The Attack of the Wastrel

Ever since Le Yan had become a Glaze Class Warrior, he had never thought that there would be a day when he would be scared of beasts. However, when he looked outside the city and saw the endless beast horde, he was terrified. His voice trembled as he asked, “What is going on? Where did all these beasts come from!”

“I do not know either.” Le Yao cried.

Back then, Le Yao had tried to frame Gu Lingzhi and Rong Yuan. She had collaborated with Jin Hao, who was under the control of the Female Worm (the female Insect Beast) then. After the collaboration failed, she left Spirit City immediately with a few male concubines of hers and returned to the Burnt City as fast as she could.

Not long later, the news of Gu Lingzhi becoming Lin Chongyuan’s god-granddaughter was released. Subsequently, messengers from Spirit City were sent to Burnt City to request for the extradition of Le Yao and her male concubines. Luckily, the Chancellor of Burnt City was Le Yao’s brother. He refused the extradition request and instead compensated them with large amounts of resources. This caused the situation in the Burnt City to deteriorate for a period of time. Yet, now that things had finally taken a turn for better, this had happened instead. Le Yao was incredibly alarmed.

“Put the whole city on alert and notify all the Expedition Troops to be on standby to fight the beasts together with the city’s guards!” Le Yan hurriedly commanded and looked upon the city again.

Because of the beasts’ approach, the villagers who lived in the outskirts of the city were all gathered at the city gates and requesting for shelter. However, the city’s soldiers had all been scared off by the beast horde and had closed off the city’s gates a long time ago. The commoners who had been unable to get inside the city in time were all crying and banging against the gates. Those who had the ability to, carried their loved ones on their backs and slowly climbed up the city’s walls. The people within the city were panicking, whereas the people outside the city were crying in desperation. The whole city was in chaos.

When Le Yan saw this, he raged, “Who closed the city gates?”

The beast horde was still a fair distance away from the Burnt City and would have needed at least a quarter of an hour to arrive. Why did they close the gates?

Le Yan was not sympathising with the commoners who were locked out of the city. Rather, it was because all residents of the Lost Lands were adept Warriors, and with so many of them outside the city, it was actually a small force that could be reckoned with. If they were put to good use, they would be able to kill a number of beasts. At such a critical juncture, how could he waste any cannon fodders?

“Open the city gates, let the people in!”

“But…” Niu Ran, who was in charge of the city’s defence, hesitated, “The beasts will arrive soon.”

Once the city’s gates were opened, it would not be so easy to close it again. With so many commoners outside, it would be impossible for all of them to enter the city within a quarter of an hour.

“You mean… we should give up on them?” Le Yan pointed at the group of people who were crying in despair outside the city and proclaimed righteously, “They are the citizens of Burnt City. As the Chancellor, how could I abandon them in such dire times?”

Le Yan did not control his volume. Hence, his righteous and fervent words were easily overheard by the people who were stranded outside the city. The group of people echoed in approval, “The Chancellor is wise! We are also the citizens of the Burnt City, why are you preventing us from entering?”

“Yes, let us in! The Chancellor said that he would not give up on us!”

Under the pressure of the crowd’s cries and Le Yan’s sharp gaze, Niu Ran hesitantly passed down the order to open the city’s gates.

When the gates opened, the people instantly flooded through the gates as they ran in eagerly. As a result, many people fell down and before they even had the chance to stand up, they were trampled over by the crowd behind them. They had become the first batch of sacrifice from the beast horde.

Several soldiers even rushed them non-stop, “Hurry, hurry up! The beast horde is coming, do you want to cause the whole city to perish?”

When the crowd heard these words, they hurried into the city even faster, resulting in even more deaths from the people who were unable to react quickly. Even so, by the time that the beasts had started to approach the city, there were plenty of people trapped outside who were unable to go in. The people outside the city started to become surrounded by the beasts and screams of terror sounded constantly.

Le Yan knew that if he did not close the city’s gates now, then it was very likely that he would never be able to close it again. Hence, he coldly sent out the order to close the gates. There was no longer any resemblance to when he had been proclaiming righteously earlier.

Niu Ran wiped off the sweat that was running down his face as he instructed the soldiers to close the city’s gates. He was immensely thankful that the Chancellor did not insist on being righteous.

The soldiers who were terrified felt as though they had just been saved, started to push the gates as forcefully as they could. However, how could the people who were still outside the city be willing to become food for the beasts? They also started to shove their way inside forcefully. For a period of time, the gates were actually unable to move.

Thankfully, when Le Yan passed down the order to close the gates, he had already expected this situation to occur. With an expression of grief, he said sorrowfully, “My dearest citizens, please do not block the city’s gates any longer. Or do you wish for all the citizens in the city to accompany you to your deaths?”

The people who were struggling to enter the city roared miserably, “Chancellor, are you forsaking us?”

“It is not that I want to give up on you, but that I cannot ignore the responsibility of all the other lives in the city!” Le Yan replied dejectedly as he waved his hand, “Everyone, put in your best effort to close the city’s gates. We absolutely cannot let the beasts enter the city and cause even more deaths!”

