Grace Walker glanced at the blade, first letting out a silly chuckle, but then his whole body froze as if his blood had turned to ice. He looked back and saw the dead blacksmith and the rebel soldier standing not far away, their four lifeless eyes fixed on him.

“Mommy!”

With a shriek, Grace Walker turned and ran for his life. Behind him—bang! bang!—the two zombies immediately gave chase.

“Why are these things still interested in the living? I’m so small, you won’t get much of a meal out of me…”

Grace Walker was short and weak, and after running for more than ten miles, he could still hear the steady footsteps behind him. Suddenly remembering something, he pulled out the ancient bronze ring from his pocket and hurled it with all his might.

“If you want this, then go fight over it! Leave me alone!”

Once the bronze ring was thrown, Grace Walker immediately stopped hearing footsteps behind him. After sprinting another hundred meters, he finally dared to look back. He saw the blacksmith’s corpse, for some reason, spinning in circles again, while the rebel soldier was still methodically shadowboxing.

“A corpse-controlling bronze ring! Could that thing be used to control corpses?”

Catching his breath, Grace Walker realized that the blacksmith and the rebel soldier were clearly dead, not a breath left in them. The fact that they could still move had to be related to the bronze ring.

After waiting a while, Grace Walker couldn’t contain his curiosity any longer. Having just escaped with his life, and seeing that he hadn’t been chased, he felt a bit more confident.

“At worst, I’ll just throw it away and run—they won’t chase me.”

With that thought, Grace Walker tried to brandish the saber, which was actually a bit taller than he was, but it felt awkward, so he slung it over his shoulder and cautiously crept back. He found that the blacksmith and the rebel soldier ignored him completely. Emboldened, he picked up the bronze ring again.

The ancient bronze ring gleamed brightly, with faint streaks of blood slowly flowing across its surface. Grace Walker stared at it for a long time, unable to figure out what kind of magic it held. But as soon as he held it, the blacksmith and the rebel soldier stopped moving, confirming his suspicion.

“Since it’s called a corpse-controlling bronze ring, it must be used to control these two corpse soldiers.”

Seeing that the blacksmith and the rebel soldier made no other moves, Grace Walker finally felt safe enough to examine the antique bronze ring. He had always been bold as a tiger—otherwise, he wouldn’t have stood up to that gang of robbers in the first place. Now, with two zombies flanking him, he was surprisingly unafraid.

He turned the ring over and over for a long time before noticing that there were two bloodstains on it that seemed different from the rest. He reached out and touched one, and suddenly felt a wave of dizziness as a thought flashed through his mind. The dead rebel soldier abruptly stepped back, raised both hands, and punched the air hard, making a thumping sound.

“Yikes!”

Startled by the rebel soldier’s action, Grace Walker leapt up and dashed more than ten meters away before realizing it was a false alarm. This time, the two zombies showed no intention of chasing him.

“What a bizarre world this is…”

Collapsing to the ground, Grace Walker felt a boundary in his heart shatter. He had already sensed something was wrong, but only now was he truly certain. The blacksmith and rebel soldier’s transformation wasn’t some unexplained scientific phenomenon, but real, bona fide mystical sorcery.

“What kind of hellish world have I landed in? How could I be so unlucky… My biggest hope now is… please, let the women in this world not be as ugly as those in the late imperial harems…”

A wave of sorrow welled up, and the tears Grace Walker had been holding back for days finally streamed down his face.

In his original world, as a university student at an art college, his life had been quite ordinary. But compared to the extraordinary chaos of this world, Grace Walker now thought longingly of the days when he could see beautiful women on the street at any time—it all seemed so wonderful now.

“If I had any other choice… my lowest requirement would be not to live in a world where I see dead people every day! At least, not to see fresh corpses every day. I could still handle just the old ones…”

Chapter Four: A Heroic Shot, Spirit Flame Soars

Another seven or eight days passed in a blur. In his previous life, Grace Walker had at least average intelligence, and from various clues, he gradually pieced together a rough picture of this world.

The language spoken here was almost Chinese, and the culture and customs were similar to those of the Han and Tang dynasties. This land had always been called Zhongtu Shenzhou, and the place he was in was under the jurisdiction of Lingzhou, part of the current Great Qian Dynasty.

The Great Qian Dynasty had stood for three thousand years, divided by ancient custom into sixteen commands and forty-eight prefectures. According to the little historical knowledge Grace Walker still owed his teacher, it should now be the end of the dynasty, with foolish rulers one after another, the world in chaos, and the people in misery—the most wretched of times.

Besides internal problems, in recent years, the Great Qian Dynasty had also faced invasions from the Western Di tribes. Otherwise, things wouldn’t be so chaotic now. The people of the Western Di, called the demon race by the people of Zhongtu, came in dozens of varieties, fierce by nature, and had fought the Zhongtu dynasties for generations—not just the Great Qian, but every dynasty had suffered from them.