Faced with the Sovereign’s fury, the assembled officials could only mutter timidly among themselves. No one was willing to stick their neck out and become the first target.
“Speak,” the Sovereign said. “When Mengze was acting as regent, weren’t every one of you quite eloquent? What’s wrong now? Have you all gone mute?”
An elderly noble stepped forward and said, “Your Majesty, Lion-Camel Pass was in urgent need of reinforcements and military deployment. However, such a major matter must receive Your Majesty’s personal approval. If Princess Mengze was acting in Your Majesty’s stead, then multiple parties would need to deliberate before it could be carried out. Otherwise, all rules and procedures would fall into chaos.”
“Rules?” The Sovereign narrowed his eyes, his expression already extremely dangerous. “How interesting. What rules?”
“The laws of Chonghua, the regulations handed down by our ancestors—”
The Sovereign abruptly cut him off, baring his white teeth.
“For the sake of your precious ancestral regulations, we lost three major frontier cities! Your rules can go to hell!”
The old noble suddenly shrank back, his turtle-like old face crumpling into wrinkles. The Sovereign’s fury could no longer be restrained. He flew into a rage at the court session, pounding the desk as he demanded, “What exactly do you people want? Is whether someone is a man or a woman really that important? If I want someone to act in my place, I’ll let whoever I want do it! What else? You want to make the decisions yourselves? Then I might as well go to the rear courtyard and drag out a pig to sit in my position!”
“Never mind Daze. Back then, the Liao army’s three hundred thousand troops tried to occupy Feng City, yet our forces drove them back. Di City is even one of Chonghua’s most important raw-stone cities. Since ancient times, every enemy army that attacked it lost—yet all three cities fell within twenty days. Even a pig stationed there would never have allowed such an absurd thing to happen!”
“…”
“Who rejected Mengze’s proposal? Who refused to let her send troops to Lion-Camel Pass? Was it you?!”
His sharp gaze pointed directly at the old noble who had spoken up earlier.
The old noble hurriedly said, “O-Of course not, Your Majesty! How could such a major matter possibly be decided by this old subject alone? It was—it was…”
“What was it?! You’re normally so glib, but the moment it comes time to hold you accountable, you start stammering? Speak! Or do you want me to have Mengze point every single one of you out by name? Mengze!”
Mengze was a woman who had been permitted to attend court as an exception. She wore a black gauze crown with five beams trimmed in gold, and a black python robe patterned with hidden phoenix-bird designs. Although the robe had wide sleeves, the waist was fitted neatly and crisply, giving her a tall, handsome bearing quite different from her usual appearance.
When her elder brother called her, her long lashes moved slightly. She lowered her eyes and said, “Royal Brother, please calm your anger. Lion-Camel Pass has already fallen, and the three cities have already been lost. We do not know what unusual move the Liao Kingdom may make next. This is not the time to pursue responsibility. Please make your preparations as soon as possible, mobilize generals and troops from the Northern Frontier, and arrange a counterattack.”
The old noble had originally been worried that Mengze, after enduring so much exclusion these days, would seize this opportunity to make a thorough complaint to her elder brother.
But when he heard her say this, he immediately breathed a huge sigh of relief and could not help silently praising Mengze in his heart.
This girl knows not to take advantage of someone’s misfortune. She understands how things work!
He hurriedly said, “Exactly, exactly, Your Majesty. You see, at the time we were also concerned about Chonghua’s laws and the proper order of the court. Our intentions were good, but perhaps the outcome was not quite what we hoped for. Please calm your anger.”
Another official stepped forward.
“Indeed, Your Majesty. A family has its family rules, and a nation has its laws. We ministers acted according to the laws of the nation. Although this resulted in the loss of three cities and one pass, at least the laws and order were not thrown into chaos. That cannot be considered entirely a bad thing.”
The moment the Sovereign heard this, the breath he had just forced down immediately surged back up.
As if that were not enough, another person added, “Your Majesty has been bedridden for more than twenty days. The concern of your ministers was not without reason. If Your Majesty’s honored body was suffering from some serious illness, according to the law, the Council of Elders should have been informed sooner. Hiding the matter in this manner would naturally cause the court officials to worry needlessly.”
The Sovereign’s anger instantly shot to his head. He drew a breath, then suddenly raised his reddened eyes filled with hatred and slammed his palm onto the table.
“You people really are something! Are your mouths growing on your faces not for discussing strategies and making plans, but for chewing the fat?!”
