Chapter 644: - The Fury of Great Yan!

The entire discussion hall fell silent.

The only sound left was the girl's happy, proud giggling.

The Sword Saint's brows twitched faintly beneath his bamboo hat.

In truth, the Sword Saint had never been particularly interested in plots, intrigues, or schemes.

He would watch.

If he did not understand something, he would ask.

But most of the time, he maintained a detached attitude, searching instead for some moment of sudden enlightenment.

The higher he climbed, the smaller the Sword Saint's heart became.

So small that it could contain only one sword, the family inside his little courtyard, a flock of chickens, and one duck.

But at this moment, even the Sword Saint's expression changed beneath the brim of his hat.

This turn had arrived too suddenly.

Too impossibly.

Swordsmanship spoke of thunder exploding from level ground.

The phrase matched the transformation in the hall almost perfectly.

Gou Moli had just been preparing to follow Marquis Zheng out.

Then he stopped.

His reactions were fast.

His lower body did not turn.

His upper body did.

Forget etiquette.

He stared directly at Situ Yu's pregnant woman.

The former Savage King, who had once dominated the snowfield and stirred storms everywhere he went, actually felt dazed for a moment.

Almost as though several lifetimes had passed.

That should not be possible.

His own Wenren Mi'er had not even been sent out yet.

Goddamn it.

How had another one appeared first?

And she was already pregnant?

Perhaps Gou Moli's thoughts had become muddled.

Perhaps the change had simply been too abrupt.

Combined with the fact that the Savage King relied primarily on his brain and possessed only a mediocre foundation in actual martial arts, he could not maintain that twisted posture for very long.

Thud!

Gou Moli fell directly onto his backside.

It hurt.

But a smile remained on his face.

He had seen every sort of human spectacle in his life.

Tonight, he had finally witnessed a truly peerless play.

Xu Wenzu had already reached the doorway.

He stopped.

His breath caught.

The three folds beneath his chin pulled inward, shrinking into one and a half rounded layers.

The mountain of flesh hanging over his belly rose toward his chest as he inhaled sharply.

Unfortunately, that “mountain” was too heavy.

It quickly dropped again.

For a moment, waves of flesh rolled across his stomach like water.

Xu Wenzu's next reaction was not to look at the pregnant girl.

Nor at Situ Yu.

He instinctively turned toward Marquis Zheng, who stood beside him and should have been leaving the hall with him.

Xu Wenzu's gaze held a kind of numbness.

He had already been shocked too many times tonight.

The meaning in his eyes was simple:

Little Brother Zheng, your arrangements are actually this meticulous?

Xu Wenzu suddenly felt like a man who had intended to walk over and negotiate with his neighbor because the dividing wall had been built a little across the property line.

Then his good friend Zheng Fan slapped him on the shoulder and said:

Come on. I'll go with you and back you up.

Only after arriving did he discover that Zheng Fan had apparently come to exterminate the neighbor's entire household.

But who could understand what Marquis Zheng himself was feeling?

He had arranged only two things.

First, have Hero Chen stab Ran Min.

Second, prepare the guard in Flying Fish Robes to respond if he was asked to intervene.

Ran Min adding his own improvised scene was one thing.

But what the hell was Prince Cheng Residence doing now?

Marquis Zheng had only wanted to slap Prince Cheng Residence, then use that slap to strike Gong Wang from afar, then use that second distant slap to send yet another distant slap toward whoever stood behind Prince Cheng Residence in Yanjing.

Instead, after one slap, a whole heap of murder weapons came tumbling out of Prince Cheng Residence.

As though the residence itself were desperately begging:

Kill me.

Kill me.

Kill me!

This was no longer pulling up a radish and finding mud clinging to the roots.

He had pulled up the entire cesspit.

As for the true central figure of the moment, Prince Cheng, Situ Yu, his expression seemed frozen solid.

Earlier, sitting in that chair, he had swallowed too much humiliation, too much depression, too much anger.

Then news that his woman was pregnant had lifted his spirit again.

This woman who understood books and propriety, this gentle and refined woman, this woman only a year older than him who was nevertheless mature, decisive, knew when to advance and retreat, understood how to smooth his emotions, and always brought him peace, had now in the most unexpected way imaginable struck him with a thunderbolt from a clear sky.

