Chapter 145: Sunset Bow

When Queen Isabella arrived in a flurry, accompanied by Cortés and Pizarro, the scene that greeted them was seventy or eighty players scattered haphazardly across the beach in various states of defeat.

"This is impossible!"
"One person took on seventy or eighty of us? This is too overpowered, I want to report this!"
"He must be a supreme diamond VIP..."

Lying incapacitated on the sand, the Spanish players were still fully capable of conversing.

You felt intense emotions:
Shock +1
Anger +1
......

The collective emotions radiated by these seventy or eighty people rapidly reached one hundred points. Yan Luo chose to fuse them, but failed; this time, he obtained 11% of the fragments, leaving only the final 7% missing.

Seeing the queen's arrival, a group of players shouted in succession:
"Your Majesty, avenge us!"

In the setting of *Civilization: Rise of Great Powers*, the most powerful combat force in any faction is its leader. Even Chongzhen, hanging himself from Coal Hill, could single-handedly crush an entire Eight Banner army within this game—moreover, generals and ministers possessed formidable combat strength as well.

As for the players, at least during the initial launch phase of the game, the vast majority were inferior even to NPC soldiers.

Queen Isabella’s expression was rather unsightly. Originally, there were only slightly over seventy players who chose the Spanish civilization, a meager number that had already displeased her. Now, this entire group had actually been knocked down by a single person.

Absolute trash!

Unlike Wu Zetian, who possessed the character trait of "fondness for handsome youths," Isabella had established the Spanish Inquisition and ushered in the Age of Discovery. Her defining characteristics were loyalty and fanaticism toward the Lord, coupled with an aggressive drive for religious proselytization and the plundering of wealth.

"Who are you?"
"I am from the Chinese civilization, under the Wu Zetian faction, belonging to the Republic branch: Great Zhou, the Huaihua Halberd-Wielding Commander!"
"This location is a city-founding site I discovered first. The Great Zhou tribe of Wu Zetian will soon arrive here. Please leave this place at once; otherwise, do not say you were not warned!"

Hearing Yan Luo’s words, not to mention Isabella, even the two generals Pizarro and Cortés, along with the players, felt anger rising in their chests.

Utterly arrogant!

Just a single person wanted to claim this vast stretch of coastline? And they were expected to just leave?

With a gloomy face, Isabella recalled the intelligence regarding the leader Wu Zetian loaded into her smart-system database: merely a female monarch of the Chinese civilization. But she, herself, was the greatest monarch in Spanish history! If this place had only consisted of the Aegean Sea or the Hawaiian Islands, she might have yielded to prevent early warfare.

However, there were also the Great Barrier Reef and Mount Fuji!

Therefore, the queen issued an order without the slightest hesitation:
"Archers, fire!"

Every leader was granted five thousand immigrants and five thousand soldiers prior to establishing a city.
The composition of the soldiers was: three thousand spearmen, one thousand archers, and one thousand imperial guards armed with stone axes and wooden shields.
Cortés was the general of the spearmen, while Pizarro commanded the archers. Both had brought out a hundred soldiers each, whereas Isabella had brought three hundred imperial guards. Upon the queen's command, one hundred archers stepped out of the ranks and unleashed a volley of arrows toward Yan Luo.

This was far more ferocious than the volley from the Macedonian phalanx encountered in the world before last! Because there were more personnel, all the arrows were concentrated in the sector where Yan Luo stood.

A rain of arrows!

Previously, he had relied on raising a shield to block them; this time, he had no shield in his hand.

Instead, he had a horse.

With a swift tumble, he leaped off the horse, ducking behind it and using the steed as a living barrier! The arrows fell like raindrops, producing a flurry of dull "clang, clang, clang" impacts. All of these stone-tipped arrows bounced off the horse's body.

Rock Armor!

"What the F***?"

Countless players gasped aloud at that instant. Some had their eyes bulging almost out of their sockets. Most of the arrows landed in the empty ground, thrusting diagonally into the sand and making that area look like a hedgehog, yet the brown, high-headed steed did not bear a single arrow on its body—was this supposed to be a mere mount?

