The Collapsing Beginning

Year 2023 of the Great Zhou Calendar, late autumn, the Imperial Capital, Weiyang Palace.

The biting cold wind swept up withered yellow leaves, weaving through the towering red walls and yellow glazed tiles, letting out a piercing shriek like the wail of a vengeful spirit.

In this high-martial world where the strong reigned supreme, the night meant more than just the fading of light; it represented a carnival for the weird and the evil. Whenever the sky was dyed pitch-black, indescribable horrors would breed and spread within the crevices of the shadows. Without a martial arts expert standing guard or a grand formation for protection, ordinary commoners could only tightly shut their doors and windows, shivering as they prayed for the dawn.

Yet tonight, the Great Zhou Imperial Palace was also shrouded in a heavy aura of death.

Deep within the palace, white mourning garb fluttered everywhere. The heavy tolling of a bell rang out time and time again, striking at everyone's heart, bringing a suffocation so oppressive it made it hard to breathe.

In a side hall of Weiyang Palace, Wang Hao, who had just changed into mourning clothes, sat on a yellow rosewood chair, staring blankly into a massive bronze mirror.

The youth in the mirror was about sixteen years old. His face was as pristine as jade, his sword-like eyebrows extended to his temples, his nose was high and straight, and his eyes were like bright stars.

He had to admit that after two thousand years of inheritance and countless generations of screening and fusing excellent genes, the Great Zhou Imperial Family had produced a physical vessel of peerless, world-shattering handsome looks. Even though his face was pale at the moment, he naturally exuded an innate, aristocratic aura.

Except right now, this handsome face, capable of enchanting thousands of young maidens, clearly spelled out four words: utterly tired of life.

Year 2023 of the Great Zhou Calendar... Weiyang Palace... Crown Prince... Ascension to the throne?

Wang Hao raised a hand and painfully rubbed his throbbing temples. The original owner's memories surged forward like a bursting dam, violently colliding with his modern mindset, causing him waves of dizziness.

A moment later, this tearing sensation gradually subsided, and he was forced to accept this absurd reality.

Three days ago, he was still a corporate slave on Earth, working overtime like crazy just for a few hundred bucks in perfect attendance bonuses. He had rested his head on his desk for a quick nap after pulling three consecutive all-nighters. Who would have thought that upon waking up, time and space would shift, and he would actually transmigrate.

Moreover, he transmigrated into the body of the Crown Prince of the Great Zhou Empire, Wang Hao.

What was even more thrilling was that, because his cheap father had just passed away, he was about to ascend the throne and become the new master of this massive empire.

Starting off as the Emperor, the supreme ruler, owning the Four Seas...

Wang Hao muttered to himself. It should have been a joyous occasion, yet he couldn't bring himself to smile at all.

As a transmigrator well-versed in web novels, this should have been the dream god-tier start. Waking up to hold the power of the world, getting drunk resting on the laps of beauties, ruling over billions of subjects, and possessing endless resources, how exhilarating would that be?

But when Wang Hao fully digested the original owner's memories regarding the late Emperor, that is, his recently deceased cheap father, as well as the current state of the Great Zhou Empire, he only wanted to rush out of the hall, raise his middle finger at the pitch-black sky, and curse out loud:

You damn heavens, you're playing me!

The Great Zhou Empire had been established for two thousand years. Martial arts flourished, experts were as common as clouds, and the imperial family's foundation was outrageously profound, suppressing the destiny of the world. However, this seemingly flawless and solid empire was actually riddled with holes on the inside, tottering on the verge of collapse.

And the main culprit behind all this was the man who had just died, Wang Hao's biological father in this life, Wang Qian.

Just thinking of this late Emperor made the corners of Wang Hao's mouth twitch madly.

Wang Qian wasn't a bloodthirsty tyrant in the traditional sense; if he had been, things would have been simpler. He was a highly creative incompetent ruler, an absolute weirdo, and a troll who would leave a heavy mark in the history of Great Zhou.

How did the history books describe incompetent rulers?

Lakes of wine and forests of meat? Favoring treacherous sycophants? Neglecting state affairs? Wantonly killing loyal officials?

For Wang Qian, these were just basic operations, and one could even say they lacked imagination.

