Book 7, Heaven and Earth Turned Upside Down – Chapter 10, A Terrible Situation
“Thud!” With each step of its massive feet on the ground, the Violet Tattooed Bear would make the earth shake. This Violet Tattooed Bear was fixated on Linley. No matter where Linley ran off to, the Violet Tattooed Bear followed, while its two massive bear paws continually tried to reach out at him.
“Grooooowl!”
Hearing those familiar dragon roars, Linley couldn’t help but look up at the skies. What he saw made his heart clench tightly.
The sky was covered with countless massive dragon bodies. In terms of numbers, there were definitely more here today than that time previously at the Foggy Valley. What’s more, within the host of dragons, there were even Silver Dragons and Black Dragons. Both of those were dragon-type beasts of the ninth rank!
“No!”
With a sudden leap, Linley avoided yet another attack from the Violet Tattooed Bear, then charged directly for Clayde. “No matter what, this time, I have to kill Clayde.”
“Get it, ring, get it back!” Clayde’s forehead was covered with sweat, but he didn’t dare charge forward himself.
“Roaaaar!”
“Roaaaar!”
Several dozen dragons swooped down from the skies, blasting forth dragonfire from their mouths. The flames belched forth by the Black Dragons were black in color as well, while the Silver Dragons exhaled plumes of silvery-white flames. Clearly, in terms of temperature, the black flames and silver flames were far hotter than the dragonfire of the Fire Dragons.
“Sizzle sizzle.”
The temperature of the surrounding area immediately began to rise at a terrifying speed as several dozens streams of dragonfire blasted down.
“Your Majesty, if we don’t leave, we’ll die for sure! If we’re dead, treasures will be useless to us!” Kaiser’s entire body was suffused with red battle-qi. He roared frantically at Clayde, who started.
“CLAYDE!!!”
A furious roar from the fully Dragonformed Linley, who was shooting towards him like an arrow.
“Go. Go, let’s go!” Clayde immediately howled out the order angrily. This decision of Clayde was an extremely painful one for him, but he too understood that if he died here, everything would be lost. In addition, his eldest prince and his second prince both had magicrystal cards on them, with a combined value of a billion gold coins.
A billion gold coins was definitely enough to allow a royal clan to rebuild and flourish again.
“Bam!” Kaiser’s giant sword once again blocked Linley’s attack.
“Kaiser, let me kill Clayde. No matter how much gold you desire, I’ll give it to you.” Linley was half-mad with anxiousness as well.
Kaiser just shook his head.
“Roaaaar!”
Right at this moment, a Black Dragon suddenly swooped down and tried to snatch Linley with its claws. Black Dragons were highly intelligent. Seeing how the Violet Tattooed Bear continuously pursued and tried to kill Linley, it was sure that there had to be a reason for the bear’s fixation. Thus, its first target was Linley.
“Me again?” Linley frantically dodged to the side.
Just now, when he had been fighting with Kaiser, that Violet Tattooed Bear had decided to chase after him instead of Kaiser. And now, the same thing was happening again. The Black Dragon of the ninth rank chased after the fleeing Linley.
“Whew.” Kaiser paid no more attention to Linley as he hurriedly upped his speed to the maximum and fled away. Immediately, several of the giant dragons began a pursuit of Clayde and Kaiser, but the large majority of them continued to encircle and attack Linley.
The Violet Tattooed Bear began to roar in anger as it rose to its hind feet.
Clearly, it was enraged at the dragons for stealing its prey, but the Violet Tattooed Bear didn’t dare to openly fight against the dragons either. The Violet Tattooed Bear wasn’t confident of beating even that extremely large Black Dragon leader of this host of dragons, to say nothing of the rest of the dragons.
“Thud!” “Thud!” “Thud!”
The Violet Tattooed Bear began to walk away in a different direction, moving a long distance with each stride. Every building in its way was crushed and demolished.
“Clayde!” Seeing Clayde and his men grow farther and farther away, Linley wanted to immediately chase after them.
But yet another massive dragon descended from the skies. This was a massive Black Dragon, over a hundred meters long, and it blocked the road in front of Linley while constantly reaching for Linley with its claws. From its mouth, it repeatedly blasted hot flames at Linley.
