Yang Kingdom, Rui'an Prefecture, Imperial Capital.
Bang!
Inside the study hall, a heavy, exquisitely carved inkstone was suddenly grabbed by the person behind the desk and hurled forward, smashing directly into the head of a nearby eunuch.
The inkstone landed solidly, cracking open the eunuch's skull and leaving behind a grotesque, gory cavity.
With a muffled grunt, the eunuch collapsed to the ground on the spot, dead before he even hit the floor.
Blood pooled out, spreading beneath the shattered remains of the inkstone.
Everyone kneeling in the room held their breath, none dared to so much as glance at the unfortunate eunuch.
All of them trembled, prostrated on the floor like insects.
The man seated at the head of the study hall, of course, was the current Emperor of the Yang Kingdom, Wen Xian.
Although his name evoked celestial elegance, Wen Xian looked anything but.
He bore no immortal aura, only the form of a bloated, obese man.
He wore a specially tailored imperial robe of bright yellow.
Seated behind the desk, his figure resembled a mountain, layer upon layer of fat pushing the royal garment into unsightly folds and creases.
Worse still, though his flesh remained full and elastic from alchemical nourishment, his skin had aged, saggy and splotched with liver spots, like an overfilled waterskin wrapped in dried parchment, an unnatural grotesquerie.
Only his eyes still gleamed, cold and vicious, like a vulture surveying its prey.
They sent chills down the spines of everyone present.
Though already nearly seventy, Wen Xian's physical health far surpassed that of most mortals.
Thanks to rare spiritual herbs, endless medicinal elixirs, and constant cultivation nourishment
from imperial cultivators, he had forcibly pushed his otherwise mediocre aptitude to the Innate Realm.
With the protection of the national mandate,
Wen Xian could potentially live two to three hundred years.
While laughably short by cultivator standards,
this was already more than enough time for any mortal emperor.
In a world untouched by cultivation interference,
three centuries would see dynasties rise and fall,
dozens of emperors come and go.
But Wen Xian, for three hundred years, had sat alone atop the highest seat of power.
If only, he hadn't heard today's news.
"WHO LET HIM INTO RUI'AN PREFECTURE?!"
Wen Xian's eyes burned with rage, his voice sharp and venomous like a spitting cobra.
His furious roar rang out:
"WHO allowed him into the Grand Ancestral Temple?! Why didn't anyone stop him?! Huh?!"
"The border garrisons at Rui'an Prefecture, the temple's three thousand armored guards,
are they all for show now?! They couldn't stop one lone man, Wen Chai?!"
The court remained silent.
No one dared to answer.
At last, one figure tentatively raised his head and said:
"Your Majesty... please calm your anger.
Your health-"
BANG!
This time, it was a paperweight, just as heavy as the inkstone, that flew through the air.
It struck the speaker in the head, cracking open his skull just the same as the previous victim.
He fell unconscious, his blood spilling freely.
Wen Xian cursed:
"Did I summon you all here to care about my health?! ANSWER ME! Don't evade my question!"
The person struck had been a military officer, his cultivation even reached the Sea-Cleaving Realm.
Ordinarily, Wen Xian's strength couldn't have scratched his skin.
But right now, with that one blow, he'd been knocked out cold, bleeding profusely.
The others blinked in shock, then cursed inwardly.
Damn it, why didn't I think of pretending to faint too?
Seeing no one respond, Wen Xian took a deep breath, then coldly declared:
"If no one can give me an answer, then I'll take you all for useless fools and have you dragged out and executed!"
This time, someone finally opened their mouth.
A civil official, trembling, said:
"Your Majesty... the troops stationed at Rui'an Prefecture... and the three thousand temple guards... they were all..."
He swallowed hard and said quietly:
"They were all brought in by the Prince of Jingnan."
...
Wen Xian fell silent.
Then slowly said:
"Repeat that."
"They were all brought in by the Prince of Jingnan."
Wen Xian slammed the desk, his voice booming:
"Then KILL HIM FOR ME!!"
Shik-
Without a sound, a red line appeared on that civil official's neck.
The line spread wider..
By the time he raised his trembling hands in instinctive panic, he was already holding his own head.
He died still kneeling, hands cradling his own severed skull.
Blood sprayed out, splattering those nearby.
But no one dared say a word.
Wen Xian slammed the desk again and again, ranting:
"MY Soldiers! Those are MY soldiers! MINE! MINE! MINE!!"
"Treason! This is treason!!"
The obese emperor paced back and forth behind the desk, foaming with rage.
"I've already stripped Wen Chai of his command!
The Tiger Tally is in MY hands! How dare they let him in?! Are they rebelling?!"
But amid the fury, his voice began to tremble.
