When gunshots rang out outside the armory, a gleam finally appeared in the captain's eyes.
The guerrillas were somewhat bewildered. Even when a lackey dressed in a Vietnamese military uniform rushed in covered in blood, they still hadn't processed what was happening.
"For a great death..." the visibly injured lackey muttered deliriously. Yet, his hands and feet moved nimbly as he opened the door. He glanced at the crowd, his face full of fanaticism, and spoke in a low, somewhat neurotic tone, "For atonement..."
"He, he... Captain..."
The captain took a deep breath. "Let's go. We're backing up Fang Zhiyi!"
"Backing up Fang Zhiyi?"
"This is what he and I agreed upon... using me as bait to catch a bigger fish."
"Captain, why didn't you say anything?"
"Would you have agreed if I did?"
"Nonsense, the risk is so huge! We all thought we were done for!"
The captain looked at them. "To be honest, I don't know why I trusted him either, but there was always a voice in my ear telling me that he isn't a bad person, that he is just like us... I just didn't expect him to change his mind at the last minute. He was originally only supposed to capture me, but he captured all of you instead..." He looked somewhat apologetic.
"Say no more. Whether he's a traitor or one of our own, we'll find out soon enough! Charge!"
When they charged out, the scene before them left them dumbfounded. Although most of the enemy forces had been transferred out of the city, the Vietnamese troops guarding the armory still had abundant firepower. Meanwhile, those lackeys they usually spat upon were now surging forward wave after wave, acting completely unafraid of death!
But what was even more bizarre was that, despite the fanaticism written all over their faces, these men didn't make a single sound. They were literally pushing the frontline forward with their lives.
During the defenders' reloading intervals, a figure suddenly emerged from a pile of corpses. Clutching several explosive packs, he dashed fiercely toward the Vietnamese positions.
Following a violent explosion, this tragic surprise attack came to a brief halt.
"Are they insane? This isn't right, aren't these lackeys usually terrified of dying?"
"Stop chattering and hurry up!" the captain ordered. With corpses everywhere, they could still scavenge for firearms.
The city gates had been completely blocked. The ragtag troops shooting from a higher vantage point dealt a heavy blow to the Vietnamese army. What shocked Dien Viet even more was that some fearless ragtag soldiers actually jumped off the city tower holding explosives. He even heard the sound of their leg bones snapping, yet those guys, who were normally cowardly and afraid of death, merely let out muffled groans before resolutely pulling the fuses on the explosive packs in their arms.
"What is going on? Fang Zhiyi! What on earth did you do!" He couldn't remember how this trash had become so fiercely unafraid of death.
"What could he do? When you're constantly haunted by nightmares and accustomed to the death around you, you wouldn't care either if you were in their shoes," Little Hei muttered.
The number of Vietnamese troops was not that large compared to Fang Zhiyi's ragtag army, which became the key to victory or defeat. When the numerous ragtag soldiers began charging and blowing themselves up like madmen, the Vietnamese army didn't even have a chance to retreat.
Dien Viet watched with his own eyes as the commander was tightly embraced by a ragtag soldier who was clearly half-dead, and then had his windpipe bitten off by the man's teeth. He was terrified.
They must have been possessed by demons! They must have!
By the time he snapped out of his panic, several ragtag soldiers he wouldn't have even bothered to look at in the past were staring down at him, looking at him as if he were a dead man.
"I surrender! I surrender!" At this moment, he finally let go of his pride as a Vietnamese soldier.
"Stop! Keep him alive, he's a captive!" The guerrilla captain, who had conveniently rescued Lin Xiaoyao along the way, hurried over with his men. Just now, he had felt that the condition of these lackeys—no, these allied forces—was quite abnormal. Now, seeing corpses and severed limbs all over the city gate, his heart was pounding violently.
"Captive?" Huang Dali shook his head blankly. "We don't want captives. We need salvation."
"Salvation?" The captain was a bit confused. Then, he watched as the knife in Huang Dali's hand pierced straight down. Dien Viet never made another sound; he was impaled by his own military knife, fixed in a kneeling position in a bizarre posture.
"You guys... sigh, where is your boss, the brigade commander?" The captain looked at everything around him, inexplicably feeling a bit creeped out. These allied troops had clearly won the battle, albeit a tragic one, yet there was not a trace of joy on their faces, nor even sorrow. They were like the walking dead, their faces completely numb, and even somewhat remorseful.
No one answered him. Only Huang Dali muttered something. Then, the survivors began to gather the mutilated remains and corpses of their comrades, piling them together, pouring gasoline over them, and setting them on fire directly.
Lin Xiaoyao also wanted to find Fang Zhiyi, but Fang Zhiyi had simply vanished. That very night, those lackeys disappeared along with him, taking a significant amount of firearms and ammunition from the armory. No one knew where they went.
"What do we do now? Captain, we don't have enough manpower. If the Vietnamese army comes to attack the city, we..."
The captain had a massive headache. Originally, he thought they could rely on Fang Zhiyi's men to resist, but now they had actually run away! Those bastards!
"Should we leave?"
"Leave? Dien Viet and a commander died here. If we leave, what do you think will happen to the civilians in this city?"
"Then... sigh! It's all because of this Fang Zhiyi! He's just a perverted psychopath!"
"Stop cursing him. At least he did some good."
"The closest place to us is Zhaojing City. The Vietnamese troops there will definitely come to provide backup. They are expected to arrive by daybreak tomorrow."
