Chapter 373
Chapter 373
Inside Zhenyuan City.
"Kill them! Kill them all! Slaughter every last one of Shen Lang's men!"
Having completely shattered the walls of the governor's mansion, the Su Clan warriors stormed inside without hesitation.
Wu Lie, leading two hundred female warriors, and Thirteen, with several dozen men, defended the governor's mansion fiercely, using the crumbled ramparts and broken walls for cover.
The two sides clashed in an instant.
But even though Shen Lang's soldiers were elites with superior equipment, the difference in numbers was too stark.
After a brief confrontation, the tide of battle turned precarious.
Two to three thousand Su Clan warriors had surrounded Shen Lang's two hundred-odd soldiers, layer upon layer.
Shen Lang's side began to suffer casualties, and their defensive line started to crumble, on the verge of collapsing at any moment.
This formation's defensive line was composed of the strongest warriors with the highest martial arts skills; its collapse would mean the annihilation of their entire force.
Wu Lie cut down enemies like a madwoman, while Hamno, forgoing her greatsword, wielded two iron hammers, smashing them down with brutal force.
They lost count of how many they killed as enemy corpses piled up at their feet.
But they, too, had suffered countless wounds.
Though clad in steel armor, the sheer number of enemies and their cunning attacks left them drenched in blood.
Thirteen was skilled in martial arts, but in a battle like this, he was no match for the incredibly powerful female warriors. His internal energy depleted rapidly, and he too was covered in wounds.
"Master, if you don't return soon, we might be wiped out!"
Seeing the defensive line about to break before her eyes, Wu Lie shouted.
"What is there to fear in death? Let's take them down with us!"
Hearing her words, the hundred-plus female warriors roared in unison.
"What is there to fear in death? We'll take them down with us!"
With tragic resolve, they made their decision.
The hundred-odd female warriors then began to fight with no regard for their own lives, each attack an attempt to trade their life for an enemy's.
'We may be annihilated, but before we die, let's drag as many of them down with us as we can. Killing one is breaking even; killing two is a profit. Kill! Kill! Let's take them all down with us!'
Just as the female warriors steeled their resolve, a deafening roar came from outside.
"Avenge our bitter grievances! Kill them! Kill! Su Lin is dead! Su Lin is dead!"
The very ground trembled.
The three Su Clan chiliarchs rushed outside to assess the situation and witnessed an unbelievable sight.
'Shen Lang isn't dead? Who is that man hanging from the flagpole, so gruesomely mutilated? He's been castrated, and there's a sword stuck between his buttocks.'
The man on the flagpole was still screaming and wailing desperately.
'Is... is that Lord Su Lin? Marquis Su Nan's nephew, the ruler of Zhenyuan City, Lord Su Lin? He's been reduced to such a wretched state?'
Then, the three Su Clan chiliarchs witnessed something even more terrifying.
An endless sea of people, so many they blotted out the ground, followed behind Shen Lang.
Could it be that every citizen of Zhenyuan City had come out?
They wore no masks, and in their hands, they held all sorts of weapons—wood-cutting knives, hoes, and more. Every face was filled with rage and resentment.
How many of them were there? Ten thousand? Twenty thousand?
The youngest was ten, the oldest seventy; it seemed everyone in Zhenyuan City who could walk had turned out.
The three Su Clan chiliarchs shouted in alarm.
"All troops! First and Second Chiliarchies, withdraw from the governor's mansion! Form up on the training grounds and face the enemy!"
At the chiliarchs' command, over a thousand Su Clan warriors withdrew from the battle at the governor's mansion and began to form ranks on the training grounds.
"Form ranks! Shield bearers to the front, armored soldiers behind them! Archers, prepare to fire from the rear!"
If the thousand-strong Su Clan army managed to assemble and finish their formation, especially with their archers firing in volleys, the ten or twenty thousand citizens following Shen Lang would stand no chance.
They were ordinary people; they couldn't possibly defeat a thousand fully armed soldiers.
But before the enemy army could even finish forming up, Big Dummy charged into their midst.
He didn't even use the two-meter-long Xuan Iron Rod on his back; instead, he wielded the thick, ten-meter-long flagpole as his weapon.
Big Dummy's blood was boiling.
He didn't know why, but he felt as if his whole body was on fire. It was maddening, yet exhilarating.
"Uwaaaaah!"
He charged toward the enemy faster than a galloping horse.
The full plate armor he wore didn't hinder his movements in the slightest.
Only the helmet, which Shen Lang had forced him to wear, obstructed his vision and was quite uncomfortable.
Nevertheless, he charged at the enemy like a tank, powerfully swinging the ten-meter-long flagpole that weighed several hundred catties.
*Swish.*
Dozens of enemies were sent flying, spewing bright red blood as they died.
Big Dummy swung the flagpole wildly in place of his Xuan Iron Rod.
*CRASH, CRASH, CRASH, CRASH.*
How could one describe the despair of the warriors who faced Big Dummy?
'Is... is that even human? Swinging a ten-meter flagpole, isn't that cheating? You can hit us from so far away, but we can't even reach you. And being that strong is cheating, too!'
