Using his body to become a talisman, he charged in defiance into the Ninth Heaven.

As that figure within the rolling thunder shattered, flesh and blood dissolving, it was as though a wisp of phantom light flew out from within the cocoon.

Along with those white banners one after another and the countless slips of talisman paper hanging from them, they shattered bolts of lightning one by one, and shot straight into the low-hanging leaden clouds in the sky. The leaden clouds fell silent, then violently contracted, and then exploded.

A mass of leaden cloud was suddenly torn apart, then collapsed and scattered in all directions, layer after layer, ring after ring, receding ten thousand li away, beyond the limits of sight.

And this stretch of ten thousand li became indescribably gloomy, yet hollow; vaguely, it was as if a thin veil of mist shrouded the four directions. Within the mist, talismans flickered in and out of sight, and it was as if there were voices, taking the sky as their boundary, echoing back and forth.

"If Heaven will not let me live, then I shall perish together with Heaven..."

"..."

Within the Four Prefectures and Seven States, the hundreds of thousands of commoners sunk in slumber were all startled by this voice, expressions appearing on their faces such as had never been seen before.

It was as if someone had pried open their skulls by force and poured in some sounds they had never heard in all their lives.

"What happened?"

And at the very same time that this furious roar was echoing through the dreams of hundreds of thousands of commoners, in Prince Changping's army, likewise countless people suddenly felt their scalps tighten, some unimaginable oppression pressing down over their hearts.

One after another they lifted their heads to look toward the sky. The leaden clouds had scattered; they could see nothing at all, yet precisely within that void, it was as if something that shocked the soul had appeared.

And now, Prince Changping was hosting a banquet for Old Masters of the various great clans and Chaebol, having agreed that once this redundant front was broken, he would use it as a base to advance on Mingzhou, and then link Mingzhou, East Ping Prefecture City and the region of Qing Prefecture into one, as the foundation for seizing the realm.

In the midst of banter and jest, all were incomparably confident, when all of a sudden a gust of yin wind blew in from outside. The dozens of candles burning within the tent all at once flickered, then went out with a puff.

Uniform as a drill, eerie to the extreme.

It was as if dozens of invisible ghosts had floated into the tent along with that gust of yin wind, and then, aiming at the candles, blown them out all at once.

The hall that had been filled with laughter and conversation fell silent.

In the pitch-black tent, Prince Changping and the various Family Heads of the great clans and Chaebol looked at one another, all struck by a causeless panic.

They felt as though, in a muddled haze, countless people's curses and accusations were sounding by their ears.

"Someone is casting a curse?"

Though Prince Changping was a grasshead king, he also hailed from the jianghu, and his experience was broad. After a brief start, he immediately slapped the table and leapt up.

He bellowed in rage: "How dare you—this is the army camp, the murderous qi of the troops can break All Techniques; who dares cast a curse into the army?"

In that instant, he even felt it was absurdly laughable, and he was about to order the troops to be roused, to seize that reckless wretch who dared cast a curse, or else command his men to drill and, relying on the murderous qi of the army, cause the curse-caster to be backlashed and die.

He had ten thousand reasons not to fear the one casting the curse, yet the more he shouted like this, the more the hair on his heart stood on end, and a nameless terror rose within him.

He strained to widen his eyes, wanting to see clearly everything around him, but the more he looked, the more bewildered he became.

The advisors and Old Masters of the great clans who had just now been clinking cups with him and laughing, their faces all turned blurry, and in the end became the coarse, rough features of mud-legged peasants, iron-blue with rage.

They pointed at their own faces, cursing him out foully.

More and more of them, more and more.

Innumerable voices bored into his ears all at once, pinning down his soul, pinning down his body.

The more he was pressed down, the more frightened he became; the harder those voices pressed, the louder their spittle-flecked abuse.

Yet gradually, he could no longer even hear his own voice; the more strength he put into it, the farther his voice seemed from himself.

"Prince Changping..."

In the tent, someone suddenly leapt up, voice trembling in a shout.

The others all turned their heads to look, and their scalps nearly burst from fright. With the extinguishing of the candle flames, Prince Changping seemed to have slapped the table and stood up, pointing and cursing at something.

But when they looked closely, they saw that Prince Changping's face was already iron-blue, his mouth gaped wide as he stood there, blood flowing from all his features; he had long since dropped dead on the spot.

Yet the sound of him cursing still faintly echoed within the tent, as if his soul did not know he was dead, still putting on a show of ferocity, spewing abuse at the top of his lungs.

"Someone is using a curse to kill?"

"This is the middle of the host army—whose curse is this formidable, that it can directly suppress the army's murderous qi and curse the commander to death?"

In an instant, an indescribable terror spread everywhere; this matter was simply beyond anyone's comprehension.

But just then, an even fiercer, stronger wind suddenly howled up outside, and all but ripped the command tent from the ground. The countless nobles within felt as if stripped bare in the dead of winter, their whole bodies icy cold.

Threads of yin wind passed straight through their bodies, just like cold hands stroking across each and every one of their bones.

"You..."

A great general of the army rasped, trying to say something.

But before he could utter a complete sentence, he likewise suddenly dropped dead on the spot.

"Ah..."

The other Think Tanks, advisors, great generals, and Commanders, seeing this scene, could no longer control themselves. They turned to flee, but some merely swayed and then toppled over dead, heads lolling.

Some had only taken a few steps out when their bodies went rigid and crashed to the ground, their eyes still staring wide.

That shadow play poured into the shared dreams of the Four Prefectures and Seven States' commoners bore the title, "Prince Changping Driven Mad, Black Magic Chen Sets Corpses to Bow Before the Grain."