How dare you embezzle my imperial money

The City of Darkness, headquarters of the Eight Guild Alliance.

This underground city, buried deep beneath the earth, had existed for seven thousand years—older than most sacred lands in the Central Continent.

It was built within a dead, ancient volcanic crater. Eight tunnels descended from the crater’s rim, converging in the volcano’s belly into a massive subterranean city.

The entire city was shrouded by a semi-transparent black light barrier—the Eternal Night Dome, a great protective array laid down by generations of Eight Guild Alliance masters. It was said to withstand a full hour of peak Martial God realm bombardment.

At this moment, within the alliance’s council chamber, the atmosphere was as oppressive as the sky before a thunderstorm.

The chamber was circular, three hundred zhang in diameter. Eight banners hung on the walls—Blackwind Guild, Moonset Tower, Netherworld Society, Bloodfiend Sect, Ghosthand Hall, Shadowsoul Gate, Soulreaving Temple, and Ten Thousand Demon Cave.

Beneath the faint green glow of ghostly lamps, the banners stirred without wind, their embroidered totems writhing in the shifting light like living things.

Eight stone seats circled a central table. Seven were occupied; one was empty.

The empty chair belonged to the Demon Lord, master of Ten Thousand Demon Cave. He had entered a death-sealed meditation three hundred years ago and never emerged, but everyone knew he was still alive—for the guild’s banner had never fallen. By the City of Darkness’s law, if a guild master died, his banner would burn itself out.

At the center of the round table lay the memory stone that Shadow had brought back.

The stone played the full visuals of the Blackwind Valley battle—from the thunderclap of heavenly lightning to Shadow being crushed underfoot, from the annihilation of all fifty Shadow Guards to the moment Wang Hao bent down and whispered in Shadow’s ear. Every detail was recorded with painful clarity.

When the recording ended, a long silence fell over the hall.

Finally, a cold, feminine voice broke the stillness.

It was Yue Ji, master of Moonset Tower. She appeared to be a woman in her thirties, but the faint film of dead gray in her eyes betrayed that she had lived at least a thousand years.

“Shadow,” she said, “you claim his combat power far exceeds early Martial God realm. Elaborate.”

Shadow knelt in the center of the hall. His bat wings had retracted into his body, but the wounds on him were still shocking.

He lowered his head, his voice hoarse: “Subordinate unleashed the full power of the Dark Demon True Form, amplifying my strength to the peak of early Martial God realm. With thirty-six flying blades and eight bone daggers, I could have held my own against a mid-stage Martial God. But he only used three palm strikes.”

“The first palm blocked every attack. The second sent me flying. The third drove me into the ground.”

“Between those three strikes, I had no chance to fight back.”

Yue Ji’s fingers paused for a moment, then resumed their tapping.

“What were the characteristics of his qi?”

“Golden, with a faint trace of transparent white light,” Shadow recalled. “That white light carried an aura of utter destruction. After my Dark Demon True Form was corroded by it, the circulation of my qi through my meridians dropped by forty percent. Ordinary healing was completely useless against that erosion. I had to use the City of Darkness’s treasured Netherworld Lifesaving Ointment just to barely stabilize my injuries. I believe it was the work of a special kind of lightning.”

Several sharp intakes of breath echoed through the hall.

“Destruction Dao Marks,” Feng Wanli, the master of Blackwind Guild, said slowly. He was an old man with snow-white hair and beard, but his build was as sturdy as a mountain. His hands were three times larger than an ordinary person’s, and the lines in his palms shimmered with flowing, black wind patterns.

“They are the Dao resonance left behind by the tribulation the heavens send down when one breaks through to Martial God realm. Only a Martial God who has passed nine heavenly tribulations can condense Destruction Dao Marks into their foundation.”

“Nine tribulations?” Xue Wuhen, the Bloodfiend Sect master, frowned. He was shrouded in a blood-red mist, revealing only a pair of scarlet eyes. “Our intel said eight bolts of heavenly lightning struck Heaven’s Void Peak. Eight, not nine.”

“The intel was wrong,” Feng Wanli shook his head. His voice was calm. “Or rather—Wang Hao deliberately made the intel wrong. He endured nine bolts of heavenly lightning. The final bolt was transparent and colorless, impossible to detect with ordinary means. Look at the memory stone—his palm prints shift from gold to platinum white. That white is the color of Destruction Dao Marks.”

Silence once again filled the hall.

If Wang Hao truly commanded Destruction Dao Marks, he was no mere early Martial God. He now possessed the capital to challenge even a late-stage Martial God. Add to that the lightning tower capable of unleashing a full-strength Martial God’s attack, and the imperial sword of unknown depth—this was no longer something the City of Darkness could handle lightly.

“I told you all from the start—we shouldn’t have touched him.”

The speaker was Ghost Granny, master of Ghosthand Hall. She was a hunched old crone, her ten fingers withered like chicken claws, each nail half a foot long and black as ink.

“You all insisted on showing off. Now look—the Shadow Guard is wiped out, the Eight Guild Alliance has lost all face, and we owe him three hundred billion spirit stones.”

“Wasn’t the casino matter agreed upon by everyone?” Yin Jiuyou, master of Shadowsoul Gate, sneered. His voice wavered, seeming to come from every direction at once. “Now that there’s trouble, you want to pass the blame?”

