Just as the two groups were about to collide.
Clack-clack-clack!
An extremely faint, extremely eerie sound of mechanisms rose from the dark night.
Then came the whooshing of air being torn apart, like a torrential downpour.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
Pfft! Pfft! Pfft—
Countless bolts shot from the rooftops on either side, from the shadows at the mouth of the alley, even from behind the crenellations atop the county granary's high walls—like innumerable eyes of death suddenly opening in the darkness.
These were no ordinary arrows, but repeating crossbows specially made by the Mohist Pavilion. Their bolts were short and compact, fitted with triangular armor-piercing heads, and flew so fast the eye could scarcely follow them.
The Cui Family's private soldiers fell in swathes like harvested wheat.
Seven or eight burly saber-wielding men in the front row blossomed with bloody flowers across their chests, toppling backward before they could even scream.
A few men in the middle row tried to raise their blades to block, but crossbow bolts converged from every direction, drilling in through their armpits, the backs of their necks, and their waists, nailing them into bloody hedgehogs.
A guard captain beside Cui Chong had just raised his shield when three bolts struck his throat, heart, and lower abdomen in a triangular pattern, blasting him backward into the county granary gate. The impact made the hinges hum.
In merely three breaths' time.
Fewer than ten of the Cui Family's private soldiers remained standing on the long street before the county granary.
Cui Chong froze where he stood, the rage on his face solidifying into a dazed blankness bordering on idiocy.
He stared down at the guard's corpse twitching at his feet, at the blood pooling across the ground and the bolts scattered everywhere. His lips trembled, but not a