Inside Taiji Hall, flesh flew and smoke filled the air.
The view pulled back.
Beyond the towering walls, it turned toward the vast expanse outside the imperial city.
The area surrounding the imperial city had long since become a suffocating hellscape of slaughter.
The pitch-black night sky had been torn apart.
A hundred thousand rebel soldiers, clad in heavy armor and armed with razor-sharp blades, stood in dense formation across the squares and streets outside the palace. They stretched as far as the eye could see.
A hundred thousand blazing torches were held high in the air.
The flames soared into the heavens, dyeing the clouds above the capital a blood-red hue.
It was a crimson ocean composed of fire and steel.
The enormous army had surrounded the Great Yuan imperial palace so completely that not even a single bird could escape its ironclad encirclement, let alone a person.
The pressure generated by the assembly of a hundred thousand troops was enough to rob anyone of the courage to resist.
At the very front of the formation stood dozens of gigantic siege ladders, each several zhang tall.
Huge wooden wheels were mounted beneath them, and hundreds of bare-chested strongmen pushed them forward.
Facing the palace’s vermilion gates, a siege ram resembling a gigantic beast was already in position.
Its main beam had been carved from an entire century-old tree, so thick that three men were needed to wrap their arms around it.
Its tip was sheathed in heavy cast iron and covered with sharp spikes.
At a single command, this steel beast would smash straight through the gates of the Great Yuan Dynasty.
In the center of the army, atop a bronze war chariot drawn by four tall horses, Lin Zhenxiong gripped the railing and gasped for breath.
Where was there any trace left of the dignity and imposing bearing of the Great Yuan's most powerful minister?
He had only just crawled out of a dog hole behind Taiji Hall.
His meticulously arranged topknot had come completely undone.
His gray-white hair hung messily over his shoulders, making him look like a deranged old beggar from the streets.
The luxurious python robe that symbolized supreme power had been slashed with countless cuts by splintered wood.
It was smeared with dirt, dust, and the blood sprayed onto him by his own guards and death squads.
Rank blood dripped down his face, making his twisted features appear even more ferocious.
Lin Zhenxiong’s eyes were bloodshot, every inch of his eyeballs webbed with crimson veins.
His gaze held a mixture of relief at having survived the disaster, boundless fury, and the madness of a gambler who had staked everything and lost.
He recalled the terrifying sight inside Taiji Hall—the steel beast breathing tongues of fire—and still felt a lingering fear.
But he was, after all, an old fox who had weathered countless battles and climbed to power over mountains of corpses.
Once the initial terror passed, his reason quickly returned.
Standing atop the chariot as the night wind swept around him, he set his mind racing.
That terrifying demonic firearm absolutely had to have its limits!
Lin Zhenxiong clenched his teeth, frantically comforting himself and searching for reasons why victory was still his.
To fire such a dense barrage of hidden weapons, its internal mechanism must be extraordinarily complicated.
After such a fierce volley, its ammunition must surely have been completely depleted!
Reloading weapons like that would undoubtedly take a very long time.
Besides, even if it could fire again, it was still nothing more than a lifeless object!
Lin Zhenxiong abruptly raised his head and looked toward the boundless army of fire before him.
His confidence began to grow wildly once more, like weeds after rain.
“No matter how powerful a weapon is, it might kill a hundred men, or even a thousand—but could it possibly slaughter my entire hundred-thousand-strong army?!”
He was certain that the Su father and daughter had already run out of ammunition. That iron contraption was nothing more than a glorified poker.
Even if it had not run out, it could never cover every direction while facing an attack from a hundred thousand men.
As long as they buried it beneath a mountain of human lives and drowned it under a heap of corpses, they would surely overwhelm that lump of iron!
“Bring me my sword!”
Lin Zhenxiong let out a hysterical roar.
An adjutant beside him hurriedly presented him with a spare longsword.
Lin Zhenxiong seized it and drew it in one motion, pointing the blade toward the tightly closed vermilion gates of the imperial palace.
Standing atop the war chariot like a raving demon, he summoned every ounce of his inner strength and issued the final order to charge.
“Soldiers of Great Yuan! Su Zhen is a tyrant, and the Demoness has thrown the realm into chaos!”
“Today is our finest opportunity to uphold Heaven’s will and win glory!”
“The demonic firearm inside Taiji Hall has exhausted its ammunition! They are trapped turtles in a jar!”
“Kill them! Charge, regardless of the cost! Anyone who takes even half a step back will be put to death!”
Strengthened by his profound inner power, Lin Zhenxiong’s voice rolled across the hundred-thousand-strong formation like peals of thunder.
“Whoever enters the imperial palace first will be rewarded with ten thousand taels of gold and granted the title of Marquis of Ten Thousand Households!”
“Whoever captures or kills the Tyrant and the Demoness will pass their title down through the generations and share the Great Yuan realm with this prince!”
