Deposed? I couldn't be happier! I wouldn't even be a dog to the crown prince.

The biting wind was like a knife, whipping up a flurry of snowflakes, but it could not dispel the overwhelming resentment emanating from the massive Jingguan (a mound of corpses).

The 30,000 Snow Dragon Riders and 5,000 Divine Machine Battalion musketeers were like a pack of angry lions forcibly restrained. Although military orders kept them in place, their heavy breathing and bloodshot eyes revealed their impending rampage.

"Your Highness!"

Zhang Yuan, a civil official accompanying the army and the Vice Minister of the Court of State Ceremonial, suddenly stumbled out from the back of the column.

He stumbled and crawled to Li Chengqian, his old face filled with fear and a kind of pedantry unique to scholars.

"Your Highness, please calm down!"

Zhang Yuan knelt down in the snow with a thud, tightly hugging Li Chengqian's thighs with both hands, his voice trembling.

"The Great Tang is a land of propriety and a celestial empire! How can we imitate the barbarians and commit such tyrannical acts?"

"While Goguryeo's actions are indeed barbaric, Your Highness, as the Crown Prince of the Tang Dynasty, should guide them with benevolent rule and win them over with virtue!"

He became more and more excited as he spoke, as if he had become a saint who would save the world.

"If Your Highness were to issue the order to massacre the entire city today, what crime had these 100,000 Goguryeo people committed? How would the world view the Tang Dynasty? What kind of tyrannical infamy would Your Highness bear in the annals of history!"

These words were like a bucket of ice water poured over the heads of those angry soldiers.

Many veterans gritted their teeth, their swords creaking in their hands, but they could only endure it due to military law and the authority of the crown prince.

Li Chengqian lowered his head and quietly looked at Zhang Yuan, who was clinging to his lap.

There was not a trace of emotion in those deep eyes because of the word "tyrant," only a deathly stillness that made one feel as if they had fallen into an ice cave.

"Winning people over with virtue?"

Li Chengqian's voice was very soft, so soft that it sounded like he was asking himself.

"What a wonderful example of winning people over with virtue!"

He slowly raised his right hand.

"Zheng—!"

A sharp, teeth-grinding metallic scraping sound suddenly rang out.

Xue Rengui, standing nearby, didn't even see the Crown Prince's movements clearly. All he saw was the jade-inlaid dagger at Li Chengqian's waist, which was supposed to be an ornament, transform into a cold streak of light, grazing past Zhang Yuan's scalp.

"what!"

Zhang Yuan let out a piercing scream, and collapsed backward in terror.

His official hat had been precisely sliced ​​in half, a strand of gray hair falling to the ground in the wind. The sharp blade had almost grazed his scalp, leaving a shallow bloodstain.

If Li Chengqian's hand had moved down even half an inch, this Vice Minister of the Court of State Ceremonial would have lost his head.

"To hell with 'winning people over with virtue'!"

Li Chengqian's roar echoed across the wilderness like spring thunder.

His usually languid face was now filled with a chilling ferocity and violence.

Li Chengqian kicked Zhang Yuan, who was still in shock, to the ground, pointed at the mound of corpses made up of Tang Dynasty soldiers, his eyes bloodshot.

"You want to talk to me about etiquette? You want to talk to these beasts about the way of the king?"

"When a million soldiers of the Sui Dynasty died here, did their Goguryeo people observe any etiquette?"

"When the Tang Dynasty envoys were mutilated and frozen to death on the ice a few days ago, did Yeon Gaesomun speak of the Way of the King?"

Li Chengqian strode forward, grabbed Zhang Yuan by the collar, and lifted him up by force.

"A blood debt can only be repaid with blood!"

"Since they enjoy killing people, they like using corpses to build pyramids."

Li Chengqian abruptly threw Zhang Yuan onto the snow, his voice as cold as if it came from the deepest hell.

"Then I will grant their wish."

"I want no prisoners, no land, and no pleas for mercy from these bastards!"

Li Chengqian turned around and ignored the civil official who was so frightened that he wet his pants.

He looked at Xue Rengui, his eyes flashing with a madness that wanted to destroy everything.

"Xue Li, give the signal."

"It's like the lurking tiger has come out to hunt for food."

Xue Rengui took a deep breath.

At this moment, a chilling fervor appeared on his honest face.

Without hesitation, Xue Rengui drew a specially made whistling arrow from beside the saddle and nocked it onto the Zhentian Bow.

"collapse!"

The signal arrow shot into the sky.

Instead of emitting a sharp whistle, it produced a low hum similar to the roar of a ferocious beast, exploding into a striking cloud of blood-red smoke in the gray sky.

The plume of smoke did not dissipate with the wind; instead, it fell like a drop of blood into water, quickly staining a large area of ​​the sky red.

at the same time.

Thirty miles away from here, on the only road from Goguryeo to Pyongyang.

In a secluded valley.

Three thousand soldiers, clad in dark red heavy armor and wearing iron-faced Shura masks, lay silently in waist-deep snow like a group of lifeless stone sculptures.

There was no sound of them breathing, no sound of their hearts beating.

They didn't even have warhorses.

They wielded bizarrely shaped meteorite iron scythes, their bodies radiating an intense, almost palpable aura of death.

At the very front of the line.

Bai Qi sat cross-legged on a cold, massive rock.

His dark pupils, devoid of any whites, were fixed intently on the sky.

When that crimson cloud of smoke exploded in the sky.

The Lord of Wu'an, who had slaughtered his way through the Warring States period, finally let out an extremely awkward yet chilling laugh on his pale, paper-white face.

"Finally...it's here."

Bai Qi slowly stood up.

He did not issue any deafening commands to charge.

He simply picked up the scythe and drew a semicircle in the air.

"The Lord has given an order."

Bai Qi's voice was hoarse and deep, like two rusty iron pieces rubbing against each other.

"Get across this line of defense."

"Any Goguryeo rebels shall be killed."

"Anyone who participates in building the mound of skulls shall be killed."

"All living things..."

Bai Qi suddenly turned around, and a bright red light shone in his dark eyes!

"Kill them all!"

"Leave no survivors! No prisoners needed!"

"promise!!!"

Three thousand elite Iron Eagle warriors responded to their commander's order with a low roar that seemed to tear the soul apart.

They sprang up from the snow like three thousand dark red phantoms.

There was no orderly formation, only a pure and extreme killing instinct.

They transformed into a torrent of death, interwoven with red and black, surging wildly towards the heart of Goguryeo.

Meanwhile, on Goguryeo's defensive line.

Those soldiers who were still hiding in the mountain city, thinking they had natural defenses to protect them, had no idea what they were about to face.

They were still mocking the Tang army for its stagnation and dreaming of wearing down the enemy by relying on the bitter cold.

until.

The man, clad in dark red heavy armor and wielding a massive war scythe, appeared like a ghost atop their city walls.

The black butcher's knife fell mercilessly.

On the land of Liaodong, the true Asura hell finally descended at this moment.

The Goguryeo people will eventually pay the ultimate price that their race can bear for their arrogance and brutality.