In his pursuit of enjoyment, this guy claimed that the palaces left by his ancestors weren't grand enough. In reality, he just disliked that they couldn't accommodate hundreds of concubines playing in the water at the same time. Thus, with a single command, he tore down palaces that had been passed down for a millennium, spent tens of millions of taels of silver from the national treasury, conscripted a hundred thousand laborers, and spent three years building an extravagantly luxurious Palace of Ultimate Bliss.

Because of this, military pay at the borders was delayed for two whole years. Soldiers guarded the frontiers in thin clothes amidst snowstorms, their hearts filled with soaring resentment. When floods struck Jiangnan, the disaster relief funds were embezzled to build his gardens, resulting in fields littered with corpses of the starved and boiling public anger.

That wasn't the end of it.

In order to watch a newly entered exotic dancer perform, he made the civil and military officials who were preparing for the morning assembly kneel outside the main hall for three days, regardless of wind or rain, refusing to see anyone. His reason was: We are seeking artistic inspiration. You vulgar mortals must not disturb Us.

He didn't like attending court, finding the ministers' nagging a headache, so he threw all state affairs to the Grand Secretariat and the Directorate of Ceremonial, hiding in the inner harem to study the Dao of Ultimate Bliss.

If it were only this, relying on the profound foundation accumulated by the Great Zhou Imperial Family over two thousand years, along with a few old ancestors guarding the imperial tombs and suppressing the empire's destiny, this realm could probably have lasted for another century or two, resulting at worst in a mid-dynasty decline.

The worst part was that this late Emperor was not only a pill-popping martial artist but also an arrogant yet ordinary man with no self-awareness.

In this world where strength was everything, the martial arts realms were divided into: Skin Forging, Muscle Forging, Bone Forging, Organ Forging, Acupoint Opening, True Intent, Astral Qi, Spirit Condensation, and Saint Entry... Every realm was separated by a heavenly chasm, and it grew increasingly difficult the further one progressed.

The late Emperor Wang Qian had mediocre talent, but he won by having great reincarnation luck. By eating heavenly materials and earthly treasures like thousand-year-old Lingzhi mushrooms and ten-thousand-year-old snow lotuses as if they were regular meals, he forcefully piled his cultivation base up to the sixth martial realm, the True Intent Realm, using an ocean of resources.

His realm was achieved through popping pills, so his foundation was incredibly unstable. If he actually had to fight, he probably wouldn't even be able to beat a fourth-realm martial artist who battled in the pugilistic world. But he didn't think so! Under the flattery of a bunch of treacherous sycophants around him, he felt that his divine skills were unparalleled, his vitality was like a dragon, and his will was like iron; he believed himself to be a rare reincarnation of a Martial God.

And so, tragedy struck.

Human women could no longer satisfy the ever-expanding desire for conquest of this reincarnated Martial God. He began to seek out more thrilling, more taboo ways to play.

During a royal hunt half a month ago, some godforsaken treacherous official, in order to curry favor with the Emperor, offered slanderous advice, saying that a Jadebone Spectral Concubine in human form had been captured in a land of extreme Yin, and that she was exceptionally beautiful and alluring.

That was an anomaly!

An evil spirit that devoured living creatures in the night, devoid of reason and knowing only slaughter!

This Jadebone Spectral Concubine was a rare level-five anomaly, equivalent to the peak of the human fifth martial realm, the Acupoint Opening Realm. If one considered the logic-defying characteristics and mental pollution abilities of anomalies, it was even harder to deal with than a typical sixth-realm expert.

This creature's appearance indeed naturally carried a soul-stealing, bewitching beauty. Every inch of its skin was crystal clear, to the point where one could see the beautiful jade-like bones beneath the flesh, resembling a blooming spider lily from hell.

A normal person's first reaction upon seeing such a thing would definitely be to run as far away as possible.

But the late Emperor Wang Qian's thought process was different.

When he laid eyes on the Jadebone Spectral Concubine in the cage, his eyes lit up as if he had found his one true love. He even wanted to challenge the insurmountable reproductive barrier between their species.

Facing the admonitions of those around him, he shamelessly declared, I am the True Dragon Son of Heaven, protected by the aura of the dragon! A mere spectral entity will surely be moved by my sincere heart!

