A Sa flies swiftly.

  Three cavalrymen raised the swords in their hands and galloped towards him, shouting loudly as if chasing prey. The viceroy's spirited tone earlier had made them eager to make a name for themselves.

  He rushed over, Asa threw a fireball that hit one of the cavalrymen right in the face, and the cavalryman fell off his horse. The other two cavalrymen were shocked, and Asa seized this opportunity to jump over them, trampling on the head of another cavalryman's horse as he continued to charge forward.

  Ahead was a circle where the cavalrymen were slaughtering villagers, and over there, a patch of grass had already been stained red with blood. The villagers' cries for help were growing fainter.

  Asa directly rushed into the cavalry heap, jumped onto the horseback and cut down two cavalrymen with two knives. The other cavalrymen suddenly panicked, all of them rode over to deal with him, and the formation was immediately scattered. Asa took advantage of the gap in the middle and rushed past. In front of him were the imperial envoy and local officials, Da Te, who were sitting steadily on horseback watching the cavalrymen kill each other. It was impossible for one person to deal with so many cavalrymen, and naturally he had to find the commander.

  The two had barely time to react before Asa rushed over and pulled them off their horses, one hand on each. Asa immediately put his knife to the throat of the Imperial Envoy and shouted: "Everyone stay still!" The cavalrymen immediately stopped in their tracks.

  Only a few small children were left standing in the bloodbath, crying and wailing with their bodies covered in blood. It seemed they hadn't been seriously injured yet. The villagers had shielded the children with their own bodies, forming a human wall around them. Only hunter Levan had managed to grab a cavalryman's weapon and was fighting back with all his might, his body already bearing several knife wounds, half-kneeling and gasping for breath amidst the blood-soaked chaos. The moans of the wounded continued to echo through the carnage.

  The imperial envoy, who was being held at knife point to his neck, surprisingly remained calm and composed, maintaining the demeanor of a scholar and the dignity of an official. With a disdainful tone, he said: "I suppose you wouldn't dare harm a single hair on my head. The soldiers here have all seen your face, and if you were to harm the emperor's appointed envoy, you would become a wanted fugitive throughout the empire. And not only that, but also...

  He suddenly interrupted his speech with a yell that was even more ear-piercing than the sound of pigs being slaughtered. Asa broke off one of his fingers and said coldly, "I've never been interested in hurting anyone's hair."

  He groaned a few times, and the imperial envoy struggled to maintain his composure, saying: "You dare to harm a divine official like this, such a crime will be met with..." He immediately felt another two joints in his fingers being torn apart, two bones that were originally tightly connected suddenly pulled at an unprecedented angle, tearing at the surrounding skin and flesh, even the muscles of his entire arm began to convulse from the intense pain, and he let out another animal-like howl.

  "Tell them to dismount and lay down their arms. Quickly." Asa pinched the three fingers of his other hand this time.

  "Put down your weapons! Put down your weapons at once!" The imperial envoy shrieked and wailed, his voice indistinguishable from the others, tears, snot, and saliva streaming all over his face.

  Two faint footsteps sounded behind him. Asa suddenly turned around and slashed the face of the cavalryman who was trying to sneak up from behind, the cavalryman let out a miserable cry and flew back several steps, rolling on the ground with his face covered in blood. Several bloody teeth flew onto Dorte's body beside him, he immediately stopped digging into his waist and knelt there sweating profusely.

  Ah Si used the back of his knife and roughly cracked the soldier's cheekbone. He didn't want to kill indiscriminately, and the two cavalrymen he had just knocked down were not fatal wounds either.

  "Everyone dismount and lay down your arms. I don't want to have to say it again." Asa tightened his grip on the Imperial Envoy's hand, and the Envoy immediately burst into tears, repeating after him in a voice that was once steady and commanding: "Dismount, lay down your arms, do whatever he says! Are you fools going to watch as he gets me killed?" The cavalrymen hastily scrambled to dismount and discard their weapons.

