106: Chapter 106 A False Order is Faster Than a Knife

After dawn, the door of the Council Main House was pushed open from the inside.

Old Steward walked out holding a white wooden board newly pasted with charcoal-written characters, followed by two Handymen carrying a wooden ladder.

They nailed the wooden board to the pillar on the right side of the steps, and the board was written with thick charcoal detailing the order of releasing people in batches!

The first batch was wounded personnel with badges, the second batch was family members with badges, the third batch was combat personnel to replenish the House Guard Team, and the fourth batch was warehouse Handymen.

Each batch was marked with a number, next to which a simple copper ink stamp was stamped.

Xu Baiheng stood below the steps, the tear on the shoulder of his outer garment sewn with a few stitches of thick hemp thread, the stitches crooked.

He had the messenger read every order aloud to the public, and after the reading, he repeated it himself.

The messenger was a boy with a still-clear voice. He stepped onto the bottom rung of the wooden ladder, held up the list board, and began shouting for the first batch of wounded personnel with badges to step out of the ranks.

Every time he shouted, Xu Baiheng repeated it beside him.

Jiang Ming did not immediately interrupt this process.

He activated the residual throat membrane of Puppet No. 3, and expanded a miniature vocal cavity from the center of the living ground on the inner side behind the door at the start of the Main Mud Road.

Both sound-producing points were adjusted to standby, with the air pump pressed to the lowest setting.

He was waiting for the moment when the second batch of people began to move.

The first batch of wounded personnel with badges was released very quickly.

Supported by Caregivers, they were helped out of the Clean Water Medicine House with wooden badges hanging around their necks, walking past the steps one by one, and pushed into the side door of the Council Main House after the gate-keeping Handymen verified the simple codes on their badges.

There were no accidents.

When the second batch of family members with badges began to queue forward, someone at the end of the crowd suddenly shouted: "The second batch will go to the Pharmacy instead, list rearranged."

The voice was not loud, using the short and sharp tone commonly used by the Handymen who posted orders, biting the two words "Pharmacy" very clearly.

The people in the second batch stopped.

Someone looked back at the messenger, who was standing frozen in place holding the wooden board, where the label behind the second batch clearly read "Council Main House".

People in the crowd began to step toward the Pharmacy, while others retreated, and the two forces tore themselves apart in the middle of the procession.

Xu Baiheng grabbed the messenger's shoulder to make him continue shouting, then took two steps forward, raising both hands with his palms pushing outward toward the second batch of people—Stop.

He repeated the original order with his already cracked voice: The second batch remains as before.

The crowd gathered back together, and dissatisfied murmurs buzzed like flies.

In these few beats of gathering, the newly condensed membrane vocal cavity under the west wall clearly shouted in the deep throat voice of the pro-war minor leader: "Seize the ones grabbing the list."

The volume was not loud, but the words were bitten with extreme ferocity, squeezed out as if from between teeth.

Several young guards on both sides of the House Guard Team steps were already tense. Hearing this shout, they immediately pulled their scabbards from their waists, held them horizontally across their chests, and pushed outward in front of the crowd.

The scabbards were unsharpened, but the edges of the sheet metal were hard, pressing against the forehead of a conservative family member at the very front. When the man's head pitched forward, it struck the metal edge first, and blood flowed down his eyebrows.

His eyes were blurred by his own blood, and he couldn't see who hit him. He only heard "Seize the ones grabbing the list"—he had indeed wanted to squeeze forward in the queue just now, and this thought exploded in his mind.

With a backhand motion, he pulled out the firewood chopper from his belt and lunged toward the scabbards, roaring, "I didn't grab anything!" as his blade slashed onto the guard's shoulder armor.

The old sheet metal of the shoulder armor couldn't bear the force and sagged inward. The guard let out a muffled grunt and stepped back, his heel hitting the step stone and causing him to fall.

Seeing someone brandishing a knife by the steps and the House Guard Team drawing their scabbards, the surrounding people instinctively concluded that the House Guard Team was going to clear the area.