Everyone fell silent.
The official who had offered the admonition relied on the Red Inscription Iron Certificate left behind by the founding Sovereign, as well as his deep-rooted influence throughout the court and society. Thus, he deliberately put on a frightened expression.
“Your Majesty, please do not become angry. Protecting Your Majesty’s health is what matters most.”
In his fury, the Sovereign turned his head away irritably, seemingly unwilling to look at the trash before him any longer.
He said nothing. He stared at one of the great hall’s beams beside him for a while, trying to calm himself.
But it was ultimately useless.
His overwhelming fury flooded out from his heart, drowning his entire being in invisible resentment.
He closed his eyes.
Suddenly, with a loud whoosh, he swept his sleeve across the table and flipped the entire desk over. Cherries, pears, and other things rolled all over the floor, while scrolls and memorials scattered into complete disarray.
“Get out!”
“…”
“Get out, get out, get out! All of you, get out!”
“…Yes!”
The Sovereign breathed heavily. His furious, bloodshot eyes glared down at the court officials before him. Then he spat out several words.
“Wait.”
The ministers stopped.
The Sovereign said, “Lord Xihe, you stay.”
Before long, the hall had emptied until only Mo Xi and the Sovereign remained.
The Sovereign exhaled deeply and leaned back, utterly exhausted. He reclined against the dragon throne, his hollow eyes staring at the vermilion-and-gold domed ceiling carved with dragons and painted with phoenixes.
“The Red Inscription Iron Certificate… the Red Inscription Iron Certificate!” The Sovereign spat curses after each repetition. “All these wonderful things left behind by our ancestors! Relying on these things, every one of them keeps finding opportunities to pursue their own little schemes. Tell me, why am I raising these people? I might as well raise a whole bunch of uniform, obedient bamboo warriors! I’ll appoint those bamboo people who don’t have all these crooked thoughts to official positions! It would save me from so many disgusting troubles!”
“…Things have already come this far. Your Majesty, please stop talking about such unrealistic ideas.”
“What’s unrealistic about it?” the Sovereign said darkly and furiously. “People with ambitions but no brains are worse than pigs with neither ambitions nor brains!”
Mo Xi pressed his thin lips together.
Their Sovereign had ascended the throne at the critical juncture of Chonghua’s reforms, and the resistance he encountered could almost be described as unprecedented.
With so many people openly and covertly opposing him, whenever the Sovereign became anxious, he would inevitably come up with ideas such as, “Instead of raising all these civil and military officials, I might as well raise a pile of obedient bamboo warriors.”
Mo Xi sighed inwardly. He did not want to continue this meaningless topic with him, so instead he asked, “How does Your Majesty intend to counterattack next?”
The Sovereign, however, said, “I’m afraid we cannot simply counterattack.”
After saying this, he raised a hand to his forehead and forcefully rubbed his brow ridge.
“Lord Xihe, do you know why I was unable to leave seclusion for more than twenty days straight?”
“The Cold-Through Illness.”
“Then why didn’t I seek you out to dispel the cold and treat me as I usually do?”
“I don’t know.”
The Sovereign straightened his body, his entire figure shrouded in the shadow cast by the hanging plaque of the golden hall.
“Lord Xihe has been driving the cold from my body for so many years. Have you never been curious about how I contracted this illness?”
Mo Xi said, “If you don’t tell me, I won’t ask.”
“You have always been cautious with your words and actions.” The Sovereign nodded. “It’s just that you tend to lose your head when it comes to that good brother of yours.”
After a pause, the Sovereign continued, “Actually, it wasn’t that I deliberately wanted to conceal this from you. I simply felt that the time had not yet come to tell you. Now that the situation has been laid bare before us, I should explain everything to you clearly.”
“Please speak, Your Majesty.”
The Sovereign considered his words for a while, then sighed.
“This matter has to begin with an old account from the founding of the Liao Kingdom.”
“I suppose I need not go into detail about that history again. From Chonghua’s elderly, white-haired men down to its youngest children, there is probably no one who does not know it. Back then, Palace Master Chentan made an exception and accepted the slave Hua Po’an as his disciple. Later, Hua Po’an betrayed him, raised an army in rebellion, established himself as king in Chonghua’s Northern Frontier, and founded this nation of utter evil.”
“Nowadays, whenever the Liao Kingdom is mentioned, no one on the Nine Provinces Continent is unaware of their bloody methods and their proficiency in black magic. But…”
The Sovereign raised his head.
