The starry night was like a painting, with pools of starlight falling into the many lakes.
In front of this crescent-shaped forest plain, a village surrounded by round wooden walls quietly emitted a faint hissing sound in the still night.
In the center of the village, a large iron pot still had a few human leg bones stuck in it, with pink at still clinging to the bones.
Holding a spear, Udehema sat dazedly on a small bench within the watchtower, staring blankly at the silent and warm marsh plain.
For a Snake-man, this kind of land was the best.
They could freely herd their lizards, plant their snakeberries, and roll happily between the waters and the marshes.
According to those upright Church people, after expelling those of the Secret Faction, the Snake-n could have these lands, which originally belonged to them.
Long before, even before the El Empire landed on the eastern continent, they were the rulers of Black Snake Bay, happily living between the streams and jungles.
Until the El people landed on the eastern continent, driving many of the Norn Tribe eastward; without iron weapons or war horses, the Snake-n quickly lost and ceded these lands to the Norn people.
Millions of Snake-n migrated from the plains to the Green Dragon Forest Sea, but by the ti they settled and built houses in Volcano Valley, only a little over a hundred thousand remained.
Therefore, the upright-legged humans were the enemies of the Snake-n; the Snake-n should not cooperate with them at all.
To Udehema, these were just the Old Priest's ramblings; regardless of who threw a piece of at in front of him, he would be willing to take a curved knife and help them kill for it.
Suddenly, Udehema's oval head moved, and he sprang up, hissing in a certain direction.
But in his field of vision, the distant marsh and forest remained calm, as if pondering whether that fleeting sight was a rabbit.
In terms of human eyesight, Snake-n were generally nearsighted, often relying on scent and special heat sensation to distinguish things.
"Buzz——"
A sudden gust of wind lifted the thatch on the pointed tower; before Udehema could react, he saw a circle of mud suddenly fly up twenty steps in front of the wall.
Why did the mud suddenly fly up?
The Snake-man sentry still stood dazed behind the railing, trying hard to discern what exactly was the sphere in the center of that mud?
However, before he could figure it out, a whiff of linen lubricating oil and the rattling sound of a crank being turned wafted through the night breeze.
Not good; by this ti, Udehema finally realized and imdiately turned around, preparing to grab the gong hanging on the post, but it was already too late.
A deafening roar ca, and three rows of dim firelight flashed from behind the distant shrubs.
Of course, that wasn't the flash of gunpowder firing, but the flas from the intense friction setting the lubricating oil on the iron shot alight, only to be extinguished by the wind.
Udehema hissed in terror, lifting his scaly head, his retinas registering blurs of heat swiftly approaching.
He opened his mouth to shout, but at this crucial mont, he found himself unable to utter a single word.
The wooden wall let out a piercing groan, pointed logs exploded, and splintered chips slapped against his scales with cracking sounds.
Amidst the flying iron shot, Udehema completely forgot his duty to alert others, curling up behind the parapet of the arrow tower, shivering with his head hugged tightly.
"An earthquake?"
"The stars are falling from the sky, run quickly!"
"It's divine punishnt, it's a rain of fire."
"What's going on?" Several disheveled Extraordinary Knights stumbled out of their houses, calling out in drunken steps, "Was there an earthquake? Who's at the post, co out and speak!"
Not a single Snake-man responded to his words; all the Snake-n were running around in a panic, and only those noble Snake-n cursed angrily, brandishing whips amid the hissing chaos.
The surroundings were filled with screams and terrified hisses, and Snake-soldiers erged naked from their hos, crawling through windows or doors.
The second round of artillery fire ca shortly afterward as expected, and the Snake-n instinctively groveled on the ground, their screams and cries exploding like tidal waves.
Scorching iron balls leapt over the heads of the Snake-n, like countless teors streaking across the early morning night sky.
Even in houses that weren't hit by artillery, Snake-n could be seen clutching their heads and screaming, hiding behind walls and buildings.
