Lin Zhenxiong stood atop a bronze war chariot, pointing at the night sky and roaring like a madman.
His eyes were webbed with scarlet veins, and he had plunged into a paranoid frenzy.
In his mind, the Great Abyss Imperial Family was already trapped like turtles in a jar.
The magical weapons and firearms in the Hall of Supreme Harmony had run out of ammunition. These enormous Kongming lanterns drifting through the sky had to be nothing more than some form of superstition the Tyrant Su Zhen had concocted in his desperation—an attempt to pray for divine aid.
On the brink of death, and he still expected Heaven to answer his prayers?
What an utterly laughable delusion!
At Lin Zhenxiong’s command, a contingent of elite archers immediately broke away from the rebel army.
More than ten thousand archers nocked their arrows at once, aiming their cold steel arrowheads at the five colossal objects in the night sky.
“Creak, creak.”
The sound of bowstrings pulled taut merged into a terrifying wave amid the chaos of the battlefield.
“Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!”
In the next instant, a torrential black rain of arrows surged upward against the flow of gravity, screaming toward the sky.
Tens of thousands of arrows, illuminated by the blazing firelight shooting into the heavens, traced deadly arcs through the air.
Lin Zhenxiong tipped back his head, a cruel, triumphant smirk curling across his lips.
He could already envision the miserable sight of the Kongming lanterns being pierced by arrows, then plummeting from the sky in flames.
He would crush the Great Abyss Imperial Family’s last hope into the dirt—bit by bit!
The enormous hot-air balloons were simply too large to miss. They hardly needed to be aimed at all.
In the blink of an eye, the rain of arrows had reached the undersides of the balloons.
“Pff! Pff! Pff!”
The sharp, forged-steel arrowheads pierced straight through the enormous wooden barrels suspended beneath the balloons without the slightest resistance.
Wood splintered in every direction as dull, heavy sounds of penetration rang out one after another in midair.
The barrels, originally sealed airtight, had been shot full of holes.
Countless arrow shafts bristled from their surfaces, making them look as though they had grown a layer of black spikes.
“Hahahaha! Beautiful shooting!”
Lin Zhenxiong clapped his hands and roared with laughter atop his war chariot, his eyes filled with the ecstasy of revenge.
“Su Zhen, your prayer lanterns are ruined! Even Heaven can’t save you now!”
On the palace wall, Su Yaoyao showed not the slightest trace of panic.
Behind her comically shaped pig-nosed gas mask, she let out a triumphant laugh.
“This is exactly what I was waiting for—your arrows!”
Su Yaoyao stood with her hands on her hips atop the lofty white-jade railing, looking down upon the rebels below, who stretched out like an endless sea.
A wild light gleamed in her clear, enormous eyes.
The wooden barrels were so thick that if she had relied solely on free fall, the powder inside would never have scattered evenly.
But now, these archers had taken the initiative and punched countless holes in the barrels for her.
What a perfect ignition mechanism!
“Father, Brother, cover your pig noses tightly!”
After turning her head to give the warning, Su Yaoyao abruptly spun around.
She drew a deep breath, cupped her hands around her mouth, and summoned every ounce of strength in her body to shout down from the wall in a crisp, thunderous voice:
“By order of this Crown Princess, let it rain pink!”
Her voice was young and delicate, yet it carried clearly across the battlefield between the two armies.
The instant Su Yaoyao’s words fell, the five enormous wooden barrels—shot so full of holes that they resembled beehives—finally could no longer withstand the pressure within.
“Boom—crash!”
Several muffled explosions rang out.
All five enormous wooden barrels burst apart simultaneously in midair!
Fragments of wood flew in every direction.
What happened next was a spectacle that the one hundred thousand rebel troops would remember for the rest of their lives. It erupted across the night sky with a thunderous roar.
There were no blazing flames or deadly shrapnel.
When the wooden barrels burst apart, what came raining down from the heavens was actually a fine pink powder!
The powder was as light as mist, resembling cherry-blossom petals whipped up by a spring gale.
Illuminated by the light of the hundred thousand torches below, the pink powder reflected an eerie, dreamlike glow.
It drifted and swirled through the air, blanketing the sky like a pink snowstorm descending from above.
Under ordinary circumstances, the sight would have been romantic enough to make the talented young men and beautiful ladies of the capital squeal with delight.
But this spectacle had appeared on a battlefield drenched in blood and piled with corpses, a place filled with merciless slaughter.
Every rebel soldier in the midst of the charge froze for a moment.
It was the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival.
And the southeast wind blowing through the sky was strong and steady.
Even the heavens themselves seemed to be cooperating with Su Yaoyao’s performance.
Riding the howling night wind, the enormous pink cloud of powder scattered and stretched outward.
At a terrifying speed visible to the naked eye, it spread toward the charging troops below.
In the blink of an eye, the pink powder had already enveloped the vanguard.
Next came the main force, and finally the rear supervisory troops.
The pink mist was like an invisible net, wrapping all one hundred thousand heavily armored soldiers—each brimming with killing intent—tightly within it.
It seeped into every gap. There was nowhere to hide and no way to avoid it.
