Chapter 1014: Dad's Taking You Up the Mountain

The wind blew from southwest to northeast.

It carried the smell of blood from Back Mountain Town and stirred the Regent Prince's black python robe.

This world... would be civilized by this Prince.

The Regent Prince of Great Yan, as he stood today, truly possessed both the qualification and the power to say those words.

Even if the Emperor of Great Yan were standing beside him right now, after hearing that sentence His Majesty would probably be able to do nothing more than smile awkwardly.

Then, beneath the Regent Prince's gaze, he would purse his lips and indicate agreement.

Jin had long since perished.

Chu was falling apart.

And Qian, long famous for its dense population and abundant resources... was now being pinned to the ground by one Great Yan army after another, its head and limbs pressed down as it struggled through its final breaths.

Great Yan... was now unquestionably the strongest state of the age.

And Great Yan's Regent Prince... could sit level with the Emperor himself.

He was even someone the Emperor had to coax and flatter personally.

If he said the world of the future no longer needed all this nonsense about Qi Refiners... then in the future, Qi Refiners would no longer be able to enter the mortal world beneath the visible banners of great sects.

There would be no more Qi Refiners descending their mountains and walking directly into court.

No more flowing sleeves inside the Directorate of Astronomy while men pointed at the fortunes of the state.

You could continue existing.

But I... could erase every halo from your body.

Mortals feared the heavens.

Mortals feared immortals.

But what mortals feared most... was still the County Magistrate directly above their heads.

Eastern Jin had already provided the model.

Xie Yu'an had once told Zhao Yuannian that eastern Jin's system would be difficult to reproduce elsewhere.

That was true.

But first, eastern Jin did not place the imperial examinations above practical ability.

Second, across that vast territory, eastern Jin now possessed only one Gourd Temple.

Third, the potatoes, sweet potatoes, and other crops developed in eastern Jin were gradually spreading outward.

It was unrealistic to make everyone rich and honored.

But at the very least... far fewer people beneath Heaven would starve to death in the future.

People liked saying that someone unable to plan one corner had no right to plan the whole board.

The Regent Prince, however... already had a finished example standing before everyone.

And so, although the Regent Prince had now entered Third Grade, he did not use his blood qi to forcibly amplify his voice.

Nor did he ask the Demon Child or the Sword Saint to create some enormous spectacle to support the stage.

Yet his words... were far more shocking than anything spoken by those three gigantic phantom figures.

"Your Highness.

"If you insist on doing this... then beside the lotus pond on Back Mountain, eighteen fellow adepts have already assembled the Heaven-Reaching Grand Formation. Its power is greater even than when Master traveled to Yanjing years ago to sever Great Yan's dragon vein!

"If you send troops onto Back Mountain today and stain it with blood... then we... will invoke Heaven's punishment and sever the fortune of your Zheng descendants!"

The smile on the Prince's face did not diminish.

He said to the Sword Saint beside him:

"Old Yu, do you know something?

"That's exactly the line I was waiting for.

"These damned bird Qi Refiners... apart from cursing people, all they know how to do is curse people.

"If the curse doesn't work on this generation, they say it was meant for the next one.

"Ten or twenty years counts as waiting. One or two hundred years counts as waiting. Seven or eight hundred years counts too.

"Eventually the blind cat will stumble onto the dead mouse.

"If they themselves don't live long enough to see it, then their disciples and grand-disciples can gather around and celebrate together.

"So what exactly did Master Cang cut back then?

"Wasn't Great Yan's dragon vein supposedly severed?

"Then why, today... is Great Yan still rising higher and higher?"

The Sword Saint said:

"So you'll imitate the late Emperor of Yan and shout, 'Quick, quick, quick. Don't delay my killing,' or perhaps, 'Don't delay my evening meal'?"

"Too vulgar, Old Yu. Too vulgar."

"Oh?"

"What's the point of paying tribute to the old scene every single time? One should always bring forth something new.

"If I'm going to replace these people beyond the mortal world and take over the task of civilizing this world... then I ought to let everyone beneath Heaven see... what kind of things... these so-called immortals truly are."

The Prince turned toward his son.

"Son. Afraid?"

"Heh."

Zheng Lin snorted with disdain.

The Prince pointed forward.

"Dahu."

"Here!"

"Pass the order. Clear the road up the mountain for this Prince and the Heir Prince."

"Yes!"

...

The road up the mountain was cleared quickly.

True, the mountain path was red with blood.

