The dim red sunlight, illuminated by the setting sun, dyed the huge ice sphere blood-red, as if the Foreign People below it, smashed into the frozen earth and turned into meat paste, nourished this land that gave birth to them.
She was still in that majestic and opulent Imperial military uniform, her night-colored cloak fluttering in the wind like a banner, the inverted cross emblem at her collar signifying ill omens and mystery, with a winged serpent of disaster coiled around the inverted cross, and the demonic number "666" carved on her forehead.
Such an abrupt and terrifying appearance instantly stunned all the Foreign People present! A meteorite suddenly fell from the sky, instantly wiping out all the leaders here. What kind of situation was this?!
The Great Leader of the Northern Nomads, with his outstanding strength, reacted in an instant. He glared with tiger-like eyes at the top of the ice sphere, hundreds of meters above the ground, where Rin stood with two children.
Rin stood steadily at the highest point, right in the center of the ice meteorite. The two Little Ones, treading on the smooth surface of the ice sphere, were a bit unsteady and slippery. They fearfully clutched Rin's clothes, looking at the dense Foreign People soldiers quickly surrounding the ice sphere, forming an impenetrable wall. The excessive commotion had attracted the attention of this Foreign People camp; at the moment the ice meteorite landed, the entire outer edge of the grand camp had jumped three times!
Rin smiled proudly, looking at the countless ferocious faces that wished they could devour her flesh and sleep on her skin. If gazes could be swords at this moment, she, along with the two children, would have been sliced into meat paste—
Unfortunately, they could not.
Rin slightly raised her right arm, flipped her delicate hand, and pressed her palm downwards. Instantly, a dazzling burst of brilliant ice light erupted among the Foreign People soldiers who had surrounded the ice meteorite but couldn't find a way to attack. In a flash, ice-shard blades, radiating cold light, burst forth from the ground! Immediately, within a hundred-meter radius around the ice meteorite, a forest of ice-blade swords erupted, and countless Foreign People soldiers who had just gathered were impaled and suspended on the branches of the ice-blade forest.
Cheap blood flowed freely down the giant ice-blade edges. Some Foreign People soldiers were instantly killed by ice blades that directly pierced their heads, but most of them were not so lucky. The erupting ice blades pierced diagonally from the ground like tree branches. The densely packed, wind-piercing ice blades impaled the unfortunate Foreign People soldiers, turning them into tattered skin-water bags, as if pierced by several iron swords, twitching in the air, clearly tasting death, awaiting the end of life.
"Ah—!"
"Ah—!"
The sudden, cruel and terrifying scene instantly frightened the two children beside Rin. Both Najenda and Esdeath were so scared that their faces turned pale, and they tightly clutched her clothes, refusing to let go. The bloody ice-blade forest was too impactful for two children under the age of three to five, but if they were so frightened that they developed psychological trauma, leading to an inability to pursue a military career in the future, it might not necessarily be a bad thing.
"Mama, this is…"
Najenda asked Rin, her face pale.
"This is war, the mutual plundering of life between enemies. Kill the enemy, preserve yourself. This is the entirety of war."
Rin answered Najenda's question indifferently. She observed the children's reactions out of the corner of her eye. Beneath Najenda's fearful expression, Rin saw a deeper sense of aversion and negation in her eyes; she disliked this scene of wanton plundering of life. On Esdeath's face, beneath her pale skin, Rin saw a faint blush. Her breathing quickened slightly, and her ice-blue eyes glowed. Compared to her initial fear, this child actually showed a faint reaction of excitement!
"Shoot arrows! Shoot arrows quickly!!"
"Shoot arrows! Shoot arrows quickly!!"
"Shoot arrows!..."
