"Boom! Boom! Boom!"
Before tens of thousands of ratfolk warriors, the soul-shaking war drums rang out once more.
The Hundred Blades Battle Flag Tie Tou had seized hung limply atop a pile of oil-smeared mandrake branches, surrounded by more than a hundred war drums.
At the front, back, left, and right of the battle flag stood four priests wearing White Bone Masks studded with great horns and scarlet Feather Garments. Keeping precise time with the drums, they danced in a frenzied, grotesque manner.
When the drumbeats suddenly came to a halt,
the four priests, too, went from wild frenzy to utter stillness, like four statues sealed away beneath dust for ten thousand years.
Yet the mandrake branches beneath the Hundred Blades Battle Flag burst into blazing flames without warning.
The crimson fire was like the countless blood-drenched arms of the countless innocent ratfolk who had died miserably over the past millions of years, reaching out from the depths of hell to seize the Hundred Blades Battle Flag and tear it savagely to pieces.
Every fragment tumbled amid the roaring flames, letting out shrill "squeak, squeak, squeak" cries, like the wails of savage beasts caught in traps.
As thick smoke curled upward, it truly took the shapes of Jackals, Wolves, Tigers, and Leopards.
Those who had once ridden roughshod over the ratfolk had now lost all the majesty and brutality of predators. They looked as pitiful and ridiculous as homeless dogs that had fallen into the water.
The smoke rose higher and higher, growing thinner and thinner.
It was as though all the Jackals, Wolves, Tigers, and Leopards had been torn to pieces and scattered to the winds beneath the righteous judgment of countless ratfolk.
Only then did the four priests, who had been frozen in absolute stillness, "slowly awaken."
They