Chapter 749: Where's the Wine? Fill It Up!

Buddhists liked to speak of cause and effect. All dharmas arose or decayed according to causality: causes gave birth to effects, and cause and effect followed one another without confusion. The delusion and awakening of all ten realms were, in the end, nothing more than relations of cause and effect.

And as chance would have it, the three great massacres that had taken place along the Wang River over these past few years all carried an inerasable karmic connection to Marquis Zheng.

The Yan soldiers who died in the first Battle of the Wang River had perished body and soul, but their resentment remained. Resentment was a kind of instinct. And over these past years, Great Yan's iron cavalry had campaigned in every direction, victorious in every battle and unstoppable in every assault, relying precisely on that same instinct of orders flowing downward and soldiers obeying without hesitation.

Zheng Fan had never served a desk assignment in Yanjing. He had never spent years accumulating seniority in court either. Yet every office he held had been conferred by imperial decree, and every noble title he bore had been granted by the Son of Heaven. His legitimacy was absolute.

Imperial decrees often began by proclaiming, in the Son of Heaven's name, to Heaven and Earth. Heaven and Earth meant gods, ghosts, and the netherworld as well. The will of the Son of Heaven carried with it the majesty of Vast Heaven.

Most people overlooked one point: within a state, the Son of Heaven was, in religious terms, the supreme existence. The mortal Emperor was himself the highest divine authority.

The Son of Heaven could enfeoff gods of mountains and rivers, station them over the four directions, and authorize them to receive incense. A shrine not entered into the official jade registers was an illicit cult, lacking legitimacy even in ritual law.

On ordinary days, none of this mattered much. To an atheist, it all seemed excessively formalistic, perhaps even ridiculous. Then you finished laughing, turned your head, and discovered A'Ming and A'Cheng laughing at you too.

The black cat and fox now responsible for playing with Tian Tian every day inside Marquis Pingxi Residence had once stayed beside the Naiman King in order to absorb his noble aura. When the two spirit creatures later encountered Zheng Fan, they were completely drawn in by the aura surrounding him instead.

Put plainly, the Savages had declined and fallen. To the states of all Xia, the so-called Naiman King was little more than the chief of a bandit rabble. How could he compare with even a Count of Great Yan?

And now Marquis Zheng had become a military-merit Marquis. Within Great Yan's eight hundred years of history, such a title carried a unique emotional weight and symbolic meaning.

Even with the First Prince's exalted status, outsiders had felt that granting him a military-merit Marquisate was somewhat beyond what his virtue and achievements deserved. Even the First Prince himself felt a little guilty about it.

That alone showed what such an honor meant to Yan people.

And so, when Zheng Fan raised his arm and issued one call, the resentment left by dead Yan soldiers immediately answered him, rising from beneath the Wang River.

For generations of Great Yan soldiers, for Yan people as a whole, military merit and the noble ranks earned through it had been an obsession carved deep into the bones.

As for the Savage warriors and Chu soldiers, they shared a blood feud with Zheng Fan. Their hatred of him was instinctive. Drawn by that hatred, their resentment naturally erupted as well.

In an instant, countless Savage warriors roared as they tried to tear Zheng Fan apart, while innumerable soldiers of the Azure Luan Army surged in from every direction, eyes overflowing with hatred.

But around Zheng Fan appeared dense ranks of Great Yan soldiers.

They formed orderly square formations around their Marquis, surrounding and protecting him. They roared too. They bellowed too. Not one yielded an inch.

In truth, none of them knew Zheng Fan.

But Zheng Fan's identity alone was enough to command them, enough to make them instinctively protect him, answer his summons, and charge into slaughter beneath his military orders.

Beneath the Wang River, an extraordinarily horrifying recreation of the old battlefield had taken shape.

Countless remnants of the dead stood facing one another.

This was not a true ghost army marching through the mortal world.

It was a configuration.

A realm.

Not a cultivation realm in the usual sense, but something closer to the idea of one flower containing an entire world.

Zheng Fan could not take "them" and go capture cities or ravage the countryside, because in the eyes of ordinary people, "they" simply did not exist.

You could not use something that did not exist to affect something that genuinely did.

But once Zheng Fan borrowed the Demon Child's power and became, for the moment, a "Qi Refiner"... they all became real within that system.

This was a chessboard.

A Qi Refiner's chessboard.

Once you entered those rules, you could act within them.

You could see.

You could hear.

This was... a game for those already on the board.

Kong Shanyang had laid out that board, intending to use its rules to suppress the Sword Saint's realm.

The Demon Child had originally wanted to punch a hole through the board.

