Crown Prince of the Empire, I quit!

In the distance was the blockade line heavily guarded by the Northern Wise King and a field of withered ridges that had been deliberately infected with disease.

Beside him were countless survivors hiding among the ruins, their eyes burning with unwillingness and hatred.

The wind blew through the charred wooden beams, wailing like a ghost.

The fire did not go out, but was suppressed by the blood and wind, becoming lower and more intense.

The coldest "poisonous wind" in the north has quietly arrived.

The room was filled with the scent of sandalwood mixed with the dust of the northern border. The fire made Qin Ming's figure on the wall look particularly tall and lonely.

In the silence, the black piece that fell in the corner of the chessboard seemed not to have fallen between the patterns on the board, but to have been embedded in an invisible battlefield of smoke.

Outside the door, Li Zuoyou leaned forward slightly, like a fully drawn bow.

Without saying a word, his figure suddenly faded in the light and shadow coming through the window lattice.

As if blending into the stagnant air.

There was only the light and extremely fast sound of footsteps stepping on the golden brick floor outside the hall, which quickly faded away almost inaudibly.

The door opened and closed silently, bringing in a gust of cool breeze, and then closed silently again.

Li Zuoyou walked quickly but not hurriedly, and his voice was low and clear, penetrating the noise and solemnity of the Datong Sect.

"Team A!"

Several equally silent soldiers approached immediately, their footsteps as consistent as if they were stepped by the same person.

"Seal off the guesthouse outside Yankang Gate. All members of the Shenmu delegation must be closely monitored and not allowed to leave. All boxes and packages that have not yet left the capital must be searched and reported, every inch! Use the fastest horses and the most experienced poison detectors."

He paused, his eyes sweeping sharply towards the direction of Yankang Gate:

"Escort? Ask them to come out."

The word "please" was decisive and chilling.

When the heavy palace door closed again, blocking out the last ray of sunlight outside the palace.

Li Zuoyu's figure had long since disappeared into the deep shadows of the towering palace walls.

Qin Ming's gaze finally withdrew from the void and slowly turned to the smooth golden brick floor where the grass seeds had just fallen.

He tapped his fingers on the cold armrest.

Three eunuchs in gray clothes emerged from the ground, their movements silent but surprisingly fast.

A basin of high-quality quicklime that had been prepared long ago was brought up, and the snow-white powder with a pungent smell poured down, covering the gold brick that was no different from the surrounding ones.

The heavy hammer struck down, and the gold brick shattered.

The snow-white color of lime covered the broken brick chips and poured deeper into the cracks in the newly dug soil.

Hammer after hammer, dust hovered in the hall like a stagnant poisonous cloud.

Qin Ming sat upright in the chair, motionless, staring at the deepening pit, his eyes heavier than the hammer's.

He silently repeated his decision: "...The enemy has used poison. Warn them again, and be quick!"

Every word seemed to carry iron filings, sharpening his will.

In the cold wind of the north, Toru Khan, the prime minister of the Shenmu Kingdom, wrapped himself tightly in his sable fur coat.

The old face was tense.

Outside the car window was a disgusting, barren wasteland, dotted with unmelted embers like black snow.

"The ghost wind froze the east river, and the Zhu Family Fort... Liu Yueli's people... the meat cellar... is filled..."

An attendant came closer, breathing rapidly.

His words were broken and hushed by the cold and fear.

The fragmentary information pieced together the bloody "cleansing" being carried out by the Northern Wise King.

Toluhan's wrinkles twitched violently.

His withered fingers tightly grasped the fur edging the sable coat.

His cloudy gaze passed through the shaking car window and focused on the eerie outline of a lead-gray barrier in the distance, like a giant beast lurking there.

That is the Frost Edge Barrier of the Northern Wise King.

On the edge of the ruins of Zhujiabao, the makeshift refugee camp was shivering in the cold wind.

The charred remains of beams and broken walls are like ghost claws piercing the sky, supporting a dome of filth and despair.

The air was filled with the stench of scorched earth, low-quality charcoal smoke, and human and animal feces.

There was also a faint smell of corruption, as if rising from a frozen quagmire.

Liu Yueli struggled to push aside the tent curtain that was frozen hard by mud and ice, and the biting cold and the familiar foul smell immediately hit her face.

It's colder outside than inside.

In the corner, on a "bed" made of thin wooden boards.

Lying there was the only surviving intelligence scout from Changbai Mountain, a short man named Yang Erzhu.

At this moment, his sallow face seemed to be covered with a layer of gray death.

His lips were cracked and covered with a strange purple-blue color.

His breath was frighteningly weak, and every breath he took felt like he was swallowing a knife with all his strength.

What was even more alarming was that on his neck and forearms, which were exposed outside his tattered military uniform, the dark red flesh sores had begun to fester, oozing out sticky pus with a sweet and fishy smell.

In the dim light, these sores were faintly covered with a layer of gray frost particles.

"Liu...Master Liu..."

When Yang Erzhu heard the noise, he struggled to open his eyelids a little.

His distracted gaze barely focused on Liu Yueli's face.

He didn't dare say anything else, but his throat rolled spasmodically, trying to force a smile to comfort the other person, but it only distorted the sores on his face.

The people lying on the other broken beds in the tent were in a similar situation.

The low, intermittent moans and the heart-wrenching coughs that came one after another gnawed at one's nerves like a blunt knife.

A woman huddled in another pile of rags, her skinny hands tightly covering her mouth, staring at Liu Yueli's movements, her eye sockets sunken, and a tear silently slid down her dirty collar.

Liu Yueli's heart felt like it was being tightly grasped by an icy iron hand.

A paralyzing feeling of suffocation made her sway slightly.

She forced herself to calm down, walked quickly to Yang Erzhu's bed, and leaned over to take a closer look.

She was careful not to touch it directly, using the edge of a relatively clean piece of coarse cloth.

Just get closer and smell the smell coming from the sores.

The sweet and fishy smell mixed with the rotten smell of thawing frozen meat was much stronger than before.

It penetrates into the nasal cavity, bringing with it a needle-like chill.

Her fingers twisted unconsciously. The strips of cloth Chang Baishan had torn off to wrap her frostbite had long since worn out, and now her wrists were wrapped in layers of rags that had long lost their color, each layer soaked through, with hard black blood ice forming around the edges.

"Xiao An!"

Liu Yueli sat up suddenly, her voice slightly hoarse with excitement, but it sounded particularly clear in the depressing camp.

"Seal the corners of the tents tightly! Everyone, listen up! No more dumping filth into that depression to the east! Pour all the dirty water into the nearest stone pit in the leeward direction!"

She spoke rapidly, with an unmistakable urgency.

The boy named Xiao An got up in a panic, using his hands and feet to grab balls of rags to fill the holes in the tent.

"This evil sore...is a plague!"

Liu Yueli gritted her teeth and almost squeezed out these words

"A plague that crawls from filth and... the dead! To touch its breath... to come near rotting corpses... is to die!"