Alongside Tie Tou, hundreds upon thousands of ratfolk warriors charged forth.
After more than two months of Death Trials, these were naturally the cream of the crop, selected layer by layer from tens of millions of ratfolk rebels. Each had their own way of surviving.
Some ratfolk warriors moved as swiftly as lightning. With a few leaps and dives, they swallowed hundreds of cubits, then used high-frequency, high-speed changes of direction within a small range to evade dozens of arrows in succession.
Some ratfolk warriors, like Tie Tou, possessed boundless strength. Carrying enormous wooden shields embedded with several layers of bone plates and carapace, shields thicker than the width of a palm and densely bristling with arrows, they could still heft them before themselves and race forward at flying speed.
Still other ratfolk warriors had extraordinarily long hands and feet. Wielding slings tanned from beast sinews, they hurled angular projectiles with razor-sharp edges precisely into the crenellations atop the city walls.
During the Era of Prosperity, ratfolk had two primary methods of harvesting Mandala Fruit.
One was to rely on nimble hands and feet, like Ye Zi, climbing directly up the Mandala Tree to harvest the fruit.
Some ratfolk also liked to use slings, aiming at branches laden with Mandala Fruit and shooting the fruit down with precision.
The latter often trained themselves into masters of slingcraft, capable of piercing a willow leaf from a hundred paces away.
The range of a sling could not compare to bows and crossbows firing down from above.
But after crossing five trenches in succession, the distance between the ratfolk warriors and Hundred Blades City was less than a hundred cubits.
The sharp-eyed ratfolk warriors could even see the panicked expressions of the Jackals, Wolves, Tigers, and Leopards behind the city wall's crenellations.
They