The "Golden Age" of Thousand Waves City didn't fade; it ended with a collective, agonizing scream.
It began in the private silence of meditation chambers and the dust of training grounds. Cultivators who had spent the last week binging on the Peng Clan's cut-rate pills suddenly found their Qi turning into liquid lead. The "minor tremors" had metastasized into a systemic catastrophe. Meridians, once supple and clear, were now coated in a viscous, grey sludge that made every breath a battle and every circulation a jagged spark of agony.
By midday, the "Grey-Eye Plague" had reached the markets.
"My Dantian... it's freezing!" a mercenary shrieked in the central square. He collapsed, black veins spider-webbing across his throat like a parasitic vine. "The Peng pills! The bastards poisoned us!"
The realization didn't spread like a rumor; it detonated like a powder keg. Thousands of people, realizing they had traded their future potential for a handful of saved coppers, felt a primal, murderous betrayal. The fear crystallized into a white-hot, focused rage.
"To the Peng Estate!" a voice roared, a father carrying his unconscious son, whose meridians had burst in a spray of mist. "They sold us rot and called it mercy! Burn it all down!"
The march was not a protest; it was a river of iron and fury. Shopkeepers, mercenaries, and even the City Guard, many showing the tell-tale leaden tint in their eyes, armed themselves with whatever could draw blood. They bypassed the Tang Clan's shops, casting looks of bitter regret at the Jade Spring Hall as they surged toward the direction of Peng Estate.
Inside the Peng Estate, the sound of the approaching mob was like the relentless rolling of thunder before a storm.
Patriarch Peng Kai stood in his war room, staring at a heap of returned, shattered pill bottles, when the first paving stone detonated through the high stained-glass window. He flinched, the crash snapping him out of his hollow trance.
"Patriarch!" Elder Zhou burst in, his face a mask of sweating, unadulterated terror. "The gates... they're being battered down! There are thousands of them, and they aren't listening to reason! They're demanding your head on a spike!"
Peng Kai didn't move. He looked at the shattered glass, then at the stolen Tang pill bottle on his desk, the one that smelled exactly like theirs, only perfected. A jagged, terrible realization began to tear through his mind, shoving him past the brink of sanity.
"The Golden Cauldron Merchant Union..." Kai whispered, his voice cracking with a high-pitched, hysterical edge. "They didn't just sell us a flawed recipe. They sold us a death sentence. They knew! They knew the toxins would bridge the threshold and accumulate!"
He grabbed a handful of his own pills from the desk and crushed them into dust, the grey powder flying like grave ash.
"They gave the Tang Clan the real good and gave us the poison!" he roared, spit flying from his lips. "They wanted to destroy us! They used the Peng name as a test-subject for the formula and then threw us to the wolves!"
"My Lord, the mob is breaching the outer wall!" Zhou screamed as a massive boom shook the floorboards. "The City Guard is refusing to intervene, they say their own captains are crippled by the pills!"
Peng Kai let out a laugh that sounded like dry leaves skittering over a tombstone. His eyes were wide, bloodshot, and dancing with a manic, unstable light. He ignored Zhou, stumbling toward the window to see the sea of torches and distorted, angry faces pouring into his inner courtyard.
"Betrayed by the Union... mocked by a child from the Tang Clan..." Kai's fingers clawed at his own face, drawing ragged, bloody furrows down his cheeks. "I am the Patriarch of the Peng! I owned this city!"
He spun back toward the center of the room, his aura flaring in a chaotic, violent burst of Golden Core power. The pressure was immense; the remaining windows detonated outward in a spray of glass, and heavy sandalwood furniture was tossed aside like autumn leaves. He was no longer a leader; he was a cornered beast, his world dissolving into a nightmare of debt, betrayal, and madness.
"If they want my head, let them come!" he shrieked toward the vaulted ceiling, his mind finally snapping under the weight of his own ruin. "But I will take every merchant, every beggar, and every Tang bastard to the Yellow Spri—"
"Stop."
The word didn't enter through their ears; it detonated directly inside the skulls of everyone present. The sheer weight of the mental command was so heavy that the chaotic Qi in the room was instantly smothered, forced back into the floorboards.
Peng Kai froze, his breath hitching in his throat. The manic light in his eyes wavered, replaced by a deep-seated, instinctual dread.
"G-Grand Elder?" one of the elders whispered, his voice trembling as he looked toward the deepest, most secluded part of the estate.
"Enough," the voice reverberated again, cold and ancient, carrying the authority of a man who had seen centuries of blood. "Do not succumb to rage while the wolf is at the door. We must quell the rabble before they tear this house down. Open the treasury. Distribute gold to the loudest among them, buy their silence for the hour."
The voice paused, a chilling, calculated weight settling over the room.
"Announce that the Peng Clan was unaware of the impurities. Claim we were sabotaged by our suppliers. Tell them we are refining a cure at this very moment, and that it will be provided to every affected soul... free of charge."
"Yes... Y-Uncle... Grand Elder," Peng Kai stammered, his knees hitting the floor as he fought to reign in his fractured mind. The lethal pressure of the Golden Core aura retracted, leaving him gasping for air. "We will do as you command. We will... we will blame the Union."
Deep in the shadows, the Grand Elder's presence withdrew, leaving the room in a state of terrified, forced calm. They had bought themselves a reprieve, but the price was a lie that could only hold for so long.