Chapter 1029: Great Yan's National Fortune!

For a very long time, Zheng Fan had possessed almost no real sense of belonging toward this “Great Yan,” whether deep in his heart or in the words he spoke.

Back when he served as Garrison Commander of Cuiliu Fort and deliberately went south to provoke trouble, it had been because he had noticed the signs that Great Yan was preparing to mobilize. He wanted political capital for himself, wanted to become a model and a symbol. Put plainly, it had been political speculation.

When Zhong Tianlang led troops deep into Yan territory and passed below Cuiliu Fort, Zheng Fan had even deliberately pointed him down the wrong road, using the classic move of diverting disaster elsewhere: better a fellow Daoist die than this poor Daoist.

The moment he entered Shengle City and acquired a territory of his own, he immediately began laying long-term plans with “rebellion” as the ultimate objective, then implementing them step by step, looking for all the world like a man suffering from a persecution complex.

Back then, Great Yan was really no different to him from Great Qian, Great Chu, or Great Jin.

And Zheng Fan himself was not so different from the Ran Min who appeared later.

It was simply that when Zheng Fan woke, he happened to be in Beifeng Commandery of the State of Yan.

Wherever the opening dropped him, he would play according to the local rules. In any case, he intended to seize opportunities and climb upward. With seven Demon Kings beside him, there was no world in which he could have done too badly. At the very least, the opening stages would have gone smoothly.

In Great Yan, that meant rising from Lieutenant Commander to Garrison Commander, drawing a down-on-his-luck Prince into his camp, then taking the military road upward.

Had he awakened in Great Qian, it would have been even simpler. Practice calligraphy. Memorize poems. Manufacture a reputation first, then advance through the imperial examinations, using the path of literary swagger to earn his first pot of gold. While climbing, he would avoid being sent to the Three Frontiers to “gild” his résumé as much as possible and make sure not to clash with Yan too early.

By the end, perhaps when Chen Xianba shattered Qian’s armies and the lands north of the river, the man who had already arranged everything in Jiangnan to receive Zhao Mugou would not have been Li Xundao, but Zheng Zhongyi.

If he had awakened in the lands of the Three Jins, he would have joined one of the great houses early. Once he made a name for himself, he would acknowledge some lord as foster father, seduce the man’s daughter, become his son-in-law and a feudal retainer, spend his free time beating up Savages, and quietly train private troops.

Perhaps before Situ Lei ever got around to killing his own father, “Zheng Turei” would already have killed his father-in-law and seized the position.

Naturally, once the elite Yan cavalry under Prince Jingnan and Prince Zhenbei pressed against the border, he would immediately proclaim himself Emperor first, then discard the dynastic title and downgrade himself into a mere sovereign of a state, waiting for the winds and clouds to turn again.

Had he awakened in Great Chu, the difficulty would have been somewhat higher, but hardly impossible. Find some down-on-his-luck noble scion, kill him and take his place, secure an admission ticket into the aristocratic order first. As for whether he would then raise high the banner of noble elitism or shout, “Are kings, marquises, generals, and ministers born from some special seed?”—that would depend on which way the wind was blowing.

Like an actor upon a stage:

Whatever script was being performed, wear the costume that suited it.

The thing sought was always the same.

Applause and reward from the audience.

But when had it started changing?

When the Blind Man urged rebellion, when had the idea stopped feeling so “obvious,” so “natural,” and instead required excuses like “the court persecuted us first,” “the Emperor moved against us first,” and “we need to prepare to protect ourselves”?

Because one thing could no longer be denied.

The Great Yan of today was not merely the Ji Clan’s Great Yan.

It was not merely the Great Yan of the Northern and Southern Princes.

It was also Zheng Fan’s Great Yan.

His existence had already carved out for this state the embryo of a true central dynasty and opened the road into a new age.

Look back, and those black-armored riders who revered black, whether they were his own direct troops or not, would all charge on horseback beneath Zheng Fan’s orders with extraordinary excitement and loyalty.

That black dragon banner, forever whipping in the wind... after looking at it long enough, it had begun to look right.

And after it began to look right... he had grown too lazy to replace it.

“Great Yan’s loyal and worthy minister” had originally been a title Zheng Fan liked using to mock himself.

