Chapter 145: Forty-One and Forty-One Thousand
Two days and two nights from hell!
For the Divine Elephant Nation, these two days and two nights had truly been a living hell.
Casualty reports kept pouring back to the Balibali Military District headquarters like snowflakes.
Even though theirs was an enormous military district with more than seventy thousand troops, they had begun to feel fear.
Because after two straight days, their casualty count had reached the horrifying number of thirty-five thousand!
Thirty-five thousand!
Half the forces of the entire military district!
Those nobles simply could not understand it.
Why?
How??
In terms of individual combat strength, the Divine Elephant Nation might not match the Tiger Roar Army, but the gap in numbers was simply too great.
Even a sea of spit from that many people should have been enough to drown them.
And most importantly, they had already sent five Second-Tier fighters from the military district to reinforce the front.
That made a total of ten Second-Tier fighters all together, or what Huaxia called Profound Rank Martial Artists.
And yet the Tiger Roar Army had only twelve hundred men, and only three Profound Rank Martial Artists!
They gathered and scattered like the wind, moving as though directed by a single arm. Their combat power and discipline were unlike anything the Divine Elephant Nation had ever seen.
And they always seemed to have eyes in the backs of their heads.
Wherever the enemy had fewer men, that was where they struck.
When the Divine Elephant Nation soldiers were at their most alert and most fully prepared, the Tiger Roar Army would not come.
But the moment they relaxed, the Tiger Roar Army was there.
And their Profound Rank Martial Artists were always either more numerous than yours or stronger than yours.
If your side ever had more than four Profound Rank fighters or even more than that, the Tiger Roar Army would instantly scatter, and you would not catch a single one of them!
On the third day, the Divine Elephant Nation finally could not take it anymore.
They dispatched a Third-Tier expert, or what Huaxia called an Earth Rank expert.
He was secretly teleported into Camp Two, where he waited for Li Mu on his Somersault Cloud, or for the Tiger Roar Army to walk into the trap themselves.
But to their surprise, the Tiger Roar Army seemed to have sniffed out the danger. They did not appear again at all.
On the fourth day, the Divine Elephant Nation concluded that the Tiger Roar Army had already returned to Tiger Roar Camp and must be exhausted from days of constant movement.
One only had to think about it to know.
Over those two days and two nights, the Tiger Roar Army had been moving almost nonstop.
If they gathered in large numbers out in the wilderness, they would attract monsters, so even when they rested outside, they had to split up and pause separately.
There was no way they could have rested well.
After two straight days like that, the Tiger Roar Army had to be utterly worn out.
If the Divine Elephant Nation struck now, they could catch them off guard and avenge themselves.
So the Divine Elephant Nation committed heavily, sending out two hundred elephants.
Each elephant was packed with twenty soldiers in an almost acrobatic fashion.
That made a total of four thousand elite troops, all splitting up and launching a night raid straight toward Tiger Roar Camp.
After a nonstop seven-hour dash, they gradually began regrouping in the distance.
The aura released by so many people gathering in one place quickly attracted a huge number of Abyss monsters.
But their mobility was just too poor. With monsters both ahead of them and monsters being drawn in behind, they had no way to avoid them.
They could only carve out a bloody path forward.
Before they even reached Tiger Roar Camp, they had already lost two to three hundred men.
And once they arrived at Tiger Roar Camp, one curry officer shouted over the radio, “Go around, go around! Lead the monsters into the camp!”
Unfortunately, the Divine Elephant Nation force was too unwieldy to turn that quickly. They were far too slow in splitting toward both sides, and the monsters from behind caught up and began slaughtering them.
Even so, the monster horde still managed to smash down Tiger Roar Camp’s outer wall and pour into the camp.
The Divine Elephant Nation soldiers entered Tiger Roar Camp as well and began street fighting.
They had expected to catch a Tiger Roar Army so exhausted it could barely think straight.
Even if both sides perished together, that would still have been acceptable.
But to their shock, Tiger Roar Camp was completely empty.
There was not a single living person there!!
The Divine Elephant Nation army could only use Tiger Roar Camp as a temporary stronghold while desperately killing off the huge mass of monsters they themselves had lured in.
By the time the monsters were finally wiped out, the Divine Elephant Nation force was down to a weary two thousand seven or eight hundred men.
After a seven-hour acrobatic death march, followed immediately by that brutal fight against the monster horde, those men collapsed onto the ground, just about to catch their breath.
And then the Tiger Roar Army suddenly charged in from three directions.
Their bodies were all flushed red as they came howling in Berserk State, smashing through the Divine Elephant Nation troops like rotten wood and dry grass, wiping them out to the last man inside Tiger Roar Camp.
Now, for those final two days, if one shifted back to the Huaxia Tiger Roar Army’s point of view:
After killing for two days and two nights, Song Chuhe had originally planned to strike Camp Two again.
Unexpectedly, the moment they neared the camp, the Heaven-Shaking Compass began to spin wildly.
