A few minutes after the decision to send troops to attack the mobile fortresses through underground channels was made, there was a change on the battlefield.
An explosion occurred under a mobile fortress. This caused it to tilt and stop firing.
This had happened because one of the defenders had attached a bomb to the underside of the mobile fortress, where a barrier was protecting. Even though the fortress was a heavily fortified rank 5 artifact, its shell was still shredded by the bomb, and significant structural damage was inflicted on it.
The explosion of the bomb was like a signal to the troops hiding within the tunnels underground. They surged forward with a battle cry and rushed into the mobile fortress through the hole that had been blasted into it.
The invaders on the mobile fortress went forward to block and resist the defenders. So the mobile fortresses became small battlefields.
For a time, the defenders were successful with their maneuvers. The people on the mobile fortresses sensed the defenders coming at them from under the ground, but there was nothing they could do to stop a rank 5 bomb from cracking their precious war machines open and creating a vulnerability for the defenders to exploit.
The success of infiltrating the mobile fortresses and pushing the fighting to the invaders stalled the invaders and reduced their ability to focus fire on the walls. But the defenders also had to switch off the attacking formations so as not to turn their allies into minced meat.
Both sides reduced their usage of long-range weapons to attack each other. For the Red and Blue Fire sect, this was because they didn't have a choice about it. They had to focus on the enemies boarding their ships. But for the defenders, the reduction in long-range firepower was entirely voluntary.
This was a shame because some mobile fortresses lost the defense of their barrier shields. Unfortunately, those mobile fortresses were boarded by allies, so the attacking formations couldn't be used to demolish them.
However, as bad as things might seem for the Red and Blue Fire sect, they were able to hold their ground very well. This was because some of their elite troops were equipped with armored suits that elevated their physical power and granted them extraordinary firepower.
These armored troops were at the third mortal coil. But their armored suits granted them power that was at the fourth mortal coil. Some of them could even reach the peak of the fourth mortal.
The response of the defenders was to overwhelm their enemies with corpses and beasts. The foundation establishment cultivators of the Beast Training and Black Bones produced beasts and corpses that were at the fourth mortal coil.
So it wasn't only the people of the Red and Blue Fire sect that possessed power that was beyond their cultivation level. Unfortunately, things didn't end there.
The cultivators of the Red and Blue Fire sect at the fourth mortal coil also possessed armored suits that could elevate their power to the fifth mortal coil. The defenders didn't have a good enough response to this level of armament because they lacked the resources to produce weapons, artifacts, beasts, and corpses at that level.
The Five Veins region lacks the resources to produce things at the fifth mortal. This made them unable to resist the golden core elders of the Red and Blue Fire sect.
Arthur saw this and sighed as he said, "What a pity. What a shame."
"We were studying their spells and techniques like serious students preparing for an exam. But the Red and Blue Fire sect don't plan to play fair right from the start. They only want to bully us with resources and their rich background."
He had already noticed the inferiority of the Five Veins region once the exchange of firepower began. It was glaring to him because the attacking formations were only at rank 4, while the mobile fortresses were rank 5 machines.
This was why the attacking formations couldn't take down the mobile fortresses despite having the advantage of numbers. They simply lacked the necessary power to threaten the mobile fortresses.
If not for the fact that the defenders had rank 5 bombs, the walls would have surely been taken down, and there was very little that the defenders could have done to prevent it.
But even though they had rank 5 bombs and successfully used them to bring the fight to the invaders, Arthur was not happy because those bombs were supposed to be trump cards.
The bombs were supposed to be used in great times of need to level the playing field, not at the beginning of the war, at the opening salvo. What's worse is that the bombs could only stall the mobile fortresses, not destroy them.
When they had used the bombs to gain access to the mobile fortresses, Arthur had asked himself, "If we are already using our trump cards now, what will we use when we become desperate?"
Maybe others didn't see it, but it was clear to him that the defenders were not prepared for the level of firepower that the Red and Blue Fire sect could produce.
However, no matter how obtuse the others were, once the rank 5 aemoded suit appeared, it became clear to them too that they were outmatched. 55 nascent soul tools had that way of making things clear.
The Red and Blue Fire sect had 55 golden core cultivators and 55 mobile fortresses. So there was one of their golden core cultivator on each mobile fortress.
Each one of their golden core cultivators was equipped with an armored suit that elevated their power to the fifth mortal coil. They also had hundreds of elite troops with firepower at the fourth mortal coil assisting them.
In comparison, the teams that infiltrated the mobile fortresses were mostly at the third mortal coil. They had leaders at the fourth mortal coil, but these leaders didn't have any means to deal with firepower at the fifth mortal coil.