One After Another: The Fork in the Road (Part 1)

The residents of Wu Tuo City were among those comparatively slow to realize what was happening. | Mainly because the experts of the Heaven Seizing Sect and Heavy Artifact Sect had mostly withdrawn in advance, leaving almost no Void Stepping cultivators in the entire city. There were no suitable leaders to sense the danger or handle the emergency, and the initial chaos within the city—including some people in the streets hacking and killing indiscriminately—was much the same as the Sand Bandits' unbridled conduct.

Those who dared to live in Wu Tuo City year-round generally had a high tolerance for such things.

Yet when devilish qi roared, pressing down like a mountain, when goose-feather snow fell and froze upon touching the ground, and all manner of strange phenomena manifested, even those with meager cultivation could sense the atmosphere's eerie, uncanny nature.

Then, when at least ten thousand heads throughout the city exploded at almost the same instant, blood and brains spraying everywhere, the savage stimulation pierced through most people's psychological defenses in one blow. Collective terror could not be suppressed at all. No one knew who cried out first, but in a city of a million, over half the population fled in mad panic, like headless flies, throwing the entire city into turmoil.

Near the Heaven-Stealing Tower, the chaos was already like boiling soup. The Heaven Seizing Sect's rules were strict; though the steward upstairs had trembling legs, he still had to steel himself and report to the upper floor.

The demonic spirit watched the outside, its thoughts wholly focused on the dense, intricate currents of qi. It ignored him completely, merely flicking its sleeve and sending the steward tumbling down the stairs.

That counted as an instruction. At once, all sorts of people within the Heaven-Stealing Tower scattered like birds