chsdbacks #164 - Long Bridge, Bloody Road! (End) [6k Ultra HD Remastered Version]
#164 - Long Bridge, Bloody Road! (End) [6k Ultra HD Remastered Version]
The wooden bridge, suspended by thick iron chains over the long bridge, creaked and groaned, its surface trembling under the constant tramp of fleeing refugees.
Unlike their previous charge across the bridge towards the city hall, the refugees' morale had significantly deteriorated.
Originally, nearly three thousand members of the Refugee Salvation Army had crossed the bridge, nearly pushing back the thousand mercenaries into the alleys.
Once inside the alleys, the knights' charging power would have been greatly diminished, but now a mere fifty knights had routed them, causing them to abandon their armor and weapons.
Counting those walking on the bridge, nearly a thousand had been left behind on the other side, some killed or wounded in the earlier fighting, and others simply abandoned.
Although the origin of the fog wall remained a mystery, Horn was grateful that most of the people on the other side had indeed retreated.
As for the morale issue, there was no time to worry about that for now; they had more important things to do.
In the night wind, the dense fog gradually dissipated, and the thick iron chains of the long bridge began to sway, as the rhythmic sound of hooves echoed on the bridge planks.
Black shadows gradually emerged from the white fog, and a longsword was the first to break through, charging forward.
Thirty elite knights, arranged in three columns, burst out of the white fog, wisps of mist clinging to the gaps in their armor, trailing far behind.
The only thing at the end of their charge was the refugees on the opposite side of the bridge.
"Pikemen, Holy Gunners, forward!"
Directing the crowd to retreat and clear a space, Horn shouted towards the Holy Gunners behind the crowd.
Pushing aside the refugees blocking the way, the Salvation Army's veteran force finally made its appearance.
The Black Hat Army's pikemen advanced to the first rank, bracing the butts of their spears on the ground, the tips aimed at the elite knights.
Three rows of seven Holy Gunners stepped forward, alternating with the pikemen. Because of the poor accuracy of the spring-powered rifles, they had to compensate with numbers and area of effect.
The first row still knelt, the second row stepped forward in a bow stance, and the third row stood upright.
But this time, they were missing three spring-powered rifles, and they were facing not just six knights, but a full thirty.
Leading the charge was Friscia, completely invigorated by the high-speed charge and the prospect of slaughter.
Charging and killing—this was what knights were meant to do. Knights were meant to ride on fast-charging horses, taking heads.
It might sound crude, but Friscia felt himself getting aroused just thinking about it.
Infantry was weak, advising them not to cross the bridge, but without crossing the bridge, what kind of knight would he be?
His vision turned red, and he could only see the clear point ahead. Everything on either side was blurred.
He could only see the cowardly enemies before him, those lowly, unclean ones who deserved to die.
"Unclean ones, run!" Friscia shouted with a sneer at the Holy Gunners before him. "Messiah's messengers have come to take your heads!"
The laughter reached Horn's ears, and he took a deep breath, picked up his 40mm spring-powered hand cannon, and stood in the middle of the Holy Gunners.
Amidst the continuous whirring of gears, Horn leveled his hand cannon, aiming at the first knight.
Seeing Friscia pass the red streamer, Horn shouted, "Fifty yards."
Hooves trampled over the body of an old man, and Horn continued, "Forty yards!"
As the sound of hooves grew increasingly urgent, Horn gradually made out the knights' ferocious faces.
"Thirty yards… prepare!"
Steadying the gun rest, Horn took a deep breath through his nose, removed the winding key from the spring-powered hand cannon, and roared, "Praise the Holy Spirit!"
A solid slug the size of a pigeon egg shot out of the dark muzzle of the hand cannon, and the shriek of the pressure-balancing holes pierced the eardrums.
The slug tore through the air, creating a terrifying screech, and struck the faceplate of the charging knight's helmet directly.
The sturdy faceplate caved inward, and blood mixed with bone fragments sprayed out of the helmet's visor.
The knight's head flew backward, causing his entire body to fall backward to the ground.
