Stronger with More Jobs-Chapter 458 - 236: The Gathering Storm!!

The ripples of the Force Field Barrier had yet to subside.

Zhang Tiezhu’s hulking figure barrelled in like a cannonball, the jagged Mountain Opening Saber clutched tightly in his uninjured right hand, his bloodshot eyes sweeping across the entire hollow floor in an instant.

"Captain Fang! Comrade Wei! Jiang..."

The tail end of his shout came to an abrupt halt, as though an invisible hand had gripped his throat.

Zhang Tiezhu, along with the rushing soldiers of the Fierce Tiger Company and the elite of the Sharp Blade Class behind him, froze instantly at the entrance to the valley, as if collectively struck by an Immobilization Spell.

The scene before their eyes completely overturned their understanding of the word "battlefield."

It shattered all their imaginations of the devastating conditions on the mountaintop from below the mountain.

There were no mountains of corpses and seas of blood.

No sight of piles of Life Ghost remnants like a towering mountain.

Neither was there the terrifying Vajra Buddha, looming over everyone like a nightmare.

There was only a... an utter, heart-tingling silence and emptiness.

The entire bottom of Black Pine Ridge seemed to have been swept over in the most brutal, unreasonable manner, by an invisible, giant hand covering heaven and earth!

Everywhere they looked, their vision was unprecedentedly clear.

The remains of what were once towering, ruined villages, of which the outlines could still be discerned, had completely disappeared.

Not even half a wall, one person high, could be found.

In its place was a thick layer, covering the entire hollow bottom, reaching a depth of around a foot, composed of the finest dust, rubble powder, and some kind of black-reddish glaze-like substance formed from being incinerated by an extreme temperature then quickly cooled... scorched black "powder!"

This layer of powder covered the ground as if laying a carpet from Hell over this repeatedly ravaged land.

A cold and desperate carpet.

The air was filled with the acrid smell of burning and a strong sulfur scent.

The ground at the edge of the Force Field Barrier presented two distinctly different states.

Outside the barrier, was trampled soil and blood-stained ground.

Inside the barrier, just a step away, lay this breathtaking, endless expanse of deathly scorched earth.

"This... this damn..."

The voice of an old soldier behind Zhang Tiezhu was dry and trembling, and he instinctively lifted his foot, hesitating to step forward as if stepping not on scorched earth, but on some kind of forbidden boundary, "Where are those Life Ghosts? Where is that big guy?!"

Another soldier, nervously bending down, trembled as he grabbed a handful of scorched black powder, spreading it in his palm. His fingertips ran over those tiny glaze fragments, cold as ice, yet carrying a bizarre remnant of heat.

"All... have turned to ash?" he muttered to himself, his voice filled with incredulous bewilderment and a hint of fear, "All... all gone?"

Indeed, all gone.

Whether it be the piles of Life Ghost corpses previously slain by Fang Qingyu’s squad.

Or the subsequent sixth wave of terrifying flood, enough to engulf everything, including the Vajra Buddha that loomed like a world-ending Demon God...

Everything was buried beneath this layer of all-encompassing scorched black powder, vanished without a trace.

As if they had never appeared.

Only this utterly "flattened" hollow floor ruins silently testified to the terrifying intensity of the earlier battle, far beyond anyone’s imagination.

"Captain Fang! Comrade Wei! Comrade Jiang! Comrade Chu! Comrade Lu!"

Zhang Tiezhu jerked back to his senses, his hoarse shout filled with uncontrollable panic and worry, instantly shattering the suffocating silence.

Like a madman, he dragged his fractured arm.

Slogging into that pitch black powder plain, using the jagged saber as a crutch, poking deep pits into the soft scorched earth.

His gaze, like a searchlight, frantically scanned the deathly scorched earth.

"Over here! Commander! Captain Fang and the others are over here!"

A sharp-eyed Sharp Blade Class soldier pointed into the depths of the hollow, near the rear mountain wall, shouting out in sudden realization.

Zhang Tiezhu whipped his head around to look.

He saw on a relatively "elevated" slope of scorched earth, five figures scattered like discarded rag dolls amid the thick black ash.

Fang Qingyu lay face up, his naked torso covered with black ash and dried blood, almost blending into the scorched earth, only his chest barely rising and falling to prove he was still alive.

Jiang Wei’s small figure was curled up not far from him, her pale face with golden blood caked at the corner of her mouth, her little mouth moving slightly, as if sucking on something nonexistent.

Wei Banmeng leaned against a half-person high scorched black rock, her cool face devoid of color, lips cracked, the Profound Qilin Double Blades limp at her side, eyes closed, as if even breathing had become exceedingly weak.

Chu Kuanglan lay sprawled out in a "pit" a little farther away, his whole body covered with black ash, looking as if he’d just been dug out from a mine disaster, his arms twisted at unnatural angles, with un-dried blood at his mouth corners, while emitting heavy breathing like a broken bellows.

Lu Jiuyuan knelt on one knee beside Chu Kuanglan, leaning on a jagged long saber, the deep gash on his waist and abdomen, visible to the bone, had burst open again, blood soaking through his torn combat uniform, mixing with the black ash, forming a dark red patch. He hung his head, his body uncontrollably trembling slightly.

The five of them, not one could still stand up.

On their bodies, not a single intact spot could be found.

Only that faint yet tenacious breath of life, like a candle flickering in the wind, silently burned above this utterly destroyed scorched earth.

"Medic!!!"

Zhang Tiezhu’s eyes were about to split, and with all his remaining strength, he let out a blood-curdling roar.