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Book 7, Chapter 38: Open Fire

Bang!

The Titan-Class puppet’s fist descended mercilessly, splitting the elder’s skull open like an watermelon.

The elder did not regenerate from this wound. The destructive power of a Titan-Class puppet had completely extinguished his vitality in one blow.

Ye Fenghan fell to the ground, his strength completely exhausted.

The earlier battle had been an incredibly dangerous balancing act. Even a slight misstep would have resulted in death.

He had only won because of the Titan-Class puppet’s unexpected might, as well as the immortal energy that was in his body.

“Well, that old guy is dead now.” Chang He was not as aware of the significance of what had just transpired. In his eyes, a Tenth-Ring Arcana Master was equal to an Ultimate Emperor Realm cultivator, as was a Titan-Class puppet. In fact, Tenth-Ring Arcana Masters were typically weaker than either of the two, and the Titan-Class puppet had even been granted intelligence by Su Chen through his unique Method Power. In Chang He’s eyes, their victory was practically guaranteed.

He had no idea that, while they might have had the advantage in terms of strength, he would have died if it weren’t for Ye Fenghan keeping both of them safe.

Ye Fenghan was too lazy to explain all this to him, but Chang He just didn’t seem to shut up. “Right, what technique did you use back there? It must be an incredible one if it can even restrict a Tenth-Ring Arcana Master.”

“A one-time use one,” Ye Fenghan replied.

“That’s fine too. Just tell me the name of the technique! Can I exchange for it with contribution points?” Chang He asked excitedly.

Ye Fenghan tilted his head, thought for a moment, and then shook his head. “Not right now.”

“Why not?” Chang He seemed nonplussed by his quick rejection.

Ye Fenghan finally lost his patience and slapped him upside the head. “Stop asking so many questions and get to work.”

After saying this, he turned towards the Demon-Executing Cannon.

“What else is there to do?” Chang He asked curiously.

“Firing the cannon, of course.” Ye Fenghan gently stroked the cannon’s metallic surface as he glanced at the chaotic battlefield in the distance.

Rivers of blood flowed everywhere, and decapitated heads dotted the gruesome landscape.

Both races were fighting with all their might, fully focused on either holding or destroying the third line of defense.

The barrier flickered constantly as it continued to protect the Harpies. Of the ninety-nine Arcana Towers, three had already fallen to the hands of one of the human squads. At that moment, the Harpy front lines were under incredible duress. Failure was, in some sense, almost inevitable.

But before the barrier totally collapsed, the humans would need to pay a tremendous price to maintain their offense.

“How do you use this thing?” Chang He asked as he circled the cannon.

“Do you see that dial over there? Turning it controls its direction. And that lever controls its power output; the higher, the more powerful.

“How do you know all this?” Chang He was extremely curious.

“Sect Master informed me before we arrived. Don’t ask me how he knew.”

Chang He finally understood. “So this was a mission that the Sect Master assigned to you from the very beginning, right? You didn’t tell me about this?”

“Shut up and go adjust that lever!” Ye Fenghan commanded. “Mountain, you go and guard the entrance.”

The Titan-Class puppet nodded once before lumbering away.

Chang He ran over to the power lever. Ye Fenghan was already beginning to adjust the cannon’s direction, aiming it at the Arcana Towers.

“Set the power to twenty. Prepare to fire,” Ye Fenghan barked sharply.

“That low?” Chang He glanced at the power lever and saw that it went all the way up to 180. He felt that Ye Fenghan was setting the power to be too low.

“What do you know?” Ye Fenghan replied curtly, “The Demon-Executing Power’s rate of fire and its power are inversely related. The lower the power, the more rapidly we’ll be able to fire shots. Twenty is more than enough to destroy those Arcana Towers. Fire!”

“Understood!” Chang He excitedly pressed the button to fire.

A lightning bolt shot forth from Perpetual Daylight Palace.

This lightning bolt was nowhere near as powerful as some of the earlier ones fired. Twenty units of power was obviously quite mediocre for the Demon-Executing Cannon. Even so, a shower of sparks still spilled forth from its mouth.