But the Qi Refiners in Yingdu had lent Kong Shanyang their strength and forcibly stabilized it.

And what Marquis Zheng intended to do now was simple.

I respect your rules.

I respect this board.

So... this Marquis will overturn the whole damned thing!

"Soldiers of Great Yan! Hear this Marquis's command! Follow this Marquis and kill our way upward!"

"HU!"

"HU!"

"HU!"

The answering roar came in perfect unison.

At that moment, even Marquis Zheng himself almost felt as though countless soldiers truly stood at his side, around him, loyal to him. They protected him and moved according to his will.

It was a strange sensation.

You knew perfectly well it was false.

Yet it felt incomparably real.

Across the ages, countless Qi Refiners had lost themselves during cultivation for exactly this reason.

Marquis Zheng, however, was enjoying himself thoroughly.

He was not a Qi Refiner.

Put plainly, he was only borrowing his son's power and splashing it around.

Naturally, there was nothing to fear and nothing to taboo.

It was like entering a new playground.

All he had to do was run wild.

"Kill!"

"KILL!"

"KILL!"

The resentment of dead Yan soldiers began charging upward.

The water across this stretch of the Wang River gradually darkened until it looked thick as ink.

Then... within the unseen world... the clamor of armored cavalry seemed to roar upward from beneath the river.

The woman had already surfaced.

She was afraid.

She did not fear destroying her cultivation completely.

She did not even fear death that much.

A person who truly dreaded death would never have agreed without hesitation to help her husband assassinate a Marquis of Yan.

But this world held many things more terrifying than death.

For example... losing one's mind beneath this terrifying tide of resentment and becoming a walking corpse.

That fate was worse than death by a thousand cuts.

The woman burst from the water.

Ahead of her, she saw countless soldiers roaring as they charged upward.

And once Zheng Fan drew the resentment of the Yan army upward, how could the Savage warriors and Chu soldiers who instinctively hated him possibly let him escape?

Wave after wave followed.

At this moment, the depths beneath this stretch of the Wang River looked as though the gates of the underworld had opened here!

The scale and momentum of it were enough to rival the day Master Cang entered Yanjing, when thunder and rain shook the ten directions and a black dragon manifested in the sky.

The common people near the surrounding ferries only felt that, over one distant stretch of river, a sinister wind had suddenly begun howling amid the cries of ghosts.

In the dead of winter, it somehow felt as though a violent rainstorm were about to break.

Kong Shanyang began trembling when he saw it.

His gaze dropped below.

Then rose above.

He understood perfectly... what this meant.

Not only for himself.

The fellow practitioners from Jin in Yingdu who had poured their qi into this place would also suffer terrifying backlash!

Once you entered the board... life and death became your own responsibility!

"Seal! Forbid! Suppress!"

Kong Shanyang no longer had any attention to spare for Wei You's fight against the Sword Saint.

He immediately cast, trying to lock down this area and suppress the resentment erupting from beneath the river.

"KILL!"

The roar exploded beside Kong Shanyang's ears.

Before, he had merely been observing the scene from a distance.

The moment he intervened, however, it was as though he had placed himself directly in the center of the charge made by all that resentment beneath the river.

Before him stood the accumulated remnants of hundreds of thousands of soldiers who had died here.

Even the mightiest Martial Artist beneath Heaven would not dare face such a scene directly.

How could a lone Qi Refiner?

In that instant, Kong Shanyang seemed to see a figure among the countless dead.

The man wore armor.

Held a Black Dragon Banner.

Stood atop a war chariot.

He thrust a long spear forward and roared:

"Great Yan will be victorious! The Yan army will be victorious!"

Countless Yan soldiers gathered around him shouted in unison:

"Victory to the Marquis! Victory to the Marquis!"

They rolled forward like a black tide and trampled straight across Kong Shanyang.

Behind them came countless Savages and Chu men, roaring as they threw themselves after the first wave, one after another without end.

"Pfft!"

Kong Shanyang spat out a mouthful of blood.

Blood also began dripping from his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth.

He let out a miserable scream.

Then he cried.

His entire body twisted like that of a madman, tears and mucus streaming down his face as his mind hovered on the verge of complete collapse.

And then... before his eyes... the immense tide of resentment erupted from beneath the river... and charged into the sky!

At that moment... war drums thundered.

Horns blared.

Countless remnants of the dead surged out of the Wang River... to assault Heaven itself!

...

"Pfft!"

"Pfft!"

Yingdu.

The rear courtyard of the Imperial Astronomical Bureau.

River-Reversing Elder spat blood first.

Immediately afterward, the Jin-born Qi Refiners beneath him began vomiting blood one after another.

Some with lower cultivation died on the spot.

