The dark races didn't give the Empire much time to prepare. Several armies arrived in less than three days, assailing the sinkhole from several directions.

The sinkhole itself was tens of thousands of meters wide, surrounded by an even wider area covered in black flames. The entire stretch of land was about the size of an Imperial province.

A hundred thousand soldiers hardly made a splash when they were spread out in the region. The Imperial forces never left the sinkhole, a clear indication that Song Zining planned to fight the enemy head-on.

The dark races had no reason to shy away from the challenge. The sinkhole was filled with raging flames at the moment, but even the supremes didn’t know when they would die out. Every day that the humans remained near the sinkhole was an extra day of risk.

The battlefield was so wide that neither side could lock down the other’s movements. Even though there were only a couple of routes near the sinkhole, there were still too many leading to the periphery. The black flames in the hilly terrain were also changing constantly, and no one knew when it would gush out from a crack in the ground and cut off a path. This added greatly...