The Magus Era

The human bridges built under Gong Sun Liang’s suggestion worked.

Large groups of Gong Sun Lang’s warriors climbed up over the bodies of their comrades and reached the city wall, launching offensives.

Gold Crow Clan warriors on the city wall and the warriors on the human bridges formed two strong battle formations, like two sturdy metal walls as they bumped violently into each other. Long spears lunged and blades hacked towards each other, heavy axes clanged against thick chains, and strong shields squeezed each other, with dazzling fire sparkles darting everywhere.

The weapons pierced heavily on the shields. On the surfaces of armors and shields, defensive spell symbols sparkled one after another, covering every warrior’s body with a faint glow. The weapons with all kinds of lethal spell symbols glowed dazzlingly as they lunged towards the defensive screen based on the city wall and generated shrill noises.

The warriors from both sides were all elites, at the same power level. But soon, people realized that something was wrong.

When the weapons of Gong Sun Lang’s warriors landed on the bodies of Gold Crow Clan warriors, the armors and shields of these Gold Crow Clan warriors shielded their owners perfectly. No matter how hard the enemies tried, these Gold Crow Clan warriors would tremble slightly at most, with their armors and shields remaining perfectly undamaged.

However, when Gold Crow Clan warriors’ weapons landed on the enemies’ bodies, brighter sparkles would be generated and louder sounds would be caused. Wrapped in streaks of raging fire, Gold Crow Clan warriors split the shields of their enemies and shattered their armors. Not long after the battle started, many warriors under Gong Sun Lang’s command had their shields torn into pieces, armors penetrated, then were killed by the Gold Crow Clan warriors.

Broken bodies fell from the ladder tops. Watching this, some commanders roared in both fear and anger. Clearly, Gold Crow Clan warriors were far better equipped than the enemies. Compared with the armors, shields and weapons used by Gold Crow Clan warriors, Gong Sun Lang’s warriors felt that they were fighting with wooden boards and sticks.

Maguspriests with better eyesights found something wrong with the spell symbols sparkling on those armors, shields, and weapons. For example, a basic defensive spell symbol system was composed of thirty-six connected spell symbols. But, when Gong Sun Lang’s warriors were under attack, the numbers of the spell symbols sparkling on each warrior’s armor was smaller than thirty-six!

The defensive spell symbol system on each of these armors was incomplete. The spell symbols on each armor weren’t connected, and as a consequence, the defensive power of each set of armor was largely weakened.

The lack of spell symbols was still acceptable, but these Maguspriests were stunned when they discovered quite a large number of gravity spell symbols on the armors, shields, and weapons used by Gong Sun Lang’s warriors. The only purpose of these gravity spell symbols was to increase the weight of an object. No one would be stupid enough to use gravity spell symbols on armors, except for reverse gravity spell symbols. Reverse gravity spell symbols could reduce the weight of armors, allowing warriors to wear heavier armors and to have greater defensive powers! For example, an average-level human warrior could only bear a one-inch-thick armor. But, with the reverse gravity spell symbols, the thickness of some important areas of his armor could be increased by over half an inch, and the defensive power provided by this armor would increase by ten times!

No one was stupid enough to use gravity spell symbols on armors to make them heavier, because gravity spells on the armor couldn’t do any help to a warrior, but would slow a warrior down and largely weaken him!

"What the hell?" A Gong Sun Family commander grabbed a warrior of his and ripped off his armor. Picking up the chest armor, which was the thickest part of a whole set of armor, this commander raised his sword and hacked on it. Along with a loud crack, the five-inch-thick chest armor was easily cut into two. This chest armor seemed to be especially heavy and strong, but in fact, it was hollow, for about four inches thick!

The actual thickness of this chest armor was one inch!

How could such a thin armor with an incomplete defensive spell symbol system ever provide its owner a great defensive power? Those gravity spell symbols increased the weight of this armor and made its owner believe that this was a pure alloy heavy armor! No one would ever discover this secret!

"Damn you!" Looking at this hollow chest armor, all commanders from Gong Sun Lang’s army were stunned.

They raised their heads and looked at their warriors treading on ’human bridges’, fighting against Gold Crow Clan people. These warriors could not break the armors of Gold Crow Clan warrior with their own weapons, but a Gold Crow Clan warrior was able to penetrate the bodies of five to six enemies by simply wielding his long spear!

"How the hell did this happen?" The other commanders were infuriated. They ripped off their warriors’ armors and cut them open right on the spot, finding out that all of these shiny armors were hollow!

Hollow! Hollow!

The five-inches-thick chest armors were hollow for about four-inches, but relatively, these chest armors could still be counted as ’high-quality’ ones. The other pieces, which were less important than chest armors, such as shoulder pads and boots, were made from thin iron sheets! They lacked any defensive power at all!

"These armors, how can they send our people to a battlefront with these armors?" The group of commanders were driven crazy, all bursting into raging roars.

These armors were all ’top-grade’ pieces given by Emperor Xun, the new human emperor. How could they call these ’top-grade’ pieces?

Emperor Xun needed the support of large human clans and families. Therefore, the Gong Sun Family had promised each family or clan which supported Emperor Xun with a large amount of armament, to arm their private forces.

However, these so-called ’top-grade’ armors and weapons, which were from the treasury of the alliance of human clans and were provided by Emperor Xun, were all hollow shells!

"Emperor Shun would never do this...Such things never happened before...These armors..." The group of commanders turned around and stared at Gong Sun Lang with burning eyes.

Gong Sun Lang was gripping Gong Sun Liang’s neck and screaming, "My dear brother, you got me into trouble! Gong Sun Xiong, damn you, you’re not my brother, you’re my enemy! Where are these armors from? How?"

Gong Sun Liang bared his teeth in pain as he looked at Gong Sun Lang and said, "These were produced overnight by all large factories and workshops in Pu Ban City, under Minister Xiang’s order...Hollow pieces are easy to produce, so this batch only took about thirty-six hours!"

With a muffled series of footstep sound, a large group of commander rushed up to Gong Sun Lang and surrounded him.

"Gong Sun Lang, those armors, shields, why?!"

"How can you fool us with those trashes?"

"This is murder! Are you trying to get all our people killed?"

"You need to explain this to us! Now!"

Gong Sun Lang rolled up his eyes and suddenly howled aloud in pain. Next, he fell to the ground, vomiting blood.