My cultivation disguise has been exposed by Xiao Sizi.

We must eradicate them completely, without showing any mercy.

Li Chen turned and walked out of the main house. The sunlight outside shone on the blood-soaked fortress, and it was so quiet that there wasn't a single sound of living people.

He stretched and yawned, breathing in the air thick with the smell of blood, feeling the pent-up frustration that had been weighing on his mind for days vanish.

"If only I knew how to forge the Human Emperor Banner," Li Chen muttered regretfully, stroking his chin.

"If we could make a pole and put all these beasts inside to be tempered day and night, they would probably be radiating dazzling golden light of merit."

He walked out along the main road of the walled city, intending to continue in another place.

He stopped when he reached the dilapidated fence of the village gate and scanned it with his divine sense.

Hiding in a patch of waist-high grass outside the fence was a straggler with a knife.

He was a boy of about fourteen or fifteen years old, clutching a rusty wood-chopping knife tightly in his hand. He was staring at Li Chen with a fierce, beast-like gaze through the gaps in the grass.

Li Chen pretended not to notice and walked straight past.

Reaching the edge of the bushes, Li Chen suddenly stopped, turned his head, and waved to the trembling boy who was still holding a machete.

"Don't be silly! Go away, I won't kill children."

Li Chen sighed, adopting a hypocritical, compassionate demeanor.

"Get out of here before I change my mind, but I won't let you off the hook next time we meet."

The boy couldn't understand the words, but he understood Li Chen's gesture of waving to shoo people away.

He froze for a moment, the ferocity in his eyes turning into disbelief, then turned around without hesitation and ran wildly towards the distant mountains and forests.

Li Chen stood still, watching the boy run away about ten steps.

He suddenly chuckled.

With a sudden burst of force, the ground exploded, and Li Chen's figure instantly covered a distance of more than ten steps, appearing like a ghost directly in front of the running boy.

The boy crashed headfirst into Li Chen, and the force of the impact sent him sprawling to the ground.

He looked up and saw that devilish face with an incredibly bright smile.

"What a coincidence, we meet again."

Li Chen grinned, and without warning, the long sword in his hand pierced through the boy's heart.

The boy's eyes widened, filled with the frustration and disbelief of being tricked. He gripped the rusty woodcutter's knife tightly and breathed his last in resentment.

"I told you I wouldn't let you go the next time we met. I'm a man of my word. Die!"

Li Chen drew his longsword and shook off the blood.

He stepped over the corpse with satisfaction and walked along a dirt road.

A local dog, startled by the fire in the walled city, tucked its tail between its legs and barked wildly at Li Chen.

Li Chen slapped the dog backhand, the sharp gust of wind sending it flying dozens of meters away, crashing heavily into a tree, its fate unknown.

Looking down, I saw an earthworm, startled out of the soil by the blood, wriggling along the road.

Li Chen joined his index and middle fingers together and casually unleashed a wisp of extremely thin sword energy, cleaving the earthworm in two perfectly vertically from head to tail, just like cutting tofu.

Passing by a farmer's abandoned chicken coop, Li Chen casually pulled out two still-warm eggs from the haystack and shook them frantically to his ears.

Hearing the "squeak" sound of the yolk completely crumble inside, Li Chen finally put the egg back in its original place with satisfaction.

"If I said 'three cleans,' then I meant 'three cleans.' I'd shake the eggs until the yolks were broken."

……

Meanwhile, fifty miles away from here...

The cyan beam of light, like a giant sword cleaving through the thick clouds of the East China Sea, crashed onto the plain in the center of the island.

A fierce wind whipped up dust and withered grass, and five hundred fully armed elite Tang Dynasty warriors in black armor appeared in the light.

The cold, hard sound of armor plates clashing echoed throughout the ranks. No one spoke in the army; the grim formation resembled a piece of raw iron smashed into mud.

Li Chengqian, carrying a fine steel lance, strode out of the crater where he had landed. His heavy combat boots stepped on the muddy grass, breaking off a dead tree branch.

Looking down the earthen slope, about half a mile away, there is a large wooden fortress.

The thick tree trunks were sharpened and tied into high walls, inside which were densely packed low thatched huts.

The towering blue beam of light had already alarmed the people in the village. The shrill sound of wooden whistles rose and fell, the city gates were wide open, and hundreds and thousands of short men wearing rough bamboo armor and holding iron samurai swords poured out like startled ants, forming a chaotic array in front of the village.

Li Chengqian stood on the hilltop, the cold wind making the red tassel on his helmet flutter.

He narrowed his eyes, his gaze piercing through half a mile, fixed on the samurai with their comical shaved heads and bowlegs.

At that very moment, the book "The History of Time" hanging in mid-air in the backyard of the Qin Prince's mansion struck his mind like a bolt of lightning.

The blood-red words turning page by page, the babies crying in mid-air impaled on bayonets, the desperate cries of the people driven into deep pits, and the two Japanese samurai laughing as they stood amidst mountains of corpses and seas of blood.

All the images intertwined wildly on his retina, transforming into the short, ugly figures before him.

Li Chengqian felt as if a raging fire had exploded in his chest, burning away his reason and boiling his blood.

His once clear eyes instantly became bloodshot, with blood vessels spreading across his eye sockets in a menacing manner, turning as red as blood in just a few breaths.