A suffocating purple fog rolled down the river valley like a tidal wave of bruised velvet.
Where the necrotic miasma touched the riverbank, the green reeds turned black and curled into brittle ash. Fish floated belly-up to the surface of the shallows, while three hundred and twenty-five thousand allied soldiers clutched their damp cloth face-coverings in sheer terror.
Every cultivator on the Central Continent knew the horrific reputation of the Imperial Censorate’s blood-lotus plague.
Forty years ago, an entire frontier prefecture of two million souls had refused to pay the decennial blood-toll.
The imperial inquisitors had deployed this exact necrotic smoke through the valley winds. Within three hours, every man, woman, and child had dissolved into foul puddle water, leaving behind nothing but empty silk robes and bleached bone fragments.
It was an executioner’s weapon, designed to slaughter armies without damaging palaces or farmland.
Down at the river landing, twenty Conclave elders scrambled toward the moored flagship barge.
Their boots thudded against the wooden dock in a frantic, splashing stampede. Patriarch Shen and Patriarch Mu led the charge, their faces grey with panic as the toxic cloud crept within two miles of the allied camp.
