Fireworks

The red sun rose in the east, morning clouds staining the thousand-year-old ancient capital crimson.

Thick smoke billowed from the city walls, blades and spears stood like a forest, and beneath the outer walls lay a thick layer of incomplete corpses not yet burned to ashes...

Perhaps they had grown weary from endlessly swinging and withdrawing their blades for several days and nights. Only newly recruited young men occasionally shouted. Countless soldiers on the fire-blackened, mottled walls swung their blades in grim silence. Those with poor luck were ambushed by stronger zombies and dragged off the walls to be eaten. The atmosphere was suffocating, gray Filth Qi shrouding both the sky and their hearts.

The soldiers who had been atop the walls all harbored the same suspicion: perhaps they would not be able to hold out much longer.

The one-eyed junior officer roared commands from the battlements. He could not remember how many times he had mounted the walls to defend them. They rotated without pause day and night, until they had even forgotten the hour. Only when he saw the gate tower and thick smoke draped in a layer of golden dawn light did he realize another night had passed.

He raised a hand to shield his eyes from the boundless golden radiance in the east.

It was slightly dazzling. Soot and eye gunk had mixed at the corners of his eyes, itching terribly and making him want to rub them, but after glancing at his filthy hands, he decided against it.

Amid the chaotic slaughter, a powerful zombie hidden among ordinary rotting corpses suddenly sprang onto the wall and pounced nimbly at the junior officer. A flash of steel cut it cleanly in half at the waist.

"Bah! Blind, stinking thing!"

He swung his blade and chopped off