Yet occasionally, a lucky iron shot still effortlessly punched through the walls.
It's worth noting that during Horn's previous test, a falcon cannon at 400 ters could penetrate 0.7 ters into gravel breastworks.
The outer village's double-layered elm walls, not even half a ter thick, were almost pulverized into a sieve by two rounds of concentrated artillery fire from 24 falcon cannons.
"Advance 150 ters for the third round of shelling; infantry regints follow up with an advance."
Under the shouting of Mormon, the four infantry regints of the Divine Punishnt Army, totaling 2000 n, charged toward the village in the torchlight and night.
At a distance of 400 ters, they remarkably suffered no retaliatory arrows or spears, letting the Divine Punishnt Army reach the village walls unopposed.
In the eyes of the Snake-n, these black-robed demons crashed into the precarious walls, one after another climbing over the broken stakes.
The knights left defending the village struggled to gather a group of Snake-soldiers, but just as they rounded a corner, they saw five rows of over a hundred Holy Gunn aiming their dark muzzles at them.
"Don't be afraid, charge forward; they have less than two hundred n."
"Hiss hiss... die die... hiss hiss——"
"In the na of the Supre Dragon God, crawl and charge with !"
Watching the approaching Snake-soldiers, the officer in the first row calmly drew his saber, slashing it heavily in the starlight.
"Praise the Holy Wind!"
"Bang bang bang——"
.........
When the sun rose, Horn dismounted at the village entrance, witnessing Snake-n lying belly-up all over the ground, their hands bound behind their backs, like salted fish lying on the ground.
The dawn light shone on the green, black, and white snake scales of these Snake-n, sparkling like dots of gold on the lake.
Horn crouched down, carefully observing these peculiar creatures.
Their lower halves were serpentine, while their upper halves resembled lizard-n, with long oval heads with closable ear holes on the sides, mostly dressed in rough clothing made of bark and sagebrush.
"Where did these Snake-n co from?" Horn turned and asked a nearby local Wizard who had been rescued.
The Wizard angrily kicked a downed Snake-man: "They're all cannibal barbarians who ran over from the Green Dragon Forest Sea."
"Are Snake-n the sa as Beastn?" Horn questioned again, but a response ca from another direction.
"No, no."
Turning towards the voice, Horn saw a Demon Hunter novel's standard white-bearded Old Wizard being helped over by Novia.
He leaned on a root cane, wearing a pair of broken glasses, nodding kindly and pleasantly towards Horn: "You see, Beastn and humans can produce offspring, but Snake-n are oviparous and cannot produce human offspring, so they are not a human subspecies, but an alien species."
"And you are?" Horn's inquisitive gaze turned to Novia, who was supporting him.
Novia introduced him matter-of-factly: "This is Old Brother Havier, an expert in demonology; those in the Bald Head Society are rely his disciples' disciples."
This Old Wizard gave a self-deprecating chuckle: "I originally escaped through the temple tunnels, but alas, I'm old and my old limbs couldn't run fast enough, so I got caught by these Snake-n... Speaking of which, what do you plan to do with these Snake-n?"
"Might detain them for a few days, then after the war ends, give them so rations and let them head ho themselves." Horn glanced at the ground full of salted fish-like Snake-n, feeling a bit troubled.
"Could I offer a small suggestion regarding the disposal of these Snake-n?" The kindly old Havier glanced sympathetically, striking his staff with exasperation, "You know, these Snake-man are just savages who ran here from the Green Dragon Forest Sea."
"No no no, that's not what I'm saying," Havier replied. "I'm not talking about letting them go. I an, they're perfect slaves!"
Horn stared at the elder with curiosity.
"You see, these Snake-n, with their strong physiques, could be useful for labor, don't you think? They can be tended with barely any resources, yet they have the endurance to support heavy workloads. Keeping exclusively children and the injured doesn't maximize their potential. The won and stronger ones should be kept as well," continued Havier, tapping his staff on the ground in emphasis.
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