  A Sa glanced at the remaining villagers, among whom there were still a few who were seriously injured. Now even if they let them go, they wouldn't be able to walk far.

  A Sa let go of the imperial envoy's hand, tightened his grip on the knife around his neck and said: "Do you have any seals, documents or tokens? Take them out."

  "Yes, yes." The imperial envoy rummaged through his sleeve and pulled out a seal, more obedient than the most well-behaved child.

  Rodhart has sat up from the ground. Looking at the corpses all over the ground, these fellow villagers who were still full of life and enthusiasm for the illusions they had created for themselves last night, are now being slaughtered like livestock in this place they yearned for. He covered his face with pain, slowly shaking his head, his voice choked with sobs: "How could it be like this......"

  "Take a few horses, bring the survivors and the wounded into town to find a doctor to bandage them up. If anyone asks on the way, show them this seal and say it's the imperial envoy's orders. The imperial envoy is eliminating heretics in the forest here and will pursue them after winning, only returning in a few days. These are all wounded soldiers. After finishing, take them away from here, the farther the better."

  The seal fell beside Rodhart's feet, but he didn't even glance at it. He buried his face in his hands, his fingers digging into the flesh of his forehead and cheeks, as if trying to rub out his own features. Tears seeped from between his fingers, but he made no sound, his entire body shaking with sobs.

  A Sa suddenly kicked up a foot and kicked his face, shouting: "If you want to cry, roll back and cry slowly. Do you want to cry all these people to death here?" His body moved, the knife was on the neck of the imperial envoy, and the imperial envoy made a scream similar to that between sheep and pigs, and his crotch immediately became wet.

  Rodhart was kicked by that foot and rolled on the ground for several times, lying motionless on the grass. As if gasping for breath, he suddenly stood up by himself.

  His two sword-like eyebrows were knitted together with great effort, his lower lip was pulled into his mouth and bitten by the neat teeth, he was already bleeding all over his mouth, it was unclear whether it was caused by his own biting or the kick that broke through earlier. The tears on his face blended with this expression to form a sorrowful heroic aura. He quickly picked up the seal, hastily bandaged the injured villagers, pulled over several cavalry horses, and helped them onto the horses.

  Asa looked at the remaining dozens of horses left by the cavalry and asked the hunter Leven, "Are you badly hurt? Can you still move?"

  "It's not fatal for the time being." Hunter Levin covered his wound and said, he had several deep wounds, blood was still flowing out, fortunately his physique was very strong and could hold on. Asa beckoned him to come over, stretched out a hand and pressed it against his several wounds, using all his might to use healing magic. He wasn't interested in healing techniques and rarely practiced them, these few times were already his limit.

  He told Hunter Leven, "Drive all the horses here away, the farther the better." It's far from the city, and it takes half a day to ride a horse. As long as all the horses are driven away, even if the situation on this side is out of control, it can still give the escaping villagers a lot of time.

  Hunter Leaven turned to drive the horses, and as he passed by Dao Te's side, he suddenly pressed him down and beat him until he was paralyzed on the ground before turning around to drive the horses away in a group.

  As Rodhart led the villagers away, Hunter Leven also drove the horse herd to disappear into the forest. Asa finally let out a breath, and then that stock of suppressed anger was released, he reached out to grab the fat on Dorte's neck, like pulling a dog, pulled him over and knelt down with the imperial envoy, put the knife across their two necks and asked: "I decide to slaughter one of you, leave one as a hostage is enough, you two say, who should die?"

  "He's dead!" they exclaimed in unison.

  "He's a higher official than me, these are all his ideas, he said to kill all these bandits." Daote's whole body of fat was trembling, his voice sounded like a pig squealing. "I'm just a small official, it's them who told me to do this."

  "I'm thinner than him, it's much more convenient as a hostage." The imperial envoy was indeed a scholar, knowing to emphasize his own advantages. He also raised the hand with broken fingers by Asa, as if showing off an extraordinary achievement. "You see, I've been made like this. I...I don't want to die..." His nose and tears gushed out together.

