I raised stunning young ladies, but they all wanted to possess me.

The swarm of bone-eating insects from the north was the first to hit the defense line.

The veterans of the rearguard lay prone behind makeshift bunkers, the fire of rifles and machine guns spitting out in the darkness.

The tank group turned their guns and fired in unison to the north. The shells exploded in the swarm of insects, hurling the front-line bone-eating insects into the air.

But there were too many insects.

They surged out of the wetlands, emerged from the reeds, and crawled out of the rice paddies soaked by the tide, densely packed, like the entire earth oozing black pus.

The pressure is greater from the south.

Skeleton knights charged down the southern highway, their hooves pounding the road and their scimitars cleaving through roadblocks.

Several S-rank experts from reclusive families rushed forward.

They were the last reinforcements transferred from Xuanyuan Cheng, and each of them was a renowned master in the ancient martial arts world of Great Xia.

The first one is Pei Qianshan, a swordsman from a collateral branch of the Pei family.

He used an ancient sword that had been broken and reforged. The blade was longer than that of an ordinary sword, and the guard was engraved with the flowing cloud pattern unique to the branch of the Pei family.

He stood alone in the middle of the highway, his sword flashing like a waterfall, slicing the skeletal knight at the forefront and his horse into pieces.

His swordsmanship was extremely fast, so fast that only silver afterimages could be seen in the air.

But there are too many skeleton knights.

They surged down the embankments on both sides of the highway and squeezed through the gaps in the damaged median strip.

Pei Qianshan fought and retreated until he reached a collapsed overpass. Leaning against a concrete bridge pier, his sword light was no longer as sharp as it had been at the beginning.

He glanced one last time in the direction of the convoy, carved a line of words on the concrete bridge pier with the edge of his sword, and then turned to face the surging black tide.

The bridge collapsed, and he was buried under the rubble along with countless skeletal knights.

The second is Huo Lie, the King of Guns from the North.

He wielded a long spear made of black iron, and his spear techniques were wide and sweeping. With one move, he could sweep away thousands of troops and create a gap more than ten meters wide in the black tide.

He stood at the highway ramp, wielding his spear like a black dragon.

The bone-eating insects crashed into his gun rim and were all shattered into pieces.

He held out for nearly twenty minutes until a scaled-down Titan-class beast charged down the flank slope.

Huo Lie didn't dodge. He held the gun in one hand, his feet planted in the asphalt, and thrust the gun tip straight at the Titan's chest.

The spearhead pierced the Titan-class shell, but the shaft couldn't withstand the force and shattered in the middle.

Huo Lie was thrown back by the force of the impact, his back slamming into the guardrail at the ramp entrance.

He stood up, bracing himself against the broken gun barrel, and charged toward the Titan, plunging the broken gun into its knee joint.

With a single palm strike, the Titan-class figure vanished into the dust.

The third was a Shaolin outcast, whose Buddhist name was Bujie.

He wielded a thick black iron rod, and his staff techniques were incredibly powerful and fierce.

With a single blow of his club, he could smash a skeletal knight, horse and armor, into the ground.

He was stationed at the westernmost end of the southern defensive line, which was the closest flank to the convoy's evacuation route.

When the worms of the Black Tide emerged from the ground, he slammed an iron rod into the ground, cracking the entire area.

He kept hitting it with the stick until the iron rod bent, then he used his fists.

He smashed the head of a bone-eating worm with one punch, and then punched through the worm's skin with another.

Finally, he stood beside a hole burrowed out by worms, supporting himself on the ground with his broken fist, and did not get up again.

When the medic arrived, he had stopped breathing, but his fists were still clenched, and his knuckles were covered with broken insect shells.

The fourth is a Miao beast tamer, surnamed Ma.

She kept a strange beast that resembled a pangolin but was bigger than a tank.

Under her command, the beast charged into the black tide, smashing the joints of the steel giant with its shell.

Magu herself stood on the back of the strange beast and used her Miao sword to kill the bone-eating worms that pounced from the side.

The beast's carapace was pierced by a Titan-level beam. She jumped down and slapped the last of her Beast Taming Gu into her chest, sacrificing her life to drive the beast into a berserk state.

The beast charged wildly, crushing all the calamities within hundreds of meters around it.

When the beast fell, she leaned against its corpse, the blackened beast-taming bone flute still stuck in her chest.

The fifth is Ma San, the one-eyed swordsman from the Northwest of the Great Xia Dynasty.

He wielded a thick-backed ghost-head saber, his swordsmanship simple and unadorned, yet each strike carried the ruthlessness honed through thirty years of life-and-death battles.

He stood guard at the last intersection of the southern defense line, the glint of his blade rising and falling in the black tide.

The skeletal knight's spear pierced his shoulder, and he swung his sword with his other hand.

The bone-eating worm bit his calf, so he dragged that leg and continued chopping.

He cut down the old locust tree at the intersection, leaving its trunk across the middle of the road to block the insects.

Then he climbed up the tree, stood on it, patted his one-eyed eye with the back of his knife, and shouted something.

The sound was drowned out by the gunfire, but all the soldiers nearby who heard it said that Master Ma was shouting in his hometown dialect, probably something like "I'm leaving first."

He jumped down from the tree, brandished his knife, and plunged into the depths of the black tide, never to emerge again.

"All S-class units on the south side have been wiped out!"

The voice on the communicator was choked with sobs.

"The southern defense line has fallen!"

"The skeletal knight is charging towards the convoy!"

Gu Yan closed her eyes.

When he opened his eyes again, a seven-colored light swept outwards from him.

The light was dazzling in the night, like a sun rising from the ground.

The skeletal knights who were charging from the south all stopped.

The blood-red flames in their eye sockets went out, and when they lit up again, they were a rainbow of colors.

The warhorses turned around in unison and charged towards the swarm of bone-eating insects to the north.

The knight's lance pierced the swarm of insects, and his hooves crushed the worms.

The Black Tide's attack formation was torn open with a huge gap.

"The convoy must accelerate! All vehicles, proceed at full speed through the western passage!"

Gu Yan's voice boomed over the radio.

The convoy picked up speed.

Trucks, buses, private cars, armored personnel carriers—all vehicles were running at maximum power.

The dust kicked up by the wheels covered half of the road.

Pei Youyi's wind wall firmly protected both sides of the convoy, keeping all the escaped bone-eating insects out.

Her face grew paler and paler, and blood seeped from the corner of her mouth, but her protective barrier did not budge an inch.

On the main attack route to the east, Wei Changfeng's rearguard troops are trading their lives for time.

When the tanks ran out of shells, they used machine guns; when the machine guns ran out, they used grenades; and when the grenades ran out, they grabbed explosive charges and charged forward.

Squads of veterans rushed out of their bunkers like human bombs, crashing into the ranks of the steel behemoths.

Flames shot into the sky from the beach, and explosions continued incessantly.

Wei Changfeng stood in the command bunker at the very front. His old military uniform was soaked in blood, and the injury to his right leg made it almost impossible for him to stand, but he did not retreat.

He held a telescope and stared at the sea, his voice coming through the communication channel, each word deliberate and clear.

"How many men are left in the rearguard?"

"Reporting to the commander, there are still 400 men left in the third blocking position."

"The second blocking position has fallen."

"The first defensive position... is gone."

"Pass on the order."

"All personnel at the third blocking position, take all the explosives you can carry, follow me, and charge!"

There was a moment of silence on the communicator.