Both the earth and the skies were covered in dragons, and all of them were launching attacks at Linley. Surrounded and attacked by so many dragons, Linley felt miserable as well.
“Bastards!”
Encircled and besieged by a large number of dragons, Linley could only watch as Clayde disappeared from his field of vision.
“Boss, we need to flee!” Bebe was frantic now.
Bebe was extremely agile, and also very small. It would be very difficult for those dragons to attack him. What’s more, Bebe’s fierce claws and sharp fangs were very powerful as well. His attack power was now enough to cause some harm to the dragons, causing all of them to be quite nervous with respect to that little tiny thing.
“Go. Go where?”
No matter in which direction Linley tried to flee, a host of dragons would block and attack. He wasn’t afraid of dragons of the eighth rank, but there were more than ten dragons of the ninth rank as well.
“Whap!”
Linley was attacked viciously by a Silver Dragon’s tail, but Linley only flipped around in the air before trying to flee again. But it was useless. In midair, several dragons encircled and attacked again. Linley was in such a bad situation that he wanted to cry.
“Swish!” Linley very agilely avoided an attack by a fierce claw, continuing to dodge about at high speed.
“Boss, I’ll help you!” Seeing the danger Linley was in, Bebe immediately flew over as well and began chomping down viciously at the leg of that dragon. CRUNCH! CRUNCH! CRUNCH!
“Roaaaaar!” That giant dragon let out a roar of pain.
Relying on his astonishing speed, Linley managed to resolve one draconic attack after another. Whenever he met with real danger, Bebe would help out. The dragons weren’t able to do anything to Linley for now either.
In their eyes, this human-shaped aberration was too hard to deal with, and that even smaller-sized rat-type magical beast kept on nibbling at them and causing them pain.
“Roaaaaar!” The leading Black Dragon let out another roar.
Instantly, all of the dragons flew into the air. They had already made the decision to give up this battle against this difficult-to-deal-with human-shaped aberration. It was totally not worth it for an entire host of dragons to waste so much time on a single human-shaped aberration.
The host of dragons flew away, just like that.
“They left?” Linley was startled.
Just moments ago, he had been frantically dealing with the attacks of many dragons, and he had been dodging for his life. That was a very miserable experience. He didn’t expect the dragons to give up just like that.
“Boss, let’s go now!” Bebe urged.
“Right. Clayde.”
Recalling Clayde, Linley maintained his Dragonform and led Bebe at a high speed charge through the city.
By now, the vicious battles between man and magical beast within Fenlai City had all but come to an end. There were very few living people within Fenlai City now, and virtually the only creatures alive on the streets were magical beasts that were hunting for living humans. The Dragonformed Linley moved too fast, and what’s more, the fact that his body was covered in scales deceived many magical beasts into thinking that Linley was a magical beast as well.
“Not here.”
Linley had led a chase in the direction where he thought Clayde would’ve fled to, but even after escaping Fenlai City, he still didn’t find any traces of Clayde’s party.
Outside Fenlai City. A desolate scene.
Even many of the great trees that had lined the road to and from Fenlai City had been shattered. Countless human corpses lay on the road as well. Clearly, these people had managed to flee Fenlai City, but had been killed outside the city by magical beasts nonetheless.
In the desolate countryside outside Fenlai City, small groups of one or two magical beasts could be seen everywhere.
“I wonder what direction that Clayde ran off in.” Linley stared at the three branching forks ahead of him. He felt very helpless. It was possible that Clayde might’ve even left through the East Gate of Fenlai City, but as Linley saw it, that was unlikely, because the further east they went, the closer they would have become to the Mountain Range of Magical Beasts.
Thus, Linley had chosen to exit via the West Gate.
But despite having left by the West Gate, Linley still didn’t know in what direction he should now head. After all, there were hoof prints pointing every which way.
“Perhaps that Clayde didn’t choose any of the roads, and went cross-country into the wilderness.” Linley said to himself. The weakest person in Clayde’s party was of the seventh rank, and so going cross-country wouldn’t be difficult at all.
Linley understood that the chance of finding Clayde in the wilderness was very, very low!
