Every appearance of the red giant snake brought casualties to the commoners and destruction to their homes.
Mu Tianyou led his armies to hunt it down, but the giant snake was too fast and too strong. Every time, it vanished before he could arrive, and the people began to panic.
“This is a heavenly punishment!”
“The monarch must be lacking in virtue to have brought this snake upon us!”
“May the gods of Central Province show mercy! May Lord Qing Lu save us!”
Rumors spread like wildfire, and the hearts of the people were filled with dread.
In the winter of the eleventh year of Tianyou, Mu Tianyou finally found his opportunity.
One night, the giant snake appeared again to attack the Royal Capital, but the ambush Mu Tianyou had set outside the city worked.
As soon as the giant snake emerged from the ground, it was trapped by countless vines and arrays.
Mu Tianyou held his longsword and descended from the sky, striking at the giant snake's vital point.
Sword light flashed as cyan divine light adhered to the blade, transforming into a sharp sword qi.
The sword qi slashed into the giant snake, opening a deep wound. Crimson blood erupted, splashing onto Mu Tianyou's face, scalding hot.
The giant snake hissed in agony and turned its head to look at him.
His reflection was mirrored in those amber vertical pupils.
Mu Tianyou saw that look again.
Grief.
And chaos.
The giant snake was like a person struggling desperately to wake up, yet unable to do so.
But at that moment, Mu Tianyou only thought of the innocent people burned to death, the destroyed cities and homes, and the terrified faces of countless living beings.
“Regardless of what you are,” he gripped his sword hilt tightly, “I must kill you.”
He charged forward, engaging the giant snake in battle.
That battle lasted for three days and three nights.
The giant snake's power was immense; a swing of its tail could shatter mountain rocks, and its breath could scorch the earth.
Mu Tianyou's body was scorched black, over a dozen of his bones were broken, and his internal organs were severely injured. He fought until he was nearly exhausted.
He picked himself up time and again, charging forward repeatedly as the cyan divine light flickered on his body, desperately repairing his injuries.
Finally, at twilight on the third day, Mu Tianyou found his chance.
In the brief moment the giant snake gasped after breathing fire, Mu Tianyou poured all his strength into his sword and pierced the snake's eye.
The blade entered through the eye socket, transfixed the skull, and emerged from the back of the head.
The giant snake's body stiffened, and then it slowly collapsed.
Boom—!
The body, a hundred zhang long, slammed into the ground, gouging out a deep trench and sending clouds of dust into the air.
Mu Tianyou knelt on the ground, gasping for breath.
He looked at the corpse of the giant snake and its eyes, which were gradually losing their luster.
The grief and chaos in those eyes were replaced by a sense of calm.
It was as if it had finally found liberation.
Mu Tianyou stood up and staggered toward the giant snake's corpse. Following Wan Xiu's instructions, he organized men to begin sealing the great snake.
The sealing process went smoothly.
The giant snake's corpse was dragged into the underground city and sealed beneath one of the two gates.
Mu Tianyou personally carved the final character into the stone wall and the stone door, then activated it with divine light.
The characters glowed with a ghostly blue light, which seeped into the ground to lock the giant snake's corpse firmly in place.
The moment the seal was completed, Mu Tianyou suddenly felt a wave of weakness.
He knew he had overextended his divine light.
But he did not care, only letting out a long sigh of relief. “Finally... it's over.”
...
In the first month of spring, the twelfth year of Tianyou, Scarlet Flame Mountain stopped erupting. Water began to seep into the marsh, and the parched riverbeds became moist once again.
The commoners cheered and shared the news with one another.
In the sixth month of summer that same year, only five months had passed since the red-banded giant snake was sealed.
Mu Tianyou was in his study reviewing memorials. Outside the window, the cicadas chirped noisily, and waves of heat surged through the lattice, making the air so stifling it was hard to breathe.
Then he heard the first scream, coming from outside the palace, sharp and piercing.
An attendant soon arrived in a hurry to report that trouble had broken out in the city. A large number of people had been infected with a plague. Before the attendant could finish speaking, his own skin began to fester.
His skin peeled off in patches like burnt paper, and his flesh rotted, pus flowing down his body.
Mu Tianyou took a step back, his face turning ashen. “Summon the Head of the Imperial Medical Bureau!”
The Head of the Imperial Medical Bureau arrived quickly, but upon seeing the corpse that no longer looked human, his legs gave way, and he collapsed to his knees.
In the distance, the streets of the city were already filled with rising cries and wails.
The plague had come too quickly, like a nightmare that dragged people into the abyss before they could react.
On the first day, a dozen cases were found in the city.
On the second day, there were hundreds.
On the third day, thousands.
By the seventh day, not a single healthy person could be found in the entire Royal Capital.
Those infected festered all over, rotting layer by layer from skin to muscle, and from muscle to bone.
The physicians of the Imperial Medical Bureau tried every method—decoctions, acupuncture, medicinal baths, talisman water, and spiritual power purges—but none of it worked.
The plague seemed sentient, burrowing into the human body and refusing to leave, taking root and sprouting within until the person rotted into dregs from the inside out.
In less than a month, the entire Jiao Mu Kingdom had fallen.
From the Royal Capital to the borders, from government offices to the countryside, death was everywhere.
Some villages were completely wiped out, with no one left even to collect the corpses.
Bodies rotted in houses, on roads, and in the fields, turning into pus that seeped into the soil, staining the entire land black.
Mu Tianyou's father, Mu Jinghe, was forced to take command once again. He personally led an army to purge the plague zones, setting out from the Royal Capital with the last thirty thousand elite troops, heading south to find the source of the plague while clearing the affected areas.
But as they marched, their numbers dwindled.
The plague was not picky about its victims; it ignored status and cultivation, burrowing into anyone it found.
Some tried to use spiritual power to force the plague out of their bodies, but as soon as they circulated their power, they instantly dissolved into pus, without even having time to scream.
By the fifteenth day, less than five thousand of the thirty thousand elite troops remained.
Mu Jinghe stood on a hillside, looking at the ragged, festering soldiers behind him.
They were exhausted, but none fell. They all stood, looking at him.
“Your Majesty, the Retired Emperor,” a young soldier suddenly spoke. “I have one thing I wish to ask.”
Mu Jinghe nodded. “Ask.”
“Can we... still go back?”
Mu Jinghe looked at him, at that young face.
There were several sores on his face oozing pus, but his eyes were bright, just as they had been when he first joined the army.
Mu Jinghe was silent for a long time before he said, “We can.”
The young soldier smiled. “That is good then. I still wanted to go back and see my mother.”
Mu Jinghe said nothing, turned around, and continued forward.
That night, they encountered a horde of hundred corpse patchworks.
They emerged from the ground in dense, overwhelming numbers, surging forward like a tide.
Those things were completely rotted and emitted a foul stench. Some looked like humans, some like beasts, and some were unrecognizable masses of rotting flesh crawling on the ground.
They poured out from the earth incessantly, as if they could never be killed off.
The battle lasted throughout the night.
By dawn, the hillside was covered in fragments of rotting flesh and the corpses of soldiers.
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