246: Save as many as you can!

The burly men behind Hans also joined in the jeering.

“Exactly! Don’t tell me he’s a spy sent by the Church to destabilize our morale!”

Another man with a burn scar on his face spat out a mouthful of bloody saliva: “Stop talking nonsense! Even if I die, I’ll drag a few white-robed scumbags down with me. I’ll never surrender like a coward!”

Facing everyone’s hostility, Mo Yan didn’t even bat an eyelid.

He couldn’t be bothered to argue about swimming skills with someone who was about to drown.

Instead, Buck couldn’t stand it. He stepped in front of Hans, blocking the spittle that was almost spraying onto Mo Yan’s face.

“Hans! You damn well calm down!” Buck grabbed Hans’s thick arm, his strength making Hans momentarily stiffen.

“Calm down? How can I calm down! Buck, have you been tricked?”

“The West District is also sealed off, how did you get here? Did you fly over?” Hans roared.

“We didn’t fly over,” Buck released Hans, turned, and pointed in the direction they came from, “We walked over.”

Hans looked in the direction he was pointing, his pupils shrinking sharply.

What was that?

A passage?

No.

As the leader of the South District, Hans knew the structure of these underground waterways like the back of his hand.

He clearly remembered that the direction Buck pointed to was an abandoned pipe that had been sealed for hundreds of years, its walls...

But now, that wall… was gone.

Hans’s roar got stuck in his throat, and the clamor behind him abruptly ceased.

All the survivors of the South District stared dumbfounded at the distant passage, their minds blank.

“That… that’s the abandoned pipe of the Third Reservoir…” an old man familiar with the terrain said with a trembling voice, “Impossible… that was clearly a dead end…”

“Is there food?” Gun Gun sensed the atmosphere was a bit heavy. He poked his furry head out from behind Mo Yan, curiously observing the group of people.

He saw many rusty iron pipes on the ground, which seemed very chewy, so he trotted over on his short legs, picked one up, and prepared to start gnawing.

Crunch.

The crisp sound was particularly jarring in the underground palace.

Hans and his subordinates watched Gun Gun, who, with one bite, snapped off a section of an iron pipe thicker than an adult’s arm, and started chewing it with a crunching sound, like chewing sugarcane, a look of enjoyment on his face.

Hans: “…”

South District residents: “…”

If the passage gave them a visual shock, then the sight of the panda gnawing on an iron pipe completely subverted their understanding.

Cold sweat streamed down Hans’s face.

When he looked at Mo Yan again, there was no longer any hostility in his eyes.

Able to blast open a rock wall with a single sword, and even raise a pet that eats steel as a snack…

What level of existence was this, exactly?

“Thump!”

Hans knelt down on one knee without hesitation.

“Hans, commander of the South District, greets Your Excellency! Please, Your Excellency… save us!”

With his kneel, thousands of survivors behind him seemed to awaken from a dream, kneeling down in a dense mass.

“Please, Your Excellency, save us!”

...

“Buck.”

“Here! Your Excellency!”

“Have them retreat through that path and hand them over to Idora.”

“We will now depart for the East District and North District.”

Buck was startled, then immediately reacted, his face draining of color: “Your Excellency! You… you’re still going to the East District and North District?”

“No! Absolutely not!” Hans, disregarding his loss of composure, said urgently, “Those areas have lost contact. Scouts reported that the Church’s main force and several Inquisitors are guarding that side. Going now would be suicide!”

“We cannot let you take any more risks!”

In their eyes, Mo Yan coming to save the South District was already an immense kindness; they absolutely could not stand by and watch him enter a certain-death situation.

Mo Yan finally turned his head, his tone indifferent.

“Save as many as possible.”

“You only see the danger.” Mo Yan’s lips curled into a cold smile, “What I see, however, is an opportunity. The Church thinks that by trapping you inside, they can rest easy.”

“The more arrogant they are, the more lax their defenses become. They are guarding against you rushing out from inside, but they would never expect someone to kill their way in from the outside.”

He gripped the longsword at his waist.

“Moreover…”

“Who said I was going to kill my way in from the outside?”

Before his words finished, his figure flickered, leaving an afterimage where he stood, and he appeared like a ghost a hundred meters away. The longsword in his hand had already been unsheathed at some unknown moment, transforming into a streak of light, piercing towards the iron gate.

Outside, the Church knights, who were roaring with laughter, suddenly fell silent.

The leading priest felt a chill on his neck. He instinctively reached out to touch it, only to feel a warm liquid.

He lowered his head, watching in horror as his own blood…

“Ugh…”

Mo Yan flicked his wrist, and the longsword was instantly withdrawn.

“I just came… to open a door.”

As the priest fell, the energy maintaining the magical Seal on the gate dissipated.

The iron gate, weighing tens of thousands of pounds, lost its magical support and collapsed with a crash, raising a cloud of dust.

As the dust settled, a dozen Church knights stared dumbfounded at their companion’s corpse and the suddenly appearing Mo Yan. Before they could even react...

Mo Yan’s figure had already transformed into a phantom, rushing into the crowd.

Sword light flashed, like the scythe of the Grim Reaper.

Screams rose and fell, then instantly fell silent.

In less than ten seconds, when Mo Yan stood with his sword sheathed, there was not a single standing Church knight behind him.

Blood stained the ground, forming small streams that flowed slowly.

The entire process was incredibly fast.

The survivors of the South District, including Hans and Buck, were all petrified on the spot, mouths agape, unable to utter a single word.

They had imagined countless ways of being rescued, but they had never imagined it would be this kind of… overwhelming slaughter.

Mo Yan flicked the blood from his sword, sheathed it at his waist, and his figure flashed again, using the Star Stepping Art to silently return to his original position, as if he had never left.

He looked at the already dumbfounded Buck and calmly asked, “Now, can you lead the way?”

That scene just now had exceeded his meager imagination.

“Your Excellency… I… we…” Buck stammered, his mind somewhat frozen from the overwhelming shock, unable to say anything for a moment.

“You just need to act according to the plan.”

“Yes… yes.”

Buck and Hans exchanged glances, both seeing in the other’s eyes unspeakable shock and the wild joy of surviving a catastrophe.

“Hans, I’m leaving this to you!” Buck made a decisive decision, shouting at Hans, “Organize everyone, bring the wounded, and evacuate through the passage His Excellency opened!”

“Quick! Someone will meet you at the library!”

“What about you?” Hans asked urgently.

“I’ll take people and go to the East District with His Excellency!” Buck patted his chest, “Since there’s a chance, we can’t let any fellow countrymen die at the hands of those Church scum!”

Hans nodded heavily.

“Brothers, did you hear that! The Empire has not abandoned us!” He raised his arms and shouted, “Everyone, women and children first, then the wounded, and warriors bring up the rear! Maintain order, we’re going home!”

“We’re going home!”

“We’re going home!”

Thousands of survivors erupted in earth-shattering cheers.