Chapter 376: Gūniáng
The rage of battle was simmering. The rebel and the Royal Guard were reaching the predicted climax. Dasha had set the stage perfectly. So far, the players were performing their parts to perfection.
Underneath his feet, the fire roared down through the stairwells, a ravenous beast devouring everything in its path. Wooden beams cracked and splintered, collapsing with a deafening crash. The building coming down, so too did Dasha. Bit by bit, the building collapsing and lowered and lowered.
A young girl tried to pull her younger brother towards the exit, but a wall of flames blocked their path. She screamed for help. The adults around her were too engrossed in their own battles to notice. Her brother’s cries echoed through the smoke-filled air as she tried in vain to find another way out.
Dasha glanced over his shoulder at the smoke and the screams. His Qi Sense was semi-effective in the smoke. Certainly not omniscient yet fully aware of the hell he unleashed.
The fire consumed multiple floors, the heat intense enough to melt the paint off the walls and shatter the windows. Flames licked at the wooden beams, sending sparks showering down like deadly rain. The residents had been screaming for help this whole. From the start, however, it was too late.
Dasha had cut off their escape routes. They were all trapped them in a hellish inferno.
Parents tried to shield their children, using their bodies as barriers against the encroaching flames. Siblings clung to each other, their faces streaked with soot and tears. The heat was unbearable, the smoke suffocating. Desperation turned to horror as the realization set in: there was no way out. Every exit, every window, it was blocked or destroyed or too high to jump off of.
Something was always there.
In one room, an elderly woman sat in a chair, her eyes closed as the fire consumed the building around her. She had seen too much in her life to fear death. She simply waited, accepting her fate.