They were the fortunate ones.

Those whose cultivation was higher... were forced to endure the most brutal kind of "charge" a battlefield could offer.

"Ah! Don't kill me! Don't kill me! I surrender! I surrender!"

"AAAAAH! Spare me! Spare me! Spare me!"

"I was wrong! I was wrong! I was wrong..."

"Waaaaah... ahhh... Mother... Mother, save me..."

Someone who had never entered a battlefield could never imagine how terrifying true slaughter really was.

This was not a feud between neighbors.

Not a grudge between men of the jianghu.

This was a true Asura killing field.

Human lives were arranged neatly here... then harvested just as neatly.

Despair.

Confusion.

Hatred.

Slaughter.

Under the stimulation of that resentment, all of it became extraordinarily pure, raised to its most extreme form.

And therefore... all the more terrifying.

The Jin Qi Refiners in the courtyard screamed, cried, raved, and clawed at their own bodies.

In the eyes of ordinary people, these men were immortals.

Walking.

Eating.

Sleeping.

Every word and gesture usually carried the air of transcendent sages.

But now... what they displayed was something utterly human.

The ugliest and most primitive part of humanity.

Troops from the City Patrol Office rushed into the courtyard.

Even these soldiers were stunned by what they saw.

River-Reversing Elder sat at the head of the gathering, screaming as he dug his own eyeballs out with his fingers.

Where his eyes had been... only two dark, bloody sockets remained.

What unfolded before them was true hellish torment.

Nearly every Qi Refiner sect taught some variation of the same warning before a disciple formally entered the path:

Enter this gate.

Cultivate this Dao.

Behold such sights... and cherish your life.

Entering the gate let you see scenery different from that seen by ordinary people.

It also meant being forced to endure dangers those outside the gate would never touch.

"Heh-heh-heh... hahahahaha..."

The Supervising Eunuch laughed.

Thanks to the old grand eunuchs of the palace, virtually every senior eunuch in red robes cultivated Qi Refining arts.

Naturally, he could understand why the people before him had become like this.

He did not know the exact cause.

But they had unquestionably suffered backlash.

And he was delighted.

Looking at their miserable state made him feel extraordinarily comfortable.

As a palace eunuch and a household slave of the Son of Heaven, he had always possessed an instinctive distrust of Jin people.

There was nothing strange about that.

The palace eunuchs even called Great Yan's own court officials "outside ministers" and guarded against them by instinct.

How could they trust people from another state and another land?

These men had gathered here... which meant they had unquestionably been doing something they did not want others to know.

Surely they had not secretly gathered merely to pray for blessings upon the new sovereign?

Heh-heh-heh.

The Supervising Eunuch himself would be the first not to believe it.

The Director stood beside him, staring at the scene as though struck by lightning.

He had received the assignment of establishing Yingdu's Imperial Astronomical Bureau.

And now this had happened.

How was he supposed to complete the job?

The stage had barely been erected... and half of it had already collapsed.

The Supervising Eunuch glanced at him and shook his head helplessly.

This man's cultivation as a Qi Refiner was decent enough.

Everything else about him... was truly ordinary.

That much could be seen from the way he had indiscriminately recruited so many Jin Qi Refiners into Yingdu's Imperial Astronomical Bureau.

It was not that Jin Qi Refiners could not be accepted.

They had to be accepted.

There were not enough Qi Refiners from Yan alone to fill every post.

But there had been no need to recruit them so openly and enthusiastically, even pestering the Prefect to issue official invitations asking people to descend from their mountains and join.

Heh.

"Director, do you know why the late Emperor placed Great Yan's Qi Refiners under the Secret Intelligence Department? Do you know why the late Emperor forbade eunuchs from interfering in government, why even Eunuch Wei always acted with extreme caution, yet palace eunuchs were still permitted to cultivate Qi Refining arts and be trained in them?"

The Director shook his head in confusion.

"Heh. Everyone says Qian is the land of literary splendor, the place scholars beneath Heaven yearn toward. But in truth, Qian's Back Mountain is the sacred mountain gate that Qi Refiners beneath Heaven worship and long for most. The late Emperor once said that some Qi Refiners of Great Yan can call themselves Yan men when there are benefits, offices, and salaries to be had. But once those things disappear, they put on a white gauze robe, form a hand seal, and suddenly imagine themselves as beings from Heaven. The late Emperor said that everyone beneath Heaven can be given dignity. But when dealing with these so-called heavenly men, the imperial house should make one thing perfectly clear to them: they are servants of the throne."

The Supervising Eunuch reached over and straightened the Director's collar.

Then brushed dust from his shoulder.