"What?"

Queen Isabella's pretty face was twisted in shock. Seeming somewhat in disbelief, she waved her hand, and the one hundred archers unleashed a second volley.

"Clang, clang, clang, clang..."

"Let me handle this!"

The archer general Pizarro, a bearded man, unslung a large bow from his back, nocked a stone arrow against the bowstring, flipped backward through the air, and drew the bow to a full moon! At that very moment, the air surrounding the burly man began to boil, and the arrow was coated with a shimmering, gold-plated aura that radiated brilliant light!

As one of the two most important generals under a civilization's leader, Pizarro naturally possessed formidable strength and personal combat skills.

Sun-Shooting Bow!

The Inca Empire worshipped the sun god and considered themselves descendants of the sun. Pizarro, who had destroyed that ancient civilization, felt as though he were shooting down the glorious sun itself. With a furious roar, the arrow surged forward violently. As it cut through the air, even the light of the sun in the sky dimmed, as if the sun itself were about to be extinguished by this single arrow!

Trailing behind the arrow was a long comet-like wake of light, intermingled with a deeply concentrated trace of blood-red hue.

Naturally, the rock-like skin of the horse could not possibly block an arrow of this caliber.

Yan Luo scrambled out from beneath the horse's belly. Planting his feet wide apart in a horse stance, facing the incoming Sun-Shooting arrow, he gripped the middle of the coiled-dragon staff and began to twirl it.

Five Elements Rotation! The explosive physical force generated from his bones and muscles combined with the iron staff. Accompanied by a fierce "whoosh, whoosh, whoosh" sound of rushing wind, the sixty-two-pound coiled-dragon staff erupted into countless afterimages, forming a complete hemispherical defensive barrier in front of his body.

The arrow drew closer and closer...

"Boom!"

An explosive, wildly violent shockwave—sparks and light points bursting from the arrow, mixed with countless blurred staff shadows—stained a vast expanse of space into a hazy, mottled turbidity. Amidst the deafening blast and violent collision of air currents, Yan Luo, who had intercepted the "Sun-Shooting Bow" skill with his staffcraft, felt a ferocious, overwhelming force transmit straight through his arms.

His feet instantly sank deep into the sand, completely past his knees! Leveraging this momentum, he was sent sliding backward for a full five meters before the force finally dissipated completely, leaving two deep trenches gouged by his feet and calves in the beach.

"What the F***?"

The Spanish players gasped in astonishment once again. Pizarro's arrow, complete with special effects, had looked unimaginably ferocious just moments ago, startling all the players. Yet what was even more shocking was that this Chinese player had actually blocked it with a staff!

Today was only the day of the server launch! How could there be such a formidable player?

Furthermore, that staff appeared to be made of iron? Wasn't this supposed to be the Stone Age?

Just who on earth was this Chinese person?

"Impossible!"

Pizarro was undoubtedly equally shocked that Yan Luo had intercepted his arrow, his gray eyes locked unwaveringly upon the distant youth.

"Imperial Guard, charge!"

Queen Isabella ordered with a cold expression.

Three hundred soldiers holding stone axes and wooden shields began to form up and advance toward Yan Luo.

This was a game, and the combat effectiveness of the leaders' bodyguards—the imperial guards—was naturally far from low. Due to the limitations of the era, the weapons of these three hundred men were merely made of stone, but their baseline physical attributes far exceeded those of ordinary soldiers. Beneath their crude, rough garments rippled rugged, fierce, and well-defined muscles!

A scene that defied the belief of Queen Isabella, generals Pizarro and Cortés, and all the players unfolded before them: facing the advancing imperial legion, the Chinese man not only failed to run away, but instead took the initiative to charge straight ahead to meet the legion head-on.

"He's a lunatic!"
"A single person facing an imperial legion of Spain?"
"Is he looking for death?"
"Stupid, arrogant Chinese!"