“North. I heard that ‘King’ of the Mountain Range of Magical Beasts say that the people of the Holy Union could only flee to the north! I’ll head north as well. Given Clayde’s fame, there’s no way that his passing will attract no attention. When I reach the north, I’ll search for him again.” Linley made up his mind.
Seeing the corpses littering the area around him, Linley couldn’t help but sigh.
“Ah! Wushan township!”
Linley suddenly thought of his own hometown. Wushan township was less than a hundred kilometers away from Fenlai City. What sort of shape was Wushan township currently in? Linley couldn’t be bothered to cancel his Dragonform transformation, as he began to run at high speed available to him towards Wushan township.
Although Linley wasn’t moving at maximum speed, after having assumed the Dragonform, he was able to easily travel two or three hundred kilometers each hour as a warrior of the ninth rank.
The trees on each side of the road quickly disappeared into the distance, and dust flew about everywhere.
“Is that...?” A fleeing mounted knight suddenly saw a human-shaped aberration suddenly charge in his direction from behind. He couldn’t help but be frightened, but Linley only passed him by, moving like the wind towards Wushan township. This was the speed of a warrior of the ninth rank! Within twenty minutes, Linley had drawn close enough that he could see his hometown.
Wushan township.
This was a very quiet little township. In the past, the lives of the commoners here had been very peaceful.
But now...
Corpses. Mutilated corpses everywhere. Those corpses clearly bore the signs of having been ravaged by magical beasts.
“This...this...” Linley walked onto the main road of Wushan township. He stared at the corpses littering the main road or the side alleys. There were old people, young people, women, children...seeing all this, Linley couldn’t help but feel grief in his heart.
Linley recognized the majority of these dead people.
Linley suddenly saw a young man not far away, clutching a baby in his arms. That young man’s body was covered with blood, and that baby had been bitten to death as well.
“Or...Orson [Ao’sen].” Linley wanted to cry, but the tears wouldn’t come out.
Orson was only one year older than him. When Linley had first started his physical training at the empty training grounds outside Wushan township, both of them had been placed within the six-to-eight year old group. Orson was the little boy who had stood right next to Linley when they had lined up. The two of them were on fairly good terms. Linley knew that two years ago, Orson had gotten married after reaching the age of maturity. That dead infant was most likely Orson’s child.
“Rip. Rip.” Not too far away, several Windwolves were chewing on the corpses of the dead.
“Ah!” Linley cast a furious glare at them, then flew towards them like a bolt of lightning. He didn’t use his Bloodviolet Godsword. Using his two hands, he either smashed their heads in or ripped them into several pieces barehanded.
In the blink of an eye, the few dozen magical beasts which had remained in Wushan township were all killed.
Seeing the magical beast corpses around him, as well as the human corpses, Linley cancelled his Dragonform transformation, a pained laugh escaping him. And then, he felt to his knees, powerless.
Everyone was dead.
“Haha...” Linley began to laugh in a low voice, but his eyes had begun to fill with tears.
“When the magical beasts ambushed the city and I escaped from the Radiant Temple, I was so immeasurably smug and self-satisfied with myself. But...” Linley’s tears began to flow. Only now did Linley truly understand the meaning behind the words that ‘King’ of the Mountain Range of Magical Beasts had spoken.
“How could I be a pathetic human? Humans are nothing more than food to us magical beasts!”
“Food. Food.”
Linley’s heart was filled with grief.
Wushan township. His hometown. These familiar fellow villagers!
All dead.
When he had left his hometown, Linley had felt fairly calm, because he had always known that his hometown would still be there. But now...his hometown was gone. Everyone was dead.
“What a calamity.” Doehring Cowart’s ancient voice rang out. “Not just for your hometown. Most likely nearly half of the entire Holy Union has now become the domain of magical beasts. Those people...will become nothing more than food.”
Linley quietly stared at his surroundings. He could totally envision how the countless people within the domain of the Holy Union had now been trapped within a catastrophic nightmare. This so-called day of joy, the 10000th anniversary of the Yulan Festival, to the people of the Holy Union and the Dark Alliance, had become a day of catastrophe.