"Your Majesty,"
A voice echoed from the floor, from the head in the dead man's hands.
"They've already rebelled."
The speaker was Huangfu Yan, the Chief Minister of the Department of Shennong.
He continued:
"The Prince of Jingnan has left the Grand Ancestral Temple. Upon exiting, he faced the troops of his former command and said just two words."
Wen Xian stared down coldly.
"What two words?"
"He said: 'Form Ranks.'"
"And immediately, three thousand iron-armored troops fell into formation, neat and orderly, and followed the Prince of Jingnan toward Zangfeng Prefecture."
"Along the way, they gathered thousands more:
veterans, the unemployed, those long out of commission. When they reached the border gate, the garrison opened the gates voluntarily."
"Some attempted to block them and they asked why he went and the Prince of Jingnan replied:
'For the eternal peace of the mountains and rivers, for the unbroken golden seal.'
And then they stepped aside, no longer daring to stop him."
He sighed.
"Your Majesty... this is called prestige."
Wen Xian's face twisted.
"Huangfu Yan... did you come here just to mock me?"
Huangfu Yan, speaking through the severed head, replied:
"I wouldn't dare."
"But as Your Majesty has seen, this is reality.
Your brother, the once-renowned and glorified Prince of Jingnan, has decided to raise arms."
"And now, he has already gathered over ten thousand soldiers... with the tacit approval of a Saint."
Wen Xian asked darkly:
"Has Grandma Wangshu really granted her consent?"
Huangfu Yan sighed:
"A Saint has moved. Zangfeng Prefecture has already been sealed, Spiritual Energy forbidden, entry blocked, exit cut off."
Wen Xian's eyes widened as he ground his teeth:
"What the hell is in Zangfeng Prefecture...
that made him, after all these years of patience, finally make his move?!"
Huangfu Yan shook his head.
"I don't know."
"But it must be something truly monumental,
so valuable that it can rival the nation's fate. Only then would Wen Chai dare go mad like this."
Wen Xian's eyes narrowed into slits.
"I know... I know what it is."
"The Elixir of Immortality! Only that would make Wen Chai go insane!"
He looked back down at the head.
"Huangfu Yan, can you contact the Department of Shennong's people still inside Zangfeng Prefecture?"
Huangfu Yan shook the head slightly.
"No, but before the prefecture was sealed,
because Wang Yangbo, who was in charge of Zangfeng Prefecture,suddenly died, I already activated two puppets hidden within."
"Their signals are weak, but still functioning.
If either of them is killed, I can immediately replace their consciousness with my own."
Huangfu Yan, as Chief Minister of the Department of Shennong, specialized in yan techniques, more commonly known as puppetry.
Outside Zangfeng Prefecture.
Wen Chai stood at the edge of the barrier, hands clasped behind his back, calmly gazing at the golden boundary line before him.
Behind him, war banners flapped in the wind, snapping crisply.
The army of over ten thousand had already reformed into their once-familiar military formations, disciplined and orderly.
Though they hadn't had time to don matching armor, their garments mismatched and their banners of different colors and insignia, at this moment, their expressions were strikingly alike: an almost fanatical fervor.
No one made any extraneous movements.
These were soldiers who had voluntarily followed Wen Chai, all of them were formerly his subordinates, the majority of whom were the elite of their units.
Like Li Hongling, Wen Chai's specialty was also in "formation momentum."
But unlike Li Hongling, who became a disciple of the Martial Saint later in life, Wen Chai had studied under renowned formation masters since youth, and refined his own battlefield formations through hard-won experience.
He was a true practitioner of momentum formations.
Dawn gradually brightened the sky.
After marching through the night, Wen Chai suddenly turned and shouted:
"Form up!"
"Yes, sir!"
The roar of ten thousand voices echoed skyward like thunder.
The soldiers swiftly aligned into a military formation, and in an instant, an overwhelming aura surged upward, seemingly shaking the earth beneath their feet.
Yet the formation wasn't fully activated, because Wen Chai, as the formation's core, had not infused it with power.
He had no intention of fully activating it, this was merely to boost morale.
Inside Zangfeng Prefecture, the formation wouldn't work either.
But morale, hearts and minds, were still effective.
In this cage devoid of Spiritual Energy, it was the mortal body that represented true strength.
Others might be no more than individual steel plates, but Wen Chai intended for his army to become an impregnable fortress!
He would bring this fortress with him and flatten everything that dared stand in his way.
This was the opportunity bestowed upon him by lady Wangshu, and it was also a test, to which he would deliver the perfect answer.
Wen Chai drew in a deep breath and shouted:
"Advance!"
He was the first to step into the barrier of Zangfeng Prefecture.
