Chapter 222: Advancement!

“Are you trying to get me killed?”

“This subordinate would not dare.”

“You’re definitely cursing me in your heart for being fussy and difficult.”

“Master is wise.”

“Heh. Still, I’m curious. What color is the dragon robe Siniang embroidered herself?”

“Golden yellow. It suits our aesthetic.”

The dragon robes of the State of Yan favored black, emphasizing the emperor’s martial bearing. The State of Qian revered Daoist mysticism in its dragon robes, lending the emperor an air of mystery. The State of Chu favored elaborate ornamentation; every little decoration had a story behind it.

As for Jin’s dragon robes…

The State of Jin was already gone. What style its dragon robes had no longer mattered. Even if only for the sake of an auspicious omen, later generations would never imitate the dragon robes of a fallen state.

“Better keep it hidden.”

“This subordinate understands.”

Zheng Fan knew perfectly well that if he indulged himself today and put on a dragon robe for the thrill of it, then the Marquis of Jingnan might struggle out of bed despite his wounds, travel for three days straight, and personally come chop off his head.

Truthfully, up to now, whether facing the Emperor of Yan or the two Marquises of the north and south, Zheng Fan had no confidence at all. Not only him—even the Demon Kings themselves had none.

Once his armor was fastened, Zheng Fan walked out of the courtyard. A horse had long since been prepared outside.

Zheng Fan mounted.

Then he turned to look at Xiong Lie and Tufa Chengji.

He waved casually.

“Follow.”

The gesture was as offhand as calling the two family dogs along when leaving the house.

It wasn’t that Zheng Fan was deliberately humiliating them. Many people naively believed that if you constantly showered others with kindness—bathed together, ate together, slept together, and so on—you could win their hearts.

That was far too naive.

There were plenty of people in this world who would become more sincerely submissive the less courtesy you showed them. Treat them warmly and gently, and they might turn around and sell you out.

When a conqueror arrived in newly conquered territory, the first thing to establish was authority, not benevolence.

Tufa Chengji moved first, cutting in front of Xiong Lie and taking Zheng Fan’s reins in his own hands.

He had somehow become a personal retainer without quite understanding how, but since his forehead had already struck the ground, acting coy halfway through would only make him look foolish.

Behind him, Xiong Lie bared his teeth in anger. Some things didn’t seem particularly desirable until someone else tried to snatch them. Then, suddenly, they became irresistible.

But there was no sense in two men holding the same reins. Xiong Lie could only follow behind the horse step by step, his already dark, broad face growing even gloomier.

The Blind Man rode as well, deliberately maintaining a certain distance from Zheng Fan. A supporting actor needed to know his place. He couldn’t steal the scene.

Around them waited Xiong Lie’s savage guards and a group of Tufa Clan soldiers. Tufa Chengji had come to the meeting alone, but his clan soldiers had not gone home. Now, seeing their clan head personally leading the horse of that Yan nobleman, some of the Tufa warriors had strange looks in their eyes. Even so, none dared cause trouble.

Zheng Fan also spotted Tufa Su. If only the woman had been a little prettier, he might not have minded sacrificing himself to a political marriage for the sake of drawing the Tufa Clan closer.

Then he reconsidered.

A proper man relying on marriage alliances—what kind of ability was that?

A great many people had gathered here. Shengle City was not large, but its population was a complicated mixture, especially after the recent wars had stirred all kinds of people together.

At this very moment, who knew how many pairs of eyes were watching this place? They had no right to make decisions and no power to influence the overall situation, but instinctively they were curious.

They wanted to know what sort of sky would hang above their heads from now on.

Would it scorch them beneath a blazing sun, or constantly leak rain?

At last, the ground began to tremble faintly.

Everyone turned toward the street ahead.

That was where the vibration was coming from.

The Yan army’s entry into the city had been extraordinarily easy. Tufa Chengji had stabbed the other factions in the back, attacked the other families, and personally opened the city gates. Liang Cheng had practically entered without firing a single arrow.

But breaking into a city had never been the difficult part.

What came afterward was what mattered.

The reputation of the Great Yan cavalry had already frightened Shengle City’s powerful clans before battle even began. But they still needed to see something real with their own eyes before they would become completely obedient.

This was propaganda.

This was a display of strength.

This was also a performance.

How to make the performance impressive enough that those people would personally cut away whatever restless ambitions remained in their hearts—the Demon Kings understood perfectly well.

At the head of the force entering the city rode the Jingnan Army.

The Jingnan Army had never been particularly large. After entering Jin and fighting continuously for ten days, its losses naturally could not have been small. Fortunately, its former rear-camp troops had formally entered the establishment, and the size of the Jingnan Army’s regular forces was steadily increasing.

According to the Yan court’s intentions, the regular Jingnan Army was to expand to one hundred thousand men, supported by another one hundred thousand troops in its rear camps.

Compared with the old structure of fifty thousand regular troops and fifty thousand rear-camp troops, that meant doubling its size over the next two years.

Rapid expansion inevitably caused some decline in troop quality. No matter how skilled Tian Wujing was at training soldiers, he could not completely eliminate that process. He could only shorten it as much as possible.

But the thousand Jingnan cavalry Zheng Fan had borrowed from Ren Juan were genuine veterans through and through, without the slightest dilution in quality. They came from the original fifty thousand regular troops personally trained by Tian Wujing and had also been tempered in the war in Jin.

They were true elites.

The Jingnan Army rode at the front. From armor to horses to men, every rider controlled his speed. Their warhorses trotted lightly, hooves striking the ground in measured rhythm, yet the killing aura of an organized formation had already begun pouring outward.

