The giant wolf’s cws tore through the frozen earth.

  Golden battle aura erupted from Bart’s body, the shockwave flinging away loose stones and shards of broken weapons. With all four paws off the ground, the wolf accelerated to its limit, its body skimming the terrain as it streaked across half the battlefield.

  The coaxial machine gun on the side of the tank swiveled.

  Rat-tat-tat-tat—

  Magic crystal bullets smmed into Bart, creating ripples across the surface of his golden aura. Every single round was deflected.

  No penetration.

  With the battle aura of a peak Gold-tier warrior compressed within three inches of his body, the density had exceeded the penetration limit of the machine gun rounds. Bart charged through the rain of lead. When the giant wolf was fifteen meters from the lead tank, it lunged into the air.

  Bart kicked off the wolf’s back, propelling himself even higher.

  He raised his greatsword above his head. Golden aura surged from the bde, the searing sword-qi swirling and whipping up waves of intense heat. Bart’s body traced an arc through the sky before smming onto the roof of the lead tank’s turret.

  Upon nding, his feet punched two shallow craters into the turret’s armor.

  A sweep of golden aura shed out, shearing away a cluster of communication antennas and sighting equipment. Fragments cttered as they tumbled down the hull.

  Bart stood atop the turret, mere inches from Lin Yuan.

  His armor was riddled with bullet marks and scorched bck; his gold-trimmed breastpte had cracked in two pces. But he was still standing.

  His greatsword was pointed directly at Lin Yuan’s face.

  "The useless Fourth Young Master—"

  Bart grinned, revealing gums slick with blood. His teeth were stained red; the sheer vibration of his aura tanking the machine gun fire just now had ruptured his gums. But he didn't care.

  He was here. He was standing right in front of this waste.

  The sword swung down.

  The full-force strike of a Gold-tier warrior. Golden sword-qi enveloped the heavy bde as it tore through the air, creating a piercing sonic boom.

  Lin Yuan didn't move.

  He stood in the commander’s hatch, hands shoved into his overcoat pockets, watching the sword descend.

  Suddenly, two bck shadows surged from both sides of the turret.

  Two Imperial Guard Berserkers. From the moment the lead tank had rolled out of the city gates, they had been cmped onto the armor hooks on the sides of the turret, their hands locked tight. They hadn't moved once. Lin Yuan had never looked at them—he didn't need to. They were always there.

  Until this very second.

  The one on the left reached out with both hands, his ten fingers smming directly onto the ft of the bde, his fingertips digging into the blood grooves.

  The golden aura surged into his palms the moment they made contact. His skin scorched instantly; the pungent smell of burnt flesh filled the air. The flesh at his knuckles was burned through, revealing the white bone beneath.

  He did not let go.

  The one on the right was even more direct. He threw himself forward, locking his arms around Bart’s neck from behind and wrapping his legs around Bart’s waist. The golden aura heated his chest pte to a glowing red; the metal began to deform and melt, embedding itself into his raw flesh.

  He did not let go.

  Bart’s sword stopped.

  It hung frozen in mid-air, a mere twenty centimeters above Lin Yuan’s head.

  Bart looked down at the Berserker on the left who was gripping his bde. The man’s ten fingers were charred to the bone, yet even with his flesh destroyed, the skeletal fingers remained locked in the blood grooves, immovable.

  The Berserker looked up at Bart.

  There was no pain. No anger. There was nothing.

  His eyes were hollow and dead, radiating an inhuman, mechanical void.

  A chill raced from the soles of Bart’s feet to his skull, making him feel as though he had fallen into an ice celr.

  "What... what are these things—"

  Bart tried to circute his aura to yank the greatsword back. The golden energy fred, beginning to shatter the finger bones of the Berserker on the left.

  But the glowing-red Berserker on the right suddenly exerted force, pulling backward. Bart’s bance snapped, and his sword stance instantly colpsed.

  Lin Yuan moved.

  He pulled his right hand out of his overcoat pocket. He was holding a gun.

  A modified magical revolver. A six-shot cylinder, each round a system-forged armor-piercing shell. The faint blue enchantment runes on the barrel shimmered under the daylight.

  Lin Yuan raised his hand.

  He shoved the barrel into Bart’s mouth.

  Metal collided with teeth, knocking out one of Bart's incisors. Blood and saliva trickled down the barrel.

  Bart’s eyes bulged in sheer terror.

