Second Wave

Read up to 15 chapters ahead on Patreon - patreon.com/Light_lord

-----

The battlefield fell into a haunting silence.

Ash and smoke drifted above the northern plains, floating like restless ghosts over the blackened remains of the first wave.

Fires flickered among shattered siege towers and the craters left by relentless artillery fire.

The Great Wall, battered and scorched, still stood.

But beneath it lay the cost.

More than thirty thousand Taotie were killed, burned, blown apart, or ground to pulp under tank treads.

And alongside them, nearly eight thousand soldiers lay scattered across trenches and ramparts—some torn to pieces in the dirt, some gasping out their final breaths in the arms of medics too overwhelmed to save them all.

Entire platoons had been wiped out in the forward defenses.

Bear Army squads had fought until their last magazine ran dry, holding choke points with knives and batons when rifles jammed.

Dozens of Crane Army helicopters had been shredded in the sky or abandoned in the dunes.

Tiger Army tanks lay silent and smoking where engines had seized or armor had caved in.

Eagle Army's big guns, once the fortress's hammer, now sat half-buried in drifting sand, their crews either dead or bleeding out under tarps.

Deer Army engineers hurried through the ruin, dragging wounded behind makeshift barricades as new fires sparked under the swirling sandstorm.

Above it all, General Shao Yong stood with his officers atop the Wall, peering into the storm that hid the next nightmare.

It should have been a moment to regroup. But the ground trembled again, not from the last monster's death throes, but from something rising.

A faint rumble at first. Then deeper. Louder. Rhythmic.

In the distance, dunes collapsed like wet paper.

Fault lines split the desert floor.

Gaping sinkholes opened to reveal cavernous tunnels beneath the earth.

From these wounds, the deep echo of thousands more Taotie emerged.

A young signal officer, hunched over a flickering radar, looked up with hollow eyes.

"New seismic readings, General—north sector. Massive life signs. There's… there's no end to it."

Shao's jaw clenched.

Wang Jian, his trusted advisor, adjusted a battered earpiece.

He'd survived more campaigns than anyone on that Wall, but even he struggled to keep the dread from his voice.

"All divisions in position, Second Wave incoming," he reported.

"The storm's killing our tech. Crane birds are grounded—rotors can't hold a stable lift in this crosswind. Exo suits jammed up again—sand's clogging filters, intakes, turrets. Eagle guns can't track targets—lasers scatter in the grit. Drones are offline. Even our rifles misfire every third round."

He tapped a glitching tactical map. Whole grids flickered red with static.

"We built everything for clear skies and satellites. They forced us to fight blind."

Lin Mei, General of the Crane Army, spat into the sand at her feet.

"They waited for this storm. They knew exactly when to come."

No one argued. The timing was no accident.

Shao looked out past the Wall, into the whirling haze that hid the second wave.

"He's guiding them," he said quietly.

"The King's down there, watching."

No speeches. No prayers. Just the truth.

Shao's voice cut through the wind, steady and hard.

"Even so—this Wall stands while we stand. Ready positions. No matter what comes."

No one hesitated. One by one, the generals saluted and turned away, vanishing into the storm to command their broken armies.

Behind them, the alarm wailed again—high and shrill, rattling the bones of every man and woman braced behind the barricades.

Across the fortress, exhausted soldiers stumbled back to their posts.

Bandaged hands jammed fresh magazines into rifles.

Mortar crews checked fuses by touch alone.

In the trenches, medics gave last rites with shaking voices before sprinting back to the living.

The sandstorm roared so loudly it drowned out the prayers.

But the soldiers didn't need prayers anymore.

They needed time—and bullets.

The first shells fell from the Eagle batteries.

Even blind, the old gunners trusted their gut and memory more than guidance computers.

"Two degrees left, grid Delta-Four—fire!"

The big guns roared. Massive shells punched into the dunes and blossomed into fireballs that lit the sandstorm from within.

Shockwaves ripped rolling dunes to pieces.

Splinters of Taotie flesh rained down with grit and stone.

But the horde did not break.

Behind each ruptured column of bodies, more shapes emerged—black outlines of scales and claws, moving too fast for any targeting scope.

Tiger Army armor crawled back into position.

Crews had ripped sand filters apart with their bare hands to clear the clogged intakes.

They fired blind salvos into the storm, thousands of kilograms of high explosive hammering the front lines.

Flamethrower APCs lurched alongside, drenching the dunes in sheets of liquid fire.

Whole packs of Taotie screamed as scales burned and flesh split.

But more charged over the smoking carcasses, ignoring the flames as if they felt nothing.

Above, a few Crane Army pilots forced battered gunships to lift for short sorties.

With targeting optics dead, they dropped dumb bombs by hand signals—smoke markers thrown from open doors, the old way.

Every blast rocked the horde, but the pilots knew each pass might be their last.

Deer Army hover jeeps danced around the flanks.

Crews fired belt-fed guns from open hatches, peppering the Taotie sides and vanishing into new dunes before the beasts could turn. It slowed the flood—barely.

But the Bear Army bore the full weight when the monsters struck the Wall.

They were the shield of the fortress: lines of battered exosuits, magnetic gauntlets buzzing and shields locked edge to edge behind barricades now half-collapsed from the first battle.

They didn't wait for perfect shots. They fired rockets at shapes they could barely see.

They triggered mines by remote control as shadows crossed the kill zones.

They pushed each other upright when recoil knocked men from their feet.

The first Taotie hit the Wall like battering rams. Some were blasted apart by mines.

Some leapt the outer ramparts entirely, crashing into the Bear lines before defenders could react.

A giant beast landed atop a railgun nest, crushing two crewmen in a heartbeat.

The rest of the squad scrambled up, slammed shock lances through its ribs, and watched it convulse and collapse on the parapet.

Another pair of beasts smashed into a barricade where thirty Bear soldiers held the north corner.

Half the squad was gone within seconds—bones scattered across the stone.

But the survivors fell back just far enough to drag the creatures under concentrated crossfire, turning the corner into a butcher's yard before the next wave poured over the wall behind them.

It wasn't a battle line anymore. It was a moving wound—bleeding soldiers, shredded metal, the occasional scream when a man vanished under claws.

And still, they did not break.