National Guardian's Gone and We're Done

Under the immense pressure of the hemp ropes, their skin rapidly turned a grotesque and horrifying shade of reddish-purple.

It was the desperate mark left by life struggling in agony.

The young people were terrified beyond measure, their eyes wide and round,

filled with a fear of death and a refusal to accept their fate.

Instinctively, their hands flew wildly to their own necks,

trying with their last ounce of strength to undo these sudden, deadly shackles.

Their fingers desperately clawed and tore at the rough, cold hemp ropes.

Their fingernails broke from the force, and thin trails of blood instantly seeped from their torn fingertips.

The crimson blood trickled slowly down the ropes, dripping onto the ground below,

blossoming into desperate flowers of red.

But no matter how they struggled,

the ropes seemed to be held tight by the Death God himself, pulling ever tighter, impossible to move even an inch.

Air—that ubiquitous source of life that people hardly ever noticed—

had now become more precious and scarce than any treasure in the world.

For these young people, every breath was like a torturous dance on the edge of a sharp blade.

Their lungs, like dried-up wells, desperately craved the nourishment of oxygen,

but could only draw in pitifully thin, ever-dwindling amounts of air,

until finally, their right to breathe was stolen from them completely.

The young people’s faces gradually contorted from the lack of oxygen, their eyes bulging from their sockets,

looking as if they would pop out.

The shadow of death had completely consumed their once-vibrant faces.

Desperate saliva dripped uncontrollably from the corners of their mouths, running down their chins

and soaking their clothes.

Their legs dangled helplessly, kicking in the air.

Every kick was like a faint distress signal sent out into the darkness,

a final, desperate expression of their powerful will to live.

Yet their distance from the ground only continued to increase.

Their bodies were like puppets pulled by a pair of invisible, powerful hands,

leading them step by step, irrevocably, toward a bottomless abyss of death.

In this world enveloped by a grim haze of fear, every young person ensnared by the ropes

was about to become a tragic sacrifice in this bizarre and bloody feast.

Their futile struggles, their hoarse and desperate cries,

seemed so small and insignificant in the boundless darkness,

like the powerless struggle of an ant beneath an elephant’s foot.

And the ropes that continued to fall from the sky were like cold invitations from the depths of Hell,

silently announcing their fate to be devoured by darkness.

Beneath this cursed sky,

an invisible barrier of death had already formed.

No one could escape, no one could be saved. The stench of death permeated every corner.

It seemed that death was the only final destination.

"What do we do? What do we do now?"

Sun Canxing, Lai Yu Yao, Qi Shulei, and Yu Yingjie displayed extraordinary calm and wisdom at this moment.

They knew that in this critical moment, their only hope for survival was to stick together by Chu He’s side.

Watching their companions get noosed one after another,

the ropes tightening mercilessly before they were pulled toward the sky like marionettes,

about to become just like the horrifying hanged figures on that towering tree,

they couldn’t help but feel a surge of panic and fear.

A flicker of alarm, hard to detect, flashed through their otherwise composed eyes.

At this pivotal moment between life and death, Chu He slowly raised his long, powerful fingers.

His gaze was like the stars in the deep night sky—firm and sharp, locked on the distant horizon.

As he gently swiped his fingers from left to right, the air rippled like the surface of a calm lake after a stone is thrown in,

and a subtle, mysterious wave of energy instantly surged through it.

Then, an astonishing miracle occurred.

Before the astonished, jaw-dropped gazes of the crowd, a blade of emerald-green grass condensed out of thin air.

It was like the most precious treasure nature had ever conceived,

radiating a captivating, crystalline luster.

The green was so rich it seemed to contain all the life force in the world,

so pure it was without a single impurity, so vivid it seemed to sway gently in a phantom breeze,

as if it might start dancing at any moment.

It also resembled a piece of green jade, meticulously carved by the world’s finest artisan after countless hours of labor.

Every vein, every detail was perfect—breathtakingly beautiful.

Its exquisite form was like an Elf that had drifted down from a celestial realm into the Mortal World,

inspiring a sense of yearning, yet its otherworldly aura made one afraid to touch it.

A faint glow flowed across its surface,

like the soft, lively ripples created by a crystal-clear dewdrop sliding down a leaf tip at dawn.

It was also like the gentle glimmer produced when pearls brush against each other in the deep sea,

mysterious and alluring, captivating all who saw it,

yet they dared not approach out of reverence.

Just as everyone was lost in the dreamlike,

unbelievable beauty of the emerald grass blade,

it suddenly trembled as if granted life.

At the same time, the faint glow surrounding it

began to ripple, like a stone dropped into a calm lake,

sending delicate waves spreading slowly through the air.