Chapter 240 - Skull Guillotine
Han Wu carefully scanned the fleets of the ten kingdoms, but none responded to his warning. One Qin general even used morale to form a huge lance and hurled it at him. The lance was sharp enough to shear off some of his scales and pierced his body.
Since none had heeded his warning, then he would show them what real destruction looked like. Without hesitation, he yanked the lance from his flesh and crushed it. Then, drawing on his Divine Points, he summoned his Skull Guillotine once more.
Since its last appearance, the Skull Guillotine had spent days digesting the immense energy from the black crystals it had absorbed. Two days ago, it finally succeeded and used that power to upgrade itself dramatically. Before, it could mark only 10% of its victims for death. Now, the rate had jumped to 25%. Each time it appeared, it could annihilate a quarter of the opposing army. It was genuinely a terrifying weapon.
Han Wu hadn’t wanted to use it, but the soldiers had pushed their luck too far. He acted swiftly, determined to prove that he wasn’t someone they could push around.
He poured Divine Points into the Skull Guillotine, and a ring of black light burst forth, expanding until it encompassed the entire area around his shelter. He stopped only when the light reached that boundary. This defined the area where he would activate the Skull Guillotine’s effects. To reach this range, he had to spend several hundreds of millions of Divine Points.
Bao Xiren had been carefully monitoring Han Wu from below and was horrified when he sensed the Skull Guillotine’s presence again. Its design resembled his own three guillotines, though the Skull Guillotine operated with far fewer restrictions. He couldn’t fully grasp its core mechanics yet, but he knew with certainty that many would die once it activated.
Ignoring his admiral’s earlier warning, Bao Xiren pleaded again, “Admiral! The situation is critical. If we stay here, we’ll suffer heavy casualties. We must retreat now.”
Zhao Cheping’s face twisted with anger and disappointment. He never expected the young general to repeatedly challenge his authority. They held the upper hand, so he saw no reason to retreat now.
“Men! Drag this bastard away before he clouds my judgment any further! Beat him with the cudgel, a hundred strikes!” Zhao Cheping barked.
As the soldiers were about to drag Bao Xiren away, he kept pleading, “Admiral, please reconsider! Master!”
Unfortunately, Zhao Cheping was set on taking the Imperial Capital and pressed ahead with his orders to attack.
The Skull Guillotine was ready. Han Wu gave the command without a hint of emotion to mark all enemies within range for death. Instantly, black skulls appeared above the soldiers and generals, snapping shut like jaws. Within seconds, a quarter of the entire combined army perished without warning. Even the units they had summoned using their morale vanished into thin air alongside the fallen. Those who survived faced the harsh reality that a quarter of their forces had been wiped out.
The tide of battle turned again. This time, Han Wu held the advantage.
“The admiral is dead! Can someone tell me what just happened?”
“General, why have you died without a sign?”
“Magic! That brat’s using voodoo magic. Run!”
...
The Song Kingdom had dispatched thirty-two generals and tens of thousands of soldiers, capable of summoning up to 1 million units on their own. Yet, in a single devastating moment, they lost eight generals, 3,000 soldiers, and nearly 500,000 units.
Zhao Cheping escaped death by a stroke of luck, but the grief hit him so hard he could barely breathe. The Song Kingdom had always been weak, and now the loss of eight generals in one strike dealt a devastating blow, weakening their already precarious fate.
He recalled Bao Xiren’s warning and felt the urge to end his own life. If only he had heeded Bao Xiren and had ordered even a partial retreat, their losses would not have been so catastrophic. Sadly, it was too late. The more he replayed Bao Xiren’s words, the heavier his regret became.
“Bao... Bao... Xiren... Listen to me... I command you to bring... our soldiers back home...” Zhao Cheping coughed up blood as rage and despair consumed him. That final order was the last thing he ever spoke.
The same scene unfolded aboard the other ships. Just moments earlier, they had brimmed with arrogance. Now, every one of them was drowning in regret. Though they could resummon units through morale, the deaths of their generals and soldiers were irreversible.
While they were still wallowing in their regret, Han Wu commanded his army to fight back. The Skeletons Knights charged into the battlefield and raised new skeletons from the corpses of fallen soldiers. Comrades who had died only moments before rose again as hollow-eyed puppets and drove their blades into the backs of the grieving.
Chaos erupted as the skeletons cut down the living without mercy. Many soldiers froze in shock at the sudden turn until one yelled, “Run! Retreat!”
That cry snapped the generals out of their stupor. They had lost. If they didn’t flee now, they would all die here. The ships turned, sails rising in haste, but Han Wu had no intention of letting them escape so easily.
He gave the signal to the Deeptide Whales that had been lurking in the deep to unleash Maelstrom simultaneously. The swirling waters blocked any hope of retreat. Numerous ships were dragged into whirlpools and shattered into splinters. Many soldiers drowned or succumbed to the crushing pressure of the water.
Only then did the armies of the ten kingdoms understand the full weight of their defeat. Even so, they refused to die in vain. Their losses dealt a devastating blow to their kingdoms, so many raised white flags in surrender to preserve some of their kingdoms’ strength.
It wasn’t until every ship had hoisted a white flag that Han Wu gave the order to halt the assault. He commanded all vessels to dock near his shelter, then seized them as they arrived. He stripped the generals and soldiers of their equipment and threw them into his dungeon as captives. He also confiscated every resource they had brought with them.
It took him three full days to clear the battlefield. While he had lost many of his other units, his skeleton army had grown a hundredfold. Now numbering close to 300 million, the undead legions far exceeded the space available in his Imperial Capital. To reduce the burden, he merged them until only 50 million remained. Each one was an elite among elites. The weakest of them had reached the level of Elite Iron Skeletons.
He then gathered all the spoils and told Sun Qingnian to sell them however he saw fit. With the wealth he now possessed, he had enough to construct a single city of the highest quality. Once complete, it would greatly increase his kingdom’s fate—and as its emperor, he would share in those gains.
However, a new problem emerged. The region offered barely enough space for his Imperial City, let alone a new city. With no alternatives, he resolved to build his new city on the Warring Kingdom Continent.