"Bandits"

Count Boles's iron-fisted reforms were like a dipper of ice water poured into a boiling oil pan, instantly provoking a frenzied backlash from Hewenham's old interest groups.

On the surface, they had temporarily gone to ground beneath Boles's butcher's knife and absolute power, but in the shadows, the Venomtooth of revenge had already quietly bared itself.

Boles's habit of going deep into the grassroots, with a relatively fixed itinerary, gave them an opening to exploit.

Retribution came silently, yet with fatal force.

When Boles led his core inspection team to a remote village at the southernmost edge of Hewenham Territory, near the chaotic mountain region, and was preparing to make a final measurement of the highly disputed military-farm boundaries around the village, crisis suddenly descended!

The village sat in a relatively open valley, with a stretch of rolling, densely forested hills at its back.

Boles was at the village entrance with several clerks and the village chief, pointing at a map as they discussed matters, while his hundred-plus elite personal guard detachment was scattered around them, keeping watch and resting.

Suddenly, the sentry on lookout outside the village let out a shrill warning whistle!

"Enemy attack! There's movement in the woods!"

The guard captain immediately drew his blade and shouted sternly, "Everyone, mount up! Prepare to meet the enemy!"

The well-trained personal guards reacted with extreme speed, leaping onto their horses one after another, blades drawn, bows strung, forming a defensive formation as they stared warily toward the seemingly calm forest.

However, the scene that followed made even Boles, who had fought on countless battlefields, start in surprise.

In the originally silent forest, shadowy figures kept emerging like ghosts! One, ten, a hundred... packed close together, like a swarm of ants crawling out of a crack in hell, pouring forth