In Great Harvest Township, the waning moon was red as blood.
The Liu Household's mansion had already been swallowed by towering flames, but the most brutal battlefield lay across the thousand mu of terraced fields that sustained Great Harvest Township.
"Hold the line! Don't let these beasts destroy the seedlings!"
A band of ragged tenant farmers and smallholders, armed with pitchforks and hoes, had spontaneously formed a flimsy circular formation, desperately protecting the paddy behind them, where Bloodfang Rice had only just begun to grow. None of them were cultivators. They had only the brute strength honed through years of toil.
Before them, hundreds of Gold-Devouring Rats surged forward like a dark yellow tide, their grinding teeth setting everyone's teeth on edge. Driven utterly mad by the fragrance of Spirit Rice, these Demon Beasts paid no heed to mortal pitchforks.
Crack!
A rat demon half as tall as a man bit through the iron pitchfork in one farmer's hands. Then its sharp foreclaws swept out, tearing three bloody gashes across his chest, deep enough to expose bone.
"Dad!" A young boy cried and tried to rush forward, only to be held back tightly by the villagers beside him.
Despair shrouded every villager's heart like the heavy darkness of the night. Landowner Liu and his Household Guards had long since hidden in the cellar. Who would care whether mud-legged peasants like them lived or died?
At that critical instant!
Rumble—!!
A thunderous pounding of hooves swept down the government road north of Great Harvest Township.
By the firelight, thirty scaled horses clad in light armor charged onto the battlefield like bolts of black lightning.
On their backs rode thirty elite cultivators in the Demon-Suppression Office's black scale armor. Led by a burly man, they descended like divine soldiers from heaven!
"It's