Volume 3, Chapter 43 – Spread【1】

In the south, while Bai Xiang was studying the “air-dropped gift pack”, the Chilong Army had already opened the inner gates of several defense bases, trying to escort people and supplies southward to Zhen’nan.

“This is sheer madness!”

On the steel-reinforced defensive wall, a military officer was cursing into his phone. “Evacuating over a million people… Whose idea was this?!”

“You can treat it as mine.” Huang Qian’s coarse, distinctive voice came through the receiver. “Why do you care so much? I tell you to do it, you do it.”

“But, Chief!” The officer took a deep breath, not caring whether Huang Qian could see him or not. “Even if we ignore the safety of over a million people on the road, even if we ignore whether Xinzhou can handle their material consumption once they arrive… we can’t even keep order here right now!”

He straightened his arm and lowered the handset, letting the microphone catch the noise and clamor below.

Directly beneath him was a sea of people. The broad road was jammed full, most of them shoving and shouting as they tried to squeeze through the base gate first. In a situation like this, a stampede would mean at least a thousand dead and injured.

“…None of what you just said counts as a real problem.”

When he lifted the phone back up, he heard Huang Qian again.

“The trip from Chilong Circuit to Xinzhou is only half a day. If they push hard, it’ll be even quicker. We have to get them there as fast as possible. Chilong Circuit is not safe.”

“As for supplies, you don’t seriously think Chilong can sustain that many people on its own, do you?”

Of course not.

The officer knew the issue behind it all—there really were gaps and terrain around Chilong Circuit reserved for future fortress walls. If they raised walls at every marked spot, the resulting defensive layer would not only fully encircle the entire circuit city, but also shield a huge area of farmland and livestock bases outside the city proper.

Those bases were massive… They’d been built to support a population in the millions. In an emergency, they could even remodel the urban districts; many high-rises could be hollowed out and filled with soil to grow simple crops.

The problem was that Chilong Circuit was nowhere near “war mode” yet.

The city had been laid out on a fortress-city framework, but right now it was just a skeleton. The whole thing was far from complete, and many agencies and plans for disaster response hadn’t even been put into operation.

That meant they had no way of achieving self-sufficiency. A huge portion of their supplies was still being flown in from outside—

And… turned in by the “non-people” out in the surrounding villages and towns.

“As long as Xinzhou holds, pressure on the other regions will ease, and supplies will naturally be sent.” Huang Qian said, “Forget about dying in place. Your top priority right now is evacuation. Fast.”

He didn’t even bother with the “order problem” the officer was complaining about. To him, order was no problem at all. If you wanted to complete the evacuation fast, any means were fair game. If worst came to worst—what, was the weapon in your hands just for show?

“Sigh!”

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Once the call cut off, the officer let out a heavy sigh and turned to the soldier beside him. “Fire a warning volley.”

Then he glanced down again and saw that the ones crammed at the very front were all thick-necked, tattooed, bald young men with piercings—his face grew even darker.

“If they still won’t behave, shoot to hit.”

Gunshots crackled at the gate, mingling with cries of alarm and screams. The Clean-Robe Gang’s plants hiding in the crowd seized the chance to shout at the top of their lungs: “The government troops are killing people! The government troops are killing people!”

Most of the time, fear dampened people’s ability to act. But if it went deep enough, and if their retreat was completely cut off, fear could also become a massive driving force, giving even the timid courage.

Many of the refugees—elderly, weak, women, and children alike—soon heard the “rumor” from the front.

In their minds, the broadcast telling them to “flee to the south” meant that danger was coming from the north. That meant standing here, they could no longer retreat back into the “city that might be in terrible danger”.

Under those conditions, denying them entry to the base and even opening fire to drive them back—wasn’t that just forcing them to die?

Everyone who heard the “rumor” was furious. The thugs pushed the mood further: “The government troops just want to run for themselves! They’re leaving everyone else here as food for the demon beasts!”

“We can’t just stand here and wait to die! We want to live! We’re going to Xinzhou!”

“Yeah! We want to live!”

“We’re going to Xinzhou!”

“Charge! They can’t stop this many of us!”

On the surface, the shouting thug was full of righteous anger, but inwardly, he was delighted.

His orders were to sabotage order as much as possible. If he could incite a full-blown riot, all the better. The bigger the chaos, the heavier the punishment the masterminds would face afterward.

As for himself? He had no intention of joining the rush.

The idiots he’d talked into a frenzy, these stupid commoners who believed whatever the broadcast said… Did they really have no brains at all? How many years had Chilong Circuit been around? When had there ever been a demon disaster big enough to upend the entire circuit city?

“You. Out.”

Just as he was silently looking down on the fools around him, a big hand suddenly shoved through the crowd, grabbed him by the collar, and yanked him up.

The other man was incredibly strong. One second the thug was shouting slogans at the top of his lungs, the next his collar was cutting into his throat, choking his voice off like someone had grabbed him by the neck.

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He looked up in surprise—and saw that the one who’d grabbed him was an elderly man in long robes and round spectacles.

This… Okay, maybe not that old, but the face had to be at least fifty or sixty, right?

“Old man, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

On reflex, the thug tried to intimidate him. “Do you know who we—”

Crack.

Pei Jian didn’t care what he had to say. Once he was sure he’d grabbed the right man, he squeezed and crushed the thug’s throat without another word.

The crowd exploded in an uproar.

