Now Kang Xiao and Zhang Tianlun were truly rattled. No, that wasn't the word. They were afraid.

They were bottled up inside the city with no way out.

Neither of them could laugh now. They looked at each other with faces fit for a funeral.

Zhang Tianlun most of all. He was close to tears.

He knew perfectly well that if he fell into Ning Chen's hands this time, he was a dead man.

He turned to Kang Xiao, his face full of hope. "Does Master Kang have a way out?"

Kang Xiao: "..."

"The game is up. From here on, you and I can only look out for ourselves."

He glanced at Zhang Tianlun, then quietly looked away and gave a bitter laugh.

He had lost all interest in grabbing the Imperial Seal of State or the ten-odd carriages of gold, silver and treasure.

All he wanted now was to live. Next to his life, none of that mattered so much.

He wheeled his horse around. "We pull out!"

Kang Xiao led his men out of the city lord's residence.

He looked over his two thousand-odd soldiers. "Men, there are too many of us. We're too easy to spot. Now listen to my order. Break up right here, go to ground, and look for a chance to get out of the city.

We still have twenty thousand Nanyue troops outside the walls. If you can just find a way out of the city, you'll live. I'll be waiting for you outside."

Inside the city lord's residence, Zhang Tianlun had stopped caring about gold, silver and treasure too.

He made the same decision Kang Xiao had. He told his guards to break up on the spot and go to ground... and he himself took Zhou Xing and a few other trusted men and slipped out of the city lord's residence by the back gate.

Nobody noticed the pair of eyes watching them intently from a far corner.

They belonged to none other than Yunniang.

Yunniang should have died. But no one had expected cannon fire to boom from the south…