"Neigh—"
The horse, lying on its side, fell with a mournful cry, blocking the bridge and tripping another warhorse behind it. A knight was thrown off the long bridge and into the water.
Before the knights could react, the sound of gears turning and thunder, which would later become the nightmare of countless knights, sounded again.
A storm of hundreds of iron pellets once again enveloped the bridgehead, and the sound of iron pellets hitting armor rang out continuously, sending up countless sparks.
Warhorses cried out in agony. Even elite knights were not always fully armored, man and horse.
Because there was nowhere to hide on the bridge, seven or eight knights were knocked off their horses by the iron pellets. Some even fell directly into the river.
"Ah, save me, save me!"
"Devils, it's the wind of devils!"
Three or five knights fell off the bridge one after another, and white splashes rose even higher on the river's surface.
And for the first time, the refugees who had been gradually retreating heard the knights' cries of agony.
The remaining knights were still charging subconsciously, but their battle cries had stopped.
They didn't quite understand what that was just now. Was it a witch's spell? Could these people be witches or wizards?
"Don't be afraid!" Friscia shouted in pain. "Don't be afraid. They need a long time to reload after firing once, just like crossbows. Charge, charge!"
Friscia's faceplate had a hole in it, and he could feel a piece of shrapnel lodged in his cheekbone. The pain of the torn muscle made his expression even more ferocious.
"Saint Dupinsas!"
"Careful!"
Horn's vision blurred, and he was pulled to the side of the road. When he looked back, it was the old man from before.
Less than a yard away from him, twenty or so knights, roaring in battle, crashed into the first row of the gun-spear formation like a heavy truck.
As if a strong wind were blowing through willow catkins, about four or five Holy Gunners were directly blown away like broken dolls.
The five knights at the front were also pierced through their horses' necks and overturned by the resistance of the spear formation.
But the knights quickly got up, drew the longswords from their waists, and slashed at the Holy Gunners and pikemen in front of them.
The warhorses trampled on the heads of the Holy Gunners and pikemen. Their weight of thousands of pounds made it impossible for them to get up, and they could only watch helplessly as the knights drew their longswords and cut off their heads.
Hooves trampled over the heads of the Holy Gunners, and subsequent knights charged in, crashing into the scattered Salvation Army veterans.
The Black Hat Army soldiers in the rear immediately raised their spears and charged at the knights. After this period of fighting, they no longer needed the ropes around their waists.
Roaring, the Black Hat Army ordinance platoons raised the spears in their hands, formed a uniform formation, and charged at the knights.
They were, after all, mortals. The three-layered spear formation was no match for the knights. The hooves trampled, and the knights directly ran over the Black Hat Army soldiers.
"Help, it's the knights!"
"Knight Masters, don't kill me. I'm innocent."
"Run, run!"
As refugees and Black Hat Army veterans were knocked down by the knights, the refugees finally became afraid. They turned and ran towards the rear, crying and screaming.
"Run where? Run where?" Colton, covering the wound on his shoulder that had been bandaged, roared at the fleeing refugees.
But no one listened to him. At most, they glanced at him and ran away along the river.
Colton stood there in a daze. Hadn't they been shouting and killing to kill the knights just now? How had it become like this now?
Were the knights really so invincible?
Suddenly, Colton heard a childish cry.
"Papa, Mama, wake up."
How could there be the sound of children on the battlefield?
Following the direction of the sound, a laborer's thatched hut had been knocked down, and a little girl was lying on two young corpses, crying.
Not far from the little girl, a knight was charging towards her.
"Wait!" Colton pushed aside the crowd and ran towards the little girl who was crying on her parents' bodies, but he was still one step too late.
"Too noisy."
A longsword slashed across her back, leaving a penetrating bloodstain, and the little girl fell heavily on her parents' corpses.
"You beast!"
Colton shouted at the quickly charging knight, his eyes wide with rage.
Looking at the refugees beside him who were still running away despite having slowed down, he laughed loudly:
"Hahahaha, run, you run, escape from here!"