Yet somehow, he had done more than any loyal and worthy minister in the entire history of Great Yan. If one judged purely by military accomplishments and merit, even the Northern and Southern Princes of the past had been left behind by the Regent Prince.

If I rebel, that is another matter.

But I have not rebelled yet.

And you dare leap out first and let everyone prostrate themselves before you as the supreme sovereign of the Nine-and-Five?

What?

Do you really think I, Zheng Fan, have been eating Great Yan’s grain for nothing?

It was an extremely simple way of thinking.

It was also an identity that had seeped into him quietly across all these years.

The thunder of iron hooves seemed to echo constantly beside his ears.

That sound made him feel secure.

It let him sleep soundly.

There was no need to fabricate some grand logic merely to justify himself.

He already disliked you.

Now you have made him dislike you even more.

That was enough.

I came here from the beginning intending to sweep all of you into one net and wipe out your entire house.

Now...

I am simply following through with the plan.

...

Inside Dongming Stockade, the Son of Heaven of Great Xia was gradually awakening.

No one knew which generation of Emperor he had been. The earliest records surrounding Great Xia and the Three Marquises had always been wrapped in deliberate silence. Great Xia had fallen. The Three Marquises founded states afterward. No matter how one explained it, there was always a certain hollowness beneath the story, a foundation that never quite stood firm.

Even Meng Shou, when compiling history, had merely gathered and revised the histories of the Four Great States. Great Xia lay too far in the past for him to truly reach within his own lifetime.

Still, none of it mattered anymore.

What posthumous title this Great Xia Emperor bore in the histories did not matter.

Whether he and his lover had slept within their coffins while cultivating through some method combining the ways of zombies and Qi Refiners in pursuit of the legendary First Grade, or whether he had already stood at First Grade long ago and sealed himself away until the world changed enough for him to rise again in accordance with Heaven’s will, did not matter.

Why Great Xia had fallen did not matter.

Why the Three Marquises had stood by and watched Great Xia collapse without lifting a hand did not matter.

This did not matter.

That did not matter.

Only one thing was clear now.

The Son of Heaven of Great Xia inside Dongming Stockade... and the Regent Prince of Great Yan outside it... would reach one of two endings today.

Either only one would remain alive... or both would die together.

One could already sense that the man inside the dragon coffin was very, very close to opening his eyes.

The remaining experts inside the Gate all gathered around the coffin and began guarding his awakening.

Third Master, who had coughed blood after being blasted away, clutched his chest and withdrew with the flow. During the process, no one clashed with him and no one tried to prevent his retreat.

To those people, there was no reason anymore.

They needed only to wait until this Gate Master, this Son of Heaven, completed his awakening.

Then everything today would be settled anew.

Xue San silently returned to the Demon Kings and sat down on Fan Li’s shoulder.

Fan Li was sitting cross-legged on the ground. He had long since withdrawn every defense.

He turned his head and looked at Xue San.

Xue San said, “What? Earlier you were the one shouting that Grandpa was fucking awesome. Now you’re disappointed it’s me sitting on your shoulder instead of her?”

Fan Li nodded and grinned.

“Yep.”

He still remembered that little girl asking him the same question again and again when she was young:

If, after she grew up, she wanted to kill Zheng Fan, what would he do?

And every single time, Fan Li had answered that he would slap her dead first.

Even after hearing that, she still liked sitting on his shoulders. She said he was tall, and when she sat there during their nighttime walks, she could get a little closer to the moon.

The Demon Kings did not understand what humans called love.

More precisely, “love” was a concept derived from the worldview of ordinary people.

If the average human lifespan were suddenly stretched to two hundred years, then the old concepts of love, childbirth, family, and everything tied to them would immediately be pulled apart beyond recognition.

The Demon Kings were difficult people to define.

Naturally, it was equally difficult to force ordinary worldly standards onto them.

But some feelings... were shared.

Ever since they awakened in this world half a year before Master, there had always been certain sights that left deeper marks than others.

And in the end... they had poured them all away like water until nothing remained.

There was no reluctance.

But perhaps... a faint sigh.

Fortunately, the Demon Kings’ worldview did not contain the concept of being “afraid of death.”

Dying in humiliation was unacceptable.