But at least the Brocade-Clad personal guards had finished off the wounded and thrown the corpses to either side of the road.

"Son. Give me your hand."

The Heir Prince turned and looked toward his mother standing behind him.

This time, extraordinarily, there was none of the helplessness of a child being coerced by maternal love in his eyes.

Instead, he looked faintly arrogant.

"For the sake of that line about civilizing the world."

Then... he placed his hand in his biological father's palm.

Father and son began climbing the mountain hand in hand.

The Brocade-Clad personal guards who had already advanced halfway up the slope now withdrew again according to the Prince's order.

They split into the woods on either side of the road and moved upward slowly alongside the Prince's pace.

The Princess Consort followed behind father and son.

Watching them now, Siniang found her son slightly easier on the eyes than before.

The Blind Man silently shook his head.

Master had said he came to retrieve those eight thousand comrades and destroy Qian along the way.

Looking at things now... if one truly ranked the priorities in detail, repairing the father-son relationship might actually come before destroying Qian.

A'Ming carried a water skin.

Naturally, it contained blood.

Once war began, he never lacked for meals.

Xue San led a group of Brocade-Clad personal guards through the woods, moving alongside the party and occasionally scanning the mountain path.

He still remembered the first time he had taken Master to report at the labor camp.

Back then, all of them had walked along a road too.

Everything... was truly different now.

As for the Sword Saint, he was actually the closest person to Zheng Fan.

He walked diagonally behind him, even slightly closer than Siniang.

One was his neighbor of more than ten years.

The other was his most treasured disciple.

Yu Huaping genuinely did not dare let anything happen to either father or son.

Yet no one around them crossed the line formed by the Prince and the Heir Prince.

This remained true even as bells and chanting began sounding from above, with faint rumbling thunder hidden among them.

At a stone stele... the Prince stopped.

The Heir Prince looked at it in confusion.

The bottom of the stele had been painted red.

The signature belonged to Yao Zizhan, Qian's Literary Sage.

But above that signature... there was not a single character.

The story of the Wordless Stele was no secret in Back Mountain Town.

After all, it was here on this mountain road that the previous Emperor had dissolved himself.

Some said Master Yao had refused to write upon the stele because the achievements and failures of an Emperor's entire life were not something he had the right to decide with a single judgment.

Others said that when the former Emperor dissolved himself, Master Yao had been at the foot of the mountain and could only watch helplessly as the sovereign who had just been forced to abdicate ended his own life.

The mighty Literary Sage of Great Qian had been too ashamed to write even one word.

He had left only his signature as an expression of guilt.

"That Emperor of Qian died here," the Prince said.

"Father intends to salute him?" Zheng Lin asked.

"Let me think. When I met him inside Shangjing's imperial palace years ago, did I kneel?"

The Prince thought for a while.

Then shook his head.

"I don't remember. Logically, our army was outside the city and I was a Yan military envoy. I probably had the right not to kneel."

"But?"

"But for your sake, before you were born, your father wouldn't have minded kneeling once."

"..." Zheng Lin.

"Heh."

The Prince laughed.

"That Emperor could not really be called a muddleheaded ruler. He was fairly enlightened. Barely enough to count as a wise sovereign."

"His ending wasn't very good."

"A wise sovereign can certainly be extraordinary during peaceful times. At the very least, he can carry one generation into the next and remove some accumulated abuses. But his luck was poor. The opponents he met were different."

"That late Emperor of Yan again?"

"And your father."

"Oh."

Zheng Lin understood.

So his father was using the dead to praise himself.

"In an age of great contention, either you die or I do.

"His ability was excellent, but still short by a little.

"His courage was excellent too, but still short by a little.

"In this life... even being Emperor is not so different from street hooligans fighting over turf.

"When the moment comes to be ruthless, you have to throw everything away and be ruthless.

"When the moment comes to gamble everything, you have to cast everything aside and gamble completely.

"Even if you manage all that, victory and defeat still depend somewhat on luck.

"So if you hesitate even a little, waver even a little... the ending can become very ugly.

"Because your opponent... is risking his life.

"But by the time you inherit your father's position, the situation will be different.

"The age of chaos beneath Heaven should end in my hands.

"So afterward, you must learn to calm your qi even better.

"It doesn't mean you can never use military force.

"But before you do, first make sure righteousness and justification stand on your side.

"Even if you can crush the opponent in front of you without effort, you still need to act as though you were forced into it against your will.

"Once the realm is unified, the desire for peace and stability will inevitably become the great current of public opinion.