Watching the scene from behind, the Sword King Li Qianqiu felt his scalp tingle once again.
'A martial arts grandmaster is formidable in single combat and against other experts, but on a battlefield, no grandmaster could be more terrifying than Big Dummy. Or that heaven-defyingly powerful Qiu Yao'er. These people are just too absurdly, illogically strong.'
Before the enemy could even complete their formation, they were sent flying by Big Dummy's flagpole, resulting in countless casualties.
Then, the ten to twenty thousand citizens of Zhenyuan City behind Shen Lang charged the enemy.
They were people running on nothing but righteous fury, but by following Big Dummy, they could at least put up a fight.
And so, Big Dummy acted as a tank at the forefront, clearing a path, while the ten to twenty thousand people of Zhenyuan City followed, crushing the enemy in their wake.
Like the surging waves of the Qiantang River, they endlessly submerged the enemy.
"Kill! Kill them!"
As the tide of battle turned, the hundred-odd female warriors and dozens of Shen Lang's men who had survived inside the governor's mansion charged out at the enemy with renewed vigor.
The Su Clan warriors could no longer hold their ground and completely broke.
Their two-thousand-strong force scattered in an instant, fleeing frantically in all directions.
'If you hadn't run, it would have been fine. But once you flee and get separated from the group, you're finished. Our people might not be able to defeat a thousand soldiers, but a dozen of them ganging up on a single straggler? That's no problem at all.'
The soldiers of Zhenyuan City were raised by the Su Clan, but they were formally soldiers of the State of Yue, so they couldn't be called the Su Clan's elites.
The true elites were the Su Clan's private army and the bandits of Sanyanya.
The soldiers of Zhenyuan City weren't skilled enough to take on multiple opponents at once like the Su Clan's elite forces.
Once one side broke, the slaughter began.
The people of Zhenyuan City, bloodthirsty for revenge, madly chased down the enemy soldiers. Whenever they caught one, they would mercilessly hack him to pieces with hoes and broadswords, mincing him like meat.
The soldiers of Zhenyuan City fled and tried to hide in the houses within the city.
An ordinary citizen could hide in a private home to escape from an approaching army.
But for a soldier who had been hunting and killing ordinary people to fail and then try to hide among them—wasn't that just courting death?
'Kill! Kill them! Kill them and avenge our bitter grievances!'
Shen Lang left the pursuit of the Zhenyuan City soldiers to the enraged citizens and ordered all the female warriors and his own men to close the city gates.
He also had them hunt down and kill anyone who might be trying to report back to the Marquis of Zhenyuan's estate.
Absolutely no news was to get out.
But would that be an easy task?
Fortunately, there was only one road from Zhenyuan City to the Marquis's estate, which made the task much easier.
With experts like Wu Lie giving chase at high speed, they would surely kill anyone trying to carry news to the Marquis's estate.
Above all, since Su Lin and the three chiliarchs had been captured so quickly, they likely hadn't even had a chance to send a messenger.
* * *
An hour later.
The majority of Zhenyuan City's two to three thousand defenders had been annihilated. Not only the defenders, but also the government runners and the Su Clan's lackeys were all dead.
Zhenyuan City was stained crimson, and severed heads rolled on the ground.
Not even Shen Lang knew exactly how many people had died.
In any case, it was far more than he had expected.
On his first day in Zhenyuan City, Shen Lang had killed hundreds. On the second, thousands. Now, he was killing indiscriminately.
* * *
The sun began to set in the west.
The three chiliarchs of Zhenyuan City, several chief administrators, and dozens of officials knelt in an orderly line outside the ruined governor's mansion.
"Execute them!"
At Shen Lang's command, the warriors' swords fell, and the heads of the kneeling men all dropped to the ground.
Shen Lang carefully placed Su Lin's severed head and his castrated parts into a wooden box.
A single Su Clan warrior knelt before him.
"Load all the heads onto the cart."
At Shen Lang's order, hundreds, perhaps a thousand heads—belonging to everyone connected to the Su Clan, from government runners and officials to merchants—were loaded onto the cart.
"I know it's a bother, but take this gift to Marquis Su Nan."
"And tell him that I have killed every last person of the Su Clan in Zhenyuan City, but this is not enough. Tell him I will kill tens of thousands more."
"I will wipe out every lackey of the Su Clan and every Western merchant in the five castles of Baiye Commandery."
"Su Nan is Mulan's maternal uncle, so tell him that his nephew-in-law misses him dearly."
"Tell him that soon, I will come to take his head and slaughter everyone in the Su Clan, so he should wash his neck and wait."
"Go. Go quickly. Deliver these heads and Su Lin's lifeline to my dear uncle before he has his dinner."
"The item may be small, but if he cuts it up and grills it, he might get a dish out of it."
The surviving Su Clan warrior, trembling, nodded that he would do as he was told.
And so he drove the cart away, off to deliver the gift of heads and Su Lin's 'bird' to Su Nan.
With the Su Clan warrior gone, Zhenyuan City now belonged entirely to Shen Lang.
He had literally wiped out every single person in the city connected to the Su Clan.