Castle of Black Iron

With two moons and sparse stars in the sky, a squad of over 100 wing demon knights flew by like specters. They had circled around this mountain area twice only in 2 hours.

Right on a vigorous old pine that grew out of the cliff in the mountain area, a little black beetle was squatting on some pine needles and looking at the sky.

Of course, it was Zhang Tie’s incarnation.

This place was within Xiangshan Prefecture, Wuzhou Province where Zhang Tie once killed demon knights after coming out of the underground space. With the help of bright moonlight, Zhang Tie could even see the Xiangshan City in the far.

Everything here had been changed only after a few months.

By the end of January, all the soldiers and civilians in Wuzhou Province, Zhuzhou Province and Yinzhou Province had been evacuated except for those in the areas occupied by demons. Only human knights still stuck to the region in the west of Helan Mountain Range.

The collisions between humans and demons in the theater of operations in Peacewest Military Region grew increasingly fiercer and turned white-hot. This could be speculated according to the number of scouts and vanguards of demons.

When Zhang Tie just arrived at the western theater of operations, demons only assigned one demon knight as a scout or vanguard.

3 months ago, the number of scouts and vanguards assigned by demons had reached the scale of the squad while fewer and fewer demon knights executed their tasks alone.

Zhang Tie flew all the way from Military Province. After flying by Helan Mountain Range, with the assistance of lotus-flower eyes, he found the number of teams of demon scouts and vanguards was decreasing sharply as he only met 2 teams in total. By contrast, the population of demon knights in each team was increasing sharply. Take this team of demon knights as an instance, there were over 100 wing demon knights in this team, which included over 10 earth knights and over 80 black iron knights. What a great star-studded cast!

Such a situation could never be predicted 3 months ago.

What did this mean? It meant that both parties had inputted more and more knights into the battlefield. The atmosphere of a large-scale war between human knights and demon knights was growing more and more intense while the battles between human knights and demon knights were growing fiercer. As more and more knights attended the war, the small-scale team of knights would be at great stake when executing tasks alone.

In the battlefield, when knights started to gather, it indicated that the real large-scale war was coming.

After flying by Helan Mountain Range, Zhang Tie had already had the thunder hawk leave because he didn’t want his baby thunder hawk to suffer any harm in the theater of operations. Although it could fly very fast, it would also face dangers in the sky. If it met a heavenly demon knight, the thunder hawk might encounter some dangers. Therefore, after having the thunder hawk leave the perilous area, Zhang Tie continued to move westwards alone.

Lotus-flower eyes with which he could see clearly what happened over 600 miles away, master-level hiding rune effect with which he could completely hide his qi and shape; plus his superb flight ability as a divine dominator, all the 3 tricks enabled Zhang Tie to feel like entering an unpopulated zone in the theater of operations. As a result, human knights’ or demon knights’ patrol unit could not find Zhang Tie or had been avoided by Zhang Tie in advance.

In this case, Zhang Tie felt like being the most powerful and stealthy jet-fighter that was invented by humans before the Catastrophe.

Previously, Zhang Tie had been ready for making a spree killing on the way; however, after meeting 2 squads of demon knights, he instantly realized that the demon knights in the theater of operations could not be easily killed like that a couple of months ago.

Even Zhang Tie felt helpless facing such a patrol or scout squad which contained over 100 demon knights.

If it was just 1 vs 1 battle, Zhang Tie would not be afraid at all. However, facing such a squad of demon knights, even though Zhang Tie could kill some of them, it was meaningless. Because he couldn’t teleport those demon knights that he captured into Castle of Black Iron right under the gaze of so many demon knights.

Additionally, when there were too many demon knights at present, it would almost be impossible for him to break through it. When these demon knights gradually formed larger 3-in-1 formations, it would be too hard for Zhang Tie to break them than kill one demon knight. Even an ordinary shadow knight might have to detour around a squad of over 100 demon knights in case of trouble.

A fundamental 3-in-1 formation required 3 knights; 2 secondary 3-in-1 formations required 9 knights; a third-level 3-in-1 formation required 27 knights and the like. Besides being 3 squared, 3-in-1 formations on different levels could also combine with each other flexibly in various forms. For instance, the large-scale collisions between tens of human knights and demon knights that Zhang Tie saw in the Earth-element Realm. It was also profound learning on how to combine knights’ formations, which manifested the experience and ability of the knight general who led these knights. Frankly, Zhang Tie didn’t have any experience in this aspect.

Xiangshan City was in the far. After those wing demon knights flew over, Zhang Tie flew towards Xiangshan City once again in the incarnation of the little black beetle being driven by an unspoken strength.

Xiangshan City, which was empty all over 3 months ago, had been completely different. The entire city, both inside and outside, was covered with the tents of demon fighters which lasted for dozens of miles. The dark scene brought people a strong sense of constriction.

Those demons on the ground were not limited to wing demons, but included iron-armored demons, ox-head demons and spider demons.

The residence of spider demons was in the periphery of the camp of demon corps. Spider demons were demon fighters that didn’t require tents; when they took rest, they only needed to lie on all fours like spiders…

The clear and bright moonlight was thrown onto the wilderness outside Xiangshan City, reflecting the pitch-dark round bodies of spider demons. From the sky, Zhang Tie saw dense, round balls all over the ground as if the earth was a grain-sunning ground being covered with black soybeans. Even Zhang Tie felt goosebumps all over…