"So... you need to become better at erecting a moral façade."

"Like... you, Father?"

"Exactly. Like your father. That way you never suffer a loss."

"I..."

"Learn what you can. As much as you can."

"Oh."

"Let's keep climbing. We shouldn't keep the immortals waiting."

The Prince took his son's hand and continued up the mountain.

At that moment, an enormously powerful sword intent appeared above.

A white-haired man with a youthful face descended the mountain carrying a sword.

"Liu Bohai, honored retainer of Back Mountain, comes to seek instruction!"

He held a dark green longsword.

His aura was unstable.

One moment it reached Third Grade.

The next, it seemed to fall back toward Fourth Grade.

Then one noticed the three silver needles inserted into his head.

The answer became obvious.

He had forcibly broken through using a secret art.

The Sword Saint vanished.

The next instant, he appeared in the air ahead.

He lifted one finger of his left hand toward the sky.

In that instant, a sound like the heavens tearing open seemed to come from above.

Even the grand formation on the mountain fell briefly into disorder.

"Yu Huaping!"

Liu Bohai roared and launched himself forward with his sword.

The Sword Saint did not answer.

His finger dropped.

Second Grade sword intent pierced straight through!

Liu Bohai did not dodge.

He chose to meet point with point.

It was... the most direct way for swordsmen to settle matters.

"Pfft!"

After the sword qi entered his body, blood exploded from Liu Bohai's back.

His figure trembled.

Then he collapsed weakly onto the stone steps.

The dark green sword fell from his hand.

The Sword Saint looked at him.

"I thought you died long ago."

Blood began seeping from Liu Bohai's seven orifices.

He laughed.

"I didn't.

"Years ago, I failed when forcing my way into Second Grade and more than half my meridians snapped.

"Fortunately, Master Cang intervened and brought me back to Back Mountain for treatment.

"After I recovered, my cultivation was doomed to stop at Fourth Grade for the rest of my life.

"I couldn't even return to Third Grade.

"I lost heart, so I simply stayed on Back Mountain for eighteen years.

"I've eaten their food for eighteen years.

"Today, I finally repaid the favor.

"To die beneath your sword, Yu Huaping, is my good fortune.

"But if it had been any swordsman other than you, at least I might have had a chance to exchange a few more moves and use some of the sword forms I've worked out over these years.

"Now...

"I don't even get the chance."

"Rest in peace," the Sword Saint said.

"Very well.

"Qingmo... keep it for me. Find someone and pass it down.

"Isn't the Baili Sword with you too?

"Oh.

"I think this boy has good bearing.

"Why not... give it to him?"

Liu Bohai pointed at Zheng Lin.

Clear contempt appeared in Zheng Lin's eyes.

"He's my disciple," Yu Huaping said. "He won't think much of yours."

"But my Qingmo is a fine sword."

"The Swordsmith is forging a custom sword for him.

"Qingmo... isn't good enough either."

"Ai."

Liu Bohai sighed.

Then raised one hand.

He struck himself in the chest.

Before the sword qi inside him could fully backlash and drown him in pain, he ended his own life first.

The Prince led the Heir Prince over.

"Was he famous?" Zheng Fan asked.

"More or less. Years ago, he should have had a seat among the Four Great Swordsmen, but he vanished too early."

"Oh. I see."

The Prince nodded, not especially impressed.

Instead, he asked:

"He came down here to stall us. Does that mean the people above still haven't finished preparing?"

"Perhaps," the Sword Saint answered.

At that moment, battle cries erupted from the woods on both sides of the mountain path.

The Brocade-Clad personal guards had begun fighting experts descending from Back Mountain.

"Looks like they really aren't ready.

"Dahu, did you bring food?"

"Yes."

Liu Dahu took out naan and handed it to the Prince.

The Prince broke off a piece and passed it to his son.

"Since the performance up there isn't ready yet, the two of us can wait.

"Come to think of it... in this life, your father has never properly taken you on a trip."

The Prince led the Heir Prince to sit down.

Father and son held naan and began eating.

Partway through... the Heir Prince turned and asked:

"Do we really have to... take our pants off just to fart?"

"What?"

The Heir Prince glanced at his mother standing ahead.

He arranged his words carefully.

"All this extra trouble."

"Oh, hahahaha."

The Prince did not become angry.

"One way or another, we have to make this trip."

"Why?"

In Zheng Lin's view, his father could simply issue one princely order and have every chicken and dog on the mountain exterminated.

There was no need to climb personally.

