The battlefield was no longer a place of war.
It had become a unilateral 'slaughterhouse'.
Crunch, squelch!
Grotesque sounds of rupture blanketed the fortress.
Yuan Shao's pride, the Chimera Legion—once called the perfect biological weapons—staggered as if dancing in place.
"Grrrr...!"
"Squeeeal!"
They did not attack the enemy before them.
Instead, they began to tear at their own bodies.
A bear's arm grafted onto a chimera's left shoulder strangled the neck of the host orc.
A wolf's head fused to a stomach chewed on its master's thigh, and forcibly stitched intestines rejected the life force, tearing through the abdominal wall and spilling out.
The control over Life had been usurped by the higher concept:
The act Yuan Shao believed to be 'creation' was, in truth, nothing more than a 'desecration' of stitched-together corpse fragments.
The moment the Death Lord opened his eyes, all those fragments of corpses obeyed their original master, 'Death'.
Cao Cao twitched his finger as if conducting this pandemonium.
His chilly, necrotic green gaze looked beyond the battlefield, piercing through to the magnificent citadel far to the north, Ye Fortress.
"Now, shall we check on the main body?"
*
At the same time, the Audience Chamber of Ye Fortress.
The Ruler of the North, Yuan Shao, was lifting a wine glass with trembling hands.
Red wine rippled inside the top-tier crystal glass.
"W-What is this..."
Through the magic communication sphere displayed before him, the disastrous scene of his army self-destructing was being broadcast live.
The sight of his 'beautiful children,' whom he had painstakingly created, devouring each other and exploding.
It was a complete negation of Yuan Shao's aesthetics.
"Why... why aren't they listening to my orders? Why is the control...!"
Yuan Shao hysterically threw the wine glass to the floor.
Shatter!
Red liquid stained the floor.
It was then.
Thud.
The air in the audience chamber settled heavily.
The massive shadow guarding Yuan Shao's back.
Yuan Shao's most cherished masterpiece, possessing an output on a different dimension from the replicas sent to the battlefield—the original Wen Chou—moved.
"Yes, Wen Chou! You go and wipe out those lowly scum! Bring me Cao Cao's head..."
Yuan Shao shouted, turning around.
But Wen Chou did not move.
The monster, massive as a mountain, simply lowered its head, looking down at its creator.
The dozens of golden artificial eyes glowing through the helmet slits.
Their light went out.
And in their place, the Blue Flames of Hell ignited.
[...]
"...Wen Chou?"
The blood drained from Yuan Shao's face.
Cold sweat born of terror trickled down his pale blue skin.
He instinctively stepped back.
"Get... get away! I am your master! You drank my blood! My orders..."
Crash!
Wen Chou's gigantic hand seized Yuan Shao's entire body.
The magnificent golden bio-armor crumpled like a sheet of paper.
"Aaaargh!"
Yuan Shao's scream rang through the audience chamber.
But Wen Chou showed no mercy.
The thing opened the massive bio-mouth located on its stomach.
The maw, dripping with disgusting acidic saliva, opened wide toward Yuan Shao.
[A gift... from the master...]
Cao Cao's mocking voice flowed from the monster's mouth.
"No... No... Aaaaaack!"
Crunch.
Yuan Shao couldn't even finish his scream.
He was stuffed alive into the belly of the monster he had created.
His noble lineage, the pride of a prestigious family, his obsession with the perfect body.
In the end, he became nothing more than a handful of meat, chewed and swallowed.
The audience chamber of Ye Fortress, once shining with gold and marble, instantly turned into a castle of screams and death.
*
Back at the frontier fortress.
The red monsters covering the southern wall had collapsed on their own.
But the situation for those who had breached the northern wall was different.
"...!"
Gongsun Zan suppressed the fear rising to his chin and assessed the battlefield.
The army of his rival, Yuan Shao, had destroyed itself in vain.
Even with his Ghost Legion, immune to physical attacks, he could not guarantee safety against that bizarre 'Power of Death'.
His instincts were screaming a warning.
If he didn't flee right now, even his soul would be annihilated.
"It's a trap! All forces, retreat!"
Gongsun Zan raised his silver spear and shouted the order like a scream.
"Break through the walls! They cannot catch us! We are ghosts!"
Neigh-!
The White Horse Phantom Cavalry turned their steeds.
