Chapter 14-397: The Wall (2/2)

The Shroudzone of the Great Wall extended only a mile from the Wall itself, and its Deadzone a mile beyond that. But underneath that black cloud that snaked unmoving across the sky and over the horizon, there was a Greyfield.

No magic could be Cast there, and no chi or Qi powers could be wielded. There were no Forms or Techniques that could be executed there, and only passive Disciplines or Feats would have an effect.

The undead of the Great Wall didn’t have the might and powers of the Dark Bishops of the other Shroudzones, with their Negative Elemental energies and boosting of the undead, but they didn’t need it, because they stood there with none of our great magical powers able to attack them.

The Chinese fighting force was only getting bigger by the day. Volunteers of their own people and people coming from overseas had helped clear Shroudzone after Shroudzone. While there Powered among them, the majority of them were taking Human Racial Class Levels.

They were building to Seven, becoming Forsaken, reclaiming some youth, largely getting incredibly tough, leaders igniting as Sources among them, and so far they’d even Awakened three Voids, one of them a Hyn.

Magical Weapons and Armor were not affected by the Shroudzone, along with other passive magical items, what few there were. Pointedly, neither Blessings nor Marks were affected.

The Fight with the Cultivators was where everyone Seven and up headed to... unless they were Forsaken and went beyond the Great Wall and up to Tibet, where the Void Brothers were pressing mercilessly into the Plateau there. Endless creatures from Dream and Nightmare seemed to block the way, and yet, the Forsaken seemed to be getting further and further, as vivus fed the Land, Forsaken solidified the Veil, and the warped area beyond was being forced back into Reality, acre by acre, square mile by square mile.

And making some damn strong Forsaken as it did, too!

The Forsaken rapidly maxed out the Slots on the Weapons and what Armor they had, since their stuff was generally in the 26 to 30 range, and could only hold three to five Slots. That meant that if they wanted better stuff, they had to improve it themselves, because there just weren’t enough smiths around who could do it for them.

Happily, the best smiths in the world were working with them, available in Marktell, and could guide them in the process. The most powerful among them could even work towards the lofty goal of QL 40, if they could get the right materials and earn the right. Briggs and Commander Haru’Ara wouldn’t even consider doing it for them if they weren’t a Ten.

As a result, there was a massive investment in smithing Skills among the men and women here, as well as Bowyer and Woodworking, and even Glassmaking to help with the Autobows that were the favorite Weapons of those hearing that eventually firearms would get extremely expensive and not work as they did now.

But, in the meantime, those Firearms were getting in a lot of work.

The undead on the Great Wall really had no answer to firearms’ superior range and hitting power. Laden with Banes and Vivic fire, helped by Tokens, volleys of gunfire from shooters with Abundant Ammunition, working from siege towers to give exposure to the top of the Great Wall and its many towers, mowed down many thousands of the Wall’s defenders remorselessly, concentrating on any archers among them, or those manning siege engines which could match their range.

Men from overseas with sniper rifles or shooting anti-material rounds were particularly useful in such endeavors, as blowing out simple shields used for cover was no problem for them, and arrow slits were just a convenient opening through a stone wall for the better shooters.

Contrary to what might be expected, Jiayu Pass ended up being the starting point for the liberation, and the destruction, of the Great Wall. That was largely because the fortification was visible in the distance from where the assault on the Tibetan Plateau was taking place, and so it served as a sort of bridge point for the men who reached Six to work on, as it was more difficult to assault than a normal Shroudzone.

Still, since they could start at an endpoint, it wasn’t as hard as it might have been. The biggest thing was that they had to destroy the Great Wall and vivisize every single stone as they went, or the undead would simply rebuild it.

Oddly enough, it was the Chinese who had the most zeal for this task. It was like the Great Wall was a barrier in their minds, connecting them to their pasts and looming over their future. The ancient beginnings of the Great Wall were a horror built on Imperial abuse by the government and ultra-conservative Confucian thinking, which had hampered and stayed with China for basically all of its thousands of years of history.

It was time to tear it all down. The gods were coming; Good and Evil DID exist, they weren’t just who benefited from what and the victor was saint while the loser was the villain; and rulership wasn’t about the biggest fist, but working with forces bigger and better than any one man to create a King of the Land and its people.

China was going to be entering a new age, and it was time for them to seize and mold it properly into something new, or to be bound and limited by their past, possibly forever.

The Cultivators were hideous examples of clinging to the glories of the Imperial past to most Chinese now, and examples of the old styles of clothing and attire basically meant you were a Cultivator wannabe at this point.

It was Briggs who pointed out to them all that while they had to get rid of their past, they also had to seize the future, creating a new way for the Chinese that was not just that of the West and localized. As a result, there was not so strangely a very somber tone around the new styles being adopted by the Chinese.

Anything Cultivators had insisted on was absolutely abhorred, basically seen as slave styles regardless of how elegant it was, no different from dressing a flesh puppet. It was true, too... anytime I saw a red scarlet phoenix dress, I instantly tensed up and got ready to fight, as did literally millions of Chinese. It went without saying that pale skin was basically revolting to many. Amusingly enough, freckles, which were just about as anti-Cultivator as could be, were very much in vogue.

Designers among the Purgers could and did talk, comment on designs, show favorites, and grimly deny sorts of patterns that stirred up unpleasant memories. Industry wasn’t what it was, but magic helped, and making cloth wasn’t all that hard. New traditions and a new national identity wouldn’t be born overnight, but the Chinese were Leveling as hard as any population in the whole world, maybe more.

They were definitely going to be a big influence in the new world, one way or another.