As soon as we landed, we found ourselves outside the towering walls that surrounded Anyang and facing rows of troops clashing with one another. Wei's parents, Bai, and Gang had been dropped off inside the walls, taking shelter in a much more secure temple as they immediately began to worship Wei and Meihua, boosting their spiritual energy.

There were hundreds of Shang soldiers pressing against Zhou troops, and yet they were clearly outnumbered. If there were at least 1,000 Shang soldiers, then they were drowned out by 5,000 Zhou ones.

All surrounding villages and homes were being set ablaze, vicious cries ringing out from dying families. Burning mothers pushed their children back as they fell on their knees, and the scent of burning flesh filled the smokey red air.

Yue’s face lit up in intrigue as she stared around at the destructive sight around her. I’d forgotten how, in the end, this was still her prime element—with a demon as her sponsor, there was an innate curiosity.

Wei immediately jumped back, his eyes widening at surprise. For how powerful the Shang dynasty was, a bigger army should have been gathered under the orders of Emperor Di Xin; he was clearly letting this conflict grow.

But this was all part of Daji and the Emperor’s plan. They knew that, with how righteous Wei was, he could never leave his people to die. In the end, he would only draw more attention to himself and become an easier target for persecution.

To fail now meant to lose his worshippers. They expected him to protect them, and Wei could not disappoint.

Wei’s gaze darkened as he drew his sword out from his side, shouting orders at Bai and Gang. “Emperor Di Xin refuses to handle this. We need to push back Zhou immediately. Gather as many civilians as you can!”

Suddenly, a stumbling man slammed straight into Wei before falling back. His movements were crazed and frantic, and long black hair covered his face as he clawed at his flailing body.

“I-Is that you, Your Highness?” He asked in a wild tone, his wide eyes staring at Wei from behind the curtain of hair. “‘Blessed Martial Guard of Salvation, oh, please! Save us!”

Wei’s jaw tightened as he grabbed onto the man’s shoulders tightly, trying to calm him down. “Sir, please calm down!”

Without any warning, Wei winced slightly, a result of his still burning temples. Wei was still worshiped enough not to lose any substantial spiritual energy, especially thanks to his family and servants, but he needed to hurry.

The man, however, didn’t relent despite Wei’s comfort and began to scratch and grip so tightly against Wei’s robes that dirty black handprints were left behind.

“Please! Please! Your Highness!” He screamed, growing more and more panicked as his legs buckled and a spasm went through him. His emotions became more and more powerful, and his behavior became more erratic.

Meihua’s face suddenly fell as she analyzed the frantic man’s behavior. His long hair still covered most of his figure, but foamy spit was now dripping down onto the ground from his mouth. It fell onto the ground in large, thick puddles.

Wei tried to pull his arm back, but the man threw himself onto Wei, screaming and clawing against him.

“Don’t leave me, Your Highness! Please!” His tone became more and more shrill, cracking with every word, “They’re keeping us all out of Anyang! They won’t let us through the walls!”

“S-Sir!” Wei exclaimed, gently trying to take a step back and push off the man. “Please calm down! I’ll help you, but I need you to back up!”

Bai and Gang suddenly appeared, and Bai immediately raced toward Wei and inserted himself between Wei and the crazed man, violently shoving him back.

“Get your filthy hands off of His Highness! Don’t you know who you’re talking to? How dare you grab him like that!”

Wei immediately scolded Bai for his cruel language, but the man had already frozen in shock.

Suddenly the man turned around and gestured toward the hundreds of people running from their burning homes and toward the walls of Anyang. His whole body trembled with a mixture of panic and rage.

“Everybody! His Highness is here! He’s right here!” He roared, pointing straight at Wei’s tall white frame. Hundreds of panicked civilians immediately stood up at those words and raced toward Wei.

"Your Highness!"

"Save us, please!"

"You're our god, aren't you?! How could you ever let this happen!"

"Why won't you let us into Anyang?! Are you trying to keep us out!"

With a shocked expression, Wei stared at the man with wide eyes before Bai and Gang quickly got in front of him.

“What’s wrong, Your Highness? Are you really going to run away from your own people?! Is it because we’re not from Anyang?!” He screamed in agony, grabbing his hair and ripping it out before his nails dug into his arms and legs, scratching at it violently.

“W-What are you saying? I’d never abandon any of you! You need to calm down!”

Zhige’s bright red eye was spinning in my sword frantically, its pupil a small slit. It was clearly deeply disturbed, and yet it never left my side.

I grabbed the man’s arm, already knowing what to expect, and shoved him back. “Get the fuck off of him. The hell are you trying to do? His Highness is here to help you, and you’re treating him like this? He can't do anything when you're on top of him, you fucking bastard!”

His hair finally moved out of his face after I jolted him, exposing massive black buboes erupting out of his flesh. He immediately tried to cover his face but not before all of us could see the giant black and pus-filled bubbles squirm like they were alive.

They were shaped like small body parts. One looked just like a beating black heart on the side of his face, and at our horrified expressions, he let out a shrill scream and quickly tried to cover back up.

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“I’m fine! I’m fine! There’s nothing wrong with me!” At his heightened emotions, the body parts began to move and grow. One shaped like a clawed hand began to tears it way out of his face. He screamed and tried to reassure us, but my blood had already run cold.

There was blood dripping down his face.

Blood.

I took a slow step forward. The hair on my neck stood up, and my breath was caught in my throat. It felt like all the air in my lungs had been violently squeezed out.

