Chapter Sixty-Two: The Mad King

Let us set aside for now the thunderous witch hunts in Dongyang and other regions.

On the land of Xinghan, upon the war-torn fields of Xuzhou, a strange white mist crept in. The one hundred thousand-strong army under the command of the Qing Regency Prince—including its elite Daoist and Buddhist soldiers, mercenaries, old and new troops, and conscripted men—was seized by terror without exception.

The sources of this panic were manifold.

There were the martial artists who moved like ghosts and mountain spirits within the fog, striking invisibly from nowhere. There was the endless maze of mist, a labyrinth with no exit no matter how one walked. There were the colossal, demonic silhouettes looming at the fog's edge, half-seen, half-imagined.

But the greatest terror came from those beside them.

Before the martial artists even began their slaughter, before any organized massacre, this so-called army of one hundred thousand—little more than a disorderly mob—had already been thrown into chaos. The Five-Mile Fog itself had no means to cloud the mind; even as Lan Yi, high above, mischievously bombarded them with microwaves to agitate their spirits, such minor disturbances could be ignored by ordinary men with a bit of resolve.

Yet the fear of those at their side—the horror of seeing comrades dragged into the fog, the inability to trust, the suspicion of betrayal by their own officers who might barter them away as pawns—all this drove these already anxious souls to the brink of collapse.

After all, they faced immortals.

What madness had possessed them, to dare oppose beings beyond mortal ken? How could they possibly secure forgiveness now?

This rabble was rife with internal conflict, bound by its own hierarchies of contempt.

You call me a northern brute; I call you a southern coward. You discriminate against and suppress the Han; I eye the barbarians with hostility. You spit in my pot; I fling filth into your bowl. Loyalty to the warlord was as fickle as the wind, with shifting allegiances and countless factions.

And under the regent's passive indifference, the Northern Army led by Yuan Peng bore the brunt of the turmoil, gradually becoming the scapegoat of the panicked mob.

They were, after all, the elite.

The proud scorned the rabble, bullying and robbing them on the march, relying on their officers to shield them. Such grievances, insignificant before, now became the spark to an explosive powder keg.

From high above, the old demon Lan Yi looked down upon the swirling mist as if watching a war-game, finding amusement in the scene. He crooked a finger at a particularly noisy spot.

At that very moment, the tension in the Qing army reached its breaking point—shoving and cursing, rifles leveled and insults traded—when suddenly, every man flinched as one.

Bang!

A stray shot fired. In the stunned silence that followed, two groups stared at each other—shocked, despairing, fearful—yet more than anything, they became feral. Restraint snapped. The beast within demanded release.

“Damn it all! The Northern Army is killing Southerners!”

“The Tartars are slaughtering the Han!”

“Rebellion! Rebellion! The Han dogs are rebelling!”

“Down with the Qing fiends! Hail to the Immortal Master!”

In an instant, a cacophony of a dozen or more chaotic slogans erupted throughout the camp of a hundred thousand. Gunfire crackled in the camps that immediately collapsed into anarchy, bullets mowing down the unsuspecting, blood spurting in fountains. The barracks turned to a living hell, thick with gunsmoke and carnage.

Lan Yi could not help but laugh aloud.

He had only engineered a single misfire, and the final obstacle to the unity of North and South had dissolved in a frenzy of mutual slaughter, as though they were mortal enemies fated never to coexist.

He had set out bored, seeking rivers of blood. Now, he found himself amidst rivers of blood in the most literal sense—hundreds, even thousands, dying in moments, blood streaming from their bodies, pooling into crimson lakes that merged and flowed into the canal, dyeing its waters red.

And the mist, steamed by this blood, became a crimson fog.

Now, this was truly a hell on earth, bathed in blood.

The martial artists at the frontlines stood dumbfounded.

Feeble and pathetic, chickens and dogs at each other’s throats—these, who once lorded over them, basking in their own glory, boasting of wisdom and virtue, of benefiting the people, of heroic resistance even in defeat by foreign powers? In truth, they were lower than the filth on the ground.

Many martial artists, in that moment, suddenly realized: aside from Immortal Master Lan Yi, not even the emperor himself was worth a second thought.

Now, then—

A dangerous, predatory grin spread across the faces of the martial artists.

Meanwhile, in the central command tent, amid the crossfire—no one knowing who was shooting whom—Yuan Peng, protected by his personal guards, dashed in, clutching his cap. This high-ranking official, afflicted with a limp, stormed in and addressed the regent with righteous fury.

“Your Highness, why are you not quelling the camp mutiny?”

Yuan Peng was beside himself with rage.

His Northern Army had taken grievous losses, with their own men inexplicably turning upon each other. Some squads had been wiped out entirely!

“Why should I?” the Regent replied, entirely untroubled, as though the chaos outside had nothing to do with him.

Yuan Peng was momentarily stunned, glaring at the prince.

This noble, elevated by the gentry in a time of despair, seemed somehow changed.

“Have you thrown in with the demon?” Yuan Peng was startled by his own sudden suspicion.

“What? Ha!” The Regent burst into harsh, bitter laughter. “If I had truly joined Lan Yi, you’d all be dead without even knowing how it happened.”

He clapped his hands, his laughter thick with venom and rage.

“Since your teacher’s time, you lackeys have done nothing but suck the blood of the court, growing fat and red-faced, taking concubines into your eighties. Now, with the dynasty on the verge of collapse, you want to abandon ship, even take the helm yourselves?”

Rising slowly, the Regent’s expression grew twisted and fierce. He was a capable prince, and precisely because of that, he despaired—his own dynasty could not be saved, yet must now be usurped by his servants.

If the situation was untenable, then so be it for everyone.

All those supposed masters and their ridiculous curses were mere theater—acts he performed deliberately, so that the one remaining force capable of usurping the dynasty, the Northern Army, would follow him southward, straight into the iron jaws of those demonic martial artists who could never be defeated.

He could accept defeat.

But he would never let his household slaves win.

This, above all, was the principle of the imperial clan.

At least, the Regent had to admit respect for Lan Yi.

Here was a true immortal—a man who, in battle at Pu Hai and Jinling, had sunk the Westerners’ great ships in open confrontation, driven their armies into rout. To be defeated by such a being was no disgrace.

But Yuan Peng? What was he but a traitor, a turncoat, a faithless, dishonorable wretch? Did he, with his queue still uncut, dare covet the empire?

“You—you—you! Madness!” Yuan Peng, choked with fury, spat up blood and collapsed to the ground, ashen-faced.

It was over. All was lost.

His entire power base was trapped within this bloody fog. Once this battle was done, there would be nothing left in the north to halt the martial artists’ march; not even the people of Dongyang could withstand the wrath of their vanguard, which might well sweep to the very edge of the sea, and perhaps even beyond—to encompass the whole world.