“Boom!”
“Boom!”
Deafening impacts rolled in from the square outside the Hall of Supreme Harmony.
The sounds were deep and terrifying.
The sturdy gates of the imperial palace groaned in agony beneath the battering of hundreds of burly men and a massive siege ram.
The Imperial Guards’ defensive line was on the verge of collapse.
Three thousand men facing a hundred thousand—this was nothing short of a one-sided massacre.
In front of the Hall of Supreme Harmony, the atmosphere was heavy.
The smell of gunpowder still lingered in the air, yet the shadow of death had already descended once more.
Su Zhen stood atop the lofty white-jade steps, his face livid.
He glanced at the Gatling heavy machine gun resting on the table.
Its barrel was still scorching hot, and the brass ammunition belt had been completely emptied.
“We’re out of bullets…”
A trace of unwillingness flashed through the eyes of the Tyrant of Dayuan.
No matter how powerful firearms were, they would eventually run out of ammunition.
That old dog Lin Zhenxiong had been right.
A hundred thousand soldiers— even if they simply stood there and let someone hack at them, they could wear a blade down to a blunt edge.
Su Zhen drew a deep breath, then suddenly pulled the Longquan sword from his waist.
Clang!
The crisp ring of steel echoed through the night sky, and its cold gleam illuminated his resolute face.
“In Dayuan, emperors die in battle. They do not surrender like cowards!”
Su Zhen gripped the hilt tightly, and a powerful surge of true qi erupted from his body.
He turned to Su Jin at his side, his tone solemn and tragic, as though entrusting him with his final wishes.
“Jin’er, take your sister and find a way out through the secret passage!”
“Your father is going to deal with that old dog Lin Zhenxiong. Even if I die, I’ll make him come with me!”
Faced with the tottering palace gates and the roar of a hundred thousand troops, Su Zhen could no longer hold back. He drew his Longquan sword, preparing to fight to the death.
Su Jin’s eyes reddened at his words.
He tore off the tattered black robe covering his body, drew a sharp dagger steeped in deadly poison, and clenched the venomous blade in his hand.
“Father, I’m not leaving! I’m the Crown Prince of Dayuan!”
“If those hundred thousand men want to trample the imperial palace flat, they’ll have to step over my corpse first!”
Father and son exchanged a glance. In their eyes burned the blazing flames of a willingness to die without regret.
A tragic atmosphere spread throughout the space before the Hall of Supreme Harmony.
Just as this heart-wrenching scene of impending separation was reaching its climax—
Crack.
The sound of someone cracking sunflower seeds rang out abruptly, completely out of place.
Su Zhen and Su Jin turned their heads at the same time.
At some point, Su Yaoyao had returned to her little golden throne.
She held a handful of pumpkin seeds she had somehow found and was cracking them with great relish.
Su Yaoyao waved a hand calmly. “Dad, why are you trying to fight to the death? It’ll take the hundred thousand soldiers until tomorrow morning just to chop until their hands fall off.”
Su Yaoyao rolled her eyes dramatically, her face full of exasperation.
“A hundred thousand troops are surrounding the city, and you two are planning to charge out and fight them with a pair of broken swords?”
“Even if you were the greatest experts in the world, a human-wave tactic like this would still wear you down to death.”
Su Zhen froze, his hand holding the Longquan sword suspended awkwardly in midair.
“Daughter, then what are we supposed to do? The firearms are out of bullets, and the gates are about to break!”
“Who says battles have to be fought with blades, spears, and bullets?”
Su Yaoyao clapped the seed shells from her hands and slowly rose to her feet.
“Their formation is too dense. The killing efficiency of those weapons is far too low against it.”
With that, she reached into her oversized sleeve as if performing a magic trick and fumbled around for a moment.
In reality, she had pulled three bizarre-looking objects out of the portable space belonging to the poison doctor.
They were, unmistakably, three gas masks shaped like pig snouts.
“Here. Put these on first.”
Su Yaoyao rose onto her tiptoes and forcibly fitted the masks over her father’s and brother’s faces.
The material was soft to the touch, neither metal nor wood.
It clung tightly to their faces, while two pieces of transparent glass covered their eyes.
