and continued.
Xiangyin and Yanfei were already farther ahead, breaking through the last organized resistance around the military buildings while Shuyue remained among ordinary coalition cultivators whose relief after the General's death threatened to become its own form of carelessness. The emotional change was understandable after fighting beneath the pressure of an enemy who could have killed most of them with one direct attack. Shuyue did not suppress that relief. She prevented it from loosening the formations.
"The General is dead, but the people in front of you aren't," she reminded one mixed team that had begun spreading too widely as the demons retreated. "Keep the spacing until this road is actually ours." Her Dao Palace of Virtues reinforced the discipline behind the warning without dulling the confidence the victory had produced. The team tightened and continued forward.
Tianlan remained on the eastern side with the two Frost Rainbow Falcons. One bird circled above the rooftops while the other flew lower along the road, watching for surviving elites who might attempt to use the western collapse as cover for their own withdrawal. Tianlan had felt the General's presence vanish, but he did not abandon his position to see the body. The route he held still mattered.
Liora learned of the death from a wounded cultivator arriving at the healing position. The man had a broken wrist and a deep cut across the back, yet the first thing he tried to do was tell everyone around him that Haotian had killed the western Demon General. Liora pressed Life essence into the wound before he finished. Her expression never left the injury.
"Save the rest until you're not bleeding through your clothes," she told him. "The General being dead doesn't make that cut smaller." The cultivator stopped talking long enough for the Veridian healer beside her to stabilize the broken wrist. Around them, the treatment area continued functioning exactly as it had before the victory.
A communication cultivator reached Haotian before he moved far from the crater. The woman carried one of the coalition relay devices connected to Xuanyin's command group, and she remained far enough from the body that she did not obstruct the formations passing around it. "Aunt Xuanyin says the western legions continue their assigned advance," she reported. "Another high-level demonic presence is moving toward the southern interior, and she does not want western formations redeployed unless the situation changes."
Haotian looked toward the deeper stronghold while extending his perception only far enough to confirm the movement. A powerful presence was indeed shifting toward another portion of the battlefield, though the intervening formations and damage prevented a complete reading without him pushing the Dao of the Universe more aggressively than necessary. "Tell her we're continuing west," he answered. "If the southern front needs reinforcement, use the reserves before pulling anyone out of a secured route."
The messenger acknowledged him and moved back toward the relay position.
The army's response to the General's death therefore looked almost identical to its response before it. Pyrelith cultivators reached another abandoned Abyss structure and destroyed the controls before retreating demons could return to them, while Umbrel teams widened their hold over the side streets and began searching specifically for officers attempting to carry information toward central command. Marephoros forces redirected pressure through damaged roads so that withdrawing demons could not simply flow backward and become one new defensive line. The offensive continued consuming the stronghold section by section.
Veridian teams checked underground routes exposed by the advancing front. Some were preserved long enough for coalition formations to pass through them, while others were collapsed behind the last friendly group once their tactical value disappeared. Celestara fighters maintained control of the open air above the district and prevented the surviving Abyss forces from converting rooftops into safe communication routes. Every captured section lost more of the connections required to function as part of one fortress.
The western General's death made that fragmentation worse. Nearby demonic units felt his cultivation disappear and understood enough to know what had happened even before a messenger reached them, but knowing their commander was dead did not tell them where to go afterward. Some continued fighting because retreat would only expose them on open roads. Others abandoned local positions and moved toward deeper districts without waiting for orders.
Officers who might otherwise have restored discipline were forced to choose between remaining with their soldiers and personally carrying the information farther inward. Several chose to stay, keeping local formations intact while the wider command remained ignorant. Others left their troops in the hands of subordinates and tried reaching surviving relays before Umbrel cultivators cut the routes. Every solution removed something valuable from somewhere else.
One demonic captain reached the crater several minutes after Haotian had already moved beyond it. Only three soldiers remained with him from the formation he had commanded earlier, and all four stopped long enough to confirm that the body at the center truly belonged to the western General. The captain's face tightened as he looked at the collapsed armor and the heavy blade lying several paces away. He understood that whatever report he carried now mattered more than his original assignment.
He turned toward the deeper eastern districts.
Umbrel cultivators found the group before they traveled two streets.
Two soldiers died in the first exchange, while the third escaped through the doorway of a damaged military building and disappeared from the road. The captain reached a side alley with blood running from one arm and forced cultivation into a communication token already cracked during earlier fighting. The first pulse failed.
