Beacon Fires

In the Southern Wasteland, sheer cliffs and towering peaks were covered in red-flossomed trees.

Bai Yujun stood atop a peak, gazing toward the Northern Lands. Her eyes seemed to skim over mountains and rivers, seeing black deathly qi spreading everywhere. Darkness shrouded the earth; trees and flowers withered, beasts wailed, and calamity pressed southward without pause, day and night.

To be honest, Bai Yujun had no idea where those corpses had come from. Considering the Dragon Palace ruins scattered across the land, it could not be anything good.

Below the mountain, Snake Demon Soldiers left their exquisite wooden houses in the forest one after another, gathering for drills. Supplies accumulated over several years were being packed into crates. Perhaps before long, the Snake Demon Army would march out of the Southern Wasteland once more.

Bai Yujun did not want war, nor did she want the snake demons to suffer casualties.

Yet the rise of a race and its civilization did not rest on schemes and calculations, nor on slick tongues. It relied on fierce spirit, on carving out an age of prosperity through blood-soaked battle. The fortune of Heaven and Earth favored only races that strove to grow stronger; those content to hide in comfortable nests and indulge themselves were nothing but worms.

If the snake demon race wished to grow strong, it had to do something. Not merely make sacrifices, but act and take part.

In her heart, she had decided to take part in the great calamity that could not be avoided anyway. But she had no intention of immediately leading her army north. The humans feared the Snake Demon Army would seize their thousand acres of fertile fields and street-front shops, feared their estates would change names and owners. That was only human nature. After all, they