The silver-white ghost cavalry galloped back toward the northern wall they had entered through.
Their speed, ignoring the laws of physics, was like light.
At this rate, they could phase through the wall and escape the battlefield in an instant.
But.
"Where do you think you're going?"
A low voice crawling from the ground caught their ankles.
Xiahou Dun, standing atop the corpse of the monster modeled after Wen Chou.
The
He was not looking at objects in the material world, but precisely targeting the coordinates of the fleeing souls.
"Rats."
Sharing Xiahou Dun's vision, Cao Cao clenched his hand violently toward the empty air.
[Soul Shackles]
Boom-!
The earth turned black, and thousands of black spectral hands surged up from the ground.
They had no physical form.
They were shadows reaching out only to snatch souls.
"Let go! We cannot be cut! Pass through the wall!"
Gongsun Zan's subordinates screamed.
Their bodies, attempting to pass straight through the wall, snagged in mid-air with a thud.
Black hands wrapped around the ankles of ghost horses and the necks of soldiers, dragging them down to the ground.
Their phasing ability was sealed.
Their immaterial bodies were forcibly given 'substance'.
Cao Cao smiled coldly and slammed his hand down.
"If you're caught, you must be torn apart."
Screech!
Tens of thousands of skeleton soldiers waiting on the ground latched onto the ghosts like a swarm of ants finding prey.
Now, blades pierced them, and teeth sank in.
"Argh! Aaaargh! My leg! My soul!"
"Help me! I'm being cut! I can feel the blade!"
The noble silver-white afterimages that had embroidered the battlefield were instantly swept away and vanished into a wave of black skeletons.
It was not a battle.
It was the sentence of 'Absolute Death', which neither the living nor the dead could defy.
* * *
Screams, battle cries, the rough breathing of living things.
Everything disappeared.
Only one sound remained on the battlefield.
Clatter, clack.
The hollow friction of dry bones hitting each other whenever the wind blew.
All living enemies were dead.
And all dead enemies had risen again to become Cao Cao's soldiers.
In that strange and perfect silence, a man took a step.
Thud, crunch.
With every step, the sound of ribs and skulls crushing underfoot could be heard.
But Cao Cao didn't care.
He slowly ascended the massive hill piled white in the center of the battlefield, the 'Mountain of Corpses and Bones'.
In his hand, he held a head—helmet gone, flesh torn, in a gruesome state.
It was the skull of Yuan Shao, once called the Ruler of the North.
Standing at the peak of the mountain of corpses, Cao Cao looked down at his feet.
An endless gray plain.
What filled it was no longer weak humans bleeding red blood.
An 'Immortal Legion' that knew no pain, forgot fear, and would never betray.
The perfect army he had longed for was right there.
Cao Cao lifted Yuan Shao's skull in his hand.
In the empty eye sockets and crushed mouth, black blood that had burst from Wen Chou's stomach pooled like wine.
"..."
Cao Cao brought the skull to his lips without hesitation.
The fishy, cold blood of the loser flowed down his throat.
It was a toast to victory, and a ritual announcing the end of the era of the living.
Thud.
Cao Cao indifferently tossed the empty skull to the ground.
That was the signal.
Boom-!
First, the giant black iron knight lined up at the foot of the mountain.
Xiahou Dun knelt on one knee.
Only the blue soul fire burning in his left eye held color in this monochrome world.
Rumble-!
Following him, the elite Skeleton Knights known as the Tiger and Leopard Cavalry, and the undead legion numbering in the hundreds of thousands, all knelt in unison.
The earth trembled at that massive wave.
Cao Cao leaned back onto the cold throne made of bones and corpses.
His gaze turned toward the eastern sky.
It was time for dawn.
But the sun beyond the horizon could not rise.
The thick demonic energy of death exuded by Cao Cao covered the sky, killing even the sunlight into gray.
A dawn where the sun would never rise.
An ambiguous and chilly time where light and darkness mixed.
Cao Cao's lips slowly parted.
"From this moment forth, the North shall serve me, the living and the dead as one."
A chilly Necrotic Green glow beamed from his eyes, illuminating the dark sky.
It was the signal flare announcing the birth of a new empire.
"This place is..."
Cao Cao proclaimed in a low voice.
"Wei (魏)."
On that day, the era of 'Twilight', which would never lift across the entire North, began.