Yes.

She was still smiling.

Still delighted.

Still sincerely overjoyed that the Wenren family would have blood passed down to another generation.

But Situ Yu knew perfectly well that she was not this stupid.

Even taking ten thousand steps backward, even if she truly were nothing more than some little woman whose mind had been overwhelmed by joy, the moment every person in the discussion hall fell silent, she should have noticed that something was wrong.

She should have stopped laughing.

But she was still laughing.

Laughing happily.

That smile made Situ Yu's blood run cold.

It frightened him.

It was as though he had watched a venomous snake bite him hard, then raise its body, look directly at him with a sinister smile, and flick its tongue.

Tonight, Situ Yu had actually done nothing.

Truly.

He had done nothing.

He had merely sat there.

And then, one after another, from within his own Prince Residence, malice had been sent toward him from every direction.

At this moment, while shock and suffocation almost stopped Situ Yu from breathing, he instinctively looked toward the pearl curtain beside him.

His mother sat behind it.

When he was ten, he had watched his father die.

Watched his rivers and mountains shatter.

Watched the court's great ministers decide together to submit to Yan and seek protection.

He had sat there too.

Sat on the dragon throne that once belonged to his father.

At the time, he had been helpless.

Uneasy.

But one emotion had already existed deep inside him.

Why?

Why should it be this way?

Later, Situ Yu gradually came to understand.

It had not been that the officials of Yingdu possessed any special love for the Yan.

The city chose that path for two reasons.

First, the enemy across from them included Savages.

Second, it included rebels.

Once Situ Lei died, there had been no one left on the east bank of the Wang River to whom Yingdu could surrender.

If they refused to submit to the Yan, everyone could only wait for the city to fall and be massacred.

Situ Yu could never forget himself at ten years old, sitting there and truly hoping some minister would stand up and say:

We will defend the city ourselves.

We will continue protecting Yingdu.

We will continue protecting Great Cheng.

Because this was the foundation established by his ancestors.

Because this was the state personally created by his father.

But no one did.

For a time, he had even looked down on his own mother.

Back then, she had held her ten-year-old son and said:

Child, from now on, if mother and son can simply live safely and peacefully together, that will be enough.

He thought his mother lacked political vision.

Even though Situ Yu himself had only begun truly understanding politics and authority in recent years, he still felt his mother was far too much an ordinary woman.

But now, he suddenly understood.

Once the ending had already been decided, living out the rest of one's days properly, preferably while preserving some dignity and honor, might actually be the wisest choice of all.

Situ Yu closed his eyes.

He was still so young.

Yet now he felt terribly tired.

Many people had told him stories of how his father had risen.

How Situ Lei, a neglected concubine-born prince, eventually pushed aside his two elder brothers and sat on the dragon throne himself.

Grand Tutor Sun had even once hinted that there might have been Situ Lei's shadow behind the death of Situ Yu's grandfather.

Right.

Grand Tutor Sun.

The old man who had held Situ Yu's hand and walked beside him for a very long road after his father died.

Perhaps

Grand Tutor Sun had understood everything long ago.

Perhaps he had simply grown tired.

That was why he withdrew so early.

As for Situ Yu, he was not his father.

He fell far, far short of Situ Lei.

Two streams of hot tears spilled from his eyes.

The young Prince had already begun sensing something.

Even though the hall remained perfectly silent, he knew something had broken.

It was a line.

A line the Yan had drawn around him and around Prince Cheng Residence.

Years earlier, Great Yan's First Prince Ji Wujiang, commander-in-chief of the eastern expedition army, had personally helped carry Situ Lei's coffin.

That line had been bought by Situ Lei's old favor with the Emperor of Yan and with the people of Yan.

So long as Situ Yu remained inside that line, he was safe.

He remained noble.

Even if the Yan regretted their mercy now.

Even if they wanted to settle old accounts.

Even if Marquis Pingxi had erupted at Stone Mountain.

Even if this new Prefect had clearly seized the opportunity to trample Prince Cheng Residence's dignity.

Still, they did not dare cross that line.

Situ Yu did not believe himself innocent.

