Three months later, at dusk.
In Sparrow City, a small city at the southernmost edge of Haizhou, cooking smoke drifted up in curling wisps.
In a narrow alley, a short, fat middle-aged man carried a strip of cured meat in his right hand. Humming a little tune, he headed home cheerfully.
An intense itch suddenly came from the back of his hand. Reflexively, he slapped his right hand with his left.
"Once the weather gets hot, these mosquitoes start coming around to bother people." The middle-aged man looked at the squashed mosquito on the back of his hand and complained aloud.
But then...
"Why is this mosquito blood-red all over? I've never seen this kind before." As he was wondering, a buzzing sound suddenly came from overhead.
He looked up curiously and saw a huge mass of blood-red mist plunge into the alley.
Looking closely, he realized it was no mist at all. It was made up of countless blood-red mosquitoes.
Before he could wave them away, the swarm rushed forward and enveloped him.
After a short scream, the middle-aged man fell to the ground, struggled twice, and went completely still.
In the blink of an eye, the blood-red cloud buzzed into the sky. The short, fat middle-aged man had become nothing more than a dried corpse, skin stretched over bone.
Buzz buzz buzz...
A scarlet cloud came from the north and flew straight into Sparrow City.
At once, cries of agony rose and fell without end.
The next day, several thousand Warrior Dao Soldiers appeared outside Sparrow City.
Hu Buwei, leading them, shook the small purple flag in his hand with a grave expression.
Countless jade-white butterflies flew out from the bodies of the several thousand Warrior Dao Soldiers. They swarmed into the sky, turning into specks of