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At dawn, the mist was thick and heavy, cloaking the sky and earth like a shroud of silence.
From the vast northern wilderness, the veil crept southward, slowly engulfing the towering shadow of the Great Wall.
To any passerby, everything seemed normal.
The fortress perched atop the Wall stood solemn and immovable, its ancient bricks and stone towers winding like the spine of a sleeping dragon.
The walls bore centuries of wear—scars from arrows, claws, and siege—but still stood proud.
The battle-hardened walls glittered with dew, hardened through time, blood, and legend.
Above, sleek modern drones zipped silently across the pale sky.
The Crane Army's Air Force, now operating fleets of high-altitude unmanned surveillance aircraft, had eyes on the horizon 24 hours a day.
With heat-mapping sensors, high-speed relays, and adaptive cloaking detection, they scanned constantly for signs of Taotie movement.
Despite the technological edge, the truth was grim: the Taotie had not been defeated.
Only contained.
While the Great Wall Fortress had held strong over the years—thanks to its reinforced bastions, artillery batteries, and the modern Nameless Order—the Taotie King had not remained idle.
Having failed to overrun the Wall directly, the beasts had spread outward, like dark roots burrowing beneath humanity's borders.
Their numbers surged in distant regions, swarming war-torn zones, sabotaging military outposts, and ambushing convoys.
But even then, they never forgot what lay behind the Wall—the bountiful East, the cradle of civilization—and the stronghold that stood between them and their prize.
So far this year, the Great Wall Fortress had endured numerous Taotie assaults.
Some skirmishes involved a few dozen creatures testing the defenses.
Others numbered in the hundreds.
In each case, the Nameless Order responded with brutal precision: sniper kill teams, rapid-deploy artillery strikes, and combat drones.
Every battle was a warning. The Taotie were watching.
Testing.
And then came the morning everything changed.
The tremor came first.
At 06:17, sensors embedded along the northern perimeter detected a low, rhythmic rumbling beneath the soil—faint but growing in intensity.
At 06:23, seismic scanners registered an unexplained shift. The northern deserts erupted in dust, and the sky above the wilderness turned a sickly gold.
By 06:31, the mist that had blanketed the Great Wall began to recede, swept away by a monstrous wind howling from the north.
A sandstorm formed—no, erupted—out of nowhere, building up like a wrathful spirit tearing across the landscape.
Hundreds of meters tall, it surged forward like a colossal yellow tide, swallowing hills, forests, and outposts in its path.
The temperature dropped. The sun vanished.
Everything was consumed by a wall of sand, shrieking like a thousand tortured souls.
Inside the command tower of the fortress, the sensor arrays blared.
"Rumble—"
Sirens echoed through the corridors.
The ground trembled violently, stronger than any quake recorded in years. Communications flickered.
Drone feeds cut in and out as sand overwhelmed the skies.
Then came the message—delivered breathlessly by General Lin Mei, the current commander of the Crane Army.
"General Shao! Emergency recon report—unmanned drones confirm visual on hostile movement inside the storm! It's the Taoties—massive formation. We estimate over 100,000! They breached the surface in the Northern Wilds and are charging directly toward us!"
"What?!"
General Shao Yong, supreme commander of the Nameless Order and leader of the Bear Army, stood frozen.
Calm and composed by nature, his expression faltered for a rare second.
The last time Taotie numbers exceeded 100,000 was during the Song Dynasty, centuries ago.
And now, they were all coming—for them.
"It's the King," Lin Mei added grimly, eyes narrowed.
"He's behind this. The Queen must have reached full maturity. They're finally ready."
Shao clenched his fist. "So they want to finish what started two thousand years ago..."
He turned sharply to his officers.
"Sound the alarm! Highest war alert! Seal all outer gates and prepare for full assault. Get me immediate contact with all division commanders—Bear, Crane, Tiger, Deer, Eagle. Emergency war council—ten minutes. Go!"
As alarms blared across the fortress, soldiers raced to battle stations.
Anti-air guns rotated to optimal angles.
Drone bays opened to launch swarms of interceptors.
Armored carriers rolled into position along the wall's platforms, while railgun batteries hummed to life, charged by nuclear cores embedded within the mountain itself.
The fortress hadn't seen full-scale war in millennia—but it had never forgotten.
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In the underground briefing chamber, General Shao stood before a circular table displaying a holographic tactical map of the entire Great Wall and the surrounding wilderness.
Beside him, General Lin Mei watched satellite feeds flicker on and off due to sand interference.
"Bring up historical data," Shao commanded.
A projection emerged—records of the Great Battle of the Song Dynasty, when the Queen was slain by the ancient Order.
Their names echoed through the centuries: Commander Lin Mae, William Garin—heroes of legend, now revered by scholars and military officers alike.
"Their last stand held off the Queen long enough for her to be neutralized," Lin Mei said.
"But they never encountered the King."
Shao nodded. "We're not fighting the same enemy they did. This isn't a siege—it's a calculated invasion."
He looked at the map again.
"Deploy the Tiger Army in a V formation to channel the horde into our fire lanes."
"Bear Army locks down the flanks with riot barriers and heavy suppressors."
"Crane Army deploys high-altitude recon and aerial snipers."
"Deer Army will conduct mobile flanks on both sides of the storm using camouflaged APCs."
"Eagle Army—focus all long-range bombardment on suspected hive clusters underground."
"Woooo—!!"
The shrill alarm screamed across the fortress, slicing through the dawn like a blade.
The tranquil haze that had once hovered above the Great Wall Fortress shattered.
Lights across the stronghold blinked to red, klaxons echoed through stone corridors and command posts, and loudspeakers across the battlements blared:
"Highest combat alert! All personnel report immediately! This is not a drill! Repeat—this is not a drill!"
Within seconds, the fortress exploded into motion.
Thousands of soldiers—some sleeping, some off duty, some mid-meal—abandoned everything and ran to their stations.
Military code was ironclad: failure to respond during a Level One alert was punishable by court-martial, or worse—abandoning one's oath to the Wall.
Within minutes, the front line battalions surged to the upper battlements.
Massive armored shutters hissed open along the ramparts.
Automated gun turrets rotated into position, exo-armors snapped into place over soldiers' bodies, and artillery crews loaded shells into towering cannons.