The Dawn of the New World

Seeing that the man was starting to come around, Hao Xuan kneeled down and spoke up in a low voice.

"What happened here? Where is everyone? Who attacked us?"

But the man was delirious, swaying left and right like a newly born calf.

"Hey! Can you hear me?! Pay attention!"

Hao Xuan transferred some spiritual energy into the man's body which barely seemed to help. It looked like he hadn't eaten or drank anything in days.

It was a miracle he was still able to move.

"Fuck sake," Hao Xuan fished out some barely edible rations that he had left over in his storage ring and fed them to the guard.

He came alive as the food touched his lips, snatching it away from Hao Xuan in desperation.

"Relax, I'm not going to take it from you. Eat slowly," Hao Xuan assured him after seeing his state.

The man barely looked human.

It took him a few minutes to finish everything but it helped a lot as he glanced at his would-be savior with appreciation.

"Th...ank...you..."

"Don't mention it. Here, drink this," Hao Xuan gave him some water too, the last he had left.

The guard drank it in one go, unable to hold back his tears for whatever reason.

"I thought I was going to die this time...but you saved me..."

"Don't mention it-" Hao Xuan waved his hand nonchalantly but the next sentence out of the guard's mouth left him stupefied.

"You shouldn't have. It's all meaningless...there is no point in any of it anymore..."

"Why? What the hell happened here?? Where is everyone?"

The guard let out a hollow laugh, "Just that, 'hell' happened. It was hell."

Chalking it up to hysteria caused by extreme shock, Hao Xuan didn't take his words to heart and calmly asked one question at a time.

"Who attacked the city?"

"Everyone...every single thing. It started when an army appeared in the western valley led by some kind of a stone giant with a city on its back."

The guard's words instantly brought up the vision that the equine demon had shown Hao Xuan after he visited the old witch. The stone giant was the walking city of the Hall controlled directly by Tian Zheng.

The guard couldn't hold back anymore and started crying while recounting the events of the last few days.

"Princess Inara...she went with the Barbarian Princess and some of your people to fight them. They...all died. The stone giant came to the city and tried to break in but the Grand Priestess used her magic to protect us. But even then she couldn't hold on for very long."

"We thought that was going to be the end of it but a man riding a giant flaming bird arrived and stopped the giant. He asked for someone by name, the healer girl that came with you people."

"WHAT?!" Hao Xuan grabbed him by the collar, "Ma Jiang? Is that who you are talking about?"

The guard nodded timidly, "He promised not to destroy the city if she gave herself up so...she did. We thought it would be okay but as soon as he got the girl he disappeared with her."

Hao Xuan couldn't believe his ears. That was the one thing Ryfon had asked him to do, to find and keep her safe but he couldn't even do that.

Since Hao Xuan didn't ask anything else the guard continued.

"The stone giant kept attacking for many hours before leaving. But by then the Grand Priestess had already used up too much of her strength to keep the barrier up. She...died... Princess Helena took over but not even half a day later something else happened."

The guard gestured towards the northern end of the city with fear, "Demons. Countless demons poured out of the old district. No one expected to get attacked from inside the city so we weren't prepared at all...it was a massacre. They killed everything that moved and took whoever was left back down."

"The few people that managed to survive banded together. We thought it would be best to go somewhere else but as soon as we entered the dark forest some strange creatures popped out of the ground and started attacking us."

He paused to meet Hao Xuan's gaze, "They were similar to the ones that you had killed earlier in front of the gates."

Hao Xuan thought about it for a second but he couldn't believe it, "The corrupted? That's not possible, I killed the one that was controlling them."

The guard started laughing, "Then you didn't do a very good job. These were smarter and stronger than before. The rest of your friends that survived, almost all of them were eaten by them."

"That's not possible...this is not possible..." Hao Xuan felt like he was living through a bad dream, "I was gone for barely 3 days, how could...everything just..."