Just as Rin was observing the children's reactions to witnessing the war scene, the Foreign People finally responded. The Northern Nomads, born and skilled in hunting, all knew how to shoot arrows. Standing far away, the Northern Nomads were already red-eyed. Amidst the continuous roars, countless hunting bows were drawn with arrows nocked. In a continuous volley of shots, arrows poured down from all directions like a torrential rain, like raindrops covering the sky, carrying the anger of the Foreign People soldiers, and shot towards Rin, who had appeared on top of the ice meteorite.
"Listen, this is the wail of resistance from ignorant weaklings."
The sharp wolf-tooth iron arrows, paired with the Foreign People's specially made beast-sinew strong bows, were enough to pierce the scales of a Danger Beast with a single shot. Both their penetrating power and lethality were impeccable. However, using them against Rin was a waste of good materials, for the wind, was on Rin's side—
"Roar—!"
A sudden gust of wind erupted with a clear dragon's roar. The wolf-tooth arrows, which had just left their bowstrings and ascended into the sky, were directly lifted higher by the swirling hurricane, forming a rapidly rotating arrow-ring a hundred meters above Rin's head. Propelled by the strong wind, the arrows spun faster and faster in the air, finally exploding with a boom once they reached a critical speed!
"Whoosh whoosh whoosh whoosh whoosh whoosh…!!!"
Tens of thousands of arrows, like a scattered canopy, were instantly returned to the Northern Nomads. A true storm of arrows unfolded at this moment! The arrows were unleashed in all directions, without blind spots, at ten times their initial speed and force. Countless Foreign People soldiers were directly shot into sieves by the arrows they and their own people had just fired, the barbed wolf-tooth arrows creating translucent holes in their bodies. They fell, eyes wide open and unable to close.
Rin's face remained calm and unperturbed. At her current level, all beings in the world could be viewed equally. There was no inherent hierarchy or value between lives; the value of life was endowed by the values of intelligent beings themselves. Without anyone to define the value of life, a human was no more noble or valuable than an ant.
In Rin's heart, she defined the value of many people: those she loved, those she liked, and those who admired and pursued her—many, many people. However, the lives of these Foreign People before her held no weight on Rin's scale. Therefore, they were no more noticeable than an ant… Just then, an extremely fast figure suddenly shot up onto the ice meteorite from behind Rin, and then, with a thunderous roar, lunged at Rin!
"Ah ah ah ah—!!!"
It was none other than the Great Leader of the Northern Nomads, who had barely escaped danger from the frontal assault of the ice meteorite. Even the ice-blade forest just now had failed to kill him. This three-meter-tall brute, wearing bone armor carved from the bones of a Super Danger Beast, raised a short-handled, square-headed war hammer high in his right hand and flew towards Rin from behind, moving too fast for the eye to follow—
"If you're going to ambush, please be professional. Do you Northern Nomads always have to shout to alert your target when ambushing?"
Boom!!!
An unimaginably loud sound, a distinct cracking, began to emanate from the massive ice meteorite, which was five hundred meters in diameter. Then, huge, deep cracks erupted across the sphere, and the enormous ice meteorite disintegrated with a crash, shattering into pieces.
Rin, holding the two children, floated gracefully to the ground, landing perfectly on a newly frozen ice platform. She looked with some interest at the short-handled, square-headed war hammer in the Great Leader of the Northern Nomads's hand.
"Myriad Shattering mjolnir. I never thought this hammer, rumored to be able to shatter all hard objects, would fall into the hands of the Northern Nomads. This is truly quite unfortunate."
"Woman from the Empire, your despicable and shameless sneak attack ends here! The ice you control is meaningless before this weapon, which only the strongest warriors of the Northern Region can wield! I will smash you into meat paste to mourn the Northern Region warriors who died in vain!"
Rin stood on the high ice platform, completely unconcerned about the Northern Region Grand Commander, who stood on the ruins of what was once the leader's tent. Rin shrugged slightly and said:
"Whatever you want to do is none of my business, but is it really wise for all twenty thousand of you to focus all your energy on confronting me?"
With that, Rin snapped her fingers crisply, pointing towards the direction of the Empire…
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