Still smiling, he continued:

"Director, you wanted to establish Yingdu's Imperial Astronomical Bureau as quickly as possible, so you recruited Jin Qi Refiners in great numbers. Your intentions were naturally good. This eunuch will not use that to accuse you of harboring ulterior motives. But you regard them as fellow disciples, as fellow Daoists. They regard themselves as immortals descended from Heaven, coming to your table only to borrow a pair of chopsticks and taste two bites of food. And before the food even reaches their mouths, they've already prepared speeches about how this dish is poor here and that dish is poor there. At the root of it... they've never truly been hungry."

"B-But... without them, what do we do with the Imperial Astronomical Bureau from now on?"

The Director was almost ready to cry.

"Aiya. Listen to yourself. You make it sound as though the reason two Yan men like you and me can stand here and speak today is because these Qi Refiners bled themselves dry fighting for it. Wasn't this territory conquered by Great Yan's iron cavalry? If this pack of heavenly men can't think clearly, then they need to be disciplined until they do. They want aloofness. They want dignity. And you've spoiled them rotten. What they don't understand is that they are nothing more than conquered slaves of a fallen state... whose state was destroyed by the very soldier-brutes they look down upon."

The Supervising Eunuch sneered.

Then ordered:

"Men! Drag every one of those who is still alive, every one who has gone mad, out into the streets! Let the old and young of Yingdu see exactly what these immortals look like!"

He straightened his own sleeves.

Then added:

"And let the Jin Qi Refiners who remain inside this Imperial Astronomical Bureau take a good look at themselves too. Let them see... exactly what the hell they think they are."

...

Layer after layer of lids had originally been laid across the sky.

The Demon Child tried to punch through them.

Failed.

Then he drew thunderclouds.

Those were dispersed as well.

But just as Marquis Zheng had told the Demon Child... when it came to comparing numbers... they truly did not need to fear anyone anymore.

Among the living... they had at least a "hundred-thousand-man army" under their command.

Among the dead?

Heh-heh.

They were even less afraid.

The army manifested from resentment charged directly into the sky.

Kong Shanyang failed to stop it.

The barrier created jointly by him and the many Jin Qi Refiners of Yingdu shattered beneath the impact.

And after this eruption... the resentment that had been stirred up would naturally disperse as well.

That... was essentially the true nature of transcendence rites.

Not the souls of the dead.

Only the resentment they left behind.

When relatives performed rites for the deceased, what they sought was for resentment to dissipate, obsessions to dissolve... and for the living to gain peace of mind.

In a sense, this incident had cleared away much of the killing aura lingering over the old Wang River battlefield.

It even improved the local geomancy.

The Sword Saint had lived next door to Marquis Pingxi for years.

Whenever the Marquis traveled, the Sword Saint often accompanied him.

Over time... one inevitably became stained by the ink one stayed near.

Marquis Zheng had a certain habit.

The gentlemen around him shared it too.

At first, the Sword Saint had thought it unbelievably affected.

But gradually... he began to feel that this habit... when applied to life... might genuinely be rather pleasant.

In this life, he had opened Second Grade three times.

Every one remained vivid in his memory.

Every one was the sort of exhilarating moment worth draining an enormous cup of wine over.

The first... before Snow Sea Pass... when he established a place in the world for all swordsmen beneath Heaven.

The second... inside Fengxin City... when he showed Liu Dahu exactly what kind of man his father was.

And the third... was today.

A sudden assassination.

His state of mind had passed from worry... to guilt... to anxiety... to uncertainty... to hesitation.

And now... that Marquis surnamed Zheng... had actually created a spectacle like this.

Everything that came before suddenly felt like layer after layer of suppression... all built only so the final release could be this satisfying.

Like a jar of wine aged into deep fragrance.

Break the sealing clay.

Lean closer.

One breath... and the aroma sank straight into the heart.

At that moment...

Marquis Zheng shouted:

"Yu Huaping! This Marquis has already put the dishes on the table! Where's the wine?"

The Sword Saint threw his head back and laughed.

Then raised one hand and pointed toward Heaven.

The sky above was now perfectly clear.

Nothing remained to obstruct it.

Power beyond Third Grade descended as though drawn directly from the vault of Heaven.

Longyuan gave a trembling cry.

Like borrowed evening radiance... it displayed the brilliance of sunset before sunset had arrived.

Beneath such divine might... one man.

One sword.

Like a god descended into the mortal world.

The Sword Saint's fingertip lowered.

Longyuan descended from the heavens.

Then... answering Marquis Zheng's question from moments earlier...

Yu Huaping roared:

"FILL IT UP!"

[End of Chapter 749]