Chapter 865: The Emperor Personally Takes the Field

What had happened?

How would the Tiannü Sect know what had happened? All it knew was that Hui Qingping had joined hands with Wu Gongling and betrayed her former sect.

Yet in a certain sense, even saying Hui Qingping had betrayed the sect was not entirely accurate. The Tiannü Sect's rules forbade marriage. In order to maneuver around that prohibition and marry Hui Qingping to Wu Gongling, they had already had her withdraw from the Tiannü Sect beforehand.

There was simply no way to pick the matter apart in detail. If they did, the whole affair would become an enormous joke.

Refusing to examine it closely was merely deceiving themselves. Who did not know there had been something fishy behind Hui Qingping's withdrawal from the Tiannü Sect?

If anyone was to be accused of betraying the sect, at most it could only be said that the disciples of Hui Qingping's faction had betrayed it. And since they were obeying their master, even that did not seem altogether outrageous.

In short, the affair left the Tiannü Sect thoroughly humiliated and enraged.

Internally, matters were still manageable. The real pressure came from outside. The Han imperial court was furious, while Baichuan Valley and Wushang Palace demanded an accounting from the Tiannü Sect.

Back then, if the Tiannü Sect had not acted for its own selfish interests, Wu Gongling could only have joined Han in attacking Song from front and rear. Perhaps Song would already have been torn nearly to pieces before the frozen wars resumed.

Wu Gongling had not possessed such great strength at the beginning. If he had refused to obey back then, he would never have withstood being dealt with. There had been countless ways to suppress him from every direction. Yet the Tiannü Sect had inserted itself into the matter and restrained Baichuan Valley and Wushang Palace. Song, wanting to avoid fighting on two fronts, had also refrained from attacking Wu Gongling. One cause piled atop another until he was handed the chance to grow and expand.

Tracing everything back to its source, the present situation had been created by the Tiannü Sect's selfish motives.

And now, with Song's three great sects supporting him, Wu Gongling was no longer someone who could be dealt with whenever others wished. The opportunity to suppress him had been lost completely. Even if the Tiannü Sect wanted revenge, there was nothing it could do.

Having made such a mess of everything, life inside the Tiannü Sect had become extremely difficult...

Guan Fangyi lifted the tent flap and saw Niu Youdao sitting cross-legged inside in meditation. She truly had to admire him.

In truth, after leaving the Tiandu Secret Realm, Niu Youdao had been burdened with countless affairs. Yet when his eyes were open, he dealt with one matter after another, and when he closed them, it was as though he had cut himself off completely from the world. No matter how busy he became, he never casually neglected his cultivation.

Guan Fangyi knew she could not make such a clean, decisive switch. With so many complicated matters swirling around, how could anyone still quiet his heart?

"Master Dao!" she called.

Only after Niu Youdao slowly opened his eyes did she enter.

"Something drastic has happened in Song."

"Drastic?" Niu Youdao frowned slightly. "Song couldn't have been defeated by Han this quickly, could it?"

Guan Fangyi tossed him the intelligence report.

"Mu Zhuozhen issued an Edict of Self-Reproach and yielded the throne to Wu Gongling!"

"..."

Niu Youdao wondered whether he had heard correctly. He took the report and read it carefully.

Some things were not written in the intelligence, but anyone who was not an idiot could see the implications.

Mu Zhuozhen had not yet been driven into a final dead end. How could he possibly have abdicated voluntarily?

"It seems Song's three great sects deposed the Mu clan and turned around to support Wu Gongling instead," Niu Youdao muttered. "That Wu Gongling is actually going to become Emperor of Song..."

The development had been completely outside his expectations. Yet after thinking it through, it also made sense.

Even so, no matter how he looked at it, Niu Youdao still found the whole thing absurd.

And yet absurd or not, it had happened.

Guan Fangyi sighed. "The various feudal lords struggle their whole lives without ever touching the edge of something like this, yet that shameless bastard got it without lifting a finger. The throne of Song dropped straight from the heavens and landed on his head. What a bargain he picked up."

Niu Youdao smiled bitterly and shook his head.

"You can't put it that way. A hat that large falling from the sky can crush a man to death. Not everyone can bear its weight, but he can. Why?"

"Whether he cares about face or not, he was once merely a rebel general. Yet he escaped encirclement by the feudal lords of Yan, found his footing amid the struggle of three states, and rapidly built a territory and power of his own. That ability to borrow strength from every direction and turn one force against another is no simple thing."