The powder settled on the rebels’ cold armor and on the blades of their bloodstained weapons.
It even landed on their cheeks as they shouted with their mouths wide open.
“What the hell is this?”
“Why is it pink? Is it flour?”
“Demoness! It’s definitely some trick from that Demoness! Don’t be afraid—keep charging!”
Though the rebels were confused, the momentum of their charge did not allow them to stop.
Urged on by their officers, they continued raising their broadswords and hurled themselves recklessly toward the imperial palace gates.
The Grand General, Lin Zhenxiong, was standing atop a bronze war chariot and was drenched by the pink rain as well.
A fine layer of powder drifted slowly down onto the tip of his nose.
Lin Zhenxiong frowned and sniffed.
The instant the powder entered his nasal passages, he detected neither the pungent odor of poison he had expected nor any burning or suffocating pain.
Instead, he smelled something strange.
It was an intensely rich, almost sickeningly sweet floral fragrance.
The scent traveled up his nose and shot straight into his mind.
At that moment, Lin Zhenxiong’s cold, ruthless heart—tempered by countless battles—gave an eerie tremor.
An unprecedented sense of ease arose within him, along with an impulse to throw caution to the wind and indulge himself.
Something was wrong!
Terribly wrong!
Lin Zhenxiong was, after all, a grandmaster-level expert. His instincts were far sharper than those of an ordinary soldier.
How could there be a floral fragrance on a battlefield?
And why was it a scent capable of stirring the heart and weakening one’s willpower?
Poison!
This was poison!
This was poisonous gas released by that Demoness!
Lin Zhenxiong’s pupils contracted, and his heart felt as though it had been seized by a massive hand.
Terror crawled across his blood-spattered face.
The weapons in the Taiji Hall had already been terrifying enough.
And now, that Demoness had actually poisoned an army of one hundred thousand men!
“There’s poison! It’s poisonous gas!”
Lin Zhenxiong stamped his feet atop the war chariot, gathering all his inner power as he prepared to warn the entire army.
“Everyone, hold your breath! Cover your mouths and noses!”
He opened his mouth wide, wanting to unleash this roar that concerned the life and death of a hundred thousand people.
But just as his mouth opened, before the sound had time to surge from his throat, Lin Zhenxiong was horrified to discover that his body had stopped obeying him!
His vocal cords seemed to have been locked by some mysterious force, making it completely impossible for him to utter a sound.
That wasn’t all. The muscles in his face began to twitch violently, entirely beyond his control.
An intense, uncontrollable itch spread crazily from both his cheeks.
His face, which had been twisted into a savage mask of anger and fear, now began to slowly—and uncontrollably—pull upward.
The corners of his mouth started to rise wildly.
Higher and higher.
Until they stretched into a huge, exaggerated, almost comically brilliant smile!
Inside, Lin Zhenxiong was roaring furiously and screaming in despair.
No!
I don’t want to smile!
I’m rebelling! I’m forcing the palace to abdicate!
This is a battlefield where life and death hang in the balance! Why do I feel like smiling?!
He desperately tried to force the corners of his mouth downward, wanting to regain the dignity of the Grand General.
But no matter how he tried to suppress it with his inner force, that urge to laugh was like a flood breaking through a dam. It was completely unstoppable.
Eyes filled with fear and despair, paired with a brilliantly gleaming, utterly ridiculous smile.
This was precisely the ultimate biochemical weapon Su Yaoyao had spent several sleepless nights modifying in the Poison Doctor’s Space—
The Hallucinogenic Truth-Inducing Super-Strength Maniacal Laughter Powder!
This powder didn’t need to be swallowed directly.
Simply inhaling it—or even allowing it to come into contact with the skin—would cause it to rapidly seep into the bloodstream within three seconds.
Not only could it disrupt the nervous system, robbing people of control over their facial expressions and plunging them into uncontrollable laughter,
it could also break down their psychological defenses and induce powerful hallucinations.
It would make people blurt out the deepest secrets of their hearts—the things they least wanted to say—like beans spilling from a broken bag!
This was a nonlethal weapon of mass destruction specially designed in the interstellar era for interrogation and riot suppression.
Using it against these ancient soldiers, who had never even seen a face mask, was practically using a butcher’s cleaver to kill a chicken.
And it wasn’t just Lin Zhenxiong.
This cloud of pink mist had already spread across the entire square, covering the army of a hundred thousand.
Every rebel soldier who inhaled the powder experienced the same bizarre symptoms as their Grand General.
The instant the powder settled,
the battle cries that had shaken the heavens and struck terror into the hearts of all suddenly came to an abrupt halt.
It was as if someone had pressed the mute button.
Just a moment earlier,
the hundred thousand rebels had still been glowering ferociously, their eyes bloodshot, raising broadswords and spears as they prepared to fight to the death.
They had been straining with all their might to push the battering ram, and it was just about to smash through the palace gates.
The next moment,
all one hundred thousand soldiers stopped in their tracks at the same time.
They stood stiffly where they were, their weapons still raised high in midair.
Time itself seemed to have frozen.
Then, the expressions of these one hundred thousand rugged, powerfully built, murderous men began to twist wildly, entirely beyond their control…