With such lavish rewards, there would always be brave men.
The hundred thousand rebel soldiers had no idea what had happened inside Taiji Hall.
But when they heard the promises of ten thousand taels of gold and a marquisate, their eyes turned red.
Men died for wealth, just as birds died for food.
Blinded by greed, the soldiers erupted in a deafening roar.
“Kill! Kill! Kill!”
The combined roar of a hundred thousand men seemed powerful enough to tear the dark night sky apart.
The war drums suddenly became faster and more violent, like notes from a death knell.
“Charge!”
Driven forward by officers of every rank, the ten thousand heavily armored infantrymen at the front surged forth like a flood breaking through a dam.
They raised towering shields and brandished gleaming sabers as they launched a frenzied, suicidal assault against the palace walls and gates.
The earth shook and the mountains trembled!
A hundred thousand pairs of war boots stamped simultaneously against the hard bluestone streets, and the entire capital trembled violently.
At that very moment, atop the high walls of the imperial palace, the loyal Imperial Guards responsible for defending the inner city faced a despair unlike anything they had ever known.
They had heard the strange thunderous explosions coming from Taiji Hall.
They also knew that the Emperor and Your Highness seemed to have used some miraculous firearm to resolve the crisis inside the hall.
But even if the crisis within the hall had been resolved, what about outside it?
The commander of the Imperial Guards was drenched in blood. He had just led his men in eliminating the traitors near the palace gates.
When he climbed onto the battlements with his bloodstained saber and leaned out to look below, this battle-hardened veteran instantly felt as though he had fallen into an icy abyss. The blood in his entire body seemed to turn cold.
There were too many!
There were simply far too many enemies!
Everywhere he looked, the ground beneath the walls was covered in densely packed heads and flashing blades.
They resembled a swarm of starving ants surging madly toward an isolated piece of fat.
As for the Imperial Guards, they had fewer than three thousand men still capable of fighting, even after counting every last one.
Three thousand men against a hundred thousand soldiers as ferocious as wolves and tigers.
It was a one-sided slaughter!
“Commander… can we… can we really hold them off?”
A young Imperial Guard soldier’s hands trembled violently around his spear.
He stared at the enemy army rushing toward them like a tidal wave and listened to the earth-shaking thunder of their footsteps. His voice was thick with sobs.
The commander said nothing. He merely clenched his teeth, wiped his palms—slick with sweat and blood—haphazardly against his clothing, then gripped the already-dulled hilt of his saber once more, with desperate force.
How could they hold?
What did they have with which to defend themselves?
No matter how powerful the miraculous firearms in the Hall of Supreme Harmony were, how could they possibly kill all one hundred thousand enemy soldiers?
The enemy army surged in from all directions. The firearms could cover the eastern side, but not the west.
Once the city gates were breached and an army of one hundred thousand poured into the imperial palace, the entire imperial family would surely be hacked to pieces.
When a numerical advantage reached such a terrifying scale, the courage and skill of any individual would become utterly meaningless.
“Brothers! In life, we serve the royal family; in death, we shall remain its ghosts!”
The commander raised his long saber and let out a tragic, furious roar.
“Prepare to meet the enemy! Even if we have to bite them with our teeth, we’ll tear a piece of flesh from these traitors!”
“Where the men stand, the city stands! When the city falls, we die!”
A solemn, tragic atmosphere spread across the battlements. The three thousand Imperial Guards drew their blades and swords one after another, ready to face death.
Just then, the rebel army’s assault troops surged forward like a black tide, crashing violently against the imperial palace walls.
Countless siege ladders were raised, and innumerable rebels climbed upward like ants.
But what chilled everyone’s blood the most was the massive battering ram being pushed by several hundred brawny men.
It had already been brought before the vermilion gates of the imperial palace.
“One! Two! Three! Ram!”
The rebels’ unified roar rang out.
Several hundred men exerted themselves at once, driving a century-old log so thick that it would take three men to encircle it straight into the copper-clad palace gates.
Boom!
The earth-shaking impact made the walls tremble violently, sending dust cascading from the battlements.
The deep, terrifying crash struck the hearts of everyone inside the palace like a heavy hammer.
Boom!
Then came a second blow.
The vermilion gates let out a pained groan.
A crack appeared in the thick crossbar behind them.
Every impact accelerated the countdown to death.
Watching the palace gates sway precariously, Lin Zhenxiong stood atop the war chariot at the front of the formation, his smug expression impossible to conceal.
He faced the night wind and once again circulated his inner strength, his voice arrogant and overbearing.
“Su Zhen! Stop this pointless struggle!”
Lin Zhenxiong bellowed smugly from the front lines, his heart filled with the thrill of revenge.
“One hundred thousand men! I have a full army of one hundred thousand!”
“Even if every one of them spat just once, we could drown you and House Su!”