"In his circumstances, if he had been the kind of man who cared about face, he would never have survived until now. If he hadn't shamelessly forced his way into marrying Hui Qingping and borrowed the Tiannü Sect's power, he probably wouldn't even have room to breathe today. He might already have died without an intact corpse."

"When the Cangzhou rebellion began, several hundred thousand troops followed him through hardship and homelessness, chased from one place to another. You can imagine what they endured. Yet several hundred thousand men stayed with him, and even when trapped in desperate straits they never scattered. To win that kind of support from so many soldiers is no ordinary feat."

"Without the foundation he built step by step beforehand, this throne would never have fallen to him."

"Because he was prepared, the opportunity became his. Had he not been prepared, this chance would have had nothing to do with him, and no one would even have thought of him."

"So saying he merely picked up a bargain goes too far. He earned it through his own ability."

...

The vast procession withdrawing south from the Song capital finally met Wu Gongling's army marching north.

After the two sides met and exchanged greetings, Wu Gongling rode his horse up to one carriage. He used his riding crop to lift the curtain and stared for a while at the dazed, muddleheaded Mu Zhuozhen inside. Then his gaze shifted toward the aging but still attractive Empress, who sat there trembling.

That night, Wu Gongling found an excuse to send Hui Qingping away.

Then, under the pretext of asking questions, he summoned the Empress into his own tent.

She remained inside for a long time.

When she finally ran out in the middle of the night, sobbing with her clothes in disarray, she smashed her head against a large rock and killed herself.

Some people knew perfectly well what had happened.

No one said a word.

At first, Song's three great sects had not understood what great use Wu Gongling could possibly have for keeping Mu Zhuozhen alive.

Now they understood.

Wu Gongling had been worried there might be some hidden trick, worried that Song's three great sects might have left some contingency behind.

Only after seeing Mu Zhuozhen in person and confirming his identity did Wu Gongling draft a public list of accusations, condemning Mu Zhuozhen for failing Great Song and the like. He then announced that Mu Zhuozhen had killed himself in shame and that the Empress had followed him in death.

In reality, Mu Zhuozhen had been strangled by force.

He was buried together with the Empress.

As for the women of Mu Zhuozhen's rear palace, every consort who had borne him children was executed, no matter how beautiful she was. Wu Gongling did not spare a single one.

Mu Zhuozhen's sons and daughters were likewise secretly buried alive.

He had truly cut the weeds and torn out the roots.

Publicly, it was announced that they had been sentenced to penal labor. Only much later would word spread that they had died at the hands of Han soldiers during the war.

A few of Mu Zhuozhen's children had luckily escaped when arrests were made in the capital.

Wu Gongling continued sending people to hunt them down in secret afterward.

Among the consorts who were executed, some came from families of court officials. Their deaths implicated their relatives, and Wu Gongling showed no mercy. He directly purged the officials connected to them in blood.

Even when Mu Zhuozhen had sat on the throne, he had not dared behave this way.

Wu Gongling, however, was in the midst of breaking the old order and establishing a new one. He was not constrained by the existing network of interests. He could act with his hands completely free, carrying none of its burdens.

As for the other palace consorts who came from families of court officials, they were dismissed and returned to their relatives. Wu Gongling did not offend those officials.

The women who remained were all sent to the rear as spoils to be distributed according to postwar merit.

That prospect left a great many officers and soldiers rubbing their hands eagerly.

In truth, Wu Gongling secretly selected several women he fancied and kept them for himself. But wary of Hui Qingping, he did not dare make it public. He quietly instructed his subordinates to keep watch over them and sent them to the rear with the others.

Luo Zhao was brought over afterward.

He would rather die than submit.

Wu Gongling initially wanted to kill him, but after Feng Guan'er pleaded for his life, Lingxiao Pavilion stepped forward and protected Luo Zhao.

Those who needed to be purged were purged.

Those who needed to be washed away in blood were washed away.

With the civil and military officials offering their support, Wu Gongling formally ascended the throne and proclaimed himself Emperor.

Wearing a phoenix crown and magnificent robes, Hui Qingping climbed the high dais beside Wu Gongling and accepted the officials' obeisance.

Everything felt like a dream.

She had actually become Empress of Song!

Afterward, Wu Gongling granted offices and titles on a grand scale.