That was the warning that an Earth Rank expert was present.
Song Chuhe immediately asked Li Mu what to do next.
Li Mu took one look and saw that every soldier had dark circles under his eyes.
The Tiger Roar Army really had been charging back and forth nonstop over those two days.
They had been moving and killing, moving and killing, again and again!
Forget people—even the horses were nearly dropping dead from exhaustion!
There had been almost no rest at all. Everyone had been holding on through sheer fighting spirit.
Now that an Earth Rank expert had appeared as well, Li Mu was not about to take that risk again.
He immediately ordered everyone to activate their Return Stones and head straight back to the Pearl Military District.
Li Mu himself returned alone to Tiger Roar Camp and informed all the noncombat personnel in the camp to return to the military district as well.
That had been Song Chuhe’s idea. He believed the Divine Elephant Nation still had not truly accepted defeat.
And if they had not accepted it, then there was every chance they would make another move.
After resting a full day, everyone returned to Tiger Roar Camp, while some others returned to the Forward Outposts.
Only a few hours after everyone came back, the patrol team from the Forward Outpost spotted traces of the Divine Elephant Nation.
Ten minutes before the Divine Elephant Nation arrived, everyone at Tiger Roar Camp dispersed completely into the Forward Outposts.
Then, only after the Divine Elephant Nation and the monsters had finished slaughtering one another, did they reappear and launch a sudden return strike.
At that point, Song Chuhe’s plan finally came to a temporary close.
A set of numbers was sent back to both the Pearl Military District and the Bloodsea Military District.
Inside the Bloodsea Military District, after Zu Yuanji and the others heard the report from below, the room fell into a frightening silence.
Out of the Tiger Roar Army’s twelve hundred men, a total of only forty-one had died in this campaign.
Among them, four had died by accident while luring monsters, after being pursued and killed by a Profound Rank monster.
The rest had all fallen in the process of killing the enemy.
But the enemy casualties they had inflicted were enough to make one’s scalp crawl.
Forty-one thousand men!
Forty-one thousand Divine Elephant Nation soldiers!
And that did not even include the noncombat personnel in those camps.
They had also killed five Profound Rank Martial Artists of the Divine Elephant Nation!
This was no longer a matter of merely blunting the Divine Elephant Nation’s edge.
This was a matter of hanging the Divine Elephant Nation up and whipping it senseless!
“Twelve hundred men! They killed forty-one thousand! How the hell was this battle even fought?”
“Does that kid have an extra head compared to everyone else??”
Zhong Xinghai’s old face was flushed bright red with excitement.
The others all wore different expressions.
Everyone sitting in that room was a major figure in the military.
But not a single one of them had ever fought a battle this beautiful!
At that moment, they were desperate to see a full strategic breakdown of the campaign. They were burning with curiosity over how exactly it had been fought.
Judging from the numbers alone, this battle was enough to go down in history!
And its effect was unprecedented as well.
Because only a few hours later, someone from the Divine Elephant Nation arrived.
This time it was not an envoy from Balibali City.
Instead, it was an acting vice foreign minister from the Divine Elephant Nation’s foreign affairs department, who personally came to the Bloodsea Military District to deliver a message on behalf of the foreign minister.
He rambled on and on for quite a while, but the general meaning was simple:
Brother, stop hitting us. We surrender.
Pull back whoever is in charge over there on your border.
We cannot endure this anymore.
The Bloodsea Military District only said that they would discuss it, then left that acting vice foreign minister cooling his heels in a room.
After that, Zu Yuanji deliberately sent someone directly to Tiger Roar Camp to ask what Li Mu thought.
Li Mu’s answer was as direct as ever.
“Tell the Divine Elephant Nation to hand over the five camps outside the Balibali Military District, along with all resources connected to those five camps, to Huaxia.”
“And then apologize to Huaxia. Otherwise, they can bear the consequences.”
When that message was brought back, the corners of Zu Yuanji’s mouth lifted as soon as he heard it.
His deputy asked with some concern, “Those demands make it a little hard for the Divine Elephant Nation to save face. Will they really agree?”
“Isn’t this going a bit too far?”
As he saw it, beating the other side into submission should have been enough. Li Mu had already killed tens of thousands of their men, and now he wanted them to cede territory and hand over resources too?
The Divine Elephant Nation was probably not going to agree to that.
But Zu Yuanji immediately shot him an irritated look.
“Go reply to that acting vice foreign minister. Give him Li Mu’s exact words.”
“No, wait—add a few more lines!”
“Tell them that besides those five camps and the related resources, they must also actively cooperate with Huaxia in research on Abyss border adjacency and in the exploration and development of long-range point-to-point teleportation.”
“And Li Mu is absolutely not being recalled. At most, we can stop him from taking action.”
“Give them twenty-four hours to consider it. If they refuse or let the deadline pass, there is no need for them to send anyone else to mediate.”
“The Tiger Roar Army’s next target will be their military district headquarters, with Earth Rank experts in tow...”