The savages present, the members of the Tufa Clan, and the ordinary people of Shengle City watching nearby had all grown up in this land. Naturally, they had seen blood and experienced fighting.

Unlike the citizens of Qian’s Upper Capital, who cared only whether armor looked splendid and gleaming, these people could tell whether a force knew how to fight, whether it knew how to kill—and even, to some extent, how many people it had killed.

Otherwise, where could such an aura of slaughter possibly have come from?

Some of the Tufa Clan soldiers who had previously been dissatisfied now unconsciously lowered their heads.

They knew perfectly well that if their own thousand men fought these thousand cavalry, they had absolutely no chance of victory.

When the Jingnan cavalry reached Zheng Fan, the Assistant General leading them was surnamed Gao.

His name was Gao Yi.

He looked at Zheng Fan.

Zheng Fan looked back at him.

Zheng Fan appeared calm on the surface, but inwardly he was muttering to himself. He had no idea whether Liang Cheng and the others had properly persuaded this man along the way.

At the very least, Gao Yi needed to be willing to put aside his pride and cooperate so they could perform this show perfectly and thoroughly.

Finally, Gao Yi dismounted.

He went down on one knee before Zheng Fan and shouted loudly, “This subordinate general Gao Yi pays his respects to the City Defender!”

Behind him, the thousand Jingnan cavalry simultaneously raised their sabers and roared in unison, “Greetings, City Defender!

“Greetings, City Defender!”

A surge of excitement swept through Zheng Fan’s heart.

It seemed Liang Cheng and the others had done a good job persuading them.

Truthfully, City Defender Zheng had built his foundation on barbarian soldiers. The barbarians were fierce, capable fighters and natural cavalrymen. Their combat quality was high, and to a certain extent, they were also easy to indoctrinate.

But barbarian soldiers weren’t very good at cooperating with poses and theatrics. They were a little too simple-minded. They could never quite give City Defender Zheng the kind of enjoyment he wanted.

Back at the prince’s residence, Zheng Fan had once borrowed Tian Wujing’s personal guards to flaunt borrowed authority.

Ah, that had felt wonderful.

So exhilarating.

He had never forgotten it.

The convict soldiers knew how to play along, but there weren’t many of them. Then another batch of barbarian troops had joined him afterward, and, well…

So now, as Zheng Fan looked at these thousand Jingnan troops, he had already made up his mind.

No matter what happened, he absolutely could not give these thousand soldiers back!

Even if he had to stage a little trick of “keeping bandits alive to justify maintaining troops,” he had to keep this Jingnan force firmly in his own hands and turn them into the core troops of his main army.

Whether Ren Juan got angry, Zheng Fan no longer cared.

As for whether the Marquis of Jingnan would get angry well, the Marquis of Jingnan probably couldn’t bear to chop off his head anyway.

Behind the Jingnan Army came the barbarian cavalry and the convict soldiers. Every one of them was a hardened veteran who had witnessed great battles, and their movements had been drilled into coordination.

Their edge might still fall slightly short of the Jingnan Army, which had fought across half of Jin in ten days, but their orderly formations still delivered an overwhelming visual impact.

At the very rear came two thousand surrendered Jin troops.

Xu Youcheng was among them.

Yes.

Xu Youcheng was not dead.

After the Wenren Clan was destroyed, he had wandered into the imperial region in a daze. When the imperial region was overrun, he was captured and eventually transferred into Zheng Fan’s hands.

He remained somewhat lost.

And he knew that sense of confusion would continue for a long time.

Because several nights ago, the Blind Man beside that Yan nobleman had told them that anyone whose family members had been reduced to government servants would have them redeemed at the City Defender’s personal expense.

The two thousand Jin troops still had some problems with morale, but they were Jin soldiers after all.

Their appearance made the people of Shengle City instinctively feel somewhat closer to them.

They were their own people.

Calling them sons of the local soil might have been going too far, but at least they spoke with the same regional accent.

Liang Cheng rode out and approached Zheng Fan.

He dismounted, knelt, and saluted.

“Greetings, my lord!”

Tufa Chengji knelt.

Xiong Lie knelt.

The savages and the Tufa Clan soldiers knelt as well.

Many of the commoners nearby also dropped to their knees.

Strictly speaking, this was improper ceremony.

It exceeded Zheng Fan’s station.

But Yan’s atmosphere was excellent in that regard. Such taboos were not fashionable at present. Back outside Nanwang City, the spectacle put on by the two Marquises had been far grander than this.

Zheng Fan made no gesture of dismounting to help anyone up.

Clad in armor, he sat almost lazily upon his horse and slowly swept his gaze across his surroundings.

This was his city.

This was his territory.

This would be his home from now on.

And it would also be the place from which he would build his fortune!

He had crossed into this world a year ago.

He had been a corvée laborer. He had been hacked at by others, and he had hacked others down in return. He had endured wind and rain and worked himself half to death.

It felt exactly like those people in later generations who slaved away at their jobs while emptying the pockets of six relatives just to scrape together the down payment on a home.

Your daddy finally has a home!

A heroic surge rose from deep within Zheng Fan’s heart and instantly swept through every limb and bone.

At the same moment, the qi and blood inside his body seemed to be drawn along with it.

Like magma that had accumulated for ages, it finally found its moment to erupt.

Boom!

A gentle black radiance flowed over Zheng Fan’s body.

The sensation was so exhilarating that Zheng Fan nearly threw back his head and roared.

At that moment, he advanced!

At precisely the same time, Liang Cheng before him, the Blind Man beside him, and A’Ming, Fan Li, and Xue San nearby every one of their eyes flashed with a gleam of light.

In the distance, Siniang licked her enticing red lips.

[End of Chapter 222]