Beijing had descended into complete madness.

We moved along the walls, slipping through narrow hutongs. The air reeked of blood, charred remains, and a deeper, nauseating stench of decay. This wasn't merely rotting flesh, but rather... a spiritual plague.


At a street corner, a weeping woman suddenly stopped, her face twisting into the same eerie smile as Chongzhen's as she began frantically biting the crying child beside her. Further away, rebel soldiers abandoned their looting to slaughter one another, their movements jerky and frenzied, like puppets on invisible strings.

"The contamination is spreading," I whispered, my heart plummeting.

In the game, this was called the "Plague of Despair." When a region's "ruling core" (like the emperor) becomes deeply contaminated, this mental plague rapidly infects all weak-minded units throughout the region. Beijing, the heart of the Ming Empire, was rotting from within.


Chongzhen ignored it all. To him, these were merely flickering candles about to be snuffed out—insignificant background noise. His goal was clear: execute my "optimal solution" plan.

Wang Cheng'en was pale with fear, lips trembling, moving forward only because I dragged him. As a mere mortal, prolonged exposure to this corrupted environment had pushed his mind to the breaking point.


"Hold on!" I barked, tearing a strip of cloth from my shirt and stuffing it into his hand. "Clench your teeth, don't look, don't listen—just focus on walking and breathing!"

This was a basic technique to counter mental pollution in the game—diverting attention. Though minimally effective, it was better than nothing.

Our destination was Desheng Gate. According to the game walkthrough, during the first twelve hours after Li Zicheng's army took control of Beijing, Desheng Gate would experience a one-hour power vacuum due to the surrender and mutiny of the defending commander. That was our only window to escape alive.

We avoided main roads when possible. But chaos is unpredictable, and accidents inevitable.

At a crossroads, we ran straight into an assembling rebel army—over a hundred well-equipped men, clearly one of Li Zicheng's elite units. At their head rode a commander on a tall horse who spotted us immediately, his eyes locking on Emperor Chongzhen's conspicuous dragon robe.

"Old Chongzhen!" The commander looked stunned, then delighted, raising his long spear. "Whoever captures the deluded emperor alive gets ten thousand silver taels and promotion by three ranks!"

Over a hundred rebels roared in unison, surging toward us like a tidal wave.

*We're finished.* My heart sank.

Even as a divinely chosen champion, Chongzhen couldn't instantly annihilate over a hundred well-trained elite soldiers. Once bogged down, our death would be certain.

"The sacrifices... too few..." Chongzhen muttered from deep in his throat. He seemed to assess the situation, then slowly raised his right hand.

This time, he didn't use the invisible distorting force.

A dense, impenetrable black mist erupted from his palm, forming a shield... composed of countless agonized, wailing human faces.

The faces included men and women, old and young—I even spotted several vengeful spirits wearing Ming Dynasty official robes.

"The ancestors of the Great Ming dynasty?" I thought in horror. No—this wasn't protection but a curse! A collective manifestation of resentment from the Zhu family ancestors he'd dragged into the abyss with him!

The rebels' arrows and spears shot at the "face shield" were instantly devoured by the vengeful spirits without causing even a ripple.

"Interesting." The commander's eyes flashed with an unusual red light. "So the rumors were true. You... have received the blessing of 'that one.'"

His words made my scalp tingle. He knew about the evil god!

"However, against absolute power, any blessing is meaningless." The commander sneered as he removed an ancient bronze mirror inscribed with runes from his saddle. "By order of the Great Shun Emperor, we are here to eliminate the remnants of the 'Old Gods'!"

He pointed the bronze mirror at Chongzhen.

A pure, concentrated beam of white light shot from the mirror. The light radiated righteous energy, as if channeling the hopes and beliefs of countless people.

In the game, this was called the "Light of Humanity"—one of the few high-level powers that could counter divine corruption, usually wielded only by the protagonist's faction. Why did Li Zicheng have it?

The "Face Shield" emitted a shrill scream under the white light, its black mist rapidly dissolving. For the first time, Chongzhen's eternally unchanging face showed something resembling "pain."

[Warning: Suppressed by "Holy Relic of Humanity"]

["Black Dragon's Curse" activity reduced by 70%]

"Run!" I seized this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, using all my strength to pull Wang Cheng'en and the immobilized Chongzhen into a nearby alley.

Behind us came the commander's furious roar, but the white light couldn't bend around corners, and we temporarily escaped its lock-on.

I didn't dare stop, sprinting hundreds of meters without pause until I could no longer hear our pursuers, then collapsed to the ground, my lungs burning like fire.

"Huff... huff..." I gasped for breath, looking back at Chongzhen who leaned against the wall.

The black mist around his body had dimmed considerably, and in those pitch-black eye sockets appeared, for the first time, a faint trace of human emotion—confusion and... anger.

"What was that?" he asked hoarsely—the first time he'd actively questioned me.

"They are your 'enemies,'" I explained between heavy breaths. "Li Zicheng—or rather the forces behind him—don't worship the same 'god' as you. They're competitors. You want to sacrifice the world; they want to steal the fruits of your sacrifice."

This was core lore only revealed in the late game. The fall of the Bandit King, the Manchu massacres—behind it all was a proxy war between different eldritch deity factions using the human realm as their battlefield.

The Chongzhen Emperor fell silent. In those black hole eyes, confusion and anger intertwined, ultimately transforming into an even colder, purer killing intent.

"I... will make them... pay the price..."

Alarm bells rang loudly in my mind.

*Not good.* This stimulation seemed to have triggered an unpredictable "upgrade" in his "AI."

He had begun... to think proactively.

A thinking calamity was far more terrifying than one that merely followed "optimal solutions."

We needed to leave immediately.

The power vacuum at Desheng Gate would soon end.

We quickened our pace. The scenes of madness throughout Beijing grew increasingly intense. Everywhere, civilians and rogue soldiers slaughtered each other, with twisted corpses and indescribable gore smeared across the streets. The entire city had become a massive asylum.

Finally, before darkness completely fell, we saw the silhouette of Desheng Gate.

At the city gate, just as the game walkthrough had described, an eerie silence had settled. Several groups of rebel troops with different banners stood in a standoff for control of the gate, yet none dared make the first move.

*Now's our chance!*

I pulled the two along, keeping low, inching toward the gate tunnel in the shadows of the city wall.

If we could just pass through, we'd be halfway to safety.

Just as we were about to enter the gate tunnel, a sharp eagle's cry pierced the air.

I jerked my head up.

A giant eagle with a wingspan over five meters, covered in black scales and bearing three heads, circled above Desheng Gate. Each head had a blood-red, ominous eye.

[Encounter with "Abyssal Hunter"]

A high-level reconnaissance unit from the game! How could it be here?

The eagle's blood-red eyes instantly locked onto us—or rather, onto Chongzhen.

"Found you... remnants... of the old gods..."

A grand, genderless voice resonated directly in my mind.

*It's over.* This was the highest level alert.

We... had been exposed.