Chapter 471: The Resistance of Qingxi County II

The displaced people coerced by the Red Lotus Sect did not care at all how many people were in front of them; they only knew the city gate was open, and as long as they broke through, they could have food.

Even if they lost their lives, they no longer cared.

Inside the city gate tunnel, the shield wall had closed up again. The blade-and-shield soldiers in the front row drove the spikes at the bottom of their shields deep into the blood-soaked soil, while the spearmen in the back row thrust their spearheads out through the gaps in the shields, the shafts still stained with bits of flesh left over from the previous charge.

Three hundred men stood silently in place; no one spoke, no one moved, only the sound of heavy, ragged breathing rose and fell behind the shield wall.

If this were a normal ancient siege battle, at this moment, some might be exhausted, some might be overwhelmed, and some might be gasping for air.

But the Great Zhou has the Martial Dao.

Cheng Feng, in particular, places extreme importance on the Martial Dao training of the Hong Sect disciples.

Currently, the soldiers here are all Martial Artists at least at the Skin Refining Late Stage.

Furthermore, there are the two brothers, Cheng Shu and Cheng Lei, acting as lieutenants.

The physical strength and constitution of the two who injected the Super Serum are incomparable to those of ordinary people.

Added to that is their Martial Dao cultivation at the Bone Refining Realm.

With shields and armor, they can be called killing machines.

They looked outside the gate.

The displaced people outside the gate were also looking at them.

The smell of corpses had already permeated the air. At least ninety corpses were piled up in the city gate tunnel.

The ones at the very bottom had been trampled into pulp, those in the middle were stacked like a small hill, and the ones on top still maintained the posture of reaching forward before they died.

Blood flowed out along the threshold of the city gate, gathering into a dark red stream on the official road, flowing more than ten paces before seeping into the soil.

If it were any normal army, they would have stopped upon seeing such a scene.

They would be afraid, they would hesitate, they would reconsider the cost of charging up.

But the displaced people outside the gate did not.

Their eyes were red. Not the red that describes anger, but the red of bloodshot whites, the kind that looked as if they were about to drip blood.

That was not the look of a warrior, nor even the look of a beast—beasts still know how to seek advantages and avoid harm, knowing that even when starving, they must steer clear of a hunter's trap.

These people are not beasts; they are more terrifying than beasts, because beasts still know what fear is, while they already know everything, yet care about nothing.

They do not care how many people are in front of them. Three hundred blade-and-shield soldiers or three thousand blade-and-shield soldiers, in their eyes, it is all the same.

Their world has been compressed to the extreme, compressed until only one word remains—charge.

Charge through and there is food, charge through and there is a way to live, charge through and they no longer have to be whipped and slashed by those people in lotus masks behind them.

As for the cost of not being able to charge through, they do not know, nor do they want to know.

"Food... there is food over there..."

A hoarse whisper spread from the crowd, as if squeezed out from dry, cracked throats, carrying a hunger that made one's scalp tingle.

The sound was like a spark falling into a haystack; it spread from ten to a hundred, and the displaced people who had already retreated slightly began to stir again, the hoes, wooden sticks, and stones in their hands gripped tight once more.

Behind the shield wall, Cheng Shu's palms were full of sweat. He gripped the hilt of his blade, his knuckles turning white from the excessive force, his eyes fixed on the surging heads outside the city gate, silently calculating the distance in his heart.

Fifty paces, forty paces, thirty paces—the front row of displaced people had already begun to accelerate, the blood under their feet splashing everywhere.

"Hold steady!" Cheng Shu roared, his voice as hoarse as sandpaper scraping iron from a whole day of shouting.

"Don't move the shields! Spearmen, prepare—thrust!"

The first wave of displaced people to charge into the gate tunnel collided with the shield wall once again.

Hoes smashed against the tung-oil-coated shield faces, emitting a dull thud before sliding off. A sickle slashed down, chipping the edge of a shield; the blade-and-shield soldier holding it let out a muffled grunt and took half a step back, his rear foot digging hard into the ground, and he pushed back firmly.

The spearmen thrust their long spears in unison through the gaps in the shields; the sound of spearheads entering flesh was dull and crisp. The front row of displaced people fell, while those in the back kept pushing forward, tripping over the corpses and being trampled by those behind them.

A dozen more corpses were added to the gate tunnel.

But this time, the situation was different.

After the previous charge was repelled, the displaced people would at least retreat a certain distance to catch their breath, hesitate, and regroup outside the city.

But this time, those behind did not stop at all. They trampled over the still-warm corpses of their companions, over arms and legs that were still twitching, and surged forward regardless.

If someone fell, they crawled; if they couldn't crawl, they dug their fingernails into the ground to inch forward, still muttering something—if one got close, they could hear it clearly: "food," repeating these two words over and over.

The pressure on the shield wall increased sharply.

Gaps began to appear in the front row of shields. The Red Lotus Sect members mixed among them thrust their spears through the gaps, piercing the shoulder of a blade-and-shield soldier, and fresh blood flowed down the wooden shaft.

The blade-and-shield soldier gritted his teeth without making a sound, raised his hand to slash at the spear shaft, but his body involuntarily tilted, and his shield shifted by three inches.

It was those three inches.

A displaced person as thin as a skeleton squeezed through the gap, clutching a sharp-edged stone, and smashed it down toward the blade-and-shield soldier's helmet.

The sound of metal clashing exploded in the gate tunnel; the blade-and-shield soldier swayed twice and fell to one knee, but the shield did not fall—a comrade beside him shifted to fill the gap, slashed the intruder down, and kicked the corpse out, resealing the breach.

"Fill the gap!" Cheng Shu's voice had cracked, but the order was clear.

The once honest and simple man had already undergone a great change.

In Cheng Feng's plan, he would provide for his parents himself.

As for the eldest, Cheng Shu, and the third, Cheng Lei, they would embark on the path of a Martial Artist or a military career to strive for a future.

If that failed, they could return to the Lao Cheng family, and Cheng Feng would take care of them.

The eldest and the third were also hot-blooded men, and naturally, they wanted to strive for a future.

The shield wall closed up again, but Cheng Shu knew very well in his heart that this was luck.

The next gap would not be filled so easily, and the time after that, there might not even be a chance to fill it.

He turned his head to look at the city wall behind him.

On the city wall, the new recruits of the militia were looking down.

What they saw was their comrades holding the line in the city gate tunnel, saw those desperate displaced people crashing against them wave after wave, and saw the corpses piling higher and higher, almost blocking half the gate tunnel.

A young soldier's hand holding his bow was trembling; the arrow was nocked on the string, but after aiming for a long time, he did not shoot—he was afraid of missing, afraid of hurting his own people.

"Shoot!" Cheng Shu roared toward the city wall, "Shoot behind the crowd! Don't let them squeeze up!"

The rain of arrows finally fell. Although it was sparse and the accuracy was nothing to speak of, it at least caused some chaos in the rear ranks of the refugees.

Arrows pierced into shoulders, thighs, and backs; some fell with miserable screams, others spun in place, and the momentum of the charge was finally curbed just a little.