Thus, ignoring the horrified gazes of the crowd, he ordered his men to carry this Jadebone Spectral Concubine into his bedchamber, happily stating he would title her Consort Jade.

That night, the doors to the bedchamber of Weiyang Palace were tightly shut. Everyone was on edge, terrified that an accident would happen inside.

However, the first day passed, and laughter rang out from within.

The second day passed, and decadent sounds of pleasure echoed out.

The third day passed, and the room fell into a dead silence.

It was not until the dawn of the fourth day that Empress Chen, who had heard of the matter, could no longer put her mind at ease. She led a group of top imperial guards and forcibly smashed open the doors to the bedchamber.

The scene before them became a lifelong nightmare for everyone present.

Inside the bedchamber, the red candles had burned out, leaving a complete mess.

The once imperious late emperor lay stark naked on the dragon bed. He was nothing but skin and bones, his eye sockets deeply sunken. At this moment, he looked like a piece of dead wood that had been air-dried in the desert for a thousand years. All the blood and vitality in his body had been sucked completely dry, marking a truly miserable death.

Meanwhile, the originally sealed Jadebone Spectral Concubine had transformed into a blood chrysalis. Her aura was skyrocketing as she evolved toward a Level Six Anomaly.

This kind of death was simply the biggest joke in the world! Unprecedented in history, and likely never to be repeated!

The brush in the hand of the historian present trembled violently, ink dripping onto the paper and blurring into a dark blotch. How could he write this? Record it truthfully?

Basic Annals of Emperor Yongxi of the Great Zhou: The Emperor was lustful, attempted to reform an anomaly in his bedchamber, and was subsequently drained of his blood and vitality until he passed away?

Could the Great Zhou imperial family still afford to lose such face?

Could the civil and military officials of the Great Zhou still afford to lose such face?

Could the billions of subjects of the Great Zhou still afford to lose such face?

If word of this got out, the Great Zhou Empire would instantly become the laughingstock of the surrounding barbarians. Their ancestors in the underworld would be so furious they would flip their coffin lids and jump out!

Empress Chen was frightened out of her wits on the spot. She stumbled and crawled all the way to the imperial mausoleum, wailing for help.

Half an hour later.

From the deepest part of the imperial mausoleum, a terrifying aura shot into the sky. The Supreme Emperor Wang Jingyuan, at the peak of the Eighth Stage of Martial Arts, the Soul Condensation Realm, forcefully ended his secluded cultivation. It was said that thunder rolled across the sky above the entire imperial capital as a massive hand of vital energy, large enough to blot out the sun, directly smashed half of the Qianqing Palace to pieces, crushing the blood chrysalis formed by the Jadebone Spectral Concubine into powder along with it.

Immediately following was a bloody purge.

All the eunuchs, maids, and guards who knew the inside story and witnessed that scene vanished from the face of the earth that very night. No one knew where they went; only the mass graves in the western hills of the capital saw a lot of freshly turned soil in those few days.

The historian responsible for the imperial diary was lifted by the neck like a little chick by the Supreme Emperor, forced to use euphemistic language to write down this line:

The Emperor overworked himself with state affairs, accumulated illness from exhaustion, suffered a sudden heart ailment, and died of acute disease.

Recalling up to this point, Wang Hao could not help but shudder, feeling a chill rush straight from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head.

Overworked with state affairs my foot...

Accumulated illness from exhaustion my foot...

How is this taking over the throne? This is clearly taking over a mess! And taking over a terrifying, ticking time bomb of a mess at that!

Wang Hao stood up abruptly, pacing back and forth in the empty side hall, his heart extremely unsettled.

Although the Supreme Emperor had sealed the news with lightning-fast and ruthless methods, spreading the illusion among the common people that the late emperor was diligent and loved his citizens, there is no wall in this world that does not let the wind through. Especially not this imperial palace, which was as full of holes as a sieve.

Furthermore, where did that Jadebone Spectral Concubine come from? Who exactly captured her during the hunt and presented her to the emperor? If someone said there were no hostile factions or domestic schemers fueling this behind the scenes, Wang Hao would not believe it even if he were beaten to death.

Now, his cheap father had died a euphoric death, leaving this entire dreadful mess to him.