Chapter 1129: How I Hate This!

The true reserve move was Prince of the Western Court Hao Yunsheng and Prince Jin Hao Qi.

Hao Yunsheng and Hao Qi rebelled. The emperor's own younger brother and his own son had risen in rebellion!

Though the two were said to have rebelled together, the real main force of the rebellion belonged to Prince Jin Hao Qi.

The emperor had always kept some measure of control over his younger brother Hao Yunsheng and had consistently suppressed him to a certain degree. Hao Yunsheng had indeed given him enormous support when he first took the throne, but once imperial power was in his hands, Hao Yuntu had shown no indulgence. One mountain could not contain two tigers; that was an iron principle. Step by step, he had stripped Hao Yunsheng of military command and other substantive authority, leaving him only idle honors and duties such as overseeing members of the imperial clan. Hao Yunsheng held no real power in his hands.

Hao Yunsheng had long harbored resentment toward his imperial elder brother. Back then, he had led troops through bloody fighting to support his brother's ascent to the throne, yet instead of receiving the benefits he had imagined, he ended up worse off than before. What infuriated him even more was that one of his legs had been crippled by a servant of Huyan Wuhen, and his imperial brother had simply turned a blind eye.

Given the opportunity, Hao Yunsheng would probably have rebelled long ago merely to vent the hatred in his heart. Unfortunately, he possessed nothing close to the strength needed for rebellion and had only ever dared make small moves behind the emperor's back.

As for Hao Qi, Hao Yuntu had once held expectations for this son. In truth, every son who came of age was given a certain opportunity to temper himself, or rather, was permitted to develop a small circle of his own and gain experience through it.

And once an imperial prince attained sufficient status, people would naturally begin attaching themselves to him.

That was entirely different from Prince of the Western Court Hao Yunsheng. No matter how court officials chose sides, no one would stand with Hao Yunsheng unless something was wrong with his head.

But from Shao Pingbo's perspective, certain things could never have been accomplished by approaching Prince Jin Hao Qi directly. Hao Qi would never have agreed. Prince of the Western Court Hao Yunsheng was therefore Shao Pingbo's initial point of leverage inside the imperial clan, the key used to trigger Hao Qi.

The moment Hao Qi fled that royal garden, Shao Pingbo had effectively slipped a rope around his neck and seized him by the nose. From that point onward, there was no turning back.

After escaping, Hao Qi was horrified to discover that his imperial father really had sent men to the garden to arrest him. Had he left even a little later, he would probably already have been imprisoned.

And once he had fled, he found there was no way to explain himself. If he had not been the one behind the poisoning, why had he run?

He no longer had the courage to return and face the consequences. He could not bear what awaited him there. Never mind the suspicion that he had poisoned the imperial clan; once his flight was added to it, he knew the position of Crown Prince and the imperial throne were both completely beyond his reach.

He also knew that all the things he had done against his imperial brothers in the past would give countless people an opportunity to kick him while he was down. He understood far too well what happened to losers in struggles for imperial power. The outcome was one he could not face.

Even if he wanted to go back, he could no longer do so. Under the persuasion of the advisers around him, every road back was gradually cut away until all wishful thinking became impossible.

If he did not return, what then? Hide for the rest of his life? Under deliberate manipulation, no one around him was willing to spend a lifetime hiding at his side. Was he supposed to hide alone forever? Left entirely on his own, he could barely manage even the basics of daily life. What could he possibly use to keep himself hidden? He would probably be captured before the next day was out.

Was he supposed to sit and wait to be arrested?

The proposal offered by his advisers became his only hope: collude with Jin, gather troops, and establish himself independently!

Their reasoning sounded entirely persuasive. This was his only opportunity. Qi's great armies were currently pouring out to aid Wei, leaving the country hollowed out within, while Jin's strategic intentions were plain for all to see. So long as Hao Qi was willing to submit to Jin, Jin would certainly support him with everything it could.

If Jin's strategy succeeded, then even if Hao Qi gave up any fantasy of taking Qi's throne, he could at least preserve his life and retain wealth and honor, all while watching his former rivals become prisoners.

Hao Qi had no choice. He could only take this road and rapidly contact the people belonging to his faction.

