nycdaug Chapter 581 Giant Gorge City
Chapter 581 Giant Gorge City
The old man withdrew his hand, took a step back, and made way for him.
Lin Tian turned around and walked back to the teleportation array.
Colin had already taken his place on the teleportation array platform, standing guard directly in front of the central rune. His four attendants also went up to the platform, standing in the four directions, forming a standard guard formation.
Lin Tian stepped onto the platform.
Little White flew off his shoulder, circled once above the teleportation array, and then landed back on his shoulder, its dragon body coiling into a tight circle.
Celia didn't speak; her figure completely merged into Lin Tian's shadow, without even a trace of shadow energy leaking out.
Colin glanced at Little White, then at the shadow beneath Lin Tian's feet.
"Let's go," Colin said.
He was the first to step into the teleportation tunnel. A white light engulfed his figure; his iron-black armor, silver-white plate armor, and the longsword at his waist—everything was swallowed up and vanished in an instant.
Four attendants filed in. Two warriors led the way, the mage in the middle, and the assassin brought up the rear. Their steps were steady, without the slightest hesitation, as if they had walked this path countless times.
Lin Tian stepped into the center of the teleportation array.
White light surged in from all directions, engulfing his entire field of vision.
......
The white light dissipated.
Lin Tian found himself standing in a completely unfamiliar place.
The teleportation array beneath his feet was at least three times larger than that of Star Moon City, and the complexity of its runes was on a completely different level.
The runes here are not just engraved on the platform, but on every single brick. Glowing energy lines are also embedded in the gaps between the bricks, like a giant spider web.
The air smells different.
The air in Starmoon City is mild, carrying the scent of earth and vegetation. The air here is cold, mixed with a faint smell of gunpowder and blood, the kind of smell only found in land long scarred by war.
In the distance, a low rumble could be faintly heard, like thunder, but with a regular rhythm—boom boom boom boom boom.
It was artillery fire.
It's the front line.
Lin Tian looked up and saw a city he had never seen before.
......
The moment the teleportation light completely dissipated, Lin Tian finally saw the city before him clearly.
Juxia City.
Its city walls are not made of stone, but of iron.
No, to be precise, it was cast from molten iron.
The entire city wall has a dark iron gray color, and its surface is covered with patterns and air bubbles left during the casting process. If you touch it, you can feel the rough, cold metallic texture.
The city wall is over fifty meters high and at least twenty meters thick, according to visual estimation.
The city walls were covered with protective runes.
It wasn't just a few scattered pieces, but rather a dense mass covering the entire city wall.
The runes were not the usual blue or gold, but a deep, dark red, like dried blood.
Some runes have deep engravings, so deep that it looks like grooves have been carved into metal and then filled with some kind of luminous liquid. Other runes have shallow engravings, just a thin layer, but that shallowness is not a sign of cutting corners, but rather a more advanced enchanting technique—the runes are not engraved on the surface, but rather attached to it like a thin film.
Every hundred meters along the city wall stood a protruding arrow tower, each tower ten meters higher than the wall itself, with a platform atop it large enough to accommodate a large ballista. The ballista's string was made from the sinew of some kind of magical beast, as thick as a baby's arm, and when taut, it emitted a deep humming sound.
The sky above the city walls is not blue.
It is a hazy, gray color, as if it is always shrouded in a thin mist.
That wasn't the weather, but something formed from the mixture of smoke and magical aftershocks that perpetually filled the air above the battlefield. Sunlight couldn't penetrate it, only managing to let through a thin layer of dim, yellowish light, like a dirty piece of glass.
On the city wall, a soldier stood every few steps.
Their armor wasn't the gleaming silver ceremonial gear of the Star-Moon City guards, but rather dusty, scratched, and dented combat armor. Some sat leaning against the crenellations of the city wall, some were wiping their weapons, some were organizing their quivers, and others were repairing the damage to their armor.
No one speaks.
The entire city wall was as silent as a graveyard.
Their gazes all fell in the direction of the teleportation array—not to look at Lin Tian, but instinctively to be wary of everyone who came out of the teleportation array.
Those gazes were heavy, like stones, unlike the curious or awe-inspiring gazes of the people of Starmoon City. Instead, they were cold, scrutinizing, and asking, "Are you friend or foe?"
Lin Tian stepped off the teleportation array.
Colin was already standing at the edge of the teleportation array, talking to a person in an officer's uniform.
That man's uniform was different from Colin's; it was a darker color, and he had three silver horizontal bars on his shoulder straps—that was the mark of a battalion commander, someone who led at least five hundred men.
After Colin finished speaking, he waved to Lin Tian.
Lin Tian walked over.
"This is Great Canyon City," Colin said, his tone as concise, direct, and without any embellishment as when he was in Starmoon City. "Located in the middle of the northern border defense line of human territory, it has been fighting against the beastmen tribes and icefield barbarians of the north for many years."
Thirty li outside the city is the buffer zone, and fifty li further north is the line of fire.
He paused for a moment, giving Lin Tian time to process this information.
"Three days ago, there was a battle on the northern front," Colin continued, glancing north. "The orcs amassed about two thousand men, attempting to break through the seventeenth defensive line. We drove them back, killing about three hundred, while we also lost over seventy."
When he said "more than seventy were broken," his tone was completely flat. It was as if he were saying, "It rained today."
"Life here is different from your life in a level-two main city."
"This is the front line, not a training ground."
Lin Tian's gaze shifted from the city wall to a more distant view.
In the distance, under the hazy sky, several plumes of smoke could be vaguely seen, like smoke rising from a campfire or exhaust fumes from the operation of some large war machine.
The smoke column was dark gray, almost blending into the color of the sky. It would be difficult to distinguish it if the smoke column hadn't swayed slightly.
Further away, a low rumble could be heard every now and then.
It wasn't thunder, it was artillery fire.
Boom—rumble—rumble.
The sound came from afar, attenuated and distorted in the air, eventually becoming a muffled sound, like a heart being struck by a heavy hammer.
The sound wasn't continuous, but intermittent, sometimes every few seconds, sometimes every ten seconds or so, but it never completely stopped.
From the very beginning, this city was in a state of war.
Colin led Lin Tian through the city gate.
The city gate was made of iron and was half a meter thick.
The inside of the door panel is inlaid with a layer of runic circuits, which emit a faint blue light in places where the light does not reach.