  He tried to ignite his aura. The golden energy had just surged to his throat and hadn't yet condensed into a protective yer—it was too close. At this range, the speed of aura condensation couldn't match the muzzle velocity of a bullet.

  Lin Yuan’s hand was perfectly steady.

  "My Lord."

  Lin Yuan spoke.

  His voice wasn't loud. But Bart heard it with absolute crity. Every word traveled down the barrel and into his oral cavity, vibrating against his mors.

  "Times have changed."

  He pulled the trigger.

  The hammer fell; the firing pin struck.

  The armor-piercing round accelerated through the rifling, spinning with enchanted penetration as it exited the barrel.

  The bullet punched through Bart’s hard pate, tore through his brain tissue, and erupted from the top of his skull.

  The exit wound was three times rger than the entry.

  Fragments of skull, brain matter, and blood sprayed into the air, flying two meters high before spttering across the rear armor ptes of the turret.

  Bart’s body remained standing for a moment.

  The golden aura vanished the instant its master died. The three-inch-thick protective yer evaporated. His armor let out a series of metallic groans as the enchantment runes flickered out one by one.

  The two Imperial Guard Berserkers let go simultaneously.

  Bart’s mangled corpse toppled. It rolled off the edge of the turret, bounced off the side skirts of the tank, and hit the ground.

  The heavy pte armor struck the frozen earth with a dull thud.

  Blood poured from the shattered cranial cavity, soaking into the snow in a dark red circle.

  The roar of the battlefield colpsed into a deathly silence.

  The first to react were Bart’s personal knight guards. Three knights below Gold-tier rushed forward and saw the headless corpse on the ground. One of them felt his knees go weak and knelt directly in the slush.

  "The Lord... the Lord is dead!"

  The cry was carried away by the wind.

  The noise of the battlefield dropped another level.

  The banners of thirty-six noble houses still fluttered in the wind, but the men holding them were shaking. Commotion broke out in the infantry phanxes; those in the front were shrinking back, while those in the back were breaking ranks.

  The remnants of the heavy cavalry saw the body.

  The only Gold-tier powerhouse in the North. Their backbone. Ten thousand gold coins worth of enchanted armor and twenty thousand gold coins for a mutant giant wolf—all wasted by a single young man.

  One pistol.

  One bullet.

  Not even a whole corpse left.

  The colpse began in the center.

  Three lords were the first to throw down their weapons. They dismounted and knelt in the snow with their hands raised. The infantry behind them followed suit, kneeling in waves.

  "Surrender! We surrender!"

  "Stop the cannons! Stop firing!"

  "Ransom! I’ll pay ransom! One hundred thousand gold coins!"

  The kneeling nobles shoved one another, scrambling to throw their own banners onto the ground to trample them, terrified the tanks would target them first.

  Lin Yuan stood on the turret, looking down at the sea of kneeling men.

  The revolver's barrel was still smoking. He spun the cylinder and holstered the weapon at his waist.

  On the city walls, Karl leaned over the battlements, speechless for a long time.

  An army of ten thousand, crushed within half an hour. A Gold-tier powerhouse, executed with a single shot.

  Karl’s hands were shaking—not from fear, but from the sudden release of long-suppressed tension.

  The old butler had followed Lin Yuan for so long, but for the first time, he realized that "Useless Fourth Young Master" was the biggest joke in the world.

  The tank formation came to a halt.

  The engines of the fifty tanks dropped from high RPM to idle, the white steam plumes from the exhausts shortening. The treads were coated in blood and shredded meat; red liquid dripped from the gaps in the tracks.

  Lin Yuan scanned the battlefield.

  The red dots on the system radar had dropped to around twenty thousand. Most were clustered in the center, stationary, while a few scattered units were fleeing north.

  A middle-aged noble in fine steel pte armor crawled out from the crowd, dragging himself on his knees for ten meters until he reached the front of the lead tank. Two bloody trails marked his path through the snow.

  "My Lord! Mercy, my Lord! I am Count Karson of the Seventh Northern Territory, I am willing to pay three hundred thousand gold coins for—"

  "Shut up."

  Lin Yuan’s voice dropped from the turret.

  The words died in the noble's throat.

  Lin Yuan hopped down from the turret, his boots hitting the snow and spshing up red mud.

  He walked over to the noble and looked down.

  "Before you came here, did anyone mention leaving me a whole corpse?"

  The noble's face went pale.