“Have you ever wondered where the origins of the Liao Kingdom’s magic actually lie?”
Mo Xi said, “Hua Po’an was a rare magical genius of the century. Most of the black magic spells the Liao Kingdom uses today were originally created by him.”
“How could there be so many original creations? He was once a slave who knew absolutely nothing. Who gave him his initial enlightenment and instruction?”
The answer was obvious.
Chentan.
Mo Xi frowned. “But Chentan never dabbled in any crooked or forbidden magic.”
“Who said the source of crooked magic must itself be crooked magic?” the Sovereign said. “Marshal Gu infiltrated the Liao Kingdom for five years. During that time, he sent me countless letters and collected a massive amount of information about the Liao Kingdom’s black magic. Aside from a small portion of spells that were completely derived from the surviving writings of the demon race, I discovered that many of them bore traces of Chonghua’s magic.”
“Think about it. Hua Po’an was an exceptionally intelligent person. Someone like him would not be content to simply imitate magic by following a fixed pattern. Once he had thoroughly mastered Chentan’s spells, he would certainly have begun studying how to make those spells more unusual and more powerful. The spells Chentan cast may have been intended to seek stability, while Hua Po’an would seek danger and novelty.”
As he spoke, the Sovereign casually conjured a golden-red flame in the palm of his hand.
“For example, this. This is the Nine-Lotus Flame Art that Palace Master Chen left behind. It can dispel the shallow traces of demonic energy that ordinary people have been contaminated with. You should be very familiar with it.”
After saying this, the Sovereign suddenly formed two more hand seals.
The golden-red flame immediately went out.
What now rested in his palm was a blue-black, vortex-shaped mass of miasma.
Mo Xi’s eyes widened abruptly.
“Fallen Heart Art?”
“That’s right.” The Sovereign said, “This is the Fallen Heart Art that I cultivated based on the records of black magic Marshal Gu secretly sent me. During all those years you fought against the Liao Kingdom, it must have given you an enormous headache. That is because it is precisely the opposite of the Nine-Lotus Flame Art. It is a spell that allows ordinary people to be corrupted by demonic energy.”
With that, the Sovereign dispersed the Fallen Heart Art.
“But, Lord Xihe, if Gu Mang had not secretly transmitted the diagrams and records of the Fallen Heart Art to me, I would never have imagined that between the Flame Art and the Fallen Heart Art, there were only two hand seals.”
Mo Xi was slightly stunned.
“…You mean that many of Hua Po’an’s spells still could not escape Chentan’s influence?”
“Exactly. The origins of most of the Liao Kingdom’s black magic spells are similar to those of Chonghua’s magic.” The Sovereign said, “He studied under Chentan and was born in Chonghua. No matter how completely transformed he became later, he could never escape his roots.”
“Then let us return to the matter at hand. Do you remember how Palace Master Chen died back then?”
“…The history books say that he sacrificed himself to stop the blood demon beast Hua Po’an was cultivating at the time, and ultimately perished together with it.”
The Sovereign nodded.
“The blood demon beast was ferocious and cruel, its resentment and viciousness terrifying. If it were allowed to develop, it would possess the power to move mountains, fill seas, devour the heavens, and consume the earth. More dangerously, it could continuously release demonic energy, affecting the minds of living beings within a radius of more than a hundred li, gradually infecting them with violent energy and turning them brutal and bloodthirsty.”
“The rumors surrounding it were simply too horrifying. It was said to be a demonic beast that could never truly be killed, like a phoenix reborn from its ashes, capable of returning to life after being driven to the brink of death.”
“Thus, even after Chentan sealed it back then, the successive rulers of Chonghua remained deeply troubled by the beast’s existence. By the time of my father’s generation…”
He paused before saying, “To guard against the possibility of something going wrong, he began concealing the matter from the court officials and secretly conducted an experiment.”
Mo Xi’s expression changed.
“Could it be that the previous Sovereign also wanted to recreate a blood demon beast?!”
The Sovereign said, “No.”
“Then he…”
“He found a scroll concerning the cultivation of spirit beasts among the secret illustrated records and ancient manuscripts left behind by Chentan. The spirit beast recorded there was extremely similar to the blood demon beast, but its abilities were completely opposite.”
“It was a beast capable of purifying the world.”
“My father once attempted to secretly cultivate this spirit beast that could counter the blood demon beast.”