The possessed soldier stood atop the city wall, his grin stretched to his ears, his ghostly green eyes gleaming eerily in the morning light.
His body shook violently, as though something were about to burrow out from within.
Beneath his skin, streaks of gray markings slithered like snakes, crawling from his neck to his face, from his face to his forehead, finally converging at the space between his brows to form a ghostly green pearl.
The pearl split open, revealing an eye.
It was not a human eye. It was a snake's eye. A vertical pupil, golden edges, a ghostly green iris—identical to the little snake in the Snake Den of the Northern Frontier.
Lu Chen tightened his grip on the Azure Dragon Halberd. The cracks along its shaft gave faint creaks under the infusion of true essence.
This top-grade spirit treasure would not hold out much longer. Its foundation had been damaged when it blocked that beam of light at Medicine King Valley last time, and every use now only hastened its collapse.
"Zhou Tieshan!" he barked.
Zhou Tieshan snapped out of his shock and instinctively answered, "This general is here!"
"Pull your men beneath the wall. Isolate everyone with markings. Those without markings, retreat to the eastern side of the drill ground. Do not go near the wall."
Zhou Tieshan's face turned pale. "But those with markings—"
"Leave them to me."
Zhou Tieshan gritted his teeth, turned, and ran. His voice exploded over the drill ground. "All troops, heed my command! Those with gray markings, stay where you are and do not move! Those without markings, withdraw east with me! Move!"
The soldiers froze for an instant, then sprang into action like a pot boiling over.
Some ran east, some ran west, and some stood rooted to the