  Their pleas and pitiful appearance were all for naught to Asa. Before anyone knew it, the red-robed figure who had been standing at the edge of the forest had quietly walked over and was now crouching among the villagers' corpses. The cavalrymen had long since lost their will, and no one paid him any mind.

  The originally kneeling Dao Te suddenly gained courage and strength from somewhere, and ran to the red-robed man. He rolled and crawled to the side of the red-robed man, knelt down and said: "Sir, I have done what you told me to do, and executed all the dead prisoners in the city and buried them here."

  The man in red stood up, nodded and said: "Yes, I've received all the bodies. You did a good job."

  "Sir, I know you're a magician and I've seen you use incredible magic before. Please save the Imperial Envoy from that thug's hands right now." He knew that even if he could escape himself, he would still be doomed if the Imperial Envoy died, as the dozens of people here had just clearly heard him shirk responsibility.

  The man in red robes didn't pay attention to him and looked up at the sky instead.

  Dort stretched out his hand to grab the red-robed person's hand and begged: "I beg of you, how many more corpses do you want...". He suddenly fell silent, because he saw the hand that he had pulled out from the red robe.

  That was absolutely not a hand that any living person could have, or rather it didn't look like a hand at all, but more like an old, tattered leather glove worn on the skeleton of a human hand. Through the torn places, you could see the bones directly, but they weren't white, rather a deep grey, like dead fish eyes.

  "Sorry, I'm busy." The red-robed man muttered to himself as he stared at the sky. But his hand, which didn't look like a hand, had already grasped Dorte's hand, and his dry joints had sunk completely into Dorte's plump white hands, as if holding a lump of risen dough.

  Dawde stared at his own hand, his mouth probably open that wide for the first time in his life. But anyone could see he wasn't in pain, but in terror.

  His hand, originally plump and clean, had withered away like a lettuce leaf on the stove, shrinking and discoloring quickly.

  He was probably shouting something, like a scream or something, but unfortunately only strange gasping sounds came out of his throat, and that wasn't even him screaming, it was just the sound of his lungs squeezing out air as they withered away. His whole body began to shrink like a deflated balloon. Everyone could see clearly how the plump flesh on his face slowly transformed and contracted, finally sticking to his bones. His eyes were still moving, rolling left and right, up and down, but the muscles on his face had completely withered away, leaving only his lonely eyes expressing no emotion, just indicating that he was still alive, feeling himself dying bit by bit.

  His eyes finally came to a stop as well. In just a few breaths, the formerly plump and white Lord Dote had become a desiccated corpse.

  The man in red let go of his hands, sighed, and seemed to have just drunk a cup of not-so-good tea. He still looked up at the sky with his head raised.

  In the sky, the sun still shines as usual, pouring brightness and warmth onto the ground, treating even this suddenly eerie grassland equally.

  Suddenly, a shadow appeared on the edge of the sun.

  The man in the red robe lowered his head and shouted in a hoarse, eerie but clearly excited voice: "It's here! The gate that only opens once every hundred years has finally opened!" He raised his hand-like thing casually upwards, as if beckoning his own pet. "Everyone get up and go to work."

  The villagers who fell in the pool of blood around him suddenly started to squirm, and then one by one they slowly got up by themselves. Some had holes open in their chests, some necks and heads were hanging with only a layer of skin, maintaining the posture when they fell down.

  Witnessing all this before their eyes, the cavalrymen let out voices that are usually only heard in women's throats. Several immediately fell to the ground, and the vast majority turned around and ran away. It was only when they turned back that they saw that many patches of mud on the grass were cracking open, and one by one, already rotting corpses were crawling out. These were the heretics that Lord Dote had deliberately buried here over the past half month. One silver coin each, out of love for silver coins, Lord Dote had killed with great enthusiasm, and there were more than 200 corpses buried in this not-too-large grassland.

  "You've come all this way, so don't leave now. Everyone, please help me out." The red-robed man looked at Asa and smiled. "Young man, would you also help me out?"