Linyuan City's streets had descended into chaos. Soldiers and police were urgently evacuating residents near the city walls. Cries, screams, and footsteps mingled as people fled toward the city center with their families.
Flying Demonic Beasts occasionally broke through the defenses and swooped toward the city. The army's antiaircraft guns tracked them, firing relentlessly. Shells exploded overhead, showering shrapnel and beast blood like rain.
Zhou Yan and Captain Chen Feng stood side by side, watching the faltering defensive line on the distant city walls, their palms slick with sweat.
He had improved tremendously lately, enough to handle B-Rank and even A-Rank Eerie with ease. But facing this City-Destroying Level Beast Tide, he felt a bone-deep chill for the first time.
As far as the eye could see, the Demonic Beasts outside the city resembled a black ocean, crashing against the walls in wave after wave. Each receding wave left vast swaths of corpses, but the next came even more fiercely.
"What is it, Zhou Yan? Scared?" Chen Feng glanced at him, a hint of teasing in his voice.
"Who's scared?" Zhou Yan refused to admit it, but his tightly clenched fists betrayed how tense he was. "I just think there are way too many of these Demonic Beasts. Can we even kill them all?"
Before he finished speaking, a hand suddenly settled on his shoulder. Zhou Yan stiffened, instinctively reaching back to attack, only to hear an all-too-familiar voice.
"It's me."
Zhou Yan whipped his head around and saw Lin Jin standing behind him, wearing his usual unruffled expression, as though the tens of thousands of Demonic Beasts outside the city and the earth-shaking artillery fire had nothing to do with him.
He had changed into a dark combat uniform, with Lightning-Cleaver at his waist and his eyes as calm