The twilight dyed the sea in shades of blood.
At the edge of the horizon, a dark tide surged forward.
Leading the charge was a massive flagship flying a black banner.
It was a giant ship with seven masts and twelve sails larger than ten city lord’s mansions put together.
It was a treasure ship used by pirates to transport goods.
A treasure ship could carry the cargo of three cities and sell it in the New World.
Every voyage yielded gold enough to rival a nation’s wealth.
“They’re here.”
Facing this sea-borne invasion force, as mighty as a small maritime nation, stood only a few hundred soldiers on the shore.
Half a day ago, a notice had spread to every household, allowing the citizens to flee in time.
The price of that was—the soldiers fled too.
No one wanted to fight a hopeless battle… Only the old followers of Wu Ma stayed behind.
An old man, his hair already gray, stood in armor.
He smiled and said, “This old bag of bones isn’t good for much anyway. Besides, we’ve fought this kind of war plenty of times before…”
His words pulled Wu Yi back to a decade ago—when the enemy came like a tidal wave.
Most of them weren’t gods, but mortals who worshipped the divine.
They firmly believed the rule of the Divine King was part of the natural order or perhaps, they were simply afraid of facing an unfamiliar new world.
To them, serving the gods and building up the divine realm was a sacred duty.
If they lost that purpose, they didn’t know what meaning life still held.
—Do you think it’s possible that no one is born a slave? Wu Yi had once asked them.
But they didn’t dare to think about it.
Most of their lives had already been burned away.
They had turned their best years into so-called “glory” praised by the divine—certificates, trophies.
If they agreed with Wu Yi, wouldn’t that be denying their entire existence?
Wouldn’t that make their lives a joke?
That would be too cruel.
So they decided to kill Wu Yi.
With red eyes and righteous slogans, it was hard to tell whether they were trying to convince the enemy—or themselves.
That same intensity burned in the eyes of these pirates now.
“Aren’t we going to board the ships and intercept them?” one soldier asked.
“With the handful of us here, we could barely man two or three boats,” Wu Ma laughed, “If we die at sea, there won’t even be bones left. Better to fight on shore at least some ashes might stay behind to nourish the grass and flowers.”
“Oh.”
These old soldiers didn’t care how they fought.
As long as it was Wu Ma’s command, even if he ordered their heads taken off and served with wine, they’d obey without hesitation.
Still, there was a quiet sorrow in their simple hearts.
Now that the Divine King was dead, why did there still have to be war…?
They hadn’t read much, and didn’t understand the world.
But they wanted to ask Her Highness Wu Yi themselves—why couldn’t she see what these pirates were doing?
“Miss Troublemaker, what are you doing?”
“Drawing.”
As the enemy loomed, pressing down with suffocating pressure, Wu Yi squatted on the ground, calmly using her fingers to draw something in the sand.
Her sketch was crooked and uneven, but you could vaguely make out stars, a moon, and a web of intricate light threads linking them.
“Is she mad?” Lu Sheng whispered.
“Could be,” Wu Ma shrugged.
He’d seen plenty of people lose their minds before battle.
But something told him Miss Troublemaker wasn’t one of those people.
She couldn’t see but she didn’t seem afraid either.
She always carried herself with a detached calmness.
“They’re here.”
The treasure ship dropped anchor in the distance, but the surrounding escort warships charged forward, heading straight for the beach!
In the blink of an eye, the few hundred people on shore were surrounded but neither side made a move.
Because the blood-soaked Cheng Jing was still kneeling under Wu Ma’s hand.
“Father! Save me! Father!”
Born into wealth and luxury, the boy’s body was tougher than most.
Even with half his muscles cut away, he could still shout that loud.
But Cheng Yi let out a mournful cry: “My poor child, your father will set you free!”
He raised his trumpet-mouthed spirit musket and fired straight at Cheng Jing.
“??? Wait, I can still grab th—”
His brains burst out.
Only in that final moment, staring into the dark barrel, did Cheng Jing realize—why his father had never let him go out to fight and conquer.
Because from the very beginning, he had only been a tool.
A tool to justify an official war with Donghuang.
Cheng Yi had dreamed of this day, waiting for the city lord or someone in the city to make a mistake, so he could righteously declare, “It wasn’t I who betrayed Donghuang, it was Donghuang who betrayed us.”
In doing so, he could wipe away the crew’s lingering ties and resistance to war against Donghuang.
From then on, he would crown himself king in the southeastern island nations, gradually growing into the fourth great power at sea and begin a full-scale purge of Donghuang’s coastal regions.
Everything went exactly as he had planned.
“Your turn. Join us or die.”
Cheng Yi plucked a maggot from his beard and crushed it between his teeth with a sickening crunch, his bloodthirsty eyes fixed on the pitiful resistance before him.
“……” Even Lu Sheng hadn’t expected Cheng Yi to be this cruel.
Not even a tiger eats its own cubs.
Bringing Cheng Jing to the negotiation table was supposed to secure the city folk’s homes and possessions.
Those things weren’t lives, but they were a lifetime’s worth of effort perhaps even more precious than life itself.
But the negotiation was over before it began.
Which meant that the few hundred people who stayed behind in the city had done so for nothing.
They stayed in vain.
And they would die in vain.
“I’ll go first. You all do as you please.”
Wu Ma was the first to charge out.
The remaining soldiers shouted one last time: “The Thunder Envoy never surrenders! For Her Highness Wu Yi!”
Their battle cries shook the sky but there was no heroism in it, only haste… and the bitter sorrow of a doomed end.
The final sliver of sunlight on the horizon sank beneath the sea and at that moment, Wu Yi stood up.
In front of her small bare feet was a drawing roughly depicting some celestial bodies.
Below them sat a square, blocky beacon tower.
The beacon tower blazed with roaring fire, its flames searing the stars in the drawing.
And then the stars began to glow red, scorched by the heat.
“Wait… what is that?!”
A fierce red light shot up from the sand-drawn picture, streaking into the sky, freezing time on the battlefield.
Pirates and defenders alike turned to stare at the girl and the heavens.
The first to light up was the Ursa Minor constellation, Polaris pointing toward the celestial north.
Then, as if receiving a signal, distant lands responded.
Another beam of red light rose from the faraway earth, igniting Draco.
Then a third beam lit up Cepheus.
A fourth ignited Cassiopeia.
The light spread swiftly.
Its glow illuminated the earth, and the fire ignited the sky burning from star to star in every direction.
Lynx, Ursa Major, Canes Venatici…
One by one, the constellations blazed with heat and light.
At the same time, down on earth, from Donghuang Continent to Borneo, from the Plains Continent to Aoshen, from America to the Frozen Empire—wherever the flame of civilization still flickered, wherever there was life, red light shot skyward in response!
It was called Beacon Fire.
Civilization was its fuel.
In the past, it had burned the gods to ashes and now, once more, it set the skies alight.
Soon, all 29 constellations of the northern sky were ignited.
Then came the 47 of the southern sky.
And the 12 of the zodiac.
Until the entire sky turned into the color of flame.
One figure after another stepped into the blaze, using the projections of stars and constellations as paths, converging on the place where the first beacon had been lit.
“Mm, not a bad response time,”
Wu Yi nodded in quiet satisfaction.
It had been ten years, it was time for the Beacon Envoys to report in.