Everyone looked at the captain.
The captain gritted his teeth. "Hold the line! Send out a message and tell the nearby brother units to find a way to support us!"
"Yes, sir!"
Everyone wore a solemn and tragic expression. They had only wanted to take down an armory, but Fang Zhiyi had played a much bigger game. He and his gang of lunatics had directly killed a commander and a general, and even left a whole city to them!
Just as they expected, the Vietnamese reinforcements arrived the next day. However, before they could even fire a few artillery shells, they seemed to receive some sort of order and hurriedly turned around to flee.
It wasn't until a few days later that the guerrilla captain received the news: Zhaojing City had been attacked by a group of ragtag soldiers. They were wearing Vietnamese military uniforms and claimed to have escaped. The local defenders were mostly ragtag troops themselves, and their main force had just left to provide support. Thinking they were fellow sufferers, they let them into the city without suspicion, only to welcome a horde of life-claiming demons.
The brigade commander of the Zhaojing ragtag troops was killed, and all officers above the rank of regiment commander died. Immediately after, they coerced those ragtag soldiers into frantically besieging the command post, forcing the Zhaojing reinforcements to turn back. By the time the Zhaojing reinforcements rushed back, these people had already coerced the Zhaojing ragtag troops and vanished into the deep mountains.
e bizarre and supernatural had descended. The previous emperor was a thoroughgoing tyrant; no longer satisfied with human women, he had set his sights on a stunningly beautiful supernatural entity. He met his end in his bedchamber, drained of all his vital essence. As the legitimate eldest son and crown prince, Wang Hao was thus hastily enthroned, becoming the young emperor of the Great Zhou Dynasty. No sooner had he awakened the "Imperial Sign-In Intelligence System" than he was assassinated by a Son of Destiny—a classic villain's opening. The Great Zhou, ravaged by the former emperor's excesses, was in national decline. The great families within its borders harbored their own treacherous schemes, martial sects began to defy the imperial court's decrees, and border armies, their pay and provisions in arrears, grumbled incessantly against the central government. Fortunately, the central capital was still held secure by the half-million Imperial Guards and fifty thousand Imperial Forest Army who obeyed the court's orders, along with the royal family's hidden reserves of power, barely managing to suppress the realm. As the Great Zhou's finances worsened and supernatural activities grew ever more frequent, the court sat atop a volcano. Ambitious plotters everywhere dreamed of overthrowing the dynasty, and even some reclusive ancient powers emerged, attempting to sway the tides of the world. At the first grand court assembly, the civil and military officials nearly came to blows, fighting tooth and nail over the allocation of fifty million taels of silver from the summer tax revenues. The spectacle opened Wang Hao's eyes—the Great Zhou's bureaucracy was not only corrupt but also martially proficient, a cabinet of all-rounders. Some officials even had the audacity to suggest the emperor release funds from the imperial privy purse to address the emergency. Wang Hao suddenly felt weary. Let it all burn.
lanned to earn money steadily and take life at a slower pace. But he never expected... his father's remarriage, and the stepmother bringing along a dependent, would completely disrupt his life's plans...
s the Eldest Princess, renowned for her cold and aloof detachment, became the most docile of lambs, obeying his every command without question. But when the final move was played on the chessboard, as Gu Chenghan seized everything and ascended on the verge of apotheosis, that very Princess suddenly embraced him from behind, her tone carrying a dependence never heard before: "Wait... you haven't yet... commanded me to love you forever." Gu Chenghan froze abruptly. She... hadn't been hypnotized?! ... [The Eldest Princess's Diary] [When my soul was extracted, becoming the sole spectator outside my own shell] [At first, there was overwhelming fury, until I saw] [How he used my sword to effortlessly shatter my inescapable doom] [How he wielded my authority to eradicate fatal conspiracies I had never even detected] [Like a deity, he rescued me from the deep mire I was trapped in] [If not for those annoying vixens, he and I would be a match made in heaven] [I think I am ill, gravely ill] [My deity should belong to me alone] ... "Hypnosis? Oh, it succeeded, my dear Master." "Only this time, it's my turn to hypnotize you."
nd fell into a coma while saving his younger sister from an out-of-control car. He became a vegetable. No one knew that his consciousness had crossed into a world of cultivation. Over the course of sixty years, he began as the lowest kind of mine slave, struggling to survive amid mountains of corpses and seas of blood. By sheer chance, he eventually obtained the complete memories of a fallen Immortal King. Alchemy, medicine, formations, feng shui, physiognomy, artifact forging… Every great inheritance of the cultivation world was now his. But when he opened his eyes again, he discovered that ten full years had passed in the modern world. To pay for his treatment, his father had sold the family’s shop and house, leaving himself covered in lasting injuries and illness. His mother had cared for him day and night, and more than half of her hair had already turned white. His younger sister, who had been only fifteen back then, was now twenty-five. To help repay the family’s debts, she had been forced to lower her head and put on a smiling face in places of glittering lights and endless revelry. Only then did Chen Xuan understand that what he had lost was not merely ten years. He had lost the life his entire family was meant to have. The good news was that he had brought back the memories of an Immortal King’s entire lifetime. The bad news was that his soul had returned alone—his cultivation had not come with him. Spiritual energy was scarce, resources were depleted, and the modern world still had firearms, surveillance, capital, and laws. If he wanted to protect his family, break free from everyone’s control, and become truly invincible beneath the heavens, he would have to start all over again.
