Sorcery! That Commoner Used Sorcery!
"No, what the hell is this…."
The night watch shift had just begun. The bored sentries who had been patrolling lazily rushed over at the thunderous shouting that shattered the dawn stillness. They found Yuan Shu, the Cavalry Commandant, screaming her lungs out in front of one of the tents. And that tent belonged to… Deputy Commander Zilong?
The guards' eyes widened. Rumors had been circulating that Commandant Yuan had taken a liking to Deputy Commander Zilong and even abandoned her fiancé for him. So what on earth was happening now?
"You think you'll get away with treating me like this, you insignificant wretch?! You've inherited your servant father's lack of manners—there's not a shred of courtesy to be found in you! I'll make you regret driving Yuan Shu away like this! The moment you set foot in Luoyang, I'll have you seized and sold off to a brothel! Do you hear me?! Let's see if you can still act so high and mighty toward me after you've been passed around by those sodomites! Even if you beg for forgiveness then, I won't grant it, so you'd better prepare yourself!!!"
Yuan Shu continued hurling curses while the interior of the tent remained eerily quiet in contrast. It seemed she had visited Zhao Yun only to be thrown out. …Visiting a man alone at this hour of the morning? The guards exchanged glances and whispered among themselves. Some dismissed it as nonsense, but… look! Hadn't Commandant Yuan just emerged from Zhao Yun's tent? Any adult could guess what that implied.
Hold on—didn't the fact that Yuan Shu was this furious mean…?
At that moment, Yuan Shu lifted her head at the sound of their whispers and locked eyes with the guards. Heavens! Her makeup was completely ruined and running down her face! Had she been crying?!
"If you're done gawking, get lost!!!"
Yuan Shu, her face flushed crimson, shoved the guards aside and stormed off to her own tent with heavy footsteps. She had told them to scram and then left of her own accord, but the guards were too stunned to point that out.
A man and a woman alone in a tent in the middle of the night. A woman driven out at dawn. A woman who cried so hard her makeup ran before flying into a rage and disappearing. …And yet the man never even showed his face. Anyone could reach only one conclusion: the man was trash.
But the woman was the youngest daughter of a prestigious family, while the man was nothing more than a minor provincial gentry? He had seduced an engaged noblewoman, only to treat her so coldly afterward?! Zhao Yun… that piece of trash, what the hell had he done?!
Contempt filled the guards' eyes as they stared at the tent. Of course, they had completely misunderstood the situation. Yuan Shu's ruined makeup wasn't from crying over being heartlessly rejected. It was simply because Zhao Yun had kicked her in the womb and, for good measure, rammed his cock so deep into her throat that it still ached.
…Perhaps it was fortunate for both Zhao Yun and Yuan Shu that the guards had jumped to the wrong conclusion.
. . .
"My lady! Did that perfect plan of yours go smoothly… No!!! My lady! Your makeup… Don't tell me you cried—"
"Get out!!!"
Yuan Shu kicked the shocked Ji Ling out of the tent, then threw herself onto the bed and buried her face in the soft pillow. To use her like that and cast her aside the moment his lust was sated—wasn't that how one treated a cheap whore?! How dare he treat the youngest daughter of the Yuan clan of Runan, Yuan Gonglu, in such a manner…! And he was nothing more than a commoner who had barely been adopted into some nameless provincial gentry family!
She raged, pounding the bed and hurling everything within reach. Before long, the inside of the tent was a complete mess. Yet her anger refused to subside—perhaps because recalling that humiliating memory made her body heat up uncontrollably, just as it had then.
Did I really go into heat like some bitch in estrus from that kind of humiliation?! No, that couldn't be it. …It must be sorcery! Yes, sorcery! That commoner must have used some kind of sorcery on me!
***
Naturally, Zhao Yun had cast no sorcery on Yuan Shu. He had merely punched her in the lower abdomen with honest intent to knock her down, then shamelessly used her throat to pleasure himself. Of course, he had done so in order to employ the very sorcery that people in this land called "sorcery," but that didn't mean he had used any on Yuan Shu herself.
So if Zhao Yun could have heard Yuan Shu's thoughts, he would have felt deeply wronged. After all, she had suddenly gone into heat, eagerly licked him clean, and even sucked up the remaining semen from his urethra—where did sorcery come into it?
