Chapter 147: The Death of Sherlock

Besides, this nomadic life of wandering was nothing his ancestors had not endured before.

Furthermore, he had prepared quite a few safe houses specifically for a time like this.

But could he really escape?

Or rather, could two flesh-and-blood legs truly outrun the thruster personally crafted by Chariot?

The answer was a resounding no.

Seeing how fast the bastard down below could run, Lan Qingyou's fiercely competitive spirit flared to life.

If she let him keep scurrying away like this, he would make it right out of the city limits!

Staring at the stark boundary between the stone of the city ruins and the dirt plains outside, Lan Qingyou accelerated.

First gear shifted to second, and second shifted to third.

Boom!

An Explosion Potion detonated violently, reflected in Sherlock's despairing eyes.

He desperately tried to pull more slaves in front of him to use as human shields.

But there were no slaves left nearby. As soon as he had begun to flee and use the surrounding slaves as meat shields, the others had immediately scattered in all directions.

It was true that they could not disobey Sherlock's explicit commands, but that did not mean they could not run before he issued them.

Now that they had fled to a safe distance, they finally felt the tug of Sherlock's latest order.

But with such a massive gap between them, running back in time to save him was nothing but a fool's dream.

And so...

"Ahhh!!!"

Sent flying by the blast, Sherlock crashed heavily onto the ground, violently coughing up bloody foam.

The distant figures of his lower-class subjects reflected in his blurring vision.

He weakly reached out a hand, silently begging the approaching lower-class slaves to save their master.

But the slaves, who had been compelled by their orders to rush back from all directions, suddenly halted their footsteps in perfect unison.

Sherlock's life force was rapidly fading, and with it, the absolute authority of his commands weakened as well.

In his final moments, a single crocodile tear squeezed from the corner of Sherlock's eye before he closed his eyes in overwhelming resentment and died!

At that exact moment, every slave felt the oppressive weight of the contract vanish from their souls.

"The contract... is it gone?"

When the binding chains completely disappeared, everyone stood utterly stunned.

Although they had prayed for this exact moment every single day, after a agonizing month or two of slavery, the reality of it finally happening felt completely surreal.

"Waaah!!!"

But in the very next second.

As someone broke down into tears of absolute joy, the crowd snapped out of their daze, fully realizing the magnitude of this unforgettable moment.

"It is gone!"

"It is really gone!"

"Thank the heavens!"

"That greedy bloodsucker is finally dead!"

The vast majority erupted into deafening cheers. Men and women alike shed tears of pure joy, pulling each other into fierce, ecstatic embraces.

A smaller fraction, their hearts still burning with unquenched fury, snatched up weapons and turned their murderous gazes toward the whip-wielding overseers.

These utter bastards had been quick to kneel and bootlick, willingly becoming the very tools Sherlock used to oppress their fellow captives. Now, it was their turn to pay the price.

A brutal, small-scale skirmish immediately broke out right in the middle of the celebrating crowd.

Although those overseers boasted higher levels, they were absolutely no match for the enraged, armed mob swarming them from all sides.

An overseer would barely manage to strike down one attacker before several blades carved deep gashes into their back.

Consequently, the chaotic battle did not last long, barely making a ripple in the grand scheme of their newly won freedom.

"Wait! Where is the Witch? Where is the Tower Witch?!"

Amidst the jubilant celebrations and bloody revenge, someone had finally remembered the woman who dragged them out of the abyss.

However, when they turned around to search for her, they discovered the sky was completely empty. The woman was already gone.

She had swept into their hearts like a sudden gust of wind, only to drift away and vanish without a trace.

She had struck like a bolt of thunder, rescuing them from the darkest depths and leaving behind a brief, unforgettable flash of brilliant light.

"What do we do now?"

Having so abruptly gained their freedom, the massive crowd found themselves entirely unaccustomed to their new reality. None of them knew what their next step should be.

Just then, a voice called out from the crowd.

"Why don't we throw this animal Sherlock's corpse into the mass grave? Just like he did to all the people he tortured and murdered."

This proposal met with overwhelming approval.

And so, the former overlord of the Abandoned Lake, the supposed king of kings of the Abandoned City, the owner of the unfinished Crystal Palace, and the brutal master of tens of thousands of slaves was unceremoniously dumped into a mass grave outside the city limits.

They did not even bother to wrap his body in a cheap straw mat.

He was stripped of every last shred of dignity in death.

Meanwhile, the woman whom the freed slaves revered as the thunder and the wind was currently dangling a little white mouse by its tail in a narrow alleyway.

This was the exact same alley where she and the little creature had first crossed paths the night before.

Someone had already cleaned up the area. The corpses from the previous night were completely gone, leaving only a few faint traces of the brutal battle behind.

"Alright, Spoon, hurry up and lead the way. There has to be some kind of treasure hidden around here."

Staring at the little white mouse in her hand, Lan Qingyou flashed a sickeningly sweet smile, looking as if she were just one second away from letting out a sinister villainous cackle.

The little white mouse, Spoon, trembled in absolute terror at the sight of her expression.

"Squeak—"

Spoon squeaked up at Lan Qingyou, trying its hardest to paste an innocent expression onto its furry little face.

Unfortunately, Lan Qingyou could not understand a single word of mouse-speak.

Consequently, under her deadly, torturous glare, the little white mouse frantically waved its four limbs around, seemingly trying to gesture something.

"Are you trying to take me somewhere?"

Lan Qingyou asked uncertainly.

She really had no other choice. Although the creature was still a juvenile, it was far from being fully tamed.

Otherwise, Lan Qingyou would have simply tossed Spoon onto the ground and let the little guy run on his own long ago.

"Squeak! Squeak!"

Hearing her words, the little white mouse's tiny eyes lit up brightly before pointing its right forepaw in a specific direction.

With the little white mouse acting as her personal GPS, Lan Qingyou navigated through several dilapidated streets. After winding through a maze of twists and turns, they finally stopped in front of a massive structure.

This building was none other than the rear of the unfinished Crystal Palace—the grand palace Sherlock had been constructing before Lan Qingyou personally bombed it into a pile of rubble.

Staring up at the sheer scale of the destruction she had caused, Lan Qingyou grimaced.

After all, she was the one who had brought the whole place down. 'If I had known there was treasure hidden in here, I wouldn't have destroyed it so thoroughly,' she thought bitterly. 'Now look at it. There isn't even a front door left intact.'

Thinking back on it, it made perfect sense.

She had rained down over seven hundred vials of Explosion Potion. It would have been an absolute miracle if a half-finished palace entirely lacking a Magic Shield hadn't collapsed into a heap of rubble.

No, that wasn't entirely accurate. It wasn't that the palace lacked a Magic Shield.

It was just that the Shelter housed within the palace was far too low-level to project a barrier large enough to cover the entire sprawling estate.

'Was it only Level Two? Or Level Three?'

Lan Qingyou stared at the ruined palace and mentally calculated the possibilities.

Finally, she gave up on pondering such a useless question, shifting her focus entirely to figuring out how she was going to dig her way inside the mountain of debris.

Because of Sherlock's death, all the drafted construction workers who used to toil here had long since scattered.

But trying to secretly shift tons of Stone from these ruins in broad daylight was still going to be rather difficult.

However, just as Lan Qingyou was debating whether she should come back at night, the little white mouse Spoon squeaked excitedly and pointed out a hidden path for her.