"Stupid game designer, this final defense line is completely indefensible!"

These were my last words.

While cursing loudly because I couldn't hold back the northern "Abyss Walkers" in a Cthulhu-style hardcore strategy game called "Ming Dynasty Divine War," I choked on a mouthful of water. When I opened my eyes again, I was plummeting from the sky.

Literally falling.

Crash!

I smashed through a thick tree branch, landing on something soft beneath me.

"Your Majesty!"

A piercing scream split my eardrums. As I struggled to my feet, the scene before me short-circuited my brain.

A man in bright yellow dragon robes lay beneath me, his face withered and eyes hollow, a white silk rope around his neck. He'd clearly just been knocked down by my "falling from heaven" entrance. Nearby, a eunuch scrambled toward us, surrounded by a shadowy forest of twisted trees.

Coal Hill. Emperor Chongzhen. Suicide by hanging.

These three concepts exploded in my mind. As a veteran player of "Ming Dynasty Divine War" with over a thousand hours logged, I knew exactly what this meant—this wasn't history, this was the beginning of the game's final and worst Bad Ending.

While I stood frozen in shock, Emperor Chongzhen—Zhu Youjian—whom I'd knocked down, slowly turned his head.

His eyes were no longer human.

They were pure, pitch-black voids—no pupils, no whites—like two miniature abysses. An indescribable aura of endless despair and overwhelming malice erupted from his body.

"...I... hate..."

His voice rasped, distorted and inhuman. More terrifying still, a black mist spread from his imperial robe like a living entity, and a tendril of it shot directly into my nostrils.

Instantly, my brain felt like it was drowning in a thousand tons of boiling tar.

[You have contacted the "Despair Emperor Father" collection of resentment]

[Conducting Sanity check... Check failed]

[You have been deeply contaminated by the "Black Dragon Curse"]

[Warning: Your life form is being distorted]

There was no game panel before me, but this information burned clearly in my consciousness. I could "see" that the so-called "dragon energy" within Emperor Chongzhen had been completely corrupted by some indescribable eldritch power—black with purple hues, filled with whispers of destruction and madness. Now, a portion of this power poured frantically into my body through our physical contact.

I clutched my head and collapsed to my knees in agony. Writhing, impossible geometric shapes began to appear at the edges of my vision, while countless overlapping wails and curses echoed in my ears.

"Run... get away..." I shouted at Wang Chengen, the eunuch frozen in terror. "That's not... Chongzhen anymore!"

Chongzhen—or rather, "that thing"—slowly rose from the ground. His hollow black eyes swept over me, then Wang Chengen, before gazing down at the Forbidden City engulfed in flames.

"I... cannot accept this..." he muttered, his voice carrying an eerily inhuman calmness that chilled me to the bone. "Rebels have breached the capital, the country is ruined, the dynasty fallen... But if this empire and millions of lives were sacrificed, could it perhaps exchange for... ultimate victory?"

His words revealed a twisted logic. I suddenly realized that in the game, Chongzhen's suicide was the final ritual triggering the "Apocalypse." He would become the first and most powerful "divine champion" of the evil god, using his dragon energy as a catalyst to transform all of into a flesh altar offered to the Ancient Ones.

And I, an inexplicable time-traveler, had not only interrupted the ritual but accidentally absorbed a portion of the contamination.

This fallen monarch and I were now bound by an invisible chain from the abyss.

*Run.* Only this thought remained in my mind.

"His Majesty has gone mad!" I suppressed the malice churning in my mind and grabbed Wang Cheng'en's collar. "If you want to live, help me get him south! The capital is lost—the entire north is finished!"

My words weren't a warning but a cold, cruel strategic conclusion derived from thousands of game failures.

Wang Cheng'en, intimidated by my intensity, instinctively looked toward Chongzhen.

Chongzhen's pitch-black eyes turned toward me, and across that once-human face spread a bizarre smile that stretched unnaturally wide.

"Run? I, the Emperor... am the state," he said softly. "But you... intrigue me. There's an aura about you that doesn't belong to this world."

He reached his hand toward me.

Without hesitation, I turned and bolted.

I had to survive, had to escape from Beijing as it transformed into hell, carrying this mobile source of contamination. This was no longer a game, but my own... last line of defense.

Eldritch Ming Dragon's Corruption — Chapter 9

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