() April 1687 of the Bright Era. Midwinter is getting farther away, and spring is back to the earth.

However, in Bern, the capital of the Fayele Empire, there is no joy at all in the transition of winter to spring.

In the early morning, the sky was still covered with a gray haze.

Before the end of winter, a once-in-a-century blizzard descended on this land with a not too cold climate, and many people thought it was a punishment from the gods, and in the face of this merciless killing, the heavens and the earth sobbed. And a piece of muddy, black broken ice came from the snowstorm, and the footsteps of rapid running, "clicked" and stepped into the mud.

The feet belonged to a man named Ben. Ben didn't have time to worry about the muddy water splashing on him, so he paused around the bend, looked out warily, and beckoned into the alley.

In a corner of the alley, two figures, one large and one small, emerged.

"No problem, let's go. Ben came to his wife and daughters and said to them.

The woman hugged the little girl and nodded to her husband.

"Wait. Before his wife and daughter were about to leave, Ben stopped them, grabbed a handful of mud from the ground and applied it to his wife's face. Although the wife was a little displeased, she could only obey her husband's arrangement.

After turning his wife into an ugly bastard, Ben wiped the sludge off his daughter's face.

"Don't ......" Faced with the foul-smelling, filthy mud, the 9-year-old girl flinched.

"Don't move!" Ben was a little annoyed by his daughter's awkwardness, and involuntarily took a step forward, in his opinion, wasting time at this time was equivalent to "suicide".

"Baby, listen to Daddy. The wife was well aware of the situation, and she bent down to persuade her daughter.

Seeing her mother's attitude, the girl understood that she had no way to avoid it, so she had to give in with a bitter face.

Looking at the muddy faces of his wife and daughter, Ben repeated for the last time what he had said countless times: "Listen, you must follow me, walk naturally, don't talk, don't pay attention to anyone's questions, don't look back at anyone." ”

His wife and daughter nodded their heads.

Ben then wiped his hands full of mud from his tattered burlap coat to make himself look wolfish, and after making sure that there was no danger, he walked out of the alley, holding hands with each other and following Ban.

The wide main street of Bourne is deserted, full of collapsed houses and flames that have not yet been completely extinguished. On both sides of the street, you can see corpses suspended from wooden pillars every few steps. Some of these dead were hanged alive, some were killed by swords and then hung up, the death was extremely horrific, and the head of one corpse had been shattered, and the brains of white flowers were all over the body, and the rope could not be fixed to the neck, and they were hung directly through the collarbone. Their identities also varied, ranging from soldiers and aristocrats of the previous regime, to commoners and businessmen who disobeyed the new regime, but many more innocent people who died on trumps of impediment.

Walking through the array of corpses, the little girl felt sick to her stomach, and the mother patted her daughter on the back and motioned to her with wordless instructions not to make a sound, just endure it for a while. Ben, apparently accustomed to such a scene, walked briskly forward, slowing down when he realized that he was distanced from his wife and daughter, but soon after, he unconsciously quickened his pace.

Ban's family of three is not an ordinary person who is poor. A year ago, they were living a privileged life that many people would envy. Ban turned out to be a Golden Guard.

As the special force and elite division of the Fayale Empire, the Golden Guards do not select new members from the children of high nobles of noble blood like the elite troops of other countries. Despite his sumptuous gold armor and his high reputation, the vast majority of the members of this "army within an army" came from commoners and ruined aristocrats. The Fayale Empire was founded on a military state, and the treatment of professional soldiers was much higher than that of other Holy Light Sect countries, and the treatment of members of the Golden Guards was several times that of other soldiers, and it is no exaggeration to say that a Golden Guard who has served for more than 20 years may have a more prosperous family than a middle-class nobleman who rules a city. It is precisely because a good material life is not easy to come by, that these commoners and ruined nobles from the bottom will cherish the hard-won qiē doubly, thus ensuring their absolute loyalty.

Originally from a secluded, impoverished mountain village in the southern part of the empire, Ban was forcibly conscripted into the army by the local lord at the age of 15 and served in the lord's family for six years, until during a large-scale joint battle, Ban's heroic expression was appreciated by an officer from the emperor, who bought Ban from his lord at a very low price. The class passed the examination with difficulty but smoothly, became a member of the Golden Guards, and was incorporated into the Imperial City Guards in the imperial capital. At the age of 32, Ben did what he had never even dreamed of in the first half of his life: he settled in the imperial capital and married a beautiful wife, and a year later, his lovely daughter was born.

For the next ten years, Ban and his family lived a privileged life, and he was proud to be a member of the Golden Guard, and hoped to continue serving in this elite force for the rest of his life. Although he was a soldier and could die on the battlefield for the empire at any time, the unit he belonged to was the Imperial City Guard, and at that time, not only Ban, but also the vast majority of people in the empire believed that the capital of the Fayale Empire, the most powerful in the world, could not be threatened by any force, so the possibility of Ban Hui dying in battle was close to zero.

