The air around the Leader of Celestial began to ripple with a sickly, yellow energy. From the shadows of his command vehicle, two figures stepped forward. They wore flowing Taoist robes embroidered with silver threads that seemed to move like snakes. Each of them held a stack of yellow paper talismans inscribed with blood-red ink.

They began a low, guttural chant in a language that sounded like dry leaves skittering over stone. Five talismans floated before each man, rotating in a perfect, glowing circle. With a synchronized thrust of their hands, the papers shot into the sky like guided missiles, trailing sparks of spiritual fire.

"Target incoming! Fast-moving projectiles, trajectory... erratic!" a Royal pilot shouted through the comms. "What the hell are those? Intercept! Take them down!"

The anti-air turrets on the trucks whirred, spitting a curtain of lead and laser fire. Six of the talismans erupted in mid-air, turning into harmless puffs of smoke and paper ash. But four of them bypassed the defense grid, weaving through the projectiles as if they had a mind of their own.

They slapped onto the hulls of the escort helicopters with a sickening, wet thud.

"Status! Get it off—!"

The scream was cut short as the talismans flared. A split second later, the four helicopters didn’t just crash; they imploded. The metal groaned and crumpled inward as if an invisible giant had crushed them, followed by a violent explosion of mana.

"Mayday! Mayday! Falcon 04 and 06 are down! No survivors!" Jason roared into his headset, his face pale with fury. "Eject! Get out of there!"

But it was too late. The wrecks slammed into the desert floor, sending plumes of black smoke into the sky. The two Taoist practitioners under Celestial didn’t miss a beat. They reached into their robes, pulling out even thicker stacks of paper.

Their voices rose in a shrill, piercing shriek. They cast the talismans into the air, and instead of flying toward the sky, the papers rained down into the heart of the Royal convoy.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

The talismans detonated upon contact with the heavy transports, the spiritual explosions ignoring the physical armor and striking at the machinery and the men inside. One transport flipped entirely, its contents spilling across the sand. The defensive line—the pride of Ethan’s army—was fractured.

"The line is broken! The line is broken!"

Through the gaps in the smoke, the tide of beast-men surged forward. They didn’t need guns. They used their claws and teeth, tearing through the disoriented Royal soldiers with a inhuman ferocity. The battlefield turned into a slaughterhouse as the "immortals" swarmed over the vehicles, their regeneration making them unstoppable in the chaos of the breach.

The Leader of Celestial smoothed his robes, his eyes gleaming with a cold satisfaction. "Your technology is impressive, little boy," he whispered toward the center of the convoy. "But it cannot stop the ancient arts of the Soul."

Jason pulled his combat knife, his rifle empty, as three beast-men lunged at him from the smoke. "Ethan... wake up... wake up now!"

Deep within the silence of the Soul Sanctuary, Ethan watched the carnage unfold. Crul hovered beside him, her small hands waving in the air to project multiple holographic windows showing the crumbling defensive line, the imploding helicopters, and the charred bodies of his men.

Ethan’s amethyst eyes burned with a cold, terrifying fury. Every instinct screamed at him to manifest back into the physical world and erase the Taoist practitioners from existence. But he held back, his knuckles cracking as he clenched his fists.

"I don’t want an army of paper tigers," Ethan hissed, his voice vibrating with a dark resonance. "I want predators forged in blood and iron. If they cannot survive this, they will never survive what’s coming."

"What are your orders, Master?" Crul asked, her eyes reflecting the orange glow of the distant explosions.

"Prepare the..." Ethan started, but his voice trailed off as he noticed a movement in the rear of the convoy.

Back in the physical world, the chaos was absolute. The men in the logistical units—the engineers, the technicians, and the porters—watched from the small viewports of the rear transports as the front line was shredded. Among them was **Ryan Mitchell**. He wasn’t a frontline soldier he was a man who handled supplies but he had received the hellish training, and received his dose of worm nectar. As he watched the smoke rise, he felt a fire in his blood that had nothing to do with cultivation.

"If we sit here and do nothing while the vanguard dies, we lose everything!" Ryan roared, grabbing his standard-issue laser pistol—the only weapon he had. "If you want to protect the life we’ve built, follow me!"

He didn’t wait for an answer. Ryan kicked the hatch open and leaped into the sand, his pistol whining as he unleashed a desperate volley into a beast-man who was about to disembowel a fallen guard.

The other logistics workers froze for a heartbeat. They were the ones the combat units often looked down upon—the "unarmed laborers." But as they saw Ryan charging into the fire, they grit their teeth. They knew the Scavengers wouldn’t spare them. They knew that if Ethan’s banner fell, their hope for a new world fell with it.

"For the King!" someone screamed.

Suddenly, tens of thousands of logistical workers poured out of the rear trucks. Some had pistols, some had wrenches, and others scavenged rifles from the cold hands of the fallen. It was a secondary tide—a wave of desperate, loyal men and women throwing themselves into the breach.

The beast-men, who had expected a broken enemy, were suddenly met with a wall of raw, unrefined fury. The logistics units didn’t have the training, but they had the numbers and a terrifying lack of self-preservation. Their intervention created a localized chaos that forced the beast-men to halt their advance.

Jason, covered in blood and breathing hard, looked back in shock as he saw the "laborers" firing over his shoulders.

"Those crazy bastards..." Jason gasped, a grim smile finally breaking through the soot on his face. "Reorganize! Use the opening! Fall back into the ’Turtle’ formation and stabilize the line! Don’t let their sacrifice be for nothing!"

The massacre stalled. The *Royal* army, given a precious, blood-soaked breathing room, began to knit itself back together.