However, the long queue meandered through the maze-like underground passageways, and the surrounding light was getting dimmer and dimmer.
The carbon dioxide exhaled by thousands of people caused the air to freeze. It was as if a huge rock was pressing on everyone's heart.
Meng Chao became more and more puzzled.
This did not seem to be the way out.
He had snuck into the underground tunnel before.
Based on the flow of air and the smell of the wild at the end of the tunnel, he could roughly determine the direction of the exit.
The air in the tunnel was like a rotten swamp. It was completely frozen. He could not sense even the slightest ripple caused by the wind.
Just as he expected, before long, a large block of rock appeared in front of the crowd.
There was no way out.
Aside from the path they came from, the other three sides were walls that were as sturdy as steel.
The crowd instantly panicked.
Someone could not help but cry.
A few of the rat god's messengers mixed in the crowd shouted, "Don't panic! Kneel down and pray to the Great Horned Rat God! As long as our faith is sincere enough, the Great Horned Rat God will definitely save us!"
Under their lead, the confused and helpless rat people all knelt down.
Meng Chao and Ice Storm looked at each other and did the same posture as the rat people.
Ice Storm looked puzzled. He lowered his head and mouthed to Meng Chao, "What the hell? Are you sure this is the way out?"
Meng Chao's mind raced. He instantly rejected the possibility that they were left behind to die.
Because there were a lot of strong adult rat people in this team.
Many of them had the blood of the Bloody Hooves Warriors on their hands. Logically speaking, they were the best cannon fodder.
Besides, there were a lot of rat god's messengers mixed in the crowd.
Such valuable human resources should not be wasted like this.
Meng Chao also noticed something very strange.
The queue seemed to have shortened.
They were at the back of the long queue.
There should be thousands of people in front of them.
They did not run into many forks along the way, and there were no signs of a large group of people passing through the forks.
If this was really a dead end, where did the thousands of people in front of them go?
"Wait, this is …"
Meng Chao narrowed his eyes, adjusted the size of his pupils, and mobilized his spirit energy to stimulate his retina and cone cells.
With the help of the dim light, he discovered that the walls and the ground of the 'dead end' were engraved with a large number of cuneiform characters.
As the rats prayed sincerely, the people's breathing, heartbeats, and vitality magnetic fields gradually vibrated at the same frequency.
Their vitality seemed to turn into a trickle and converge into the cuneiform.
The cuneiform characters shone brightly, and the strokes continued to extend, intertwining and entangling with each other!
Very soon, hundreds and thousands of the Rat Militia were enveloped by the radiance of the cuneiform characters.
The dazzling light seemed to possess a marvelous penetrative power as it gradually seeped into the skin, flesh, and bones of every rat.
As a result, the volunteer army of the rats, who had been badly battered by the fire of war and the smoke of gunpowder, became translucent.
Meng Chao spread his hands in front of him.
He discovered that his palms had also turned into works of art that seemed to have been meticulously carved out of glass, crystals, and colorful gems.
Every blood vessel, every tendon, and even every nerve were clearly visible. It was like a translucent person.
He was not an exception.
Every single rat in the surroundings underwent such a miraculous change.
Under the guidance of the Rat God's messengers, the rats did not panic because of the amazing changes in their bodies.
Instead, they were overjoyed to believe that the Horned Rat God had really heard their prayers and sent down a miracle to save them.
This scene caused Meng Chao's eyes to widen.
Naturally, he was not unfamiliar with the amazing changes that happened to the people.
When he was in Dragon City's Ancient Ruins No. 1, he had tasted something similar countless times.
'This is …
'A short-distance warp device on the surface of a planet!
'You can also say that this is a super large teleportation formation!'
Meng Chao came to a realization.
It was no wonder then why the Horned Rat God's messengers were confident that they could send thousands of rat people out of Black Corner City.
In the beginning, Meng Chao thought that they were just daydreaming. It was practically impossible for them to make a motley crew of one hundred thousand who had never received professional training to travel more than ten kilometers or even dozens of kilometers in an orderly manner in the dim underground environment without chaos, congestion, and even the tragedy of trampling on each other.
Besides, even if they managed to escape more than ten kilometers away from Black Corner City, it would be easy for the Blood Hooves Army to discover them.
The Blood Hooves Army's centaurs were natural cavalrymen.
It would be easy for them to catch up to large groups of escapees and split them up to destroy them.
The mastermind behind the temple thieves might be a deranged lunatic.
But he was definitely not an idiot who was all brawn and no brains.
Since he dared to spend an astronomical amount of money to carry out such a grand plan …
Naturally, he had a certain degree of confidence that he could make one-third to half of the rat people in Black Corner City retreat safely.