...
Meanwhile, back inside Zangfeng Prefecture, Chen Kuang had not acted out of sympathy.
But because the identity of this young man was far from ordinary, anyone chosen as a vessel for the Martial Saint's descent could never be just a random selection.
Yet what was strange was that, despite making such a monumental sacrifice for the Martial Saint, this boy had seemingly received nothing in return.
Had he died, that would have been understandable.
After all, how could the dead collect compensation?
But now, the youth had survived, only to return to misery.
From the moment he had been possessed, he wore that green headscarf, proving that he was the son of a courtesan, his original status.
As one of low birth, treated as expendable within the brothel, this wasn't unexpected.
But for him to experience that battle, serve as the Martial Saint's vessel, and then so quickly fall back to his original station, that was truly incomprehensible.
It meant that Martial Saint Pavilion never viewed him as a person but merely as a tool to be discarded after use.
And under such circumstances, Chen Kuang doubted that the youth would remain blind to their true face. Much less willingly serve as a vessel again.
At this moment, resentment was only natural.
And as the saying goes: "The enemy of my enemy... is my friend."
The youth glanced at Chen Kuang's extended hand and shook his head, standing up on his own.
"I was just cleaning tables with a rag, my hands are too dirty."
He explained sheepishly, and then said quietly:
"That punch which could split mountains... it wasn't me. It was that world-renowned Martial Saint."
Chen Kuang didn't withdraw his hand.
Instead, he smiled:
"Then let's start over. Tell me your name."
While handshake customs did exist in Cangyuan, introduced from the western frontier, they were rarely used among cultivators.
The youth hesitated, then wiped his hand vigorously on his clothes,and gave Chen Kuang a quick handshake.
"Mo Xu. My name is Mo Xu, 'Xu' as in the rising sun."
He quickly released his grip and added solemnly:
"Thank you for helping me. If I get the chance, I'll repay you... though as you can see, I'm just an ordinary person now."
Chen Kuang could tell.
Or rather, he'd already known, ever since that battle with the Martial Saint.
Mo Xu's meridians had been completely destroyed.
It was virtually impossible for him to cultivate ever again.
The pressure of the Martial Saint's descent had exceeded this body's limits, completely blowing it apart.
His meridians, dantian, and spiritual orifices were all shattered into a pulp.
By all logic, he should have been paralyzed in bed, a cripple through and through.
But for some reason, he had survived.
And not only that, he lived like a normal person.
That, in itself, was already a miracle.
Yet within Mo Xu's heart, a deep shadow had taken root.
His story was simple, a courtesan's son who refused to accept his fate.
He scraped together money to buy the most basic cultivation manual, and found his progress surprisingly fast.
He thought he saw hope..
Later, he heard that atop the sheer cliffs of Mount Tai, the Martial Saint had left behind a "Dao Preaching Stele", infused with a wisp of his Dao Resonance, open to all.
Anyone who could climb to the summit and comprehend the stele's essence might receive the Martial Saint's personal instruction.
Mo Xu was overjoyed, believing this to be his chance at changing his destiny.
He snuck out of Golden Phoenix Pavilion...
And in a sense, he succeeded.
When he learned that the Pavilion Master of Martial Saint Pavilion wished to summon him,
he had nearly fainted from joy, he thought he was about to soar to the heavens.
What followed... was a nightmare.
After that battle, the Martial Saint Pavilion assessed his body and delivered their verdict.
Not only did he fail to gain any future,
he also lost his only hope, his cultivation and his talent.
The Martial Saint Pavilion discarded him like a used rag and dumped him back in the Golden Phoenix Pavilion to rot.
Mo Xu sighed:
"To be honest, you saved the wrong person."
Chen Kuang's eyes glinted, but he replied:
"Perhaps not."
As he looked directly at Mo Xu, his "Piercing Insight" passive suddenly activated.
And within that hazy, shattered sea of meridians and dantian, Chen Kuang caught a flicker of a faint, profound light.
He felt a sense of familiarity, though it was so broken that he couldn't place it at first.
Until now, that is..
Chen Kuang finally saw the truth, it was nothing else but... the Martial Saint's Dao Domain!
The Martial Saint's descent into Mo Xu had destroyed everything, but unknowingly left behind something even more terrifying.
Mu Zhao's Dao Domain, named "Domination", the Dao of Tyranny!
And now, within Mo Xu's body, hidden among the ruined meridians, it shimmered ever so faintly.
To grasp a Dao Domain... was to step into the Third Grade.
If this Dao Domain could be restored, then Mo Xu could directly ascend to the Profound Profound Realm!
In other words...
Chen Kuang had just stumbled upon a quasi-Saint in the making.