The appearance of the rats threw the Jin army into chaos, and Jiang Wenpei took the opportunity to hide inside the metal door.
Outside the gate, Jin soldiers faced a dense swarm of rats; some instinctively dodged, while others wildly attacked with their weapons.
The rats didn't seem to be attacking them at all; they appeared to be trying to escape through the crowd. After the group killed over a hundred rats, the swarm had vanished without a trace.
This was the first time in Meng Ruliu's life that so many rats had rushed out. He was so frightened that his face turned pale. After a long while, he finally came to his senses and asked the soldiers, "Is everyone alright?"
The lieutenant said, "General, don't be afraid. These rats weren't summoned by that person to attack us. I didn't hear a whistle at all. They seem to have escaped from their burrows because something happened."
An old soldier nearby chimed in, "General, something might have happened underground."
Meng Ruliu asked, "Underground?"
The old soldier said, "I've encountered this strange thing in my hometown county before, so I know about it. It was nighttime, and suddenly a lot of rats came out of their holes and ran all over the streets. The dogs at home were barking incessantly, and the chickens and ducks wouldn't go into their pens."
Meng Ruliu asked, "What's wrong with these animals?"
The veteran said, "Not long after the rats escaped, the ground cracked and many houses collapsed. Luckily, I wasn't in the house at the time."
Meng Ruliu looked at the metal door and found that Jiang Wenpei was gone.
"Let's not talk about that now, saving my sworn sister is the priority. Let's get to the door quickly," she said, picking up her defensive pistol. "We should be able to open this door with the gun."
Everyone agreed and followed Meng Ruliu toward the metal door.
After taking only a few steps, the ground suddenly began to shake violently. Many soldiers lost their footing and fell to the ground, rolling around covered in mud and water.
Meng Ruliu happened to walk up to a straight metal cylinder with a recessed pattern of a fairy herb on it. Not knowing its purpose, she instinctively reached out and touched the metal cylinder to steady herself.
She felt as if she were a small boat being tossed about in the waves, and if she hadn't been holding onto the pillar, she wouldn't have been able to stand up at all.
The veteran behind them shouted, "It's a ground fissure. Don't be afraid, everyone. Only those inside the buildings are in danger. We're in an open area. We'll be fine once the fissure passes."
She hugged the tree trunk and looked back. There wasn't a single soldier standing in her sight; everyone had fallen to the ground.
Amidst the screams, the veteran's hoarse cry rang out: "No need for anyone to force themselves to stand up."
The old soldier had barely finished speaking when the ground roared, and a huge crack appeared, extending outwards from the bottom of the cliff, tearing a gap of more than ten feet and stretching all the way to the herb garden, a distance of tens of feet. It was as if an invisible sword had cleaved open the green skin of the earth.
More than ten Jin soldiers were directly above the crack; the moment it appeared, they all fell in. As the crack widened, several more fell from the edge, screaming in agony. The rest scrambled to safety on all fours.
A soldier clung to the edge of the crack, frantically calling for help. Two nearby soldiers reached out to pull him out, but an even more violent tremor struck, shaking them both into the crack.
The crack was about four or five zhang long, resembling a giant, dark maw, which separated Meng Ruliu from the soldiers.
She wanted to warn everyone to escape the dangerous place quickly, but the ground shook more and more violently. She was like a bean in a winnowing basket, her feet were shaken off the ground, her mind was in a daze, the cliff in front of her and the ground under her feet were shaking violently, and there was a rumbling roar in her ears.
Unable to maintain her balance with one hand, she had to switch to holding onto the metal pillar with both hands. There was nothing else she could do.
In the blink of an eye, the crack continued to tear open to the left and right, becoming several meters wide. Chunks of soil fell off the edges of the crack, and on one of the chunks was a house with a medicinal herb garden. The chunks of soil, along with the entire house, fell into the dark crack.
Amid the intense tremors, Meng Ruli clung tightly to the pillar, feeling her body slowly tilting to the right, as if she were about to fall to the ground.
She strained to open her eyes and looked around, discovering that the entire ground, along with the cliff and the courtyard wall behind her, was tilting.
She initially thought she had fallen, until she realized that the rain curtain had also become tilted and that her feet could no longer keep their footing and she was starting to slide down. Only then did she understand that it wasn't her who had fallen, but the ground that had tilted.
For a moment, she didn't know if she was dreaming or in reality, and could only hold tightly to the metal cylinder.
Some of the Jin soldiers behind her clung to a protruding rock, while others grabbed onto someone else's ankle. Many more, having nothing to hold onto, slid down the sloping mud until they landed on a courtyard wall.
The courtyard wall, already loosened by the violent tremors, could not withstand the weight of so many people and collapsed into several pieces, continuing to slide down the slippery, muddy ground along with the people.
Meng Ruliu tried hard to figure out what had happened.
This was far more than just a crack in the ground; the entire sacred ground seemed to have tilted at a terrifying angle. Originally, standing in the backyard of the sacred ground, she couldn't possibly see the foot of the mountain. Now, she could not only see down the mountain, but also, through the rain, see the Jin army camp and the soldiers arrayed in front of it.
The rainwater on the cliff first flowed down the cliff, and as the ground became more and more sloping, it finally turned into a waterfall pouring down from above her head.
Most of the Jin soldiers had disappeared from her sight. Only a few were still clinging to some protrusions on the ground. Under the scouring of the water, these soldiers were exhausted and slid down with screams.
Meng Ruliu wasn't much better off; the water mixed with mud cascaded over her like a waterfall. She clung tightly to the pillar with all her might until a stone hit her arm in the water, the sharp pain causing her to drop her grip on the metal pillar.
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