"When you die later, tell those wine-soaked souls, the souls of your relatives, just say you were afraid, you ran, you run away."
The refugees' footsteps faltered a little. They looked back, looking at the black-clothed soldiers who were still fighting with the knights, looking at the bodies of the mother and daughter on the ground.
"Aren't you going to run? Where do you want to run to?" Colton's hoarse voice penetrated everyone's ears on the noisy battlefield.
"You run, wait until later, until your children and grandchildren for generations become wine, see where they can run to?"
Some refugees began to stop. On their way forward, it no longer seemed like a dark street.
They seemed to see, with their own eyes, the cries of countless children in the Blueblood Orphanage.
They seemed to see the parents and lovers who had starved to death, the knights and priests who had searched for their last grain.
Just escape like this? Escape from here to there, from here to there, just keep running like this?
You can escape, of course you can escape, no one is stopping them, but why can't they move their feet?
But where can they escape to, to survive?
"I won't run anymore, I won't run anymore."
"I ran from Hotam to Upper River, I ran from Kasha to Longsand. I'm telling you, this time I won't run - I won't run!"
After shouting at those who were running away, Colton ignored the wounds on his shoulder and body, picked up the spear in his hand, and stumbled towards a knight who had fallen from his horse.
Although he couldn't see the face under the knight's armor, he could clearly feel the other person sneering.
Just like when he knelt in front of the forest, the knight sneered.
"Devil! Die!"
Colton roared and pounced, stabbing with the spear in his hand.
When he regained consciousness again, he was lying on the ground.
The excruciating pain only spread at this time, it was a wound from the ribs to the collarbone.
He could hear the sound of his spear falling to the ground with a clang, and the loss of blood and the pain in his chest attacked his brain. He couldn't move his body at all.
On the ground beside his ears, Colton could hear the sound of the knights' hooves charging left and right, and the sound of the refugees' footsteps.
The sound was like a drum, becoming clearer and clearer.
Looking at the moonlit sky, Colton's previous confusion once again occupied his mind. Is it, is it over like this?
It's so sudden, did it fail after all?
The moonlight in front of Colton's eyes blurred, and a deep sleepiness was about to swallow his consciousness.
Little Colton, Papa is coming to find you, Papa didn't die cowardly, Papa died to kill knights, Papa...
...Who is pulling the spear in his hand?
Colton blinked hard. Behind the blurred tears, he saw a teenager crying just as hard.
He looked to be only fifteen or sixteen years old, his eyes filled with tears. He was trembling with fear, but he still picked up the spear and lunged at a knight.
Then the dark, blurry short sword in his hand was picked up by an old woman. Her eyes had long been half-blind from crying, and then she shouted her daughter's name and stumbled towards the knight.
Not only them, but from some point on, more and more refugees ran up against the flow of people, pouncing one after another.
They trembled, roaring with sobs, using their flesh to block the knights' impact, falling to the ground one after another.
But there were still countless hands, without hesitation, picking up the weapons on the ground. In the rough hands stained with mud and paint, weapons were constantly passed.
Flails, pitchforks, hoes, and even bricks, the refugees roared in fear, smashing strange weapons at the knights.
They couldn't even all have a weapon each.
"Get out of the way, lowly unclean ones."
A knight cut off the head of a refugee who was hugging his horse's leg with a longsword, but he was surprised to find that the headless body was still tightly locked on the horse's leg.
"You, you..."
Before he could finish speaking, a cold, bone-chilling sensation came from his waist.
A thin teenager was full of tears from fright, but the dagger in his hand was firmly inserted into the knight's body through a gap in the armor.
He refused to let go, and the knight swung his sword back, and the teenager's head fell to the ground.
"Bang!"
The knight fell straight from his horse. Before he died, he saw the face of the teenager whose head he had cut off.
That face was filled with relief and the joy of successful revenge.
Not only those refugees, but on the rooftops, those laborers also stood up. They may not have had the courage to face the knights directly, but they had their own way of resisting.
