Steward Chen shoved open the courtyard gate, his voice already changed.
"Everyone out! Leave that stuff! Carry the wounded!"
The courtyard erupted into chaos.
A herb worker had just tied up his bedding. At the shout, he hurriedly pulled the rope loose, trying to retrieve the silver hidden inside. Before he could find it, Xu An grabbed his arm and dragged him toward the gate.
"Go!"
The tremors from the north grew clearer. Dust sifted from the eaves. Beneath the corridor, several herb workers lifted a stretcher together. The old man with the broken leg gripped its wooden poles, his lips pressed tight.
Su Yu handed the Storage Bag containing the sect's herbs to Steward Chen, then vaulted the wall and sped toward the mountain path to the south.
For now, it was their only way out.
The low ground on both sides of the Herb Farm was already flooded, while the north was where the beast horde was coming from. If they were trapped in the courtyard, those walls would not withstand more than a few charges.
Su Yu landed ahead of them on the mountain path. With one slash, he cut through a fallen tree trunk, then split a boulder embedded in the road and knocked it aside.
Behind him, Steward Chen hurried out with more than forty people.
The group had barely gone a hundred yards when a tremendous crash sounded behind the Herb Farm. The wall scored with claw marks collapsed inward. A huge beast clad in thick brown armor smashed into the courtyard, crushing the doorpost of the herb storehouse beneath it.
More beasts followed close behind.
The courtyard that had sheltered them from wind and rain moments before vanished beneath rolling dust.
A young herb worker at the rear saw it, and his legs