Once Prince Jin fled, the court did take some precautions and urgently issued decrees to the forces aligned with him. But Shao Pingbo's plan was always one step ahead, pressing hard against the rhythm of the Qi court. The court's response came too late.

The people in Prince Jin's faction had been driven into a corner by Prince Jin himself. If Prince Jin collapsed, everyone belonging to his faction would inevitably face a purge. To protect themselves, they had no choice but to follow him.

Qi's cultivator forces, however, could not possibly rebel so readily. Without cultivators supporting them, the rebel army would never withstand the pressures that would come.

But everything had already been prepared.

Under Shao Pingbo's personal direction and deployment, large numbers of Jin cultivators had secretly arrived in advance. They swiftly coordinated inside and outside with Prince Jin's forces and massacred the accompanying cultivators who refused to submit, clearing the way for Hao Qi's arrival and the rebellion that would follow.

Mobilizing so many cultivators for this operation placed Jin's cultivator strength under enormous pressure while it was simultaneously fighting two states. Its deployments were stretched extremely tight.

Yet under Shao Pingbo's meticulous planning, the cultivator strength of the State of Jin alone still managed to contend with the cultivator forces of both states on roughly equal footing.

Inside Wei, Shao Pingbo's manipulation had left many cultivator factions whose interests aligned with the regional lords wavering and unwilling to commit themselves. Wei could not mobilize all its cultivator strength, which was enough to let the divided forces of Jin's cultivators hold them off for a time.

Inside Qi, large numbers of cultivators had already left with the armies marching to aid Wei. The Jin cultivators detached to support Prince Jin were likewise enough to hold off what remained for a time.

Whether they could actually help Prince Jin win did not matter.

Shao Pingbo—or rather, the State of Jin—had never expected Prince Jin Hao Qi's limited forces to contend with the strength of all Qi.

Every promise was nothing more than a bubble. If Hao Qi succeeded, so much the better. If he failed, neither Shao Pingbo nor Jin cared whether Hao Qi or the forces under him lived or died.

The purpose was to force Huyan Wuhen's army to return and rescue the homeland, buying Jin the time it needed to conquer Wei smoothly.

The moment Prince Jin Hao Qi's defeat became inevitable, Jin's cultivators would not stay and die with him. They would scatter and withdraw at once.

The enormous sacrifices Blackwater Terrace had made with its forces inside Qi had bought the smooth execution of Shao Pingbo's plan.

With large numbers of Office of Investigation personnel drawn away from their usual positions, and with the pattern of its furious counterattack gradually revealing itself, Blackwater Terrace was able to grasp part of the network. It launched limited countermeasures into the areas left hollow, creating just enough conditions for Prince Jin's rebellion to assemble its forces.

Because the Office of Investigation's strength was missing from key places, it failed to discover and guard against the preparations in time. The Qi court reacted too slowly and failed to mobilize troops soon enough to prevent Prince Jin's forces from gathering, missing the best opportunity to intercept them.

Shao Pingbo had sacrificed enormous portions of Blackwater Terrace's strength for nothing more than this tiny opening!

To the people of Blackwater Terrace, sacrificing so many men merely for such a narrow opportunity hardly seemed worthwhile. But to the Jin court, the matter concerned the entire strategy. No price was too high. It supported Shao Pingbo's plan without regard for cost.

By the time the Qi court fully reacted, the forces of Prince Jin's faction in every region were already racing toward their assembly points. Prince of the Western Court Hao Yunsheng had also scraped together more than ten thousand troops and hurried to join Prince Jin. He truly could not muster much more than that. Under Jin's intervention, he could only take a subordinate position beneath Hao Qi within the rebel army.

At this point, the effects of Shao Pingbo's layered arrangements surfaced again, precisely as he had anticipated in his planning.

When the regions again received news that Prince Jin Hao Qi and the Prince of the Western Court had rebelled, their first reaction was actually hesitation. Even when urgent military orders arrived from the court, people doubted them, afraid the enemy was once again tampering with communications. Their first instinct was to verify whether their communication hubs had been compromised.

Even Huyan Wuhen's first response after receiving the report was to confirm it with the court. After the lesson they had just suffered, such caution was unavoidable.

