「Seven days later. Nanfu City, the provincial capital of Nanling Province.」
In the East City District, deep down a quiet alley, stood an unremarkable courtyard house built of blue brick.
Its outer walls were mottled and its window lattices were old, making it indistinguishable from the surrounding residences.
Only a faded wooden plaque above the door lintel bore the four-word inscription:
"Yellow Heaven Corps Incense Hall"
Sunlight filtered through the half-open wooden doors, illuminating the dim space within.
Inside, a gilded clay statue of a deity was enshrined. Plumes of green smoke curled up from an incense burner before it.
Dozens of cultists in short tunics of various colors sat or stood among the haze, their expressions pious as they chanted under their breath.
Passing through the front hall and pushing open a hidden door led to the depths of the inner hall. The light here was even dimmer, with only a few oil lamps flickering on either side of a shrine.
A middle-aged man with a resolute face sat cross-legged on a meditation cushion, regulating his breath with his eyes closed. He was dressed in a tight-fitting, well-made blue outfit.
His temples bulged, and with each long, deep breath, he revealed himself to be a practitioner with profound internal martial arts skills.
This man was Wei Yuanliang, one of the Incense Masters of the Yellow Heaven Corps stationed in Nanfu City.
Kneeling before him were three young men wearing yellow turbans and coarse, short-fitting tunics.
All three looked terrified. The one in the lead began to speak, his voice trembling, "Incense Master, the three Lord Yellow Turban Warriors took the brothers out to march as usual today to spread the Yellow Heaven Technique..."
"When we neared the French Concession, a conflict broke out with the patrolmen for some reason. Those running dogs of the foreigners were completely unreasonable—they just opened fire!"
"Over a dozen of our brothers were killed, and the rest scattered... The three Lord Yellow Turban Warriors have also vanished."
Wei Yuanliang’s eyes snapped open, burning with an unsuppressible rage. He gritted his teeth and spat hatefully.
’Hmm? Those demonic foreign guns again!’
He recalled what the Altar Master had told him when he first joined the Yellow Heaven Corps as a young man: "Our Yellow Heaven Corps’s *Yellow Heaven Primordial Qi Technique* is a true technique passed down from the Great Virtuous Master himself!"
"Reaching minor mastery allows you to block ordinary blades. At the Yellow Turban Warrior level, your strength becomes immense, several times greater than a Martial Artist of the same Realm!"
’This is true Divine Technique! This is the righteous path to protect our people and purge demonic evil!’
’But what about now? I’ve trained bitterly for over twenty years, only reaching the peak of the ’Yellow Turban Warrior’ Realm, yet my physical defenses can’t even stop a tiny bullet.’
’Damn foreigners!’
Wei Yuanliang slammed his fist into the blue brick floor beside him. With a dull THUD, several fine cracks spiderwebbed across the brick’s surface.
’And those damned traitors. They collude with foreigners to harm our own people. They’re even more hateful than the foreigners themselves!’
A moment later, his emotions calmed slightly, but his eyes grew fanatical. "No matter. We have the Divine Flesh bestowed by the Altar Master. As long as we cultivate diligently, sooner or later we will slaughter every last one of those foreigners and their running dogs!"
"The Blue Sky is dead; the Yellow Sky must rise!"
After venting his anger, Wei Yuanliang waved his hand at the three men before him. "Go find those three. Even if they were shot, they won’t die with their abilities."
"Yes, sir!"
The three men acknowledged the order and were about to rise when the inner hall door was suddenly pushed open.
Two burly, powerfully built men stumbled in, one after the other.
Their yellow turbans were askew, and their yellow cloth tunics were soaked in blood.
One was bleeding from his abdomen, while the other had a strip of cloth haphazardly wrapped around his thigh.
Even so, the two strode before Wei Yuanliang as if nothing were wrong and dropped to their knees with a THUD.
"We greet you, Lord Incense Master!"
Seeing this, Wei Yuanliang frowned. He glanced at their wounds and asked in a low voice, "Why have only the two of you returned?"
"Where is Miao Gongxu?"
The Strongman kneeling on the left looked up, a complicated expression on his face. "Rest assured, Incense Master. That fellow is fine. He wasn’t shot, not a scratch on him."
"It’s just that... he’s still acting as strangely as he was a few days ago. He was spouting crazy talk the whole way, saying he saw that monster again and that it wanted to eat him."
After a pause, the Strongman on the right added, "Then he said he was going to Shuangfeng Gorge in the East City to clear his head."
"Shuangfeng Gorge?"
Wei Yuanliang’s frown deepened.
He knew the place. Two green peaks faced each other like giant blades, separated by a deep valley. The summits were shrouded in mist year-round, and the view from the valley entrance was deep and inscrutable.
It was a famous scenic spot in Nanfu City.
On clear days, the city’s scholars, poets, wealthy young ladies, and foreign gentlemen all loved to visit.
They would arrive by horse-drawn carriage, rickshaw, or the foreigners’ automobiles, bringing food and wine to ascend the peaks and gaze out over the bustling expanse of Nanfu City.
Pavilions had been built on the summit, and a stone stele had been erected, carved with the inscription ’Twin Peaks Lock the Clouds’ by a top scholar from a previous dynasty.
Just then, the inner hall door was pushed open again.
A cultist stumbled in, clutching a crumpled newspaper. His face was pale with a terror like he had seen a ghost. "Incense Master! Incense Master! Look at this!"
Wei Yuanliang frowned and took the newspaper.
The front-page headline was printed in bold black letters, a shocking title that jumped off the page.
"Heated Debate Across All Sectors: Should the Daxia New Country Establish a New Emperor?"
The sub-headline was even more jarring: "The Wa Country has an Emperor, Great Britain has an Empress, the Polar Bear Country has a Tsar, and the Southern Ocean nations are full of monarchs. How can our Daxia have no one?"
After reading the headlines, Wei Yuanliang’s pupils contracted. He quickly scanned the rest of the article.
"Recently, prominent figures from all circles in Yanjing City have jointly submitted a petition, calling for the restoration of the monarchy and the enthronement of a new Emperor to right the nation’s course and soothe the people’s hearts..."

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