Chapter 1218, Celebrating Too Soon

Translator: Silavin

 

Yan Hua held her right hand raised and perfectly still. Her other hand held the telescope to her eye, fixed on the ground below.

 

She was barely breathing. Every part of her was pulled taut.

 

The Dark Scorpion Tribe’s column was drifting into the marked zone.

 

Of the full column, the Totem Warriors and Warrior Trainees had passed the halfway point. The ordinary people were not yet inside, but those at the very front were moving really fast, and light was already fading.

 

“Not yet. Not yet. Hold it just a little longer.” Yan Hua murmured to herself, low and tight.

 

She did not blink. She was watching for the moment the whole column had entered, because only then could she give the signal to detonate. And only then could the aerial strike follow.

 

“Come on. The ones at the back, seriously, move faster. Come on.” She bit down on her lower lip. “The front is almost at the boundary. The back needs to move.”

 

The Dark Scorpion Tribe’s Warriors were spread out. They had not closed their ranks into a tight group. Fortunately, the explosive packages had been buried across a long, wide stretch, so even a sparse formation would not escape.

 

But there was a problem, and Yan Hua felt it pressing on her. The Warrior Trainees at the front were nearly through. Nearly out the other side of the burial zone. If they cleared it before Yan Hua gave orders for the detonation, the blast would not reach everyone. But detonating early was not an option either, because those at the front were only Warrior Trainees. Letting the explosives go now would send the Totem Warriors fleeing clear of the kill zone before the blast could reach them.

 

That was why her hand had not moved.

 

Her palm was damp against the telescope.

 

The other Warriors behind her held still, watching through their own telescopes, not one of them making a sound.

 

Step step step…

 

Shaman Chen Shao walked on, oblivious to the eyes above and around him. His smile had not left his face. He was already deciding how much he would drink tonight in celebration.

 

The column’s pace was really smooth. They moved like people who had already won.

 

Shaman Chen Shao and Du Ya led the Totem Warriors slowly into the encirclement. The moment the last Warrior stepped inside, just as the Warrior Trainees at the front were about to cross the far boundary…

 

Yan Hua, high above, closed her right hand into a fist.

 

Cheng Shi put the horn to his lips.

 

Wuuuu, wuuu, wuuu…

 

The call rang through the sky. Below, the Dark Scorpion Tribe’s heads came up. Around the perimeter, the Flame Dragon Tribe’s concealed Warriors heard it too.

 

“Light them up!” Cang Shi called out from a hidden position.

 

The concealed Warriors put flame to fuse in the same moment.

 

Hiss, hiss, hiss…

 

The fuses caught and burned. The Dark Scorpion Tribe’s people looked at one another and did not yet understand what they were hearing. They understood only that it was not good. That someone nearby was watching them.

 

“Enemy! Position, back to back. Watch both sides of the tree line.” Du Ya reacted fast, his voice cutting through the noise.

 

The horn above and the shouting from the forest had set his instincts off. He did not know what was coming, but a back-to-back formation was never wrong.

 

“I knew it wouldn’t be so smooth. But it doesn’t matter. We’re almost there either way.” Shaman Chen Shao’s face darkened, though he was not afraid. He had come too far. Even an ambush at this range meant the Flame Dragon Tribe was close, and he would simply adapt.

 

“You really thought it would be that easy?”

 

Crack crack crack…

 

Boom!

 

“Aaaah –”

 

Du Ya’s words were swallowed by the explosions, and then by the screaming that came directly after.

 

“My leg! Where’s my leg!? Aaah!”

 

“It hurts!”

 

“What is this? Is this a Shaman Technique from the Flame Dragon Tribe? We—”

 

“Help me—”

 

“Someone, someone please—”

 

The voices bled together and over each other, cries of pain and desperation tangled up with total bewilderment. Some died without knowing anything had happened. Some died mid-sentence.

 

Smoke rolled through the forest in thick curtains. One moment the trees had been still, the next the air was grey with it, heavy with the reek of gunpowder and blood. The scene was terrible to look at. The Flame Dragon Tribe had buried a large quantity of explosive packages here and buried them densely. There was nowhere to run that made any sense, and the Dark Scorpion Tribe’s people did not know which direction might be safer than the other.

 

“Aerial strike unit, follow me.” Yan Hua swept her arm forward and drove the Peak Eagle into a steep dive.

 

Ai’er, Cheng Shi, and the others pushed their Grey Feathered Giant Birds down after her.

 

The ground pass was over. There were still survivors. Now comes the second and final part.

 

Shaman Chen Shao had been extraordinarily unlucky. He had been standing almost directly above one of the buried explosive packages. He had not managed even a thought before the blast took him apart. He never even knew how he died. That was perhaps the only mercy in it, given that there was very little left of him to speak of.

 

Du Ya had been luckier in a way. He had lost both legs and was lying on the ground screaming. He had no idea what had happened. He knew only that it had come without any warning.

 

The explosion had been close enough to take his hearing with it. He lifted his eyes and saw people everywhere with their mouths open, and he could not hear a single one of them. Not that it made much difference. They were all calling for help. He could tell that much.

 

Boom! Boom! Boom!…

 

Yan Hua led the strike unit through another pass, diving and climbing in the sequence they had rehearsed so many times before. Today’s work matched the training precisely. Every explosive package landed where people were thickest.

 

With each blast, the screaming grew thinner. Until, at last, there was none.