“Zhige,” I whispered, bringing the blade up and suddenly cutting the man’s head off. Blood sprayed out of the wound in an arc, and the blood had taken on such a dark color it nearly matched the black welts covering him.

He was bleeding.

Wei cried out at my action and quickly grabbed onto me, pulling me back, but I remained completely fixated on the sight in front of me.

It wasn’t the grotesque wounds growing out of his body that disturbed me. It was the fact that, as I watched his lifeless body on the ground and head roll all around, he was still there.

He didn’t turn to black ash.

“No…no, no, no,” I whispered in a strained tone under my breath. I had my suspicions after the failure of ‘Editor’s Pen,’ but how was I supposed to approach the rest of this arc?

The feeling of Wei’s hands on my body sent shivers down my spine. Karma couldn’t have permitted this.

As I slowly looked up, Yang’s tense and rigid body told me he had realized the same thing as I had.

This wasn’t a dungeon room anymore. These were ghosts either.

We had been integrated into Wei’s timeline. Then everything I did now… it actually mattered. And if I still had my skills and Observer notifications, then somehow, Chang was here.

Scathing Reviewer activated!

And I could change Wei’s fate, too.

“Wei, forget about these people,” I grabbed his arm and began pulling him back, “They’ll get you killed! Did you see that disease? You can’t catch it. Who knows how it spreads?”

I hadn’t expected him to listen to me, but I needed to get him out of here. Forget the awakening, I could save him now. God damnit, I could save Meihua, too!

Yang looked around for Meihua to warn her, but she was nowhere to be seen. Bai was trying to tear me back, but Gang hesitated, seeming to agree with me after seeing the state of the corpse.

“Wait, Peijin,” Yang shouted in an increasingly panicked voice, “Where’s Meihua? Didn’t she say we’d stay here to settle the situation with Zhou?”

But before any of us could gain a further grasp on the situation, a flood of Shang civilians darted forward, having spotted Wei’s glimmery robes from afar. Some had faint splotches over their skin, but they did their best to hide it.

Wei quickly turned to Bai and Gang. “Are we not allowing them into Anyang because of this…” he hesitated as he stared at the brutalized man on the ground, “disease? Is that true?”

This strange “disease” was the result of a mix of demonic energy in people. The limbs and organs hanging off of their flesh was the early formation of an entire demonic entity. If left, they would eventually grow and overtake their host, bursting out of their body like a twisted parasite.

I cut off Bai and Gang, taking a much firmer stance. “Yes. Your Highness, there is nothing you can do to save these people. Defend the wall surrounding Anyang and kill Daji. Nothing else matters.”

His face flared with an indiscernible emotion. “Nothing? I can’t just let my people die! There has to be some way to fix this. Who could even release this disease?”

“Do you really have to ask me a question like that? You know who it is! You will never be able to cure it, only smother it!”

With an ignorant sense of justice clouded by his youth, Wei pressed a hand firmly against his chest. “Then I’ll do something! At least I can try!”

Wei didn’t give me another chance to speak before he drew out his sword and leapt into the air with grace, twirling and spinning before landing in the midst of the Zhou troops. He cleanly cut through them with ease and moved through them as if they were nothing but statues.

Yang grabbed onto me, forcing me to face him. “Meihua reentered Anyang! I saw her cross the wall!”

No wonder it sounded like she was lying earlier. She planned on handling Daji herself and letting Wei deal with the battling.

At the sight of Wei defeating hundreds and then thousands of troops himself, the panicked civilians slowly calmed and began cheering for him.

“Praise the Blessed Martial Guard of Salvation!”

“Thank you, oh, thank you!”

“I told you His Highness would come! He’s here to save us all!”

I grimaced at their words, and I ignored the hundreds of Observer messages that popped up criticizing me.

Observer ‘Socrates’: Jia Li, you were too cruel when you were younger.

A good author had to kill their characters. And if they survived, a good author had to break them down into a shell of empty words before building them back off of the backs of the characters around them—all of whom would, eventually, meet the same fate.

And yet, watching Wei at this moment, a blazing light of strength and passion and ignorance, I felt…

The Zhou troops began to retreat in fear. The mere sight of Wei was enough to send dozens of them sprinting for their lives and hundreds more frozen on the battlefield. Civilians collapsed out of relief before they began to sob.

Gang turned to me, a very critical and distasteful look in his eyes as he seemed to analyze me. “You.”

“My name is Peijin.”

“You need to get His Highness out of here. I don’t know what you know, but whatever it is, His Highness must leave. Even now, he’s making an utter spectacle of himself when he should be hiding.”

Bai immediately barked back, “Don’t doubt His Highness! He’s better than all the divinities in the heavenly realm! I dare them to try and strike him down!”

Gang hissed back, “And you think Wei will win with his temples burning down? Look at this plague. You’re going to have demons tearing through corpse after corpse if you try to save any of them.”

Yue suddenly stood straight up, her entire body going rigid as she whipped her head around. Her whole body shuddered as she sensed a foreboding feeling.

An eye suddenly opened up on the side of a house, and I quickly threw Zhige at it, cutting off Daji’s connection. But Yue grabbed my arm and spun me around, pointing behind the Anyang wall.

“She’s behind there. I feel her coming.”

Demons all had good senses for one another’s energy as a result from their constant bickering and hatred for each other.

With a loud explosion, a massive hole was blown through the Anyang wall, bricks flying all over the field. Meihua's body was violently thrown by the impact as she skid across the ground, her sword wrapping itself on debris and trees to try and slow her.

Immediately, countless infected civilians booked it for the wall, ready to escape into Anyang.