However, in the past year or so, Fa Yale, known as the "strongest empire", has unveiled a storm and waves, and drastic changes have occurred suddenly, making the possibility of "almost zero" quickly becoming a reality. The flames of the civil war spread across the country, and Prince Carloton's rebels, with the help of the Central Church and the four northern kingdoms, reversed their defeat in the early stages of the civil war and counterattacked all the way to the heart of the empire, the imperial capital of Byrne. At this time, the soul of the empire, Emperor Charlottes I, suddenly disappeared at this important moment, and in the face of the menacing rebels, the two princes had to put aside their differences and join forces to fight against a common enemy. In this way, the Golden Guard, which had been idle since the beginning of the war, was pulled into battle.

In the extravagant and magnificent capital of the mightiest empire, a bloody and devastating siege begins, and Ben, like his colleagues, puts on his golden armor and takes up his two-handed greatsword to fight a terrible battle. Despite the well-equipped, well-fed, well-fortified, valiant and morale-high morale of the defenders, a unit that has lost its backbone will never win a battle. Ban and his comrades stubbornly resisted, and the rebels who died under Ban's sword, even he could not remember, however, the rebels filled the moat with the corpses of their own men, and Ban's troops were eventually outnumbered, and the defense line was forced to shrink again and again. A week earlier, when the rebels had captured the tower at the gates, it marked the complete loss of the Emperor's attempt to defend the city of Bern. It was at this time that the emperor's last pillars, the two princes, realized that the tide had turned, and they abandoned their desperate subordinates and fled from the city of Berne under the cover of several griffin horsemen. The eldest prince fled to the distant Rocal Empire, while the second prince fled south to his uncle, King Poller.

The only order left by the two princes to the defenders was to hold on and swear to live and die with the city of Bourne. After the two princes fled, many high-ranking nobles of the former empire also fled, and only the middle-level officers and grass-roots troops, as well as the unarmed common people, remained in the city of Berne to continue the resistance.

Some emperors chose to surrender, while others chose to continue to resist, and as for Ban, they chose a very different third option: fleeing with their wives and daughters. Fleeing on the battlefield is a disgrace for the soldiers, especially the Golden Guards, who bear the glory of the Empire, and in their training courses there is not even an order to "retreat". Running away? In the past, Ban didn't even dare to think about it, but now it is different, and the safety of his wife and daughter is obviously more important than glory and mission.

Who's going to be the emperor and I'm going to do it? Even the successor to the throne has run away on his own, so why should I stay and work for those guys? I've served the empire for so many years, and I've paid off all my debts......

With this in mind, Ban turned and fled in front of his commander, and his commander could not stop him, for how could a dead man with dozens of arrows in his body and burning in flames stop a large living man who could run and move?

Although the rebels entered the city, they did not fully control the entire city, and sporadic resistance was still taking place in many places, which made the rebel soldiers who had fought hard for more than two months and paid heavy casualties quite angry. Not only did they massacre the surrendered emperors, but they also frantically vented their bestial nature on the people of their capital.

In the early days of the civil war, the rebels loyal to Prince Carloton were defeated by the Emperor Charlotte I, and although the rebels finally gained a firm foothold under the armed intervention of the Central Curia and the four northern countries, the troops that had followed Prince Carloton were almost exhausted. Mercenaries, hooligans, bandits, foreign spies, and forcibly recruited peasants became the main force of the rebels. Although this rabble is huge, there is hardly any discipline to speak of.

An army that is out of discipline is a bunch of armed bandits. Wherever the rebels went, they burned and plundered along the way, leaving behind a reputation of wolfdom, and even Prince Carroton was furious when he heard it, and he ordered a strict rectification of military discipline, but in this extraordinary period, what was more important was the morale of the army, so the action to rectify military discipline finally ended in a state of "loud thunder and small rain", and after occupying the capital of the entire empire and demonstrating their victory, the primitive beastly "nature" was even more "revealed"......

If Ban had heard of the rebels' bad behavior, then what he had witnessed in the past few days had made Ban even more frightened. Seeing those innocent female "sex" being murdered one by one, even the young girls could not escape the doom, Ban was so frightened that his whole body trembled, he was not afraid that he would lose his "sex" life, he was afraid that he would not be able to protect his wife and daughter. To this end, Ban made a plan to escape. Ban fled home, packed up the simple and soft with his wife, changed into tattered clothes, ignored the wealth of the whole house, buried the priceless gold armor and two-handed heavy sword in the flower garden in the backyard, and took his daughter and ran to the gate of the city before it was completely light......

"Stop!

Just then, a patrol of rebel soldiers spotted a family of three struggling through the chaotic streets.