Then why had Yuan Shu acted that way so suddenly? How should I know… Maybe she's the type who gets aroused from being beaten? That was the answer he would have given if she had come demanding an explanation in a fit of rage. Yuan Shu would have flown into a tantrum if she heard it, but surprisingly, there was some truth to it!
It was because the creator of the 180 AD East Asia Expansion Mode (Adult Mode Compatible) for the Romance of the Three Kingdoms scenario had set Yuan Shu's sexual preferences that way to maintain historical accuracy. Of course, to truly stay faithful to history, countless women including Yuan Shu should have been made male, but the modder could never accept that. I mean, wasn't it common sense that Liu Bei and Cao Cao were women, just like King Arthur? Who in their right mind would demand Cao Cao be made male? Nonsense! As long as other historical details were preserved, that was enough.
Then why had the creator claimed that Yuan Shu getting excited like a dog when treated as a free onahole was historically accurate? Just look at how she had been treated by Lü Bu and Sun Ce. If Yuan Shu were male, she would simply look like a pathetic pushover, but change her to female and she becomes a battered wife who endures abuse from a handsome but cruel man while pouring out everything she has until he discards her. That already went beyond mere pushover territory.
So while turning Yuan Shu into a villainess, the creator had set her sexual preferences to Appearance 25/30, Masochism 25/30, and Provocation 30/30. Combined with the villainess trait that already made her act like a bitch, maxing out Provocation created the perfect personality-disordered character who threw tantrums regardless of age, gender, status, or rank.
But then they also raised her preferences for Appearance and Masochism? What happens then? Well, she becomes an absurd masochistic slut who, while normally acting like a mad dog and causing trouble, gets punched in the womb by a handsome man who finally loses his temper and immediately squirts pussy juice like she's pissing herself on the spot. Just like earlier.
***
Anyway, while Yuan Shu was throwing a fit alone in her tent, Zhao Yun wasted no more time and began chanting the sorcery incantation at once.
The spell Zhang Jue was currently casting was The King in Yellow's Play. It was a sorcery born from the terror of an indescribable existence dwelling in a dimension once inhabited by demons. Whenever sandstorms blew, the demons would always prostrate themselves and lower their heads to avoid encountering that being, so that fear and humiliation were potent enough to become a spell.
An ineffable existence whose name could not be spoken lightly and whose purpose could not be known—an entity that could not even be called a god. In the distant future, the demons, unable to endure any longer, eventually fled to another dimension after tremendous sacrifices… but they could neither forget that existence nor were they allowed to. Thus, they created a single sorcery containing their humiliation, terror, and a hint of reverence toward it. That was The King in Yellow's Play.
As befitting a spell with such a grandiose origin story, it had long been infamous as the worst sorcery for which no countermeasure or reversal spell existed. However, nothing lasts forever… Even The King in Yellow's Play eventually gained a method of dispelling it.
Centuries later, during the era when Rome had fallen and three powerful empires each claimed to be the true successor of Rome, Emperor Horcio—who ruled the Iberian Peninsula and parts of North Africa—suffered a shocking triple defeat against Emperor Imric Johan, falling for the same strategy three times in a row. After this incident, later known as "Horcio's Folly," Horcio was forced to abandon his claim to Rome's succession. Instead, he invaded the Kingdom of Egypt to conquer it, only to face a dire crisis when the Pharaoh sacrificed his own people to cast The King in Yellow's Play.
In that moment of crisis, Horcio performed a miracle by creating an impromptu reversal spell fueled by the humiliation and rage from his previous three consecutive defeats. He twisted the Pharaoh's sandstorm ritual into a rain-prayer that summoned a raging storm from the heavens, securing victory. The very sorcery Horcio used then was what Zhao Yun was about to cast now.
Of course, Zhao Yun had never experienced a historically humiliating defeat like Horcio (honestly, losing three times in a row to the same tactic wasn't an easy feat to begin with), nor did he have any sacrifices to offer. However, fortunately, while Zhang Jue had offered numerous prisoners and captives as sacrifices for the spell, he was not a true sorcerer. He had merely followed the method written in the 太平要術書 by offering people as sacrifices and reciting the incantation. In other words, he had used it without harboring the demons' humiliation, terror, and reverence. He probably even thought of the King in Yellow as nothing more than some minor desert deity.
There was no way such a method could properly manifest that terrifying power. That meant, for Zhao Yun—who had played as a sorcerer countless times in Elden Kings 3—Zhang Jue's half-baked sorcery could be dispelled even without any sacrifices.