Most outrageous of all, the parts covering their noses and mouths protruded outward into two round filtration canisters.
The canisters were covered in fine ventilation holes.
From the front, they looked exactly like enormous pig snouts.
The mighty Tyrant Dad of Dayuan had been transformed into a ridiculous pig-headed immortal.
Wearing the gas mask, Tyrant Dad spoke in a muffled voice. “Daughter, what is this? It’s suffocating me!”
The gas mask made his voice sound muffled and tinny, as if he were speaking from beneath a quilt.
“Don’t take it off! It’s called a gas mask!”
Su Yaoyao sternly slapped away his hand as he tried to pull it off.
“If you breathe in the air outside later, not even the gods will be able to save you.”
The Crown Prince, a living King of Hell—cold, sickly, and merciless, a man who killed without blinking—
paired with a comical rubber pig snout and the pink fluorescent glow that had yet to fully fade from his body.
The sight was simply too much.
It was impossible to look at.
The entire family of three had become three matching pig heads.
“Time to get to work!”
Wearing her mask, Su Yaoyao’s voice was equally muffled, but her movements were brisk and decisive.
She snapped her fingers.
At the sound, the Blood Drip special forces who had been recruited behind her swiftly surged forward.
The dozens of burly men were wearing gas masks and grunting as they pushed several enormous objects into view.
They were five gigantic Kongming lanterns!
No, they could no longer be called Kongming lanterns.
They should be called hot-air balloons!
Each balloon’s envelope was as large as an entire side hall.
They had been stitched together from countless layers of tough silk.
Their surfaces were coated with a special fireproof resin.
Beneath each enormous envelope hung a huge wooden barrel, suspended by thick hemp ropes.
The barrels were filled with the biological toxins Su Yaoyao had hastily prepared in her space.
“Light them!”
At the command of the assassins’ leader, the Blood Drip special forces ignited the five gigantic Kongming lanterns.
Boom!
Roaring flames blasted upward, and powerful currents of hot air surged into the envelopes.
The enormous silk envelopes, which had been limp and deflated, rapidly swelled as they filled with hot air.
The five colossal hot-air balloons rose slowly into the square before the Hall of Supreme Harmony, resembling five slumbering beasts awakening from their sleep.
“Cut the ropes!”
The cables anchoring them to the ground were hacked apart.
The huge wooden barrels hanging beneath the hot-air balloons broke free of the earth.
The Blood Drip troops seized the moment to distribute gas masks. Anyone who refused received a chop to the back of the head before being forced into one.
Tonight happened to be the Mid-Autumn Festival.
A strong southeastern wind was blowing above the capital of Dayuan.
The wind direction could not have been more perfect. It was as if even Heaven itself were helping them.
The enormous hot-air balloons drifted slowly along the southeastern wind toward the rebel encampment.
They passed over the high roofs of the Hall of Supreme Harmony, then over the layers upon layers of palace walls.
Silent as ghosts in the dead of night.
Standing on the white-jade steps, Su Yaoyao watched the ascending giants through the transparent goggles of her gas mask.
A crazed, excited light flickered in her eyes.
A human-wave tactic?
Today, she would show them what a biological gas bomb was!
Outside the imperial city.
General Lin Zhenxiong stood atop a war chariot, frantically directing his army to batter the palace gates.
Boom! Boom!
The gates swayed precariously, and the massive crossbar had already begun to crack with a terrifying sound.
Lin Zhenxiong’s face was covered in blood, and his entire body trembled with excitement.
Just then, one of his deputy generals suddenly pointed toward the night sky and shouted in terror.
“My lord! Look up there! What is that thing?”
Lin Zhenxiong raised his head and followed the deputy general’s pointing finger.
There, five enormous lanterns—so huge they were almost impossible to believe—came drifting in on the night breeze.
They halted directly above the heads of the hundred-thousand-strong army.
Looking at the giant lanterns floating overhead, the great general sneered mockingly. “On the verge of death, and you’re still releasing sky lanterns to pray for blessings? Archers, shoot them down!”
He had no idea—
by doing so, he had just opened Pandora’s box!
