The Female Daoists inside the temple hurriedly moved timber and battered incense tables behind the gate, piling them layer upon layer to block it completely.
The knocking outside suddenly stopped.
After an unsettling silence, a dense barrage of heavy footsteps suddenly rang out and rapidly approached the Mountain Gate.
From above, dozens of figures could be seen surging onto the Stone Terrace with weapons in hand!
The few Daoists with some cultivation were extremely nervous. Their cultivation was shallow, and they were poor fighters. Worse still, their opponents were elite soldiers who had crawled out of heaps of corpses, and they had bows and crossbows.
Most of those in the temple were ordinary Daoists, at a loss when disaster struck.
The soldiers' jeering and the sounds of them battering the gate came from outside. Their words grew filthier and more offensive with every sentence, sowing terror first as though laying siege to a city.
The young Female Daoists turned pale with fright.
Dust shook loose as the Mountain Gate rattled under the blows. The unruly soldiers formed human ladders, but as soon as they poked their heads above the wall, the Daoists inside struck them down hard with long poles. Rather than retreat, the soldiers below laughed even louder. A dozen or so immediately grabbed axes and ran toward the woods beside the Stone Terrace to fell trees.
One had barely entered the bushes when his figure was abruptly dragged inside and vanished...
Nearby, a scar-faced man swung his axe at a tree with all his strength, oblivious to the companion behind him being hoisted up in an instant.
The dull thuds of the rising and falling axe drowned out the sound of breaking bones.
Dusk deepened. The woods were already dim, and no one noticed the figures among the