No, I couldn't stay here any longer. Once the heavy cavalry charged over, it would all be over." The slaughter not far away savagely jolted Yuan's nerves.
He had originally planned to hide somewhere quietly and use the chaos to find a chance to escape. But reality slapped him hard across the face.
He had guessed that even with cavalry stationed in the distance, it would not be easy to deal with more than ten thousand miners if they truly rioted.
He had not expected Harris to act so decisively, nor had he expected there to be so many heavy cavalrymen.
"Fuck, didn't Grandma's books say heavy cavalry required enormous resources? Why were there so many at a single mine?
The people of this kingdom are fucking lunatics, idiots. What the hell are they doing stationing so many heavy cavalrymen at some shitty mine?
With this many troops, plus the kingdom's other military forces, they could conquer the entire continent. Those bastard nobles have no ambition at all."
The slaughter continued. Even miners who had already dropped their tools and wanted to surrender were too late.
Once the heavy cavalry got moving, they were not so easy to stop. Harris did not care about the lives of these lowly commoners anyway, so he simply ordered the charge to continue.
They would kill to their hearts' content first. Afterward, they could just squeeze the miners harder and make them work overtime to dig out enough ore to make up the losses.
With no other choice, Yuan lifted his feet and headed deeper into the mine.
"Go into one of the exhausted tunnels off to the side. We can come out after they stop. Harris can't possibly be crazy enough to kill them all, can he? Who would mine for him then?"
With that thought in mind, Yuan decisively hid in an abandoned tunnel with barely any stone left in it. This tunnel was some distance from the one at the bottom where the great support beam had shattered.
For the moment, he was still safe. He was not alone; several young men also slipped inside amid the chaos.
They looked at one another. None of them knew each other, and the sounds of fighting and killing outside made the atmosphere here especially quiet.
But sometimes, heaven truly decreed that blessings never came alone, and misfortunes never came singly.
"Crack!"
"Crack!"
Hearing that familiar sound, Yuan and the others, who had been resting on the ground, froze.
"No... no way?"
"Don't!"
Everyone prayed to the gods, hoping they would not encounter the worst possible outcome. Unfortunately, the gods they prayed to seemed to be on vacation.
"Heh, fuck me. The tunnel inside didn't collapse, but the one outside did. Was this thing really chasing me down to kill me? Forget it. Let it all end. I'll just go down early and wait for Grandma.
What a shitty world. If there is a next life, heavens, please let me be reborn as someone badass."
As countless stones fell, the abandoned tunnel, already quiet, fell completely silent.
The slaughter outside also came to an end. The collapse of the abandoned tunnel seemed to have triggered some sort of doomsday button.
The enormous mine began collapsing on a massive scale. Harris, who had stopped wielding his bloodstained longsword, stood there utterly stunned.
"Bastard, bastard! It's over now, it's over! They won't let me off! You damned lowborn trash, scum, all of you die! Die! Die!"
As he spoke, he kept hacking with his longsword, swinging it around like a windmill and wildly slashing in every direction as though he had gone mad.
A long time passed!
No one knew how many days had gone by. The mine had completely lost contact with the outside world, becoming a place cut off from the world. In the darkness, Yuan felt as though his entire body were about to explode.
He coughed up a mouthful of blood amid the rubble. The viscous fluid was mixed with tiny particles, and he did not know whether they were fragments of himself or dust carried in with the ash.
He tried to raise a hand to wipe his eyes, only to see weakly glowing stone fragments stuck to his festering palm.
Calling it a glow was generous. It was so faint it was practically nonexistent. Yuan did not even know how he could see these things in such dark ruins.
But he knew that he seemed to have survived.
"Breathe... keep breathing..."
He muttered into the darkness. Every breath felt like swallowing scorching coal slag, and pain swept through every cell in his body.
Yuan endured it and forced himself to breathe more quietly. With the greatest concentration of his life, he focused on his ears, trying to hear the sounds of mining within the tunnels.
If he could hear them, then he would have a sliver of hope of being rescued. Unfortunately, everything outside was as silent as death.
"Looks like it wasn't just this abandoned tunnel. The one at the bottom collapsed too. Even if the kingdom doesn't abandon this place, they won't be able to resume work anytime soon."
Yuan seemed to have accepted his fate and stopped struggling. In the darkness, his face was calm and unruffled, as though he had long since cast life and death aside.
"Grandma, it looks like I really am going down early to wait for you. I'm so tired. It hurts so much." Yuan, seeming to have lost his will, began to grow delirious and muttered nonstop.
"Child, what's wrong?"
"Grandma?"
Yuan suddenly woke with a start. He thought he had heard the old woman's voice. His eyes widened as he tried to see her one last time before death.
"Child, believe in life. Believe in hope. Life itself is the greatest miracle in this world."
At death's door, Yuan seemed to see the old woman rocking gently in her wicker chair. His once lifeless eyes burst with a radiance they had never possessed before.
Beyond the planet, the Taotie finally arrived at the desolate star system after rushing all the way there. Their warship stopped outside Yuan's planet, and various pieces of equipment began to be assembled.
"Hurry up and begin scanning the planet."
Taotie Civilization Seventh Vanguard Warship · Abyssal Eye Detection Array, commencing scan. Divine River Body pre-nuclear civilization. No super soldiers detected. No creations of Astral Civilization level or above detected. Remaining life signals below one million. Under non-war conditions, the average daily decline rate has reached 97.6%. Suspected world-ending catastrophe... Warning! Warning! Gamma radiation concentration: 5.7×10^4 μSv/h (497 times above the Divine River Body safety threshold). Neutron radiation flux: 3.2×10^11 particles/cm2 per second (capable of penetrating alloy armor). High-concentration radioactive material: high-level anomalous energy pulses detected (12 stable fluctuations per second).
"By Death God Karl, Commander Cole, something's wrong."
As each item in the report came out, several Taotie soldiers immediately lost control and shouted.
"Shut up and report the situation!"
"Commander, these Divine River Bodies are insane. They're setting off chains of nuclear explosions across the planet's surface. They're attacking themselves!" Cole frowned deeply upon hearing this.
"What bullshit are you talking about? How could a backward primitive civilization possibly be playing with nuclear explosions? Tell me, did you sneak off to the VR room again?"
"It's true, Commander. Look."
As he spoke, he swiped his right hand. The screen, originally no larger than his palm, expanded across the command center.
Seeing the alerts constantly flashing across the display and the red range markers, every Taotie soldier's eyes widened.
"The population base is below one hundred million, yet it is plummeting abnormally fast despite there being no war."
"With such an enormous radiation zone, have these Divine River Bodies truly gone mad?"
"Smack!"
Cole slapped his forehead, a thoughtful look appearing on his face.
"No wonder the beast bodies lost the Form War back then. These Divine River Bodies aren't human at all. They're even crazier than beast bodies, and their brains are more developed. How could they not win?"
"Woo~"
"Woo~"
Woo~ Warning! Warning! Super-level energy detected. Commencing analysis. Abnormal Gravitational Field fluctuations detected! Massive Dark Energy fluctuations detected. Commander, remain on alert! Warning!
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