More precisely, he did not believe Prince Cheng Residence was innocent.

Otherwise, how had Qian Shuxun's corpse been pulled from a well inside his own residence?

He had already told Zhao Wenhua that he was not completely blind to what the men around him were doing.

In other words, he might not know the details, but he certainly knew they were doing things they should not be doing.

The poisoned banquet.

The assassination of the Fifth Prince.

The death of Qian Shuxun.

All the things related to those affairs and all the things unrelated, Situ Yu might not have known beforehand.

But afterward, he could look at the movements of certain people inside the residence during those periods and infer much of the truth.

He was frightened.

They actually dared do such things?

But he was also excited.

Because he understood why they did them.

And who would benefit in the end.

Even a ten-year-old child, after sitting on that dragon throne once, could never completely forget the memory of standing at the supreme height.

Most importantly...

Situ Yu lowered his head.

He opened his eyes and looked at the woman before him, still talking, still laughing, still sharing her happiness as though she had no idea how completely the situation had changed.

Situ Yu himself was not innocent either.

He was not pure.

It was not true that he had done nothing.

Was it?

In fact, even if everything those men had done were discovered by the Yan, the Yan might still pinch their noses and acknowledge it.

For the sake of appearances.

For the sake of preserving dignity.

For the sake of polishing this ceremonial archway and keeping it standing.

Exactly as they had done moments earlier.

The Marquis of Yan.

The Prefect of Yan.

The Yan officials in Yingdu.

Every one of them had chosen to replace the lid, stop investigating, and let the matter end.

Instead, what Situ Yu himself had done, what he had already done, might truly destroy Prince Cheng Residence.

“Heh...”

Situ Yu laughed.

Even though tears still ran down his face.

Perhaps what this half-grown boy had experienced tonight was far too cruel.

Yet in this brief moment, he somehow grasped a faint trace of detachment.

His gaze settled on her belly.

Inside was his child.

The girl continued talking.

Chattering.

Sharing her joy.

Imagining the future.

Her innocence no longer seemed like blank white paper.

It looked like layer after layer of thick white paint deliberately smeared over something underneath.

Then she noticed the tears at the corners of Situ Yu's eyes.

Saw the smile now appearing on his face.

Saw his gaze slowly fall again to her lower abdomen.

The girl's eyes turned red too.

But she kept talking.

Did not stop.

Only the nasal thickness in her voice grew stronger and stronger.

Her smile gradually twisted.

He was crying.

She was crying.

He was smiling.

She was smiling.

He did not ask why.

Because now, whether he understood the reason or not no longer mattered.

She too pretended nothing had happened.

As though this enormous discussion hall contained only the two of them.

It was a strange atmosphere.

Unfortunately, it lasted only a short while.

Because once the initial shock passed, within the black banner, a dark figure slowly raised its head.

Fire kindled.

A dragon filled with fury and repression opened its eyes.

Great Yan was angry.

And here in this discussion hall, Great Yan's anger was embodied by its Marquis raised through military merit, its Prefect, and every Yan official present.

To conquer the land beneath their feet, how many sons of Yan had died on the battlefield?

Marquis Zheng and Prefect Xu Wenzu had both personally endured war.

Among the Yan officials present, almost every one had either taken part in campaigns or worked themselves ragged along the logistical lines.

For Xu Wenzu, once the Marquis of Zhenbei completely abandoned all ambition toward the dragon throne, Xu Wenzu's own aspiration had become supporting Great Yan.

For Zheng Fan, this Jin territory was land he and Old Tian had fought down together.

They had fought the Savages.

Fought Chu.

Bled and struggled to take it.

Whether Zheng Fan himself might rebel one day was a matter between him and the next Emperor.

A matter involving Little Sixth, the Crown Prince, or whoever else ultimately sat on that throne.

But how the hell did some Jin man think he had the right to reach a hand into this?

Xu Wenzu's gaze darkened into something heavy and oppressive.

He turned around.

He was already enormous.

Now his presence seemed even more terrifying.

As for Marquis Zheng, he had long since accumulated the aura of a man who had survived who knew how many great battles, a commander around whom tens of thousands of soldiers had gathered again and again.