Much less to deliberately stop and wait, giving the people above plenty of time to prepare.

This... did not fit his father's usual style.

"Some roads... a father simply has to take once while holding his son's hand."

Zheng Lin still did not understand.

"Did someone take you along a road like this once?"

The Prince's gaze tightened slightly.

Then slowly... he nodded.

"Yes."

The fighting in the woods gradually weakened.

After waiting a little longer... the Prince stood.

He and his son resumed climbing.

As they walked... a tremendous peal of thunder suddenly exploded above.

Then, from somewhere unseen... an extraordinarily majestic voice rolled down the mountain.

"Prince! If you do not cease your attack and withdraw, your offspring shall know hardship!"

A blue wind drifted down the mountain.

The Sword Saint glanced at Zheng Fan.

He did not intervene.

The Prince looked down at his son.

"Son. Listen to what he's saying."

Zheng Lin stepped forward and climbed two steps.

When the blue wind reached him... the seal at the center of his brow emitted red light.

Deep within his eyes... blood-red color spread.

"Make things hard for me?

"Heh!"

His Highness the Heir Prince stood there without moving.

When the blue wind reached him... it actually stopped.

"I simply haven't grown up yet.

"Give me another ten years.

"I will surpass my godfathers.

"I will surpass my master.

"I will surpass everyone.

"I'm not afraid of hardship.

"What I'm afraid of... is that this world will become too easy in the future.

"That would be boring!"

Boom!

Cracks spread through the blue wind.

Then it shattered apart.

A miserable scream echoed from above.

But very soon... thunder sounded again.

An enormous, hideous ghost face appeared overhead.

"Prince! If you still refuse to cease your attack, the imperial momentum you have spent so much effort building will vanish!"

"Good.

"I'd rather lose it.

"If you handed this chessboard to me whole, I still wouldn't care for it.

"If I can simply overturn the entire board... then I can start again from the beginning!"

The ghost face vanished.

Another series of screams came from the mountain.

Heaven knew how many people had gone mad or witless in that instant.

Such was the nature of curses.

When you cursed another person, you yourself had to shoulder tremendous danger.

If the curse failed... the backlash returned upon the caster.

A smile appeared at the Blind Man's lips.

He looked deeply pleased.

"My son is mighty."

The Prince standing behind Zheng Lin began applauding.

Zheng Lin turned and looked at his biological father.

His expression was caught halfway between annoyance and laughter.

The Prince continued upward.

As he passed his son, he unexpectedly noticed that the boy's face was turned sideways... yet his hand had quietly moved outward in a tiny arc.

The Prince reached out.

Took the Heir Prince's hand.

Father and son continued climbing.

Then... five presences like roaming bolts of thunder began circling through the sky overhead.

The Sword Saint's expression grew solemn.

"This isn't a curse.

"The Qi Refiners are drawing lightning!"

The Blind Man immediately warned them as well:

"All that cursing for half a day was feinting.

"They've actually gone physical."

The Prince raised one hand.

He indicated that no one behind them was to advance.

Then he continued climbing with his son's hand in his own.

"Father, don't play around until this blows up in your face," Zheng Lin warned him. "That lightning can genuinely kill us."

"Relax.

"Your father has been to Back Mountain before.

"I know the place."

"Oh."

Father and son continued upward.

Now that Zheng Fan had entered Third Grade as a Martial Artist, his understanding of power had risen to an entirely new level along with his cultivation.

"That old Heaven up there is blind.

"If it wants to strike someone with lightning, it needs the lackeys below to point out the way."

"So all these Qi Refiners are lackeys?"

"Close enough."

"But right now, they're pointing at us."

Zheng Lin looked up at the thunder that seemed ready to descend at any moment and reminded his father with some concern.

"Where are we?"

"On Back Mountain," Zheng Lin answered.

"Where on Back Mountain?"

"On the mountain road."

"Then we're not on Back Mountain."

"Hm?"

"Because we're on the road."

"Father, this is not the time to play word games."

The Prince shook his head slightly.

"Thanks to your Brother Demon Child, your father once spent a short while as a Qi Refiner too."

"Father, if you pull Brother Demon Child out right now, the two of us will only get struck even faster."

"That isn't what I'm saying.

"Because of that experience, your father learned the deadliest method for dealing with Qi Refiners.

"All these years, I've always wondered about one thing.

"He was clearly so powerful.

"Why did he always say that he only had... a slight understanding of occult arts?

"At first I thought he was merely being modest.

