Li Chengfeng had seen all sorts of blockbusters in his past life, so he thought he had seen many 'grand scenes'. In this life, he had also experienced terrifying battles of life and death. He had even 'witnessed' the terrifying battle in the Immortal Realm in the Ninth Heaven, and the terrifying battle on the flying battleship. He believed that there was nothing in this world that could shock him anymore.
Only today did he realise he was wrong. Very, very wrong.
Only by being on the battlefield could he understand what it felt like to be in a war of this scale!
This was a battle that deprived him of all his senses. The world seemed to have turned into a huge furnace. The air became incomparably hot, and his eyes were filled with a myriad of colors, bright and indistinct.
Looking up, it was a blood-red sky. Red "flowers" were blooming everywhere, and green "water ripples" were everywhere. They interweaved together, forming a strange halo of color. At first glance, one would feel that it was colorful and dazzling, but after looking at it for a while, one's eyes would sting, and tears would flow without end. In the worst case, one would even cover their eyes and wail in pain, rolling around on the ground.
Looking down, there was a clear distribution of gray, yellow, red, green, and other colors, with distinct layers of colors.
The heavy infantry in the basin had not engaged in battle yet. The first to engage were the elite cultivator armies and the Apocalypse Heavy Artillery Battalion. Both sides fired long-range attacks, the sound was earth-shattering. Everyone's eardrums went numb and their heads buzzed until they felt dizzy and painful.
Cultivators like Li Chengfeng felt like their ears were going deaf after a while. They could no longer hear the sounds around them. The originally clear sounds of the cannons gradually became distant and blurry, like the buzzing of water. They could not hear the voices of the people on the other side even if they were right next to their ears.
Everyone in the heavy armoured troops below was given earplugs to reduce the damage to their eardrums and brains from the bombardment.
Without the protection of the array and the golden body, Li Chengfeng and the rest felt dizzy. The air in their chests was boiling, and the pain was unbearable. Their mouths tasted salty and bitter.
Under such circumstances, Li Chengfeng felt that his thinking, reaction time and judgement had deteriorated significantly. The huge battlefield and the intense battle seemed to have magnified everything. In such a huge battlefield, a small individual was driven by a force called collectivism, subconsciously destroying his own individual will.
Everyone who had never been on a battlefield like this, or rather, everyone who had never fought a puppet country head-on, thought it was unbelievable that the puppet country could fight against Daqi. However, when they were on the battlefield, they finally understood what it meant to fight against cultivators.
Heaven and earth were the furnace, creation was the work, Yin and Yang were the charcoal, everything was the copper!
Li Chengfeng felt that heaven and earth had turned into a giant furnace. Whether it was cultivation spells or mechanical puppets, they were all like Yin and Yang. Humans were placed in this furnace to be forged and tempered!
It didn't matter if the people here were happy, angry, sad, young or old, they would all be forged and tempered until a victor was born.
The 'bombardment' lasted for about ten minutes. These ten minutes were the longest Li Chengfeng had ever experienced. Whether it was Daqi's side that was being bombarded or the puppet country's side that was being bombarded by the meteorites, both felt extremely uncomfortable.
Every second, there were unlucky soldiers who were hit by the light waves or shattered meteorites. Some of them were instantly decapitated, while others were instantly smashed into a pile of meat paste. Their entire bodies were smashed into the ground, and the meat paste seemed to be deeply embedded in the ground.
This was not just a battle of strength, it was also a battle of willpower!
Both sides hoped to use this fierce attack to destroy or weaken the other's willpower as much as possible, so that they could gain a greater advantage in the upcoming, more brutal melee battles.
Everyone was suffering, gritting their teeth and enduring it. Even with earplugs, they still felt dizzy, their vision blurred, and their chests tightened and they felt nauseous. What's more, some people couldn't help but bend over and vomit blood, fainting and falling to the ground.
But no matter how many fell, they were silently pulled out of the formation and sent to the rear for treatment. Most of them remained in their positions, waiting for the next order.
This bombardment lasted for a whole thirty minutes. In this long thirty minutes, other than the one hundred Apocalyptic Cannons that participated in the bombardment, the puppet country also added in two thousand Heaven's Might Magic Cannons. These two thousand one hundred heavy cannons fired a terrifying fifteen thousand shots in half an hour. Other than the two thousand cannons that formed a net in the sky, the rest were all fired at the Daqi army. More than ninety percent of them were blocked by Daqi's array formation, while less than ten percent of the light cannons managed to slip through the net and into the Daqi army camp.
But even this less than ten percent of the bombardment was enough to plough out many ditches in the Daqi army camp. Just the unfortunate number of soldiers alone had reached an astonishing fifteen thousand.
And these fifteen thousand soldiers were either dead or crippled, completely losing the ability to fight!
At the beginning of the war, the Daqi army had already lost nearly half of its military strength during the probing artillery bombardment!
After the long bombardment, both sides seemed to have a tacit understanding and stopped bombarding each other. The world suddenly quieted down, and the earth also fell into silence. However, everyone's ears still seemed to be buzzing. There seemed to be a manic giant crazily tossing and turning in their heads, causing them to be unable to stand steadily and their bodies to sway.
At this moment, the bugles from both sides sounded again, followed by a dense wave of orders from the sergeants. They sternly ordered the soldiers under their command to quickly form up again.
These soldiers nervously carried out a final check and reorganization, then quickly returned to their formation.
After a short but intense adjustment, the vanguard troops from both sides began to march towards each other simultaneously.
Even though this basin was huge, the vanguard troops from both sides added up to a hundred thousand soldiers. It was impossible for so many troops to be deployed on the battlefield in one go.
Li Chengfeng looked down from above and saw the square formation at the front raising their shields as they advanced. They were like a terrifying black tide, surging towards the opposite side.
Behind them, there was still a large group of neatly arranged phalanxes waiting quietly. After the frontline troops had advanced two to three thousand meters, they began to move forward under the military orders, leaving a wide empty space in the middle as a buffer.
The vanguard troops from both sides rapidly closed in, only stopping when they were about two thousand meters apart.
At this time, all the officers turned to look at their generals. The generals also tilted their heads to look at the flag signals behind them through their monoculars. When General Long Tenghai and Marshal Wei Weian waved their arms forward, the flag officers from both sides quickly typed the simplest, most direct and most powerful signal: Attack!