But what if one died like fireworks... after blazing with every last color?

How beautiful.

The Blind Man stood with his arms folded while the wind stirred his hair.

By rights, he ought to have been thinking about something too.

Yet nothing came.

He was, at bottom, a selfish man.

A woman had served him and cared for him for more than ten years, and even now, at this moment, not the slightest image of her could enter his mind.

A gust of wind.

It raised a cloud of sand.

The wind stopped.

The sand fell.

Let it be like this.

It was fine.

The Blind Man took another orange from his sleeve, held it before himself, and began peeling it as usual.

Liang Cheng and A’Ming sat side by side.

A’Ming held a severed limb and continued squeezing “moisture” from it.

At this point, it was not for healing.

Healing no longer mattered.

His mouth itched.

His throat itched.

His body itched.

His heart itched.

He simply wanted another drink.

Liang Cheng only sat there.

A’Ming glanced at him, then looked away and kept squeezing until his lips and teeth were stained red again.

The contrast between the two sides was strange.

Inside the Gate, its many experts had gathered into battle formation and were building themselves toward one final confrontation. After the chain of setbacks and casualties, they had, ironically, become somewhat purer.

Across from them stood the beings they believed had finally reached the end of their road, beings whose situation had supposedly been reversed against them.

Yet those beings now looked almost carefree.

The roles seemed to have switched.

The Demon Kings were not nervous.

Because they had no reason to be nervous.

They could not lose.

They would not lose.

So what if one First Grade expert was assassinated and another First Grade expert crawled out afterward?

What did that amount to?

From the moment they came charging straight to this place with such overwhelming intent... they had prepared to overturn everything.

Once Master completed that final step... they would possess seven First Grade existences.

Set aside the Demon Child, who could not emerge because he still had to remain as the foundation.

That still left six First Grade Demon Kings.

Six...

First Grade Demon Kings.

From beginning to end... the moment Master finished that bowl of noodles aboard the ship, set down his chopsticks, and said those two words—“courting death”... the result had already been decided.

One might even say the Demon Kings were showing extraordinary restraint, extraordinary courtesy, and extraordinary freedom from vulgar tastes simply by sitting or standing there with a little melancholy instead of openly laughing at the other side for struggling uselessly all this time.

Then the voice of the Son of Heaven of Great Xia came again.

“We... have returned.”

Together with it rose his aura.

His imperial pressure.

Complete awakening seemed to lie in the very next instant.

Outside the formation, after Siniang drove the final silver needle into Zheng Fan, his aura began soaring violently.

But... it was still missing one tiny trace.

That trace could be called very, very small.

At the same time... it could mean something unimaginably vast.

First Grade.

He had failed to reach it.

Zheng Fan did not panic.

He pulled Wuya from where it had been planted in the ground and began walking forward step by step, the blade dragging behind him and carving a line into the earth.

The Son of Heaven of Great Xia spoke.

“We... can grant you one opportunity.”

“This Prince doesn’t give a damn.”

Mockery was plain on Zheng Fan’s face.

At this point, there was no reason to hide anything.

Better to show his true feelings.

“Submit to Us. Serve Us. We can share All Under Heaven with you.”

“This Prince personally conquered more than half of All Under Heaven. Why the hell do I need you to divide it up and hand me a share?”

At last, the eyelids of the Son of Heaven of Great Xia began to tremble.

He was about to open his eyes.

And Zheng Fan... had reached the edge of the formation.

Siniang stood behind him.

“Blind Man.”

“Master.”

Until now, with the formation standing between them, the Blind Man’s mental link had been unable to connect outside.

But precisely because the formation was so advanced, it allowed people to see through it, and voices could pass across.

Zheng Fan asked, “Tell me. What happens if Ji Old Sixth really turns stingy and refuses to lend it? My talent isn’t enough. Even after forcing everything upward, I still couldn’t pile myself over that line.”

The Blind Man laughed.

“Then this subordinate would be overjoyed. At last I’d have won once. I’m genuinely sick to death of that Ji family.”

“Fine.”

Zheng Fan raised Wuya... and stepped into the Four Directions Grand Formation.

In an instant, the formation’s pressure descended upon him.