The old subordinates who had followed him for years all rose with him, even the chickens and dogs ascending to Heaven.

...

A rebel minister and traitor had actually become Emperor of Song.

All beneath Heaven was shaken!

Inside the imperial palace of the Qi capital, Hao Yuntu read the news of Mu Zhuozhen's death, dropped the intelligence report in his hand, leaned back in his chair, and sighed toward the heavens.

"Ah..."

Bu Xun, standing nearby, understood.

Mu Zhuozhen had been the dignified Emperor of Song, yet when others decided he should be replaced, he was replaced.

As Emperor of Qi, was Hao Yuntu not similarly constrained by Qi's three great sects?

For a time, Hao Yuntu was far from the only sovereign to feel the sorrow of a fox upon seeing the rabbit die.

Inside the imperial palace of Yanjing, flowers bloomed beautifully beyond the window.

Before a dressing table inside, Aque stared at herself in the mirror as tears silently streamed down her face.

News of Mu Zhuozhen's death had reached her.

She did not even know whether what she felt was grief.

The tears simply came for no reason.

Once, she had believed she would remain with Mu Zhuozhen for the rest of her life.

She understood that, in a sense, being sent here by Mu Zhuozhen had allowed her to escape disaster.

Judging by everything she had heard, had she remained in Song, there was no telling what fate would have awaited her.

Should she be grateful?

Should she thank Mu Zhuozhen?

Everything that had happened in the past now seemed like a dream as well.

...

Song's new Emperor ascended the throne.

Wu Gongling proclaimed to all beneath Heaven that he would personally lead the campaign!

Everyone watched to see how this new Emperor of Song would fight Han.

Yet Wu Gongling's declaration of personally leading the campaign thundered loudly enough to shake the heavens, while in practice he merely directed troop movements himself, sending armies running back and forth and playing an endless game of chase with the Han army.

He never fought a single proper battle.

Whatever else one might say of his abilities, Wu Gongling had evidently trained his skill at commanding great armies in retreat to a high level.

At the same time, his forces never stopped harassing the enemy.

The Han army could do absolutely nothing about him.

Inside the Yan army's command tent, Meng Shanming sat in his wheelchair before the map and gave a quiet chuckle.

He shook his head repeatedly.

"Picking up a stone only to smash one's own foot. Jin Jue is probably in real trouble this time. In his dreams, he likely never imagined he'd run into something like this."

Shang Chaozong also studied the map with a smile.

"If Wu Gongling can keep Han's army tied down, that's no bad thing for us."

Inside the Han army camp, Jin Jue glared at the map.

Boom!

His fist slammed against the wall.

"The Tiannü Sect deserves ten thousand deaths!"

Trouble was putting it mildly.

Faced with Wu Gongling fighting this way, Jin Jue felt as though one head had become two.

Han might be able to fight.

The problem was that Wu Gongling simply refused to fight them.

The dignified Emperor of Song did not care about his own territory.

He did not care about Song's common people either.

When faced with an invading enemy, he offered almost no resistance at all.

Destroy whatever you like.

Burn, kill, and plunder as you please.

What kind of emperor or sovereign behaved like this?

Anyone else would have lost his position long ago.

But Wu Gongling was breaking the old order and establishing a new one. He carried none of that burden.

Jin Jue could not imitate Meng Shanming and simply run through Song slaughtering and destroying at every turn.

Han intended to occupy Song.

If they destroyed everything and killed everyone, what use would it be to occupy a patch of land with nothing left on it?

Even setting aside the fact that massacre would terrify the population into fleeing, if Han lost the hearts of the people completely, governing the territory after occupation would become a nightmare.

Nor could Han retreat.

It had paid such an enormous price and lost so many men.

How could everything end so carelessly?

Yet until Wu Gongling's forces were defeated, holding conquered territory was difficult as well.

Scatter Han's troops to garrison the occupied lands?

Wu Gongling still preserved an intact army.

Try scattering those forces and see what happened.

The Han army had fallen completely into a dilemma, unable either to advance or retreat.

It was also impossible to restore production in the occupied territories and prepare for long-term local supply.

Song's army kept harassing them.

All provisions and matériel had to be transported over enormous distances from Han itself.

For Song's common people, Wu Gongling's method was a catastrophe.

But the blame for that catastrophe fell upon the invading State of Han!

[End of Chapter 865]