With the sound of bones shattering, Marquis Bakal's head separated from his body, and blood gushed from the broken cervical vertebrae, spreading and staining the floor like a spring.

Leoric bent down, laboriously picking up the Marquis's head from the ground. Looking into the unseeing eyes, he said softly, "Old friend, if time could stand still, if everything were as it was before... how wonderful that would be..."

Leoric clutched his head and smiled slightly: "It's all this damn old age's fault. We can't go back, everything is gone!"

Leoric laughed as he forcefully threw his head into the distance, eliciting gasps and screams from the crowd in the hall.

As he watched the head roll on the ground and fall into the rain outside the hall, Leoric first chuckled, then laughed loudly, and finally burst into a maniacal laugh mixed with coughing and panting.

"Traitors! They're all traitors! Not a single one of them is any good!"

The king of Holy Guard City raised his longsword, his eyes bloodshot, and appeared mad as he began to slaughter the nobles in the palace without restraint.

People cried out for forgiveness and swore oaths, but these actions did nothing to quell Leoric's madness; instead, they emboldened him to begin a more brutal massacre.

The sharp sword pierced people's backs, severed their fragile throats, and plunged straight into their brains through their eye sockets.

The helpless people were taken from their lives one after another by the king's sword.

After killing more than a dozen people, Leoric's weapon became dull and unusable. He simply threw away the weapon, picked up a sharp sword from the ground, and continued his "carnival".

The massacre lasted for about ten minutes, and the entire hall of the King's Palace was buried in blood and corpses.

Completely exhausted, Leoric lay disheveled in a pool of blood, his face flushed an unusual red, barely breathing and hanging by a thread.

The gray-robed man at the head of the group walked to Leoric's side, looked at the old man whose life was nearing its end, and asked coldly, "Satisfied?"

Leoric shifted his gaze to the chain atop the oak staff, his voice barely audible: "I don't want to die..."

The gray-robed man snorted coldly, squatted down, picked up Leoric, hoisted him onto his shoulder, and headed towards the back door of the main hall.