Soon, a few days passed like this since the United Army took charge of the situation.
The fires had gone out.
The sky over the Western Continent was dark now, not with smoke but with silence—silence that ca after too many screams, crashes, and rushed decisions.
The Western leaders gathered inside the provisional war hall, which had been hastily built from what remained of the provincial council building.
No one sat straight.
No one wore armor.
Their robes were torn. So still had dried blood on them. Others had wrapped broken limbs or burns with whatever cloth was available.
The flags of their families, those beautiful, golden emblems once raised high over cities, were now tied to their waists, dirtied and frayed.
Elder Jian's chair sat empty.
He had fallen two days ago during a beast raid outside the river barracks.
General Zhou had survived, barely. His right arm hung limp at his side. He didn't even try to hide the tremble in his left hand as he held his teacup.
"Do we… even call this a war council anymore?" soone muttered.
No one answered.
Instead, they all looked toward the large formation mirror at the front of the room, where the battlefield image still shimred.
It was quiet now—Unified Army units were combing through the last remaining beast squads. So were captured, so executed, but all were defeated.
"Are we going to et them?" an elder asked, voice hollow.
Zhou nodded, slowly. "We have to."
One of the younger sect leaders slamd his fist into the table. "It's humiliating! We should have handled this ourselves!"
Hearing this, everyone else sighed as they all showed a bitter smile.
General Zhou didn't raise his voice. He just looked at him.
"We couldn't even hold the cliffs," he said softly. "They were our pride. And they fell in under an hour."
The room went quiet again.
Lan Yuwei, matriarch of the Cloud Valley Sect, cleared her throat. "The Unified Army didn't save us out of kindness. They ca because we left them no choice."
Zhou nodded again. "They didn't do this for us. They did this for the continent."
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Then, the oldest elder in the room—Master Xun, white-haired and nearly blind, finally spoke. His voice cracked with age, but carried more weight than the rest combined.
"We kneel."
No one argued.
They couldn't.
Less than three days ago, most of them had scoffed at the idea of needing help.
Now, their armies were gone. Their cities were damaged. Their heirs were wounded. Their pride… shattered.
So they prepared.
They left their weapons behind, stripped off their clan symbols, cleaned what little of their robes remained, and walked out of the building as the sun began to rise.
Waiting for them at the edge of the old city plaza was the Unified Army.
Their soldiers stood in perfect formation.
Their armor still glead. Their expressions were calm, not smug, not cruel, just steady.
At the center stood General Wei Shan.
Her eyes t General Zhou's.
No words were spoken.
The Western commanders walked slowly across the broken plaza stones, and one by one, they knelt.
Not out of defeat.
But because they knew they had no excuse.
And they finally understood.
Pride does not win wars.
Preparation does.
Far away, on the great floating shell that served as the mobile command for the beast faction, the psychic beast floated in silence.
His chamber, once filled with maps and strategy screens, now pulsed with nothing but red.
One by one, the signals had gone dark.
First, the south.
Then the east.
Then the north.
He had placed everything on the west. He had pulled elite units, war beasts, and command teams. He had weakened every other front to push this one.
And it had failed.
Miserably.
He watched as the last images faded.
A final ssage ca from one of the beast captains in the western vanguard: "Too many. Human coordination is overwhelming.
Traps everywhere. Reinforcents—" The signal had ended mid-transmission.
Now there was nothing.
The chamber's glow dimd.
The psychic beast slowly descended from where he hovered, his long tail trailing behind him as his body pulsed with faint ntal energy.
He didn't rage.
He didn't scream.
He just stared at the mirror one last ti, as if hoping it would change. That maybe, just maybe, a new image would appear. One shows the humans retreating. One showing victory.
But none ca.
He turned away.
Behind him, one of the elder beasts entered, head bowed.
"Sir… the commanders are asking for orders."
"Which ones?" the psychic beast asked.
The elder hesitated. "The few left from the Eastern front. So border units from the North. Two battalions from the South."
"That's all?"
"Yes."
The psychic beast nodded.
"Tell them to hold. Don't advance. Don't retreat. Just hold."
"Yes, sir."
The elder turned to leave, but then hesitated. "What… what do we do now?"
The psychic beast didn't answer right away.
Then he said quietly, "We learn."
He floated back toward the central table and raised a claw.
A new map appeared.
This one wasn't filled with attack routes or formation breaches.
It showed human clan activity, Xu family movent patterns, Unified Army deploynts, cult activity, Monster Race borders, trade routes, everything.
He had made a mistake.
He had thought numbers would decide this war.
But humans have adapted faster than expected.
Especially the Xu family.
Their influence was everywhere, even when their soldiers weren't.
Their strategies, their formations, their traps—it was like every battlefield had their fingerprints on it.
He whispered to himself, "You were quiet for so long… and we took that as weakness."
He didn't say the na aloud.
But he knew.
Patriarch Xu.
This wasn't just his doing.
It was his warning.
The psychic beast finally looked up.
"Tell the commanders who are alive to hide and recoup the losses," he said calmly.
"And while we do that."
"We wait."
"We study."
"And next ti…"
He clenched his claws tightly.
"We don't attack the edges."
"We cut straight for the heart."
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