Dozens of people crowded onto the steps all at once; some were pushed up, falling onto the steps and having their calves trampled by the people behind them.

Someone seized the opportunity to pull the list wooden board of the person in front. The badge rope snapped, and the wooden board was forcefully pulled off and thrown into the crowd.

Xu Baiheng climbed to the top of the wooden ladder, grabbed the ladder frame with both hands to steady his body, and shouted to the crowd that all orders were void and they should sit down in place.

His voice went from cracked to completely hoarse, every word sounding as if it were rubbing against sandpaper.

At the exact moment he finished shouting, the moist flesh cavity in the center of the Front Field added an extremely cold sentence in the throat voice of Captain Shouwu: "Those who sit down will be burned as infected."

The volume was light, just enough for the first row of people to hear.

The first row heard it, but no one dared to sit. The standing people blocked those behind them, and those behind pushed those in front. After the orders were voided, nothing remained but chaos.

A surviving pro-war veteran jumped down from the steps, drew his blade, and slashed fiercely toward the side of the crowd, wanting to carve out a path for Xu Baiheng to come down.

What he slashed was not Jiang Ming, but a person—a remnant of the administration staff who was reaching for the broken badge rope on the ground was slashed diagonally from his shoulder down to his ribs. The blade sank several fingers deep into flesh, and blood sprayed from the wound.

The remnant turned his hand and tore the old list in his arms into two halves. Half of the list slipped from his fingers and drifted into the bloody mud below the steps.

The extremely fine hyphae on the surface of the bloody mud gently coiled and dragged that list deep into the cracks of the mud.

The list engraved the names, simple codes, and belonging houses of core personnel. Half a sheet was already enough—the wounded, Caregivers, children, clerks, and a red circle marked with "North Ridge Transfer", all of them were on this half sheet.

Lin Qiu rushed over from in front of the Clean Water Medicine House, bending down to protect a child who had been knocked down by the crowd, pulling the person out from between human legs and pushing them to the edge of the steps.

When she stood up, she was mistaken for someone pushing through by a young guard who was swinging his scabbard wildly from side to side, and the scabbard struck her back horizontally.

She did not fall, only staggering forward a step, steadying herself with her hands pressed against the step stone.

A nearby Caregiver rushed forward to push the guard, only to be stabbed in the flank by the guard's turning slash—he mistook the Caregiver for an infected body, and the white cloth strip clutched in the Caregiver's hand was stained with red threads.

The Caregiver lowered his head to look at the knife plugged into his lower abdomen, and as he knelt down, the medicine cloth pouch slipped from his waist and scattered into the bloody water.

The medical supplies of the Clean Water Medicine House were reduced by another bag.

The bloody infighting lasted less than a quarter of an hour.

More than a dozen people lay above and below the steps of the Council Main House; some were still breathing, while others were already motionless.

The stone crevices of the steps were filled with blood, seeping downward along the edges of the stone slabs and into the solidly trodden rammed earth layer at the base of the wooden pillars.

Taking advantage of everyone staring at the corpses and wounded on the steps, Jiang Ming made the door-hinge blood membrane advance deeper along the stone slab crevices at the bottom of the steps.

The portion of the wooden pillars buried in the soil was old wood, its wood fibers soaked by moisture for dozens of days, the surface already softened.

The hyphae drilled into the tiniest cracks at the base of the wooden pillars, moving upward along the growth ring textures for half a finger's depth.

Deep below the steps, Jiang Ming spoke softly in his original voice: "Your orders belong to me."

It was not a threat, nor was it a shout, merely a statement.

The sound traveled up from the base of the wooden pillars along the damp mud, echoing dully around the bottom of the steps.

Xu Baiheng supported himself on the wooden ladder as he slowly came down, lowering his head to look at the darkly red, minutely pulsing damp mark at the base of the wooden pillar—it had already grown to the foot of the Council Main House.