Chapter 232 Running To The Cellars

Chapter 232 Running To The Cellars
"They are going to kill everyone," Jin-Woo breathed, his hand trembling on the wooden railing of the tower. "The Demonic Cult will slaughter them for blood sacrifices. And the Orthodox Alliance... the Alliance won't distinguish between a murderer and a starving child in a lawless zone. They will purge the entire basin."

He turned to look at me, his eyes wide and haunted by the hypocrisy of his former brothers. "Tens of thousands of people, Mu-Kang. They are going to wipe this town off the map."

I stared down at the panic in the streets.

A few hours ago, I would have looked at this slaughter with the cold, mechanical apathy of Assassin Number Seven. I would have calculated that these criminals deserved their fate, and that the innocent collateral damage was simply a tragic necessity of war. I had poisoned the Sun Village with that exact same logic.

But I had confessed. I had laid the horrifying, rotting weight of my sins at Jin-Woo’s feet, and the system had burned the poison out of my veins. My baseline body was whole, but the guilt in my chest was heavier than ever.

I could not stop the two greatest armies in the Murim. I did not have the power, the Qi, or the time to save the tens of thousands of people trapped in the valley.

But I knew exactly where thirty of them were hiding.

"The tannery district," I said, my voice cutting through the roar of the wind. I turned away from the terrifying sight of the approaching armies and moved to the ladder. "Mi-Ra said the villagers are in the drying cellars. It's on the southern edge of the slums. If we can reach them before the main forces clash, we can bypass the Alliance blockade through the old smuggling drainage pipes."

Jin-Woo didn't hesitate. The despair in his eyes hardened into a sharp, unbreakable resolve. He had failed to save his sect from corruption, but he refused to let thirty innocent people burn in this crossfire.

We rapidly descended the watchtower. Mi-Ra was waiting for us at the bottom, her arms wrapped tightly around herself, shivering violently in the rain.

"Guide us," I told her, my tone leaving absolutely no room for argument. "Take us to the cellars."

Mi-Ra nodded frantically. She turned and sprinted into the labyrinth of the lower rings.

We followed her into the madness. The streets were completely choked with panicked bodies. Thugs trampled over one another, slipping in the deep mud and sewage.

"Out of the way!" a massive, scarred enforcer screamed, swinging a rusted halberd blindly into the crowd to clear a path. The blade caught an old beggar in the shoulder, throwing the frail man into the muck.

I didn't break my stride. As I ran past the enforcer, I lashed out with my right arm. The heavy iron chain wrapped seamlessly around the wooden shaft of his halberd. I didn't stop moving. I let my forward momentum violently jerk the weapon out of his hands, ripping the skin from his palms.

Jin-Woo moved right beside me, using his shoulder to ram a path through the throng of terrified mercenaries, his blue straight sword remaining in its scabbard. We didn't fight the crowd; we carved through it like a ship cutting through violent rapids.

"Take the left alley!" Mi-Ra shouted over the din, vaulting over a spilled cart of rotten cabbage. "The main avenue is blocked by a riot!"

We veered left, plunging into a claustrophobic, dark passage between two towering, dilapidated warehouses. The smell here was atrocious—the sharp, acidic tang of lye, rotting animal hides, and dried blood. We had reached the edge of the tannery district.

The ground beneath us violently lurched.

It wasn't just a vibration this time. The seismic shockwave was so powerful it threw Mi-Ra entirely off her feet. She crashed hard into the brick wall, crying out in pain. Jin-Woo stumbled, catching himself against a wooden post with his good arm.

I dropped to a crouch, pressing my right hand flat against the muddy cobblestones. The physical earth was groaning.

"Get up!" I shouted, grabbing Mi-Ra by the collar of her soaked tunic and hauling her to her feet. "Keep moving!"

We burst out of the alleyway and into the open courtyard of the tannery district. The area was filled with massive, open-air vats of toxic chemicals and stretched animal skins flapping wildly in the storm.

At the far end of the courtyard, heavy wooden cellar doors were set into the ground.

"They're down there!" Mi-Ra pointed, limping forward.

We sprinted across the courtyard. Jin-Woo reached the heavy wooden doors first. He wedged his good hand under the iron handle and pulled with all his remaining physical strength, throwing the doors open.

The dark, damp cellar was packed with the thirty terrified villagers. They huddled together in the freezing dark, clutching their children, their eyes wide with absolute, unadulterated fear. The little girl with the shredded rag doll looked up, and when she saw me standing in the pouring rain, a tiny, desperate gasp of relief escaped her lips.

"We have to move," I said, my voice echoing down the stone steps. "Now. The drainage pipes are a half-mile south—"

A deafening, unnatural screech suddenly tore through the sky, completely drowning out my words.

It didn't sound like a war horn. It sounded like the shrieking of a thousand dying animals, amplified through rusted iron.

I slowly turned my head toward the west.

The massive, rolling war machine of the Demonic Cult vanguard had halted at the edge of the slums. Through the driving rain and the thick black smoke, I could see the massive, iron-wrought siege engines locking into place. They weren't aiming for the Orthodox Alliance forces on the other side of the valley.

They were aiming directly down into the center of the town.

The Cult wasn't waiting for the Alliance to advance. They were going to flatten the entire basin, turning the Black Market Town into a sea of fire and blood to destroy the battlefield's cover.

I watched as the heavy iron gears of the massive catapults violently cranked backward. The payloads weren't boulders. They were massive, iron-caged spheres radiating a blinding, sickly purple light.

"Jin-Woo," I whispered, the cold rain running down my face as the absolute reality of the slaughter set in.

The Demonic Cult unleashed the first volley.