Chapter 230 Two Armies Are Here

Chapter 230 Two Armies Are Here
I didn't have a weapon to block the executioner's sword. But I didn't target the blade. I targeted the mount.

I didn't want to hurt the animal. I lunged forward, grabbing the thick leather reigns hanging near the horse’s bit with my left hand, pulling the animal's head sharply down and to the right. The horse whinnied, its momentum violently thrown off balance.

As the horse stumbled sideways, I leaped.

I grabbed the heavy leather saddlehorn with my right hand and used the beast's shifting weight to vault myself entirely out of the mud. I collided directly with Captain Ma’s heavily armored torso mid-air.

The impact knocked the breath out of both of us. Ma lost his grip on his massive sword. We tumbled off the right side of the horse, crashing down into the flooded street.

The muddy water splashed violently as we hit the ground.

Ma was massive, fueled by a terrifying, brutish strength. He immediately rolled over, ignoring the mud coating his faceplate, and wrapped his massive, gauntleted hands around my throat.

"I'll crush your windpipe, rat!" Ma snarled, squeezing with bone-breaking force.

My vision immediately began to spot. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't leverage my body to throw him off.

I didn't panic. I went completely limp for a fraction of a second.

Ma’s grip shifted slightly, anticipating a struggle.

I brought both of my hands up, driving my thumbs directly into the vulnerable, exposed nerve clusters on the inside of his heavily armored forearms. The pressure was exact, mechanical, and absolute.

Ma let out a sharp, breathless gasp. His hands instantly went completely numb, springing open.

I bucked my hips, throwing his massive weight off my chest. Before he could recover, I scrambled over him. I grabbed his right arm, planting my knee firmly onto his steel shoulder guard to pin him to the mud.

I wrapped my iron chain tightly around his wrist, leaned my body weight completely backward, and twisted his arm at a horrific, unnatural angle.

Captain Ma’s scream tore through the freezing rain, echoing off the surrounding brick buildings. His shoulder dislocated with a sickening pop, the joint completely destroyed.

I stood up, breathing heavily, the rain washing the mud from my face. I looked down at the massive, terrifying captain of the town lords' guard. He was writhing in the filth, clutching his ruined arm, completely incapacitated.

The remaining twenty heavy infantrymen completely froze.

They looked at their elite captain, broken and sobbing in the mud. They looked at the pile of their groaning, crippled comrades scattered across the street. They realized that in less than ten minutes, two men had entirely dismantled their impenetrable formation without drawing a single drop of lethal blood.

A ghost and a broken shield.

The psychological terror of our restraint was more devastating than a massacre. It meant we were untouchable.

One of the pikemen slowly lowered his weapon. He took a step backward. Then another.

"Retreat!" a lieutenant screamed, his voice cracking with sheer panic.

The wall of black iron shattered. The soldiers dropped their heavy tower shields into the mud to lighten their load and ran. They didn't march. They scrambled, pushing each other out of the way, fleeing back toward the upper rings as fast as their armored legs could carry them.

The street was finally empty, save for the groaning bodies left in the mud.

Jin-Woo slowly pushed himself up from the ground. He leaned on his sword, his chest heaving with deep, painful breaths. The cut on his shoulder was bleeding sluggishly, but the adrenaline was keeping him on his feet.

He looked at me, a mixture of profound exhaustion and awe on his face.

"The eastern route," Jin-Woo panted, pointing his bloody hand toward the alleyways leading out of the canyon. "The lords' forces are completely broken. The path to the river is clear. The villagers... they made it out."

I nodded, feeling a heavy, profound relief wash over my exhausted muscles. We had done it. We had survived the venom, the bounty hunters, and the heavy infantry. We had secured the escape.

"We need to follow them," I said, my voice hoarse. "Before the lords send the archers."

I turned toward the eastern alleys.

But as I took my first step, the water in the flooded street beneath my boots began to tremble.

It wasn't a slight vibration. It was a rhythmic, deep tremor that physically shook the decaying brick buildings on either side of us. Dust and loose roof tiles clattered to the ground.

The sound of the rain was entirely drowned out by a low, mechanical grinding noise coming from the west. It sounded like a massive, moving mountain of iron.

Jin-Woo stopped, his head snapping toward the western gate of the canyon.

"What is that?" Jin-Woo whispered, the blood draining completely from his face.

Before I could answer, a lone figure came sprinting out of the eastern alleyway—the exact route the villagers had taken. It was Yoo Mi-Ra, the female assassin who had held a dagger to my throat days ago.

She wasn't holding a weapon. She was completely covered in mud, her face a mask of absolute, unhinged terror. She didn't even look at us as she ran past, slipping and scrambling in the muck.

"They're here!" Mi-Ra screamed, her voice cracking with sheer hysteria. "The whole world is here!"

I grabbed her by the shoulder, physically stopping her flight.

"Who is here?" I demanded, my grip tightening. "Are the villagers safe?"

"Dead! Everyone is going to be dead!" Mi-Ra shrieked, pointing a trembling finger toward the east, then wildly pointing back toward the west. "The Orthodox Alliance! Thousands of them! They blocked the river! And the west... the Demonic Cult vanguard! They just breached the canyon gates!"

My heart stopped.

The Black Market Town of Yeomna sat directly in the center of the valley.

I looked east, where the sky was beginning to glow with the faint, golden light of thousands of Orthodox Qi flares. I looked west, where a thick, suffocating cloud of black smoke was rising above the slums, accompanied by the deafening roar of heavy war engines.

The two greatest military powers in the Murim hadn't just tracked us. They had marched their armies directly into the lawless zone to completely annihilate each other.

And we were trapped exactly in the middle of the killing field.