Stones smashed on the knights' helmets and foreheads, and mud and feces flowed into the knights' faces through the gaps in the helmets.
Unknowingly, the speed of these twenty knights had changed from a charge to a jog, and some were even unable to run.
Friscia cursed in surprise and anger: "Lowly unclean ones, I am a glorious knight, you will go to hell for this..."
What answered him was a loud sound close at hand. Friscia turned his head back, and a knight was hooked by a sickle and dragged directly to the ground.
The knight immediately stood up, drew his long sword, and attempted to hold his ground on foot, but facing him were black-clad soldiers who had already raised their spring-powered rifles.
The distance between them was less than ten yards.
After the shot, a dozen holes appeared in his neck armor, and one stone bullet passed directly through the knight's throat.
As the holy rifleman searched for the next target with his spring-powered rifle, the knight's throat was using its last breath to blow blood bubbles on the gaps in his neck armor.
Frisiska then realized that something was wrong. Unlike the other side of the river, there were too many refugees where they were.
The eaves were low, the ground was full of potholes, and there were still barricades and trenches that had not been removed, so their speed could not be increased at all.
If it were just these things, Frisiska would still have the confidence to break through, after all, their pitchforks couldn't pierce his armor.
But the problem was that those disgusting and terrifying black sticks could break through their armor from a distance.
As the effect of the potion gradually disappeared, regret flooded Frisiska's heart. He shouldn't have crossed the river.
But with just a slight distraction, Frisiska's vision went dark, and a piece of mud was thrown from somewhere, smearing his face and covering the seams on his visor.
"Who threw the mud?"
Before he could finish speaking, the horse beneath him was stabbed in the neck by refugees with pitchforks.
"Papa, Ama, I'm avenging you!"
"Damn bastard, son—ah—"
"Give me back my house! Give me back my home!"
In the narrow field of vision obscured by mud, countless refugees roared like madmen, rushing towards Frisiska.
"Are you crazy?" Frisiska shouted in disbelief, slashing left and right with his disoriented long sword, killing the refugees who rushed to their deaths like moths to a flame. "Are you possessed by demons?"
Before him were countless hands, holding countless weapons. The small people, once as timid as quails, were now ferocious beyond recognition, and the roars from their mouths were more terrifying than a lion's roar.
He frantically drove his warhorse forward, but it was as if he were in a swamp, and Frisiska could not move an inch.
His right hand waved his long sword in a panic, while his left hand kept wiping the mud off his visor.
Then he felt something cut the ropes of his saddle, and a huge force came from his waist, followed by a dizzying sense of imbalance.
When his back slammed heavily on the ground, Frisiska realized that he was looking at the night sky dyed by moonlight and fire.
The muzzle of a spring-powered rifle was pointed at his forehead.
"Wait, I have a ransom..."
"Bang—"
When Horn gathered his men and stood at the bridgehead again, there were less than ten knights left on this side of the river.
They were swallowed by the tide of the surging crowd, screaming in terror while waving their long swords angrily and powerlessly.
"Be careful, Savior Army, be careful," a worker standing on the roof shouted loudly to the refugee army below, "The knights are coming again."
Seeing Horn standing still, the worker simply ran out of his house, picked up the hammer and chisel he usually used for work, and roared towards the knights.
The terrifying sound of horses' hooves came again.
Visibly, the iron cables of the long bridge trembled more violently, and two more teams of knights, totaling seventy men, rushed towards this side.
If these new knights were allowed to rush in, it would be no problem to break through the nearly ten thousand refugees and take the knights trapped in the formation back.
Standing at the bridgehead, Horn indifferently watched the long bridge in front of him.
"Aren't you going to hide?" Pasrik, who had just saved Horn, asked.
Horn glanced at Pasrik. He didn't know where this old man came from and didn't dare to trust him.
But for the sake of saving so many people, Horn still replied, "No."
"Why?"
"Guess, after fighting for so long, where did Jeanne go?"