Together with the more than ten thousand men under Prince of the Western Court Hao Yunsheng, Prince Jin Hao Qi gathered nearly one hundred and fifty thousand troops.

It was only one hundred and fifty thousand men, but Qi's important internal garrisons had been stripped bare. Its main forces were moving toward Wei, while other forces still had to guard against Jin. With the large contingent of Jin cultivators that had arrived ahead of time supporting the rebels, those one hundred and fifty thousand troops captured cities and seized territory all along their route, actually developing the momentum of a sweeping advance.

Faced with a force they could not resist, quite a few local officials opened their cities and surrendered. Once they had surrendered, they naturally issued public denunciations of the court and condemned the tyrant emperor for lacking the Dao!

Prince of the Western Court Hao Yunsheng, drawing on the authority of having overseen the imperial clan for so many years, openly declared that Hao Yuntu had no rightful claim to the throne. He accused him of slaughtering his own imperial brothers and said that even his own son could no longer bear to watch and had risen against him. He called upon the entire Hao imperial clan to join forces and overthrow Hao Yuntu.

Of course, the Hao clan was not going to dare rebel merely because of those accusations. But the damage to Hao Yuntu's reputation was enormous.

The rebel army had begun with one hundred and fifty thousand troops. As it swept forward, absorbing and coercing able-bodied men and people thrown into disorder along the way, it gradually swelled toward five hundred thousand!

"You beast!" In a towering rage, Hao Yuntu could scarcely believe his own son had actually rebelled. With one kick, he overturned the desk in the imperial study, his face livid with fury.

The eunuchs in attendance trembled in terror. Even Bu Xun did not dare breathe loudly. The entire imperial palace was steeped in fear. The favored women of the inner palace, normally forever scheming and fighting with one another, all fell silent. None dared cause the slightest disturbance.

Those noble women understood perfectly well that at a moment like this, life was worth no more than grass. Anyone who stirred up trouble would be seeking death.

Shing!

Hao Yuntu drew his sword and hacked it into a pillar. Through clenched teeth, he said, "How I hate this!"

His hatred did not come from nowhere.

Hao Yunsheng was his own younger brother, born of the same mother. It was precisely because Hao Yuntu had remembered that bond, and because Hao Yunsheng had indeed rendered tremendous service in helping him win the throne, that Hao Yuntu had always turned a blind eye to some of the things his brother did in secret. He had never exterminated him completely, partly because he had also taken public opinion into consideration.

As for his son Hao Qi, Hao Qi's mother—the woman Hao Yuntu had once loved most—had died saving him. She had shielded him from arrows until her body was riddled like a hedgehog. She had died in his arms, blood still in her mouth as she spoke of their son with her final breaths.

Hao Yuntu had originally intended to make that son Crown Prince. He had even meant for him to inherit the throne.

But that son's ability was simply too limited. Hao Qi was not fit for great responsibility. How could Hao Yuntu lightly entrust an entire state to him?

Even though he knew the son sometimes acted recklessly, for the sake of the feelings he still held toward that woman, Hao Yuntu had never treated him too harshly. He had continued giving the son chances.

Never had he imagined that the own brother whose fraternal bond he had cherished would lay murderous hands on his sons, poisoning them with the intent to kill.

Now that events had reached this point, how could he fail to realize that the one behind the poisoning was his younger brother Hao Yunsheng?

Back then, when he stripped Hao Yunsheng of military power, part of his intention had actually been to preserve his brother's life. Without real authority, Hao Yunsheng would have no way to step onto a road from which there was no return, and would therefore never provoke Hao Yuntu's murderous intent.

But the thinking behind that forbearance had been wrong!

And the eldest son whom he had given chance after chance had unexpectedly allowed an outside enemy to exploit him.

Perhaps in the eyes of others, he was a cold and heartless emperor. Only he himself knew how much tolerance he had truly shown.

He hated himself for not eliminating Hao Yunsheng completely when he had the chance. He hated himself for not crushing that son's ambitions sooner, allowing the two of them together to bring about today's disaster.

He hated himself for failing to become a truly merciless emperor!

[End of Chapter 1129]