Fang Yun stepped forward, slowly making his way to the battlements.
He gazed out at a pristine sky, clear and azure, but beneath that beautiful blue expanse lay a world utterly unbearable to behold.
Under the blue sky, the earth was cracked, blackened as far as the eye could see, without a blade of grass.
The Barbarian Race had broken the Water Race's resistance, using the Heaven-Burning Furnace to scorch ten thousand li and force them to retreat along the entire front.
Upon the scorched earth, barbarian camps stood in close-packed rows, looking from afar like neatly laid bricks.
Five li away, a middle-aged man in tattered clothes, filthy from head to toe, was bound to a flagpole in a barbarian camp. His head hung to one side, and wounds covered his body. Many had festered, and maggots even wriggled in them.
His eyes were closed, his breathing faint. He could die at any moment.
His beard had gone untended for so long that it reached his chest.
"General Zhang, how is the scenery in the north this August?" Fang Yun's voice exploded across the sky with Tongue Blossoms Thunder.
These were words Fang Yun had once sent to Zhang Poyue in a letter.
Zhang Poyue slowly raised his head on the flagpole and opened his eyes. They had been dim and lifeless, but like the sky at dawn, they gradually brightened.
The clear sky reflected in Zhang Poyue's eyes, and he opened his mouth in a broad laugh.
His teeth were all there. His tongue was gone.
As though unaware of this, Zhang Poyue slowly mouthed eight words that no one could make out.
Fang Yun could read his lips.
"The sky is clear, the earth boundless; green grass spreads like a mat."
An eagle's cry of grief and