Pasrik was stunned for a moment. He thought for a few seconds, and then suddenly looked at the bridge pier of the long bridge: "You mean?"
The rapid sound of horses' hooves was close at hand, and seventy knights who had come to rescue Frisiska appeared in their sight.
The leader of the group had bloodshot eyes. It seemed that he had just taken the potion as well. Seeing Horn and Pasrik chatting idly at the bridgehead as if they were talking about everyday matters, the rage in his eyes suddenly became intense.
Facing the charge formation composed of their seventy knights, they actually left two people at the bridgehead. What did that mean?
"I'm going to kill that young man," the leading knight shouted, "No one is allowed to fight me for him."
Perhaps the thrill of the charge had occupied his brain, and the knights screamed loudly, but no one noticed the rattling sound of the iron cables rubbing together.
The horses leaped, and the leading knight could already see the face of the person at the bridgehead. He knew who it was, the legendary Holy Grandson.
A burst of ecstasy instantly occupied the knights' minds.
"Don't kill him, we need him alive, he's more valuable!"
Putting away his long sword, the knight stretched out his iron gauntlet from afar. The Khan potion made him confident that he could grab the thin, chicken-like youth in that instant.
Closer, closer, the last ten yards. The knights in the first row could see the mocking smiles on the faces of the young man and the old man... what was that about?
Why, no matter how the warhorses pawed their hooves, was Horn getting farther and farther away?
After the excitement of the potion passed, he felt a strange sense of imbalance.
When? The smile on the knight's face froze.
Only at this time did he realize that the horses' hooves were in the air, and even the Khan potion could no longer allow him to maintain his balance.
"How is this possible?"
The knights roared in disbelief.
From the shore to the bridge pier, a full thirty meters of the road bridge, the thick iron cables that could not be broken even if you cut at them for a month, were actually broken.
Actually broken?!
The bright moonlight shone on the armor, reflecting the knight's desperate face. He watched Horn getting farther and farther away, until everything in front of him was occupied by the water.
One after another, huge splashes of water rose, and amidst the neighing and exclamations, seventy knights slid into the water from the long bridge without missing a single one.
Exclamations of surprise suddenly rose one after another on the opposite bank, while Jeanne slid down the iron cables to the long beach by the river bank.
Electricity instantly flooded the river, and the knights' screams echoed in the night sky.
"He who plants the wheat eats chaff, he who weaves the cloth has no clothes."
Muttering softly, Horn did not look at the knights struggling in the river, but drew the Blood-Veiled Cloud from his waist and walked into the most dangerous crowd.
"When Eve and Adam tilled the land, did nobles and gentlemen sit in high halls?"
The knights were desperately shouting, and countless torches trembled in the roars of the refugees, but Horn's ears were incredibly quiet, only hearing his own voice.
"You occupied my wife, seized my house, and killed my good parents!"
Horn's tone gradually became impassioned.
Four yards in front of him, a knight's warhorse was held by the legs by a cable, and the young knight flew directly off the horse, sliding several meters on the ground.
Horn walked towards the knight, and behind him, on the stone bridge farther away, the villagers holding torches...
"Countless heads roll..."
Countless hands pressed down on the knight's body, his knees were broken by spring-powered rifles, and he could only use his hands to push away the refugees who were trying to tear open his armor.
"You, you don't come over here." The knight let out a cry he had never made before, and a stench had already seeped out from between his legs.
Fingers with fingernails dyed gray pried open the visor of his helmet, and a young man he had never seen before stepped on his chest, raising a sword with a red glow high.
Horn seemed to be roaring the last sentence.
"Blood debts, must be repaid with blood!"
The long sword fell, and the splashing blood stained half of Horn's face. He looked up, and there was not even a single standing knight.
The surrounding refugees were all injured, but their eyes were as fierce as night owls in the fiery hell.
Pointing the Blood-Veiled Cloud towards the opposite bank, Horn pointed the Blood-Veiled Cloud in his hand towards the opposite bank:
"Demons are in the castle, believers, follow me, cleanse the demons—"