When he turned around and faced the people of Prince Cheng Residence, the very air seemed to fill with the sharp stench of blood.

A child of the Wenren family.

Wenren blood.

Heh.

Back then, the Three Clans had divided Jin.

Great Yan's strategy had indeed been to attack Qian first and use that route to open the road into Jin.

The Princes of North and South and the Emperor of Yan had anticipated the Jin response early and shaped their plans around it.

But in the real sequence of events, when Great Yan first went to war with Qian, the Helian and Wenren families formed a coalition army and invaded Yan first.

Those two families had genuinely launched an invasion of Great Yan.

The Horsehoof Mountains line had paid an enormous price stopping that coalition.

So after the Marquis of Jingnan and Marquis of Zhenbei entered Jin through South Gate Pass and smashed the coalition from behind, Great Yan adopted a policy of extermination toward the Helian and Wenren families.

That was the outlet for Yan's rage.

The punishment for a pair of ants who had dared challenge Great Yan.

Even now, Great Yan's Secret Intelligence Department remained extraordinarily sensitive toward so-called Helian and Wenren remnants.

Among Jin rebel groups, anyone who dared raise some banner claiming to follow a Helian young lord or Wenren princess was usually among the first to be exterminated.

When it came to vengeance, the Yan truly pursued grudges to the final drop of blood.

So

Prince Cheng Residence had taken in a Wenren woman?

What exactly did that mean?

“AAAAAAAH!”

Zhao Wenhua released a roar.

But specially made shackles bound his body.

Even if he wanted to act, he had already been suppressed.

Four armored soldiers behind him exerted force together and pressed him harder against the ground.

Xue San had once created tools specifically meant to restrain experts.

Xu Chuang currently enjoyed that treatment.

There was no reason the Yan would lack similar devices.

Zhao Wenhua continued howling.

He had already realized something.

A humiliation born of being deceived, used, and then discarded casually like a piece of toilet paper.

But everything was too late.

Prince Cheng Residence no longer had guards.

City Patrol soldiers filled the residence.

Marquis Pingxi's elite personal guards were here as well.

Even if the hidden forces of Prince Cheng Residence mobilized now, they could not overturn the situation.

At this exact moment, in this exact scene, one sentence from this girl had seized Prince Cheng Residence by its seven-inch vital point.

No.

It had crushed that point completely.

What a vicious method.

What a poisonous heart.

Zheng Fan turned around and walked back.

He slightly adjusted the angle of the chair where he had been sitting, turning it directly toward Situ Yu.

Then he sat.

This time, Marquis Pingxi was not watching a play.

Nor was he absent-mindedly drifting somewhere else as before.

Xu Wenzu suppressed the emotions inside him and stepped forward.

He even forced out a smile.

A smile with something horrifying beneath it.

“Madam, you said just now that the child in your belly carries Situ blood. What other family's blood did you say it carries?”

The girl turned toward Xu Wenzu.

She wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes.

Sniffed.

Then smiled.

“My lord, was I not clear enough just now? It also carries the blood of my Wenren family. My surname is Wenren. My name is Wenren Minjun. Look...”

The girl rolled up her sleeve.

On her arm was a mark resembling a camellia flower.

This was the Wenren family crest.

Only core descendants of the clan had the mark placed upon them in childhood.

It did not possess the strange attraction toward demonic beasts that the Xiong imperial clan crest of Chu did.

More precisely, it possessed no special function at all.

But it symbolized elegance.

Years ago, when Yao Zizhan traveled through the Jin lands and received the Wenren family's hospitality, he wrote a poem about the camellia mark, praising the Wenren family's rich literary culture and declaring that it preserved the style of ancient Xia.

The girl smiled again.

“His Highness once told me that our future child would inherit the blood of both the Situ and Wenren families. Surely that child would become the master of the Jin lands.”

Xu Wenzu said nothing.

“Hehehe...”

Situ Yu suddenly laughed.

Then he looked toward Marquis Pingxi, who sat directly facing him.

And as though possessed by some strange impulse, he said:

“Marquis, did you hear? My Situ family has an heir. This Prince has an heir.”

Marquis Zheng nodded.

“Your Highness, then perhaps we should discuss how your line is going to end.”

[End of Chapter 644]