Chapter 342: Too Late

Swatting that arm down, Mingshen paled.

"What are you talking about? Don’t do anything foolish!" he chided. A horrible sinking feeling in his stomach told him to latch onto Anji tightly.

Anji smiled at her second brother. Truthfully, she knew this day would come.

"It’s ok," she smiled lovingly at Mingshen and held onto his hand reassuringly. "Thank you."

Seeing the siblings, Song Min felt a dizzying sense of hollowness. It had been a thousand years since he had seen anything like this. He killed thousands of people, if not more, and all he saw were families selling each other out to save themselves.

Why were the people he had been looking for appearing in front of him only now? And from the hero’s family no less.

Laughing, Song Min collapsed onto a stool in his inner world.

"It’s too late," he told them, pouring a shaky cup of tea. "The array in the capital will be fully corrupted tonight, and the ghost army will charge in. Not even I can stop them now."

Hungry ghosts were the scariest things Song Min had ever encountered. The starving would do anything, and he had not fed his army in so long. The more they starved, the greater his power became as they went into mindless feeding frenzies. The bodies left behind after their buffet sprees were always Song Min’s to clean up. The idea of an undead army came about from the mountains of corpses left behind after his ghostly army fed. Along the way, this army had become both his best weapon and worst ally.

As Song Min gradually revealed his plan, Mingshen grew unsteady and eventually collapsed onto the ground from shock. Anji was immediately by her second brother’s side, but not looking any better. Although Yihao could not understand most of the complex plan, he knew from his siblings’ unusual reaction that this was not a minor mistake but an extremely severe one.

"So you’re saying the undead army you raised will scale the imperial capital and take it by force while the ghosts break the weakened array with soul corruption poison and feast on the living?"

Song Min nodded, afraid to meet Anji’s eyes.

"What about the four mythical guardian beasts?" Anji remembered. "And the dragon scale? My shifu had been there. She must have purified it!"

Shaking his head numbly, Song Min looked at the ground.

"She only set a new trap and sealed it over. Your dumber brother was meant to purify it slowly, but he was too busy doing other things. If I hadn’t drawn her away back to the Mystical Qilin Sect, she might have found a way to purify it with more time..."

As the truth slowly came to light, Anji closed her eyes to hide her exhaustion. Song Min was brilliant. But he had erred so greatly that even she found it difficult to rectify his mistakes.

For the next hour, they sat in silence. Anji meditated while Song Min remained as still as a statue. Mingshen and Yihao tried to get updated on the latest information, and the strategist did his best to simulate prevention moves to no avail.

At the end of the day, Song Min had seen through everything thoroughly. They could only minimise the damage but not prevent a total disaster. Even if the Emperor and Empress did not die, at least half of the capital civilians would become cannon fodder to the uncontrollable ghost army.

By the time Anji opened her eyes, it was already late afternoon in the real world. The golden glow was so strong that nobody could pretend it was a trick of the light.

"Brothers, I need your help."

At once, they listened intently. Even Song Min seemed to regain a semblance of life.

"We have to minimise the collateral damage," she explained. "But only he and I can undo the real corruption."

Raising his head slightly, Song Min looked like a lost child who heard someone calling out to him for the first time.

With no time to waste, Anji explained her strategy. Thankfully, she made ample preparations before she left for the Crystal Lake Town. The four mythical guardians might be weakened but as long as they attempted to repair the array before it was fully corrupted, they would hold the ghost army at bay.

"As for the undead, I’ll need help from Noble Consort Liu and Brother Yihao to fight them physically. Undead do not feel pain, but they can be incapacitated. Burn the bodies to prevent the spread of plague."

As for the citizens, Mingshen was entrusted to evacuate as many as he could with Hong Nian Niang and the Vermillion Bird Sect.

"We have to call for reinforcements. Shifu, or father, are the only one at the Divine Core stage who can help me in the worst case scenario."

Blinking, Yihao frowned. "What’s the worst-case scenario?"

Anji smiled. "That’s not important for now. Time is of the essence. The two of you have to start immediately. I have some preparations to make before dusk with him over there."

Pointing at Song Min, Anji demanded that they be released from the inner world prison. Having heard all their plans, Song Min obeyed her word. He had lost every reason to continue his path of destruction. Right now, anyone could tell he was like a lost puppy clinging to the next person he saw.

Once freed from the inner-world prison, Mingshen and Yihao realise they had been sleeping in an empty room. Anji was there in a different bed, and Song Min was nowhere to be seen.

"Come on!" Anji urged. "There is a long distance to cover from Luoyang to Chang’an. Without a long-distance teleportation spell, we’d have to trouble you to carry both of us there."

In a race against time, they hopped onto Yihao’s back and suppressed the scream when their third brother jumped off the window and into the sky. Even on his brother’s back, Mingshen tore off scraps of cloth from his sleeve and wrote a short message in blood to convey it to several people.

Anji merely meditated and worked on undoing the artificial seal’s limiters. Mentally, she apologised to Yan Ping. If all went well, the chances of success were only twenty percent. Even so, she would be a cripple for the rest of her life. However, it was a gamble she was willing to take to end this meaningless war.

Hidden in Anji’s shadow, Song Min wallowed in fear and regret. The success he planned for a thousand years did not taste sweet. He wasn’t good enough to be a hero. Yet, his cowardly self did not allow him to commit to the part of a great villain.

Deeply ashamed, Song Min wished he would be wiped from existence permanently. His sins were far too great and heavy for any hope of repentance.