  "Bart did," Lin Yuan recalled for him. "He said if I crawled out on my knees, he might leave me a whole corpse."

  Lin Yuan looked around at the kneeling nobles. There were over twenty faces; some were shaking, some were weeping, and some had lost control of their bdders.

  "Great Yuan does not feed useless prisoners."

  Lin Yuan put his hands back into his overcoat pockets.

  "We only need miners and fertilizer. Now, you have two choices."

  He held up one finger.

  "One: Submission. Hand over your territories, your military power, and the ownership of your mines. From today on, you are vassals of the Duchy of Great Yuan. You will pay taxes, you will obey, and you will keep your mouths shut."

  He held up a second finger.

  "Two: Death. Your corpses go to the recycling station."

  The middle-aged noble’s Adam’s apple bobbed.

  He looked back at his kneeling peers. No one spoke. There was a silence of three seconds. Then, the first man began to unbuckle his armor, his fingers trembling so much it took three tries. The second and third followed.

  Karson smmed his forehead into the bloody mud.

  "We submit!"

  A chorus of foreheads hitting the ground followed behind him.

  Not everyone knelt.

  On the right fnk, an infantry phanx of about two thousand men still held their formation. Leading them was a coarse-featured knight clutching a half-torn family banner.

  "Brothers, run! Run north! We'll be safe once we reach the city—"

  Lin Yuan didn't even turn his head.

  "Sweep them."

  Ten Gatling guns on the city walls swiveled their muzzles simultaneously.

  The barrels spun. Blue runes fred.

  The two-thousand-man phanx was smothered by a dense curtain of lead.

  Three seconds.

  The phanx was gone.

  The snow was repced by a massive smear of shredded meat and scattered weapon fragments.

  The kneeling nobles buried their heads even lower. Some began to dry heave.

  Lin Yuan casually brushed a speck of dust from his sleeve.

  The system panel popped up with recycling notifications. Green numbers flooded the screen. Lin Yuan gnced at the total at the bottom: 4.2 million gold coins, 6.8 million energy points.

  He tapped "Confirm."

  A blue light membrane spread out from beneath his feet, covering the entire battlefield. Every masterless corpse, every scattered weapon, every piece of broken armor was swallowed by the light.

  Thirty seconds ter, the battlefield was clean.

  Nothing remained on the snow but the living and the deep ruts of the tank treads.

  The kneeling nobles watched the bodies vanish in the blue light; several of them had completely snapped mentally, muttering incoherently as they knelt.

  Karl ran down from the city walls, jogging to Lin Yuan’s side.

  "Young Master, the battlefield is cleared. Twenty-three nobles have submitted, along with approximately twenty-eight thousand remnant troops. How shall we handle them?"

  Lin Yuan gnced at the numbers in the bottom right corner of his system panel.

  The gold bance had just broken eight digits.

  The energy reserves were filled to the brim.

  The mining district was still pumping ore through the pipelines.

  He looked north.

  Toward the Northern Capital. Bart’s stronghold for thirty years. The walls, the granaries, the armories, and the fortunes stashed in those noble estates over generations.

  It was all money.

  "Have the nobles write their letters of surrender and sign them with their thumbprints. Disarm the remnants and fold them into the logistics bor corps."

  Lin Yuan turned and walked toward the lead tank.

  "Tank companies, resupply ammunition. Grenadiers, check your gear."

  He climbed back onto the turret and stood at the commander’s station.

  "The army will not rest."

  Lin Yuan opened the hatch, took out a fresh cigar, and struck a match.

  The fme flickered, illuminating his face.

  He exhaled the first cloud of smoke and pointed his finger toward the north.

  "Advance. Level the Capital."

  The engines of fifty tanks roared to high RPM simultaneously.

  Treads ground into the snow, leaving two deep trenches behind. The iron column marched toward the Northern Capital, followed by the rhythmic, synchronized footsteps of three thousand grenadiers.

  The twenty-three nobles kneeling in the snow watched the steel torrent vanish over the horizon. Not a single one dared to stand up.

  It wasn't until the exhaust from the st tank disappeared from sight that Count Karson slowly raised his head.

  He looked left and right.

  His colleagues’ faces were covered in blood and tears; two had colpsed entirely.

  Karson looked down, staring at the two bloody imprints his knees had left in the snow.

  Bart was dead. The North had a new master.

  He slowly unclipped his family crest from his belt and tossed it into the pile of slush.