Before the hooded cloaks who had entered the Blood Skull Shrine discovered the truth—that it was completely empty—and came storming out in a fury, Meng Chao and Ice Storm had already slipped silently away from the Blood Skull Arena like two shadowless ghosts.
Black Horn City was still in chaos.
Everywhere, bands of ratfolk, led by hooded cloaks, were attacking granaries and armories whose walls and fortifications had already been blasted down.
First, they assaulted from the front, using the lives of hundreds of ratfolk slave laborers to wear down the Clan Warriors' strength and blunt the edges of their weapons.
Then, at the most critical moment, the hooded cloaks emerged from the darkness and dealt the exhausted Clan Warriors a fatal blow.
Whenever they encountered a truly hard bone to chew, they simply blew it apart from underground.
Using this method, dozens of arenas, as well as the granaries and armories of the major Lineages, were breached, swept over, and devoured by the ratfolk tide.
The Mandala Fruit seized from ratfolk villages by recruitment squads, along with the weapons forged by squeezing every last drop of flesh and blood from ratfolk slave laborers, returned to the arms of their true owners.
Having stuffed themselves with Mandala Fruit, armed themselves to the teeth, and smeared their faces with blood wiped from the mangled, mud-like corpses of Clan Warriors, the ratfolk were gradually forged into a rebel army that looked the part.
However, for the Ratfolk Rebel Army, the real challenge had only just begun.
The major Bloodhoof Clan battle groups, conducting live combat drills in the wilderness dozens of miles from Black Horn City, had finally regained their organization and order.
The frazzled Bloodhoof powerhouses, High Priests, and chieftains had also worked out a strategy to return and defend Black