Up to now, they’d only heard warning shots. No one had actually died yet. The people around them scattered back, opening up a little pocket of empty space that exposed Pei Jian’s group and the thug’s corpse to view.

His men—disciples of Huanxi Sword Dao that he’d rounded back up—didn’t sit idle either. They rushed into the crowd and dragged out the tattooed toughs they’d marked in advance, killing them with a thrust of the sword or beating them bloody with fists and feet, quickly clearing out these unstable elements.

“Don’t just stand there like idiots!”

Pei Jian wasn’t remotely fazed by the eyes on him. He raised his voice and bellowed, full of breath.

“What are you all staring at?”

“With that attitude, you lot think you’re going to make it out alive?”

“Get your act together. Elderly and weak in the middle, able-bodied on the outside. Get those formations sorted, now !”

Who the hell are you supposed to be?

Those who didn’t know Pei Jian couldn’t help muttering inwardly, not about to obey those orders straightaway.

If it were just them, of course they’d choose to back down.

But how many people were piled up here? With this many bodies standing around, and so few on Pei Jian’s side, would he really dare keep killing?

“Ah, I think that’s Dao Master Pei!”

Someone in the crowd recognized him.

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“Who?”

“Pei Jian… from Huanxi Sword Dao.”

“Wasn’t Huanxi Sword Dao crippled by Lady Bai Xiang? I heard even their ancestor hall got chopped apart.”

“They can’t expand anymore, sure, but you don’t think they can guard their own little patch of turf? …They’ve always been tangled up with the Red Flower Gang. If you don’t believe me, look! Aren’t those guys all sporting red flower tattoos on their arms?”

The chatter spread quickly, and soon the way people looked at Pei Jian completely changed.

As the “bad guy” in common parlance, the “muscle behind the gang”, Pei Jian’s identity was more than enough to keep ordinary people in line. He was very pleased to see them finally show some humility and politeness. Most of them still looked unwilling, but at least they were willing to form up in lines, to follow orders and let the old, weak, and women move into the middle ranks so they could be shielded.

Scenes like this were playing out in front of nearly every base. The Chilong Army was surprised to find that the order was gradually stabilizing again without them needing to resort to harsher measures.

They certainly weren’t going to turn down this kind of good development. The bases kicked into full operation, loading the elderly and weak onto vehicles. When there weren’t enough vehicles, they dispatched soldiers to march along with the able-bodied.

Good. At least we didn’t let them down.

Pei Jian felt a weight ease in his chest.

Using the fearsome reputation they’d carefully cultivated in the neighborhoods, they opened a path and cowed the masses into behaving. That was an iron order from Shenming Sword Dao.

“Dao Master Pei.”

A particularly burly, bald man walked up, a broad sword on his back and two arms covered in big red-flower tattoos.

“The Gang Leader told me to ask you—do we really have to go this hard?”

The other Red Flower Gang members, along with the surviving Huanxi disciples, pricked up their ears at once.

They all knew that “hard” didn’t refer to Pei Jian killing people, but to why he was working so hard in the first place.

There wasn’t some merit quota on the line. Was it really worth him getting involved personally?

Sure, they were the ones asking for help here, but this level of dedication felt a bit too submissive, almost like currying favor.

“Heh.” Pei Jian curled his lip and let out a cold laugh, but didn’t answer the question.

Elsewhere, Bai Zhuqing was busy directing people to process intel.

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“Come on, Fox-Fox, help me out here—sort the results for each dojo master and each affiliated gang.”

“How am I supposed to sort them?”

“Idiot! By effort, obviously~ They all brought different numbers of people; I’m not crazy enough to judge them by the same standard~”

“About done.” Chen Jing was helping fill out the forms too. She put the last little tick on Huanxi Sword Dao’s sheet and held it up. “This one’s the best!”

“Mm… Old Pei does know what’s what.”

Bai Zhuqing took the sheet, glanced at it, and her expression chilled.

“But some of them are way out of line.”

“Qingzhu Sword Dao! Lingshe Sword Dao!”

“They’re either scheming or Clean-Robe plants. Put them all on the blacklist! We don’t need that kind of vassal dojo!”

Our little senior sister is really getting some presence.

Lian Feng watched quietly from the side, feeling that Bai Zhuqing was starting to show a bit of Bai Xiang’s shadow.

But “little senior sister” still came more naturally.

Sorry, little senior sister. In my heart, the title of Great Senior Sister will always belong only to the former Dao Master…

Reality proved Bai Xiang’s plan effective—once those local gangs were broken back down and re-mixed into the refugees, the positive effects they generated were like grafting a skeleton onto a paralyzed body. They played a role similar to a “village council” or “clan elders”, tying the people together at a depth the government troops and Inspectorate couldn’t reach, and forcing them to follow rules.

Even if those rules were gang rules, it was still better than no rules at all.

The retaliation they’d been expecting, however, never came. After discussion, they’d all agreed that the Clean-Robe Gang wouldn’t just ignore this situation. They were sure the gang would send people to stir up trouble again—but for some reason, it never happened.

Time slipped by, and the sky gradually took on the color of dusk.

By now it had been half a day since ten that morning. The first convoy of transport vehicles had already crossed into Maozhou territory. Driven forward with nerves on edge and hearts full of unease, the refugees were ordered off the trucks—

And before they could say a word, what they saw left them stunned.