He tried again.
The second pulse traveled before the damaged token broke in his hand.
The message carried almost nothing compared with what central command needed to know, but it contained enough to change the decisions of anyone who believed it. The western General had fallen. Coalition forces were deep inside the stronghold.
No location accompanied the report.
No number of enemy formations.
No explanation of how the coalition had entered.
No identification of the cultivator who killed the General.
One relay received the pulse.
Another farther inward did not.
A formation operator in a deeper district repeated what little he had to his commander, who sent the information onward through a separate route without knowing whether it was already outdated. Half the stronghold still knew nothing. The other half began reacting to another incomplete picture.
The first surviving Demon General to receive any version of the message was not moving toward the western district. He had already committed himself to another coalition front in the southern interior, where Blue Sphere and Celestara formations were advancing through elevated roads and defensive terraces that should have forced an exterior attacker to fight upward through several fortified levels. The reports reaching him had originally described a limited penetration caused by confusion elsewhere in the fortress.
He had therefore moved with his elites to contain it personally.
The message concerning the western General reached him only after he had already entered the route leading toward the southern fighting. A wounded officer intercepted the group beneath a damaged archway and forced the report out before the General could pass. "The western General is dead. That's all the relay carried clearly."
The Demon General stopped.
"Where did he fall?"
"We don't know."
"How many coalition formations are in the western district?"
"The message didn't say."
The General's expression tightened. "How old is the report?"
The officer hesitated.
"We don't know."
Silence held for only a moment beneath the archway. The southern General looked toward the cultivation fluctuations already visible farther down his own route and then back toward the officer who had brought him information too incomplete to support any meaningful change of plan. Turning toward the western district could place him even farther behind whatever was actually happening there. Remaining on his current route might at least bring him into contact with a coalition force whose position he could verify himself.
"Continue," he ordered.
His elites moved with him.
Farther north, another Demon General had not received the message at all. Several internal positions under his authority had stopped answering, and coalition cultivators had appeared near one of the routes feeding the central military districts, but nothing in the information available to him suggested that another General had already died. He gathered his own forces and began moving toward the disturbance because waiting for clarification that might never arrive would allow the enemy to advance unopposed. From where he stood, the decision was reasonable.
That remained the coalition's advantage.
The Generals were responding.
They were still responding separately.
Haotian felt the first powerful presence continue toward the southern front as he reached another western intersection with the coalition advance. A second presence moved farther north, its direction partially obscured by defensive formations and the constant cultivation fluctuations spreading across the stronghold. He did not push the Dao of the Universe aggressively enough to identify everything either General was doing. Their movements already revealed what mattered.
The surprise assault had entered a new phase. The demons no longer believed the interior fighting could be dismissed as sabotage or a limited infiltration, and the death of one General would accelerate that realization wherever the information reached. The surviving Generals had enough experience to understand that continuing to fight as isolated sector commanders would eventually allow Haotian and the coalition to encounter them one at a time. They simply did not all know that yet.
The western roads offered less organized resistance with every block the coalition consumed. Without the General's presence anchoring the defenders around him, individual officers had to decide whether to hold, withdraw, or combine with neighboring units whose orders might already conflict with their own. Some fought well enough to slow the mixed teams for several exchanges. None possessed the authority or power required to rebuild the entire sector around themselves.
Haotian stepped over the remains of an Abyss barrier and watched another coalition formation move past him. He could feel fatigue accumulating in the soldiers now that the first rush of the interior assault had lasted long enough to become sustained warfare, but the support lines were still functioning and the western advance remained organized. The greatest danger was no longer that the demons would discover the initial passage and crush the army before deployment finished. The danger was what would happen once the surviving General-level commanders finally understood enough to act together.
That moment would come.
Haotian did not intend to give them a comfortable battlefield when it did.
Behind him, the body of the first fallen Demon General remained inside a stronghold whose gates had never opened for the coalition. Around it, formation specialists and support teams continued moving as though the crater were merely another piece of damaged ground to route around. Ahead, another Demon General was already approaching a different front with incomplete information and enough strength to make the next collision far more dangerous than the ordinary defenders being pushed aside now.
Haotian continued with the western advance.
The fortress was still standing.
Its defenders were finally beginning to understand that this no longer meant it was secure.