More importantly, this particular shot dealt an extremely heavy psychological blow to the Harpies.

Why was the Demon-Executing Cannon firing on its allies?

All of the Harpies were immediately dumbfounded when they saw the cannon’s target, while the human soldiers exploded into cheers.

“Recapture the Demon-Executing Cannon!” one of the Harpies howled furiously. Large groups of Harpy soldiers began to retreat towards Perpetual Daylight Palace.

Meanwhile, Ye Fenghan and Chang He were still playing around with the Demon-Executing Cannon’s power settings.

When Ye Fenghan saw that the Arcana Tower had only swayed but was not destroyed, he frowned before commanding, “Forty. One more!”

“Got it!” Chang He happily adjusted the lever.

An instant later, an incredibly thick column of lightning sprayed forth from the cannon.

This column of lightning immediately disintegrated the Arcana Tower. The powerful attack, however, continued shooting forwards without stopping, slaughtering all of the nearby Harpies as well.

Ye Fenghan was stunned. “Why is forty so powerful?”

“Um......” Chang He muttered sheepishly.

“What is it?”

Chang He embarrassedly replied, “I was a bit too excited on that one. I accidentally raised the power to eighty.”

Damn!

Ye Fenghan glared at him.

After readjusting the cannon once more, Ye Fenghan said, “Set the power to fifty-five. Fire!”

“I can’t fire yet,” Chang He replied with a mournful expression.

Ye Fenghan didn’t even turn around. “Is there a circling red light next to the lever?”

“Yes.”

“Then it overheated with the last shot. We can only fire again once the red light has disappeared. The stronger the shot, the longer it takes the cannon to cool down.”

Chang He could only helplessly wait for the red light to disappear.

Firing a powerful shot was indeed addictive, but it also meant that the recovery time would increase. No wonder Ye Fenghan had been increasing the power so slowly.

Thankfully, eighty units of power was not that powerful, and the red light quickly dimmed. Chang He readjusted the power lever, this time making sure not to overshoot.

A column of lightning equivalent to fifty-five power units slammed into yet another Arcana Tower. This time, the Arcana Tower lit up brightly before slowly crumbling away.

“This is the perfect power level,” Ye Fenghan said as he smiled in satisfaction.

Precisely regulating the power of the Demon-Executing Cannon would allow it to deal maximum damage.

Of course, this principle only really applied to “common” targets like Arcana Towers. Using it against a Desolate Beast was even simpler: just fire at maximum power. A thousand attacks at twenty units of power would not be as effective as a single blast of 180 units.

The cooldown time at fifty-five units wasn’t too long either. Chang He and Ye Fenghan carefully controlled the Demon-Executing Cannon and continued to decimate the Arcana Towers.

Arcana Tower after Arcana Tower crumbled to pieces, and the Harpies’ defenses began to significantly weaken. Parts of the barrier even disappeared as there were no longer any Arcana Towers in the vicinity to sustain them.

The Demon-Executing Cannon easily perforated the barrier, dealing a heavy psychological blow to the Harpies.

Even though the first wave of Harpy soldiers had already arrived on the scene, the Titan-Class puppet meant that it was impossible for them to interfere. The Harpy soldiers were like moths drawn to the flame. The only fate that awaited them here was death.

Even as the Titan-Class puppet continued to swat down the flies buzzing around outside, Ye Fenghan and Chang He continued to fire the cannon as quickly as they could, enjoying themselves immensely.

“This really is addicting!” Chang He cackled in delight.

During this short period of time, the Demon-Executing Cannon had destroyed around a dozen Arcana Towers. It seemed that, at this rate, they would soon finish off all of the Arcana Towers.

At that exact moment, however, Ye Fenghan redirected the cannon once more. “Alright, we’re changing targets.”

“What? Why? The defenses haven’t been fully destroyed yet.” Chang He didn’t understand.

