Hardcore Evacuation

Chapter 46: Hardcore Evacuation

"What was that?"

The officer, who had been strolling through the manor at a leisurely pace while looking around, suddenly fixed his gaze on the roof of one of the manor buildings.

A black shadow dropped from the sky, from atop the building.

Before the officer could make out what it was, he felt something punch him in the mouth.

Something had indeed struck his mouth, but it was not a fist. It was a grenade.

Qin Xa threw the round grenade as he fell. It punched straight through the lower half of the officer's face and embedded itself deep in his skull.

The slaves and guards brought by the officer were closest to him, so naturally they witnessed this first and began shouting.

"Get do—"

The explosion swallowed the rest of the words, along with everyone around the officer.

Above the scorching Red Sand, within the dark and frigid manor, the flash of the explosion illuminated the gloomy place for an instant.

Everyone else aimed their weapons at where the blast had erupted, but Qin Xa charged out of the flames and smoke the next second.

A snow-white psychic radiance formed a translucent arc around Qin Xa's body. As his figure appeared on the enemies' retinas and their optic nerves conveyed the image, shrapnel and bone fragments from the explosion slid off his Psychic Barrier.

"Fire!"

A soldier roared as he pulled the trigger, and a scorching energy beam shot from his gun barrel.

Qin Xa sprinted forward. With every several-meter stride, he reached out and tore a grenade from the bandolier he had just strapped onto himself.

There was no need to pull any pins. He simply plucked them off and hurled them.

Several muffled impacts rang out as multiple grenades struck several people in the flesh at once.

Whether in the head, the heart, or some other vital point, the victims had already been beaten to death by Qin Xa's grenades before they could be blown apart like the officer.

A succession of explosions erupted again.

Smoke engulfed the entire manor.

The force, heavily mixed with slaves and guards brought by the regular Praetorian Guard, clearly had no order whatsoever. The chaos made them think they were under massive attack.

Qin Xa had expected the Praetorian Guard to counterattack, but that was not what happened.

These troops, who had been comfortably stationed in the outskirts of Desia City for far too long, had never even gone out to massacre the Rebel Army.

When faced with the attack, the regular Praetorian Guard simply cursed at their slaves and guards, ordering them to go kill someone, while they used Silver Vine to form shields around themselves.

Qin Xa emerged from the smoke again and hurled more grenades.

The grenades flew into flesh again and exploded again.

Just like that, Qin Xa drew closer and closer to the manor's exit.

After throwing the last grenade, Qin Xa maintained his Psychic Barrier once more and passed unharmed through the explosion.

From the very first instant, when Qin Xa leaped off the building, to the detonation of the final grenade, the entire sequence took...

3.2 seconds.

Nuceria's black technology did not include grenades like these, nor did they automatically detect the right moment to explode without needing their pins pulled.

Qin Xa had pulled every pin before jumping down, because he was confident he could accomplish what he intended to achieve with these explosives before any of them detonated.

The Astartes body gave him the ability to do so.

The enemy was in complete disarray. Only a few people positioned high up, experienced, and equipped with advanced observation gear could react.

Such as those piloting quadrupedal combat machines.

These machines were not particularly astonishing, but they carried various heavy weapons, such as the large-caliber heavy machine guns Qin Xa had seen earlier, as well as weapons with long barrels that were clearly designed for armor penetration.

There were seven in total, and all of them opened fire on Qin Xa within the smoke.

Some of the slaves and guards brought by the Praetorian Guard were caught in the crossfire and shot dead, while the Silver Vine protecting nearby Praetorian Guard members could withstand the attacks.

The powerful kinetic force of the large-caliber armor-piercing shells even scattered the smoke.

Qin Xa was exposed. He held up his Psychic Barrier, and the barrage could only stir faint white ripples across it, unable to penetrate it in the slightest.

The quadrupedal combat machines maintained their suppressive fire while nearby infantry circled behind Qin Xa and concentrated their fire on him.

Even the rifle carried by the lowliest slave here could pierce light armor from two kilometers away, and its muzzle and impact point formed an absolutely straight line. Yet they clustered together like soldiers from the age of flintlocks, packed shoulder to shoulder as they focused fire on a single target.

Their concentrated fire even injured and killed quite a few of their own people on the other side.

Qin Xa held one hand up, maintaining the Psychic Barrier before him, while extending his other hand behind him to raise another barrier against the concentrated fire.

The shots fired by those energy rifles left crimson marks on the gleaming white barrier. As more and more marks accumulated, they gradually obscured its original color.

Qin Xa glanced at the infantry behind him, then turned back around.

The red energy marks on the barrier behind him shifted to the front, gathering into a beam that pierced the quadrupedal machine before him. It then swept in an arc until the stored energy was exhausted.

Then the Psychic Barrier behind Qin Xa vanished, replaced by psychic lightning erupting from his fingertips.

White psychic lightning burst forth. The group concentrating fire on Qin Xa was instantly erased from material existence, their souls burning amid the exploding psychic sparks. Their bodies did not turn to ash, but into snowflakes that scattered in every direction and drifted slowly down.

Qin Xa looked ahead. His Psychic Barrier remained in place, resisting the attacks.

Facing that dense web of firepower, he stepped forward, advancing with the fierce bearing of a man seeking vengeance.

But then, an enemy one hundred meters directly ahead moved over a quadrupedal machine. Its stabilizers extended in an instant, and once it reached an absolutely stable state, it fired.

A shell struck Qin Xa's Psychic Barrier. At the instant it exploded, countless fragments swept through Qin Xa's position and the area behind him like a raging storm, turning many people into bloody mist that spread with the dust.

Yet something else spread first when the shell burst, dispersing through the air, invisible to the eye.

Within a circular area ten meters across, the air was precisely ignited, and flames instantly swallowed Qin Xa.

But Qin Xa charged out of the spreading dust and smoke. His massive, muscular body was astonishingly and unexpectedly swift. Its bulk did not hinder his speed in the slightest, while all the advantages of its tremendous impact remained.

More than a dozen enemies in his path were smashed to pulp by Qin Xa's shoulder. In the blink of an eye, he reached the quadrupedal machine that had fired the previous shot, then changed the direction of his charge.

His bare feet and body turned ninety degrees at once, stamping a footprint into the ground. As Qin Xa turned and took a new step, a shockwave, accompanied by rocks shattered beneath his foot and blasted outward, sent everything around him flying.

The quadrupedal machine simply did not fly as high as the flesh-and-blood humans. After tracing an arc through the air, it collided with another quadrupedal machine beside it.

Its ammunition cooked off.

The explosion lit Qin Xa's face and illuminated everyone else's vision, yet the figure slaughtering them remained only a black silhouette in their eyes.

Qin Xa's sharp gaze swept across his surroundings. Seeing the enemies' panic and chaos, he realized that although he had not yet left the manor, his objective of escaping had already been achieved, because no one could stop him.