Jiannan Circuit.
Yizhou Prefecture.
Above the vault of heaven, the sun was nowhere to be seen.
Only a heavy blood-colored haze hung over the city walls.
It was clearly noon, yet not even the faintest sound of crowing chickens or barking dogs could be heard in this vast city.
The streets were broad, and the banners outside the shops on either side still remained.
They merely drooped feebly in the chilly wind, covered in dark brown stains.
The long streets once paved with bluestone were now filled with blood-red mud.
Puddles of black blood collected in the hollows, with greasy scum floating atop them.
Yet the people walking these long streets seemed to have lost their sense of smell.
Their clothes were tattered, and they were gaunt as dried sticks.
Their eye sockets were deeply sunken; they felt neither terror nor sorrow.
They were like a group of walking corpses whose souls had been torn away.
An old man walked barefoot, one foot stepping into ankle-deep bloody mire.
A crisp crunch came from beneath his sole.
It seemed he had crushed half a finger bone, or perhaps an eyeball.
Yet the old man remained unmoved. Dragging up a string of sticky gore, he continued shuffling forward, one deep step and one shallow.
Beside him.
A woman clutched a swaddling cloth containing only half a body tightly in her arms, staring blankly ahead.
Some people, while walking, suddenly swayed and collapsed into the filth.
Never to move again.
The people around them did not stop either; they could not even be bothered to spare the corpses a glance.
They merely went around the fresh corpses, or stepped directly over them.
In this prosperous stronghold once hailed as a land of abundance, only this silent despair remained.
Ever since the beacon fires