“Qian’s national fortune... has it really shattered this badly? This is practically a back scratcher. Hahahaha...”

“Chu’s national fortune... withered all the way down to this? Dear elder brother-in-law, you need some kidney tonics!”

“Jin’s national fortune... if I hadn’t known beforehand it was in here, I’d have had trouble finding it at all...”

“Great Xia’s national fortune... nothing special!”

The Blind Man did not help Master resist the formation.

So under its suppression, Zheng Fan’s realm and aura visibly began to fall.

Second Grade... dropped to Third Grade.

In the same instant, the aura of every Demon King collapsed with him.

Second Grade vanished.

All of them returned to Third Grade.

The experts gathered around the dragon coffin widened their eyes.

The Demon Kings themselves did not panic.

Their expressions remained calm.

Their Master, Great Yan’s Regent Prince Zheng Fan, raised Wuya toward the northwest... toward Yanjing.

Then he roared:

“Ji Old Sixth! Send money!”

In that instant, terrifying pressure came howling from the northwest.

If any high-Grade Qi Refiner or shaman had been standing on the outskirts of the Great Marsh, he would have clearly seen a vast black dragon take flight from the northwest, soar across Heaven... and plunge headfirst into the depths of the Great Marsh.

The Blind Man laughed.

It was a helpless laugh.

And as he laughed, for once he even cursed aloud:

“Fucking Ji family.”

The black dragon coiled behind Zheng Fan.

Great Yan’s national fortune... began pouring into one of Great Yan’s own Princes.

The realm the formation had suppressed rose again.

Second Grade returned!

Then... before all those experts inside the Gate... the Demon Kings performed the collective Second Grade advancement show one more time.

Fortunately, after watching the impossible spectacle repeated so many times, the Gate’s experts merely twitched at the corners of their mouths.

They were becoming numb.

Zheng Fan faced the northwest and cursed:

“Ji Old Sixth, you stingy bastard.

“Fuck me, it’s not enough!!!”

...

Yanjing.

The imperial palace.

The Emperor of Great Yan, Ji Chengjue, had just ordered Wei Zhonghe to execute the old Pixiu and was preparing to descend the steps of the Imperial Ancestral Temple when he suddenly stopped.

He raised his head.

“Achoo!”

“Achoo!”

“Achoo!”

After sneezing three times in succession, the Emperor cursed:

“What beast is missing Us this damned much?”

Afterward, he waved away the imperial palanquin beside him and simply sat down on the Ancestral Temple steps.

Nearby, the old Pixiu had already been bound by Wei Zhonghe together with the red-robed Grand Eunuchs.

The old Pixiu spoke.

“Emperor, you are squandering the Great Yan that struggled so hard to reach this day!”

As Great Yan’s guardian divine beast, once the Emperor used the authority of the Son of Heaven of Great Yan to suppress it, the Pixiu no longer had any real ability to resist before Wei Zhonghe and the others.

The Emperor could not even be bothered glancing at the beast waiting for execution.

With contemptuous arrogance, he laughed.

“Without Us, without Zheng Fan... how would Great Yan ever have reached this day?”

After speaking, the Emperor of Great Yan seemed to sense something.

He looked forward.

His gaze grew extraordinarily deep.

At that moment, the Crown Prince was summoned to the Imperial Ancestral Temple as well.

Ji Chuanye looked at his imperial father and immediately sensed that something about him was different from before.

He knelt.

“This son pays respects to Imperial Father.”

The Emperor still had his eyes closed and did not acknowledge his Crown Prince at all.

The Crown Prince slowly rose and instinctively prepared to climb the steps.

Then he suddenly heard his father’s voice.

There was laughter in it.

There was gloating.

There was a kind of authentic street vulgarity that seemed utterly unsuited to an Emperor.

“Hahahaha! That Zheng bastard is panicking! He’s panicking! He’s panicking!

“Serves you right, Zheng bastard.

“Now you know how miserable We felt when you sent people to deliver cornmeal to Us back then, don’t you?”

“Imperial Father?”

The Crown Prince approached cautiously.

Then the Emperor turned toward him.

The Crown Prince immediately knelt again.

“Imperial Father, you...”

“Crown Prince.”

“This son is here.”

“Come here.”

“This son obeys.”