With that, he closed his eyes as though he was no longer able to bear looking at the situation outside.

Nobody dared to disobey the Chancellor’s orders, especially when it concerned the lives of the people. Immediately, the commoners who had managed to enter the city, moved to act.

When Le Yan had ordered the city gates to be closed the first time, they had already wanted to help. However, when they thought about how they were just like that group of people who were facing death just a minute ago, they were unwilling to do so. With Le Yan’s seemingly helpless yet cold-hearted words, they did not hold themselves back anymore and went to help.

Le Yan was right! If they still did not close the city’s gates, then all of them would die.

Nobody knew how many beasts there were outside, they only knew that if they were to show benevolence now, then they would be the ones to die.

“Don’t close the gates! My wife hasn’t entered yet, let my wife enter!” A man in the city shouted out loudly.

Following this shout, a few people tried to block the others from helping to close the gates, they were all people who had family members who had yet to enter the city. However, at this time, no one else was willing to listen to them. It was more important to protect their own lives.

“I told you all to stop, didn’t you hear me?” The man who had been clamouring about his wife being outside the city bellowed. As he saw the gate about to close shut at any moment, he actually swung his weapons around madly and threatened the people, “Stop! If you all don’t stop now, I will kill you all!”

Because of this disturbance, the force pushing the gate close weakened. The commoners outside took the opportunity to push the door open a little more and a group of people successfully squeezed into the city. However, that man’s wife was still not amongst this group of people. Just as he was about to threaten everyone else again, a thin streak of silver light flashed between the man’s eyebrows. He opened his mouth, but there was no sound. He collapsed amongst the crowd and was trampled underfoot by everyone else.

Who was the one who made the move? Nobody cared.

Burnt City’s gates finally closed after a small group of beasts had managed to squeeze their way in and everyone worked together to kill the beasts that had entered the city. A few people leaned against the gates and cried as they called out for their loved ones who were still outside the city. However, they were soon dragged away by others.

Le Yan appeared to look upon the scene in sorrow, however his eyes were still as uncaring and cold as before. He put away the silver needles that he had been holding under his sleeves.

These were precious treasures that he had bought from the Spirit City. For every needle that he used, he would have one less. If he had not been afraid of the man earlier wreaking havoc, he would not have had to waste that one needle.

He looked at the situation outside the city again. The beasts had already reached the base of the city walls while the citizens who were trapped outside the city were gradually turning into fodder for the beasts. The areas close to the city walls had already turned into a mess, with the corpses of both humans and the beasts mixed together, to become food for the next wave of beasts.

“Gather the people and prepare to defend against the beasts. We cannot let the citizens outside die in vain!”

Le Yan was the first person to draw out his weapon, a five-foot long longbow that he pulled skilfully. He shot an arrow, which accurately buried itself into the head of a beast that had the strength of a Gold Class Warrior. The beast collapsed with a groan and its corpse was quickly devoured by the other beasts.

The people were motivated by this scene and they all started taking out their weapons to fight. Even if they did not have any long-range weapons, they used stones or wooden sticks to attack. At the very least, they would still be able to inflict some damage on the weaker beasts.

The beast horde surrounded Burnt City for two full days. It was only at daybreak on the third day that beasts started to retreat unwillingly, leaving behind mountains of corpses. This news very quickly travelled to the other cities.

Inside the Spirit City’s Chancellor’s Manor, Lin Chongyuan looked extremely serious as he read the letter from the Burnt City’s messenger. Through the letter, Le Yan had earnestly requested for aid from the Spirit City to help the Burnt City through this crisis. Fearful that the Spirit City would not agree to assist, he even hinted that the beasts would definitely continue their attacks. When the Burnt City fell, the beasts would then turn to their next target city. Before the damage done became irreversible, they had to remove the threat, otherwise the consequences would be fatal.

“This Le Yan is really interesting. Does he think that everyone is as hypocritical as him and cannot differentiate right from wrong?” Chu Jiang scoffed in disdain.

Chu Jiang still remembered how Le Yan had sheltered Le Yao, preventing them from taking their revenge.

“I never thought that Rong Yuan’s theory would really turn out to be true. That Female Worm did have an ulterior motive, it actually wants to take over the Lost Lands.” Lin Chongyuan sighed.

According to Rong Yuan’s speculation, the main body of the Female Worm that had infiltrated Spirit City was very likely to have achieved peak Demigod strength. Hence, the clone that it sent out had the strength of a Demigod.

Later on, Rong Yuan had also brought a group of people deep into the Heavenly Lands to search for the main Female Worm, the Mother Worm; but in the end, they were unable to find it. They gave up on finding it and eventually decided to raise their strength instead. After two years, the Mother Worm could not hold back any longer and decided to make a move. They never expected that in its first move, it would choose to target a city that was estranged with the Spirit City. The intelligence displayed was terrifying.

“Animals are still animals in the end. Even if they managed to gain some intelligence, they still do not understand the meaning of the big picture. Does it really think that by doing this, we will really choose to be a bystander and overlook their actions?” Chu Jiang scoffed, “This time, there will be no return for them!”