“Master wants an intact Sky City, and not one riddled with holes,” Ye Fenghan replied. “Constructing an Arcana Tower is not cheap. We have to destroy some of them to minimize our losses and help our forces enter the city. Once they are inside, our primary duty will actually be to preserve the towers as much as possible.”

“So that’s how it is.” Chang He suddenly understood.

As more and more holes continued to open up in the barrier, more and more human cultivators would charge into the city.

Earlier, their goal had been to destroy.

Now, their goal was to protect.

Ye Fenghan turned his attention away from the Arcana Towers.

“So what should we target next?”

“The Harpies, of course,” Ye Fenghan said with a chuckle, “Don’t you think that using this cannon to fry flies would be quite entertaining?”

Chang He was taken aback for a brief moment before he burst out in laughter. “Not bad, not bad. You’re right indeed. This cannon was made to exterminate pesky flies anyways. How much power?”

“Set the power to five. Let’s give them a taste of rapid fire bombardments.”

“You got it!”

Ye Fenghan then aimed the cannon at the Harpies on the front line, and the Demon-Executing Cannon began to glow once again.

This time, since the power output was only set to five units, the red light signaling that the cannon had overheated didn’t light up after firing.

Chang He repeatedly mashed the fire button with reckless abandon, and a steady stream of lightning bolts shot out of the cannon. Ye Fenghan swept the cannon in an arc as if he were controlling a machine gun instead. Harpy after Harpy was struck by the lightning, and some of the weaker Harpies died on the spot.

However, the power output was a bit too low to pose a serious threat, and the cannon could only attack one target at a time. Even though it appeared to be stirring up quite a commotion, its destructive power was limited at this power level.

Ye Fenghan shook his head. “Five is not enough. Raise the power to ten.”

“Understood!” Chang He raised the power appropriately.

This increase in power was significant. The red light still did not light up, but the lightning bolts no longer flew forth in a steady stream. Wherever the individual lightning bolts landed, they would also explode, causing a mild amount of splash damage as well.

The relatively thin lightning bolts, however, had a harder time hitting their targets.

Ye Fenghan was still not satisfied. “Power to twenty.”

The power had been brought back to twenty once again.

Boom, boom, boom!

Bolts of thick lightning arced through the sky, accompanied by an ominous rumbling of thunder. Every time the cannon fired, a significant amount of damage was done.

“Power to thirty!” Ye Fenghan continued to adjust the power level.

The Demon-Executing Cannon continued to fire volleys of lightning at variable might under Ye Fenghan’s command.

Ye Fenghan eventually discovered through trial and error that, against Harpy soldiers, the Demon-Executing Cannon was most effective when it’s power was set somewhere between thirty and seventy units.

Any lower than that, and the cannon would be too weak to deal efficient damage.

As for whether thirty or seventy units of power was needed, it depended on the target’s strength. Thus, Chang He was hard at work, constantly adjusting the cannon’s power.

They continued to fire relentlessly. Tens of thousands of Harpies fell to the unstoppable barrage of lightning bolts.

Suddenly, they heard a loud cheer coming from the battlefield.

“What just happened?” The two of them were befuddled by the sound.

When they turned their attention to the source of the celebration, they saw a giant statue begin to topple off of a faraway mountain.

The Mother Goddess Statue had been pulled down.

She fell flat on her face. A large group of Titan-Class puppets could then be seen walking out of the cloud of dust.

“It’s the Titan army! The Sect Master’s Titan army!” Chang He cried out in excitement.

Ye Fenghan smiled slightly.

Su Chen’s Titan-Class puppets had been moving against the Mother Goddess Sect. The Mother Goddess Sect was one of the Harpies’ most important pillars that supported them, and they also had a large number of trump cards. This was the reason why Su Chen had dispatched his army of Titans there. Now, it seemed that their efforts had been rewarded.

At the same time that the Mother Goddess Sect statue fell, another, much closer cheer resounded.

Multicolored lights appeared to be flashing off in the distance.

And as those lights flashed, Sky City’s barrier began to shatter under an oppressive weight.

A massive object was bearing down on Sky City, emanating an imposing aura all the while.

The Mother of All Bugs!