The Crown Prince rose and walked to his father.

“Sit.”

“Yes, Imperial Father.”

The Crown Prince sat on the steps beside him.

“Closer.”

The Crown Prince obediently leaned nearer.

It had been a very long time since this imperial father and son had sat together with such intimacy.

The Emperor held out one hand and opened his palm.

The Crown Prince hesitated, then placed his own hand into his father’s.

The Emperor closed his hand around his son’s and murmured almost to himself:

“From very early on, it was always your Uncle Zheng fighting in front while your imperial father supplied him from behind.”

“This son... this son knows.”

“It was like that before. It will be like that later. Naturally, it is even more so now.”

“This son... will remember.”

His imperial father had said similar things years ago when sending him to Prince Pingxi Residence.

The Crown Prince assumed his father was merely admonishing him once more today.

“Mm.”

The Emperor nodded in satisfaction... and slowly closed his eyes again.

Nearby, the old Pixiu awaiting execution suddenly began roaring like a mad beast:

“You’ve gone mad! You’ve gone mad! You’ve gone mad!”

At first Ji Chuanye only found it strange.

Then, in the next instant... his vision abruptly went black.

Everything before him seemed to twist.

All he could do was instinctively tighten his grip on his father’s hand.

...

The Great Marsh.

Dongming Stockade.

Beneath a crash of thunder... the Son of Heaven of Great Xia finally opened his eyes.

His gaze ignored the Demon Kings completely.

It landed on Zheng Fan.

More precisely... on the phantom of the black dragon behind Zheng Fan.

“The Marquis of Yan’s... fortune.”

Suddenly, above that black dragon phantom behind Zheng Fan... another five-clawed black dragon descended.

Its scales were edged with gold.

Beside it... followed a smaller young dragon.

Martial Artist.

Swordsman.

Qi Refiner.

Zheng Fan did not care which path he used.

All he wanted... was to cross that single threshold.

First Grade!

It was just like years ago beneath the Wangjiang River, when the Demon Child entered his body and he used Qi Refiner methods to summon the hundred thousand ghost soldiers beneath the river into a charge.

This time... he would forcibly swallow Great Yan’s national fortune, use it to fill his realm, and complete the final step!

Then Ji Chengjue’s voice arrived.

“Zheng bastard, your father not only came personally, I dragged the Crown Prince—the foundation of the state—with me too.

“Blame this useless Crown Prince for failing to give me an imperial grandson yet. Otherwise I’d have dragged the imperial grandson along too and made it three generations of grandfather, son, and grandson. Hahahaha!”

In the next instant... the large and small black dragons both entered Zheng Fan’s body.

The final step... was complete.

Zheng Fan released an enraged roar.

His realm... broke into First Grade!

At the same moment, Fan Li’s body began swelling until he resembled a giant. Every motion of his hands and feet could split the earth and collapse mountains.

Xue San held his dagger while his body hung suspended in empty air. Beneath his feet spread a patch of black nothingness. His figure began flashing rapidly around Dongming Stockade, as though he existed nowhere... and as though he existed everywhere.

A’Ming spread both arms.

Behind him... a sea of blood appeared, rolling with crimson nectar.

Before Liang Cheng appeared the phantom of a throne built from white bones. Beneath his feet, a Sea of the Dead began spreading outward, countless lost souls howling within it as they waited for redemption.

The Blind Man’s left eye became black.

His right eye became white.

Yin and yang turned at a single thought.

Righteousness and wickedness depended only upon his will.

Siniang’s aura changed.

Everything else about her... did not.

She merely looked at Master standing before her.

At this moment, whether she acted or not could no longer change the conclusion.

So she had no interest in displaying that final blossoming of power.

She only wanted to look at her husband a few more times.

This colossal reversal left the experts inside the Gate completely horrified.

Even the Son of Heaven of Great Xia inside the dragon coffin... lost every trace of calm and composure.

“No... impossible!”

Zheng Fan slowly raised Wuya.

He pointed forward.

And as Master... gave the Demon Kings beneath him his command.

“Leave... not one alive.”

The Blind Man.

Liang Cheng.

Xue San.

A’Ming.

Fan Li.

All answered together:

“This subordinate obeys!”

[End of Chapter 1029]