Meng Chao had never been able to figure out the crux of his trick.
'By the looks of it, the person hiding behind the Horned Rat God has long since discovered that there's a super large teleportation formation buried under Black Corner City.
'No, it's not just one. If this teleportation formation is something created by the ancient Turan people and is some sort of military facility, they usually don't build just one. Instead, they build a few or even dozens of them. They are scattered around the area and form a large underground port. That's why they can absorb hundreds of thousands of tons of resources and an army within a short period of time.
"As for the other teleportation formation, it is definitely at a place extremely far away from Blackhorn City.
'The reason is simple. If it's outside Black Corner City, normal transportation methods are enough. There's no need for them to build a military facility like a short-distance warp system on the surface of a planet.
'The person's entire plan revolves around the teleportation formation.
'Yes, Black Corner City's sewage pipes can naturally lead outside the city, and the person will definitely leave behind a lot of traces to mislead the Blood Hooves Warriors into believing that most of the rat people escaped outside the city through the sewage pipes.
'But this is just a feint.
'By the time the Blood Hooves Warriors waste too much time inside and outside the sewage pipes, the rat god's envoys will have long since brought the rat people's volunteer army, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, and fled hundreds of kilometers away from Black Corner City along with the loot they stole from the temple!'
Even though their standpoints were different …
Meng Chao did not admire the ruthlessness of the mastermind who used the lives of ten million rat people as a bargaining chip.
But he could not help but applaud the mastermind's methods.
As for why the mastermind did not tell him the truth all along the way and even pretended to be mysterious and prayed at the very last moment …
This involved a very profound psychological principle.
Humans would always have their most devout faith when they were in their greatest despair, and they would believe in the existence of their savior.
Meng Chao was certain of that.
After a miracle descended at the very last moment …
All the rat people who escaped would no longer doubt the existence of the Great Horned Rat God.
Even if the Great Horned Rat God's envoys wanted them to face the blades of totem warriors and charge straight at them, they would not even bat an eyelid.
Soon, the light that surged out of the cuneiform turned into a milky white sea of light that drowned out everything within Meng Chao's field of vision.
The entire world started dissolving.
Including his flesh and blood.
The Turing civilization's teleportation formation seemed to have used even more advanced technology than the one Dragon City had just started developing.
Not only could they teleport more intelligent carbon-based lifeforms with rationality in one go, they could also teleport more intelligent carbon-based lifeforms.
During the teleportation process, he did not feel too much dizziness, pain, hallucinations, or any other negative effects.
Soon, the sea of light that drowned out Meng Chao's eyes disappeared like a receding tide.
When his vision became clear again, the world around him had already changed.
He was no longer surrounded by cramped, broken walls, burning cities, the pungent stench of blood, and the rising and falling cries of murder.
Instead, he was in a field next to a forest. The blue sky and white clouds were everywhere. A gentle breeze blew against his face, and the fragrance of the grass made him feel relaxed and happy. He could practically forget the fatigue, pain, and fear he had just a moment ago.
In the distant horizon, Black Corner City had already turned into an insignificant black dot.
Based on the thickness of the pillar of smoke that shot into the sky above the black dot, he was at least fifty kilometers away from Black Corner City.
Meng Chao looked around him.
The rat people who had been teleported here with him stared blankly at the world that had suddenly become clear. They could not believe that they had already escaped.
When they finally realized that the man-eating cave known as Black Corner City had already been tossed to the back of their minds, quite a number of them could not help but cry. They knelt down and kissed the cuneiform carved on the teleportation formation to thank the Great Horned Rat God for the miracle that had descended on them.
"We're saved!"
"The Great Horned Rat God really saved us!"
"Praise the spirit of our ancestors! The spirit of our ancestors that truly belongs to us rat people!"
They were so happy that they cried and danced around. They descended into madness.
Even Hailstorm was stunned.
She was not as ignorant as the normal rat people. She believed that what had just happened was really a miracle.
However, this was the first time she tasted the feeling of a short-distance warp on the surface of a planet. She was not like Meng Chao, who was already very familiar with this.
At that moment, Hailstorm was still immersed in the amazing feeling of traveling one hundred kilometers in an instant. She stared blankly in the direction of Black Corner City for a long time before she used a voice that only Meng Chao could hear to mumble, "I thought that only a handful of Towers of Light and Magic Towers in the Land of Holy Light had the technology to turn the flesh and blood of their devout believers into light and instantly teleport them to the other side.
"I didn't expect to see a similar device in Turanze.
"Harvester, you're right. The ancient Turanze people did indeed have an incredibly brilliant civilization. Compared to our ancestors, the current high-grade orcs are far inferior!"
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