"After all, he knew far too many things, and compared with all his other abilities, occult arts genuinely were not especially important.

"But later...

"I understood.

"When it comes to occult arts, you truly only need to remember one sentence:

"Believe, and they exist. Disbelieve, and they do not.

"Once you grasp that, every occult art beneath Heaven can be broken.

"If something can be broken so completely... what is there to boast about?"

The moment his father finished speaking...

Zheng Lin suddenly discovered that every sound from the summit ahead had vanished.

He turned around.

The godfathers.

His mother.

His master.

The guards on either side.

Everyone who had been climbing behind them... was gone.

This remained a road leading up a mountain.

His father was still holding his hand.

This was still Back Mountain.

And yet... it was different.

Then his biological father's voice sounded beside him again.

"Those words are easy to say.

"Doing it is very difficult.

"Some people swear they do not believe in ghosts or gods, yet fear still exists in their hearts.

"Once fear takes shape, giving a face to a ghost or god is no more difficult than kneading clay.

"You don't even need to name anyone.

"Even the battle your master lost more than ten years ago... he lost to occult arts.

"Because at the time, there was fear in his heart too.

"Today... your master would not lose."

"So... Father, there's no fear left in your heart?"

"There is."

"Still?"

"Who can truly become fearless in his heart?

"Even a true holy monk or immortal sage would probably find that difficult.

"And some things... the more desperately you try to make them disappear, the more stubbornly they insist on existing inside you.

"Let them exist.

"That's fine.

"Allow them to remain.

"You only need enough conviction... to overcome them."

Then...

Zheng Lin suddenly noticed his father's voice rising.

"Besides!

"On a battlefield... there's no one left who can defeat your father.

"Even the prophecies arranged by Heaven itself... have already been rewritten into something completely unrecognizable here in your father's hands.

"I don't even give Heaven face.

"Much less these lackeys.

"Heh."

Then... the sound of thunder falling suddenly exploded.

Zheng Lin's vision flickered.

Only then did he discover that everyone around them had reappeared.

For an instant, he could not even tell whether everyone else had vanished earlier... or whether he himself had left.

Boom!

Boom!

BOOM!!!

One bolt of lightning after another finally crashed down.

But they did not strike father and son.

They smashed into the mountain peak instead.

Because just before the lightning fell... the powerful Qi Refiners above had suddenly lost all sense of the Prince's qi.

It was as though the man had simply vanished from existence.

And so... without a target to guide it, the descending lightning instinctively bent toward the people who had summoned it in the first place.

The summit erupted.

Rocks exploded.

Light and flame scattered everywhere.

Even an unparalleled Martial Artist would have struggled to withstand such lightning in the flesh.

How much more so Qi Refiners, whose bodies were inherently weaker?

Severed limbs and mangled remains could even be seen flying from the summit into the forests below.

Zheng Lin stared at the scene in astonishment.

The Prince stopped.

Turned around.

Then said:

"All right.

"When climbing a mountain, the scenery along the road is what matters most.

"There's no need to obsess over the summit.

"We've seen enough scenery.

"Let's head back down."

"Oh...

"All right."

The Prince and Heir Prince began descending.

The Brocade-Clad personal guards on both sides immediately rushed toward the summit.

They would make certain not a single survivor remained.

Once they reached the bottom... they learned that a delegation from Shangjing had arrived and had already been waiting for quite some time.

The envoy was an old acquaintance.

Yao Zizhan.

The Prince took his son's hand and walked toward the command tent.

Master Yao stood waiting outside.

He drew a deep breath.

Then, as though summoning every last scrap of bloody courage inside himself, he shouted:

"Your Highness! If Great Qian submits, can Your Highness refrain from entering Shangjing?!"

Zheng Lin laughed.

He found the old man fascinating.

He used the loudest voice.

The greatest courage.

And yet the words themselves... were the most cowardly plea for mercy imaginable.

The war had reached this point.

Did the Qian still dream that they could merely erase the name of their state and somehow preserve everything else?

How could that possibly happen?

The Prince looked at Yao Zizhan.

"It is rare for this Prince to visit another man's home.

"Naturally, I should go inside and have a look.

"At the very least... the people of Shangjing should properly meet this Prince."

Yao Zizhan sighed.

Then pleaded:

"The people of Shangjing already met Your Highness years ago.

"They already witnessed the... hell Your Highness brought them."

"Then they should meet me all the more."

"Why?"

"Because this Prince can let them see once again... exactly how many levels... hell contains."

[End of Chapter 1014]