“Enough,” Yue Ji raised her voice, pressing her finger hard against the armrest.

The hall went quiet.

She stood up, walked over to Shadow, and looked down at him. “Shadow, you said Wang Hao demands we repay the money within three days. What if we don’t?”

Shadow’s body trembled slightly. He lifted his pale face and repeated Wang Hao’s final words, one by one: “He said—‘Your City of Darkness owes His Majesty’s spirit stones. Even your sons and grandsons, for generations, could never repay them all. So consider a different path: sell the City of Darkness to His Majesty, and I’ll leave you a way to live.’”

Above the council chamber, the eight banners rustled without wind, snapping loudly.

Yue Ji closed her eyes. After a moment, she opened them. That gray film in her irises now held a trace of resolution.

“Issue the order,” she said. “The Eight Guild Alliance is to enter full combat readiness. Activate the Eternal Night Dome’s third-layer defense. Recall all envoys abroad to headquarters within seventy-two hours. Open the underground armory and distribute war supplies. Notify all combatants above the Imperial Sky realm—report to the council chamber in three days.”

“Yue Ji, you want to fight him?” Feng Wanli frowned.

“It’s not that I want to fight him,” Yue Ji said, returning to her stone seat. “He wants to fight us. He obliterated the Shadow Guard, seized our teleportation array, confiscated eighty million spirit stones’ worth of cursed artifacts, and now demands we sell him the City of Darkness—Feng Wanli, you’ve lived five thousand years. Have you ever seen anyone so arrogant?”

“I have,” Feng Wanli said flatly. “The last one this arrogant—his bones have long turned to dust.”

“That man was not Wang Hao,” Yue Ji shook her head. “Wang Hao is different. He has not only martial power, but also a mind, an army, a currency bank, and a rapidly rising Eastern Wasteland Empire. He doesn’t just want to defeat us. He wants to devour us whole.”

She paused, her gaze sweeping across every guild master present. “He won’t stop at collecting debts. What he wants is the seven-thousand-year accumulation of the Dark City—our spirit stone veins, our underground trade routes, our intelligence networks, our assassination apparatus. He doesn’t aim to destroy the Dark City; he aims to swallow it whole.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, the Dark City has stood for seven thousand years, never conquered. Today, for the first time, someone has pressed a blade against our throats.”

She rose to her feet, her voice suddenly soaring: “But the Dark City was not raised on fear!”

The eight guild banners trembled as one. Eight beams of light in different colors shot forth from the banners, converging above the grand hall into a colossal pillar of light. The pillar pierced the eternal night canopy, blasted through the sky, and tore a huge hole in the ten-thousand-year-old dark clouds hanging above the Dark City.

Through that hole, sunlight poured into the underground city for the first time.

The sunlight fell upon the grand hall, illuminating the faces of the eight guild masters in stark clarity. In every pair of eyes burned the same thing: fury.

For seven thousand years, the Dark City had never bowed to anyone.

This time would be no different.

Meanwhile, inside the military tent.

Wang Hao had three reports spread before him.

The first was the battle damage report from the Black Wind Valley fight—zero casualties among the Eastern Wasteland army, eleven minor injuries, consumption of four Thunder Pearls, twenty-three Formation Plates, and over one hundred talismans. The estimated value of spoils: one Dark Instrument artifact named Annihilation (ranked ninety-ninth), fifty sets of Shadow Guard equipment, one teleportation formation, plus various storage rings containing spirit stones, pills, and cultivation techniques for a total value of roughly two hundred million spirit stones.

“A profit,” Wang Hao noted with satisfaction, marking a “Reviewed” on the report.

The second report was the final tally from the auction—total sales had reached an astonishing 8.7 billion spirit stones, far exceeding the projected 5 billion. The centerpiece item, a pill said to overcome bottlenecks for late-stage Soaring Void cultivators, had been snatched up by the central continent’s Danxia Holy Land for a sky-high 1.2 billion spirit stones.

The good people of Danxia still had no idea that the pill was merely an ordinary “Breakthrough Pill,” one of Wang Hao’s daily sign-in rewards—he had already handed them out to every member of his eunuch elite corps.

The rumor that the pill might be a “War God Breakthrough Pill” had been deliberately planted by Wang Hao through Wei Zhongxian, inflating the price by a factor of two hundred and forty.

“A total score,” Wang Hao wrote a second “Reviewed” on the report.

The third report was the deposit statistics for the Imperial Bank. In just five days, total deposits had already exceeded 2 billion spirit stones.

Deposit sources included the major trading houses of the Welcoming City, branch offices of the Sixteen Holy Lands from the central continent, and even several massive deposits from overseas merchant fleets. Over eighty percent of deposits had chosen three-year fixed terms, drawn by the three percent annual interest and priority mining rights within the Eastern Wasteland.

“Money for nothing,” Wang Hao wrote a third “Reviewed,” then put down his pen, leaned back in his chair, and let out a long breath.

After reviewing the three reports, he reached a conclusion—Great Xia’s finances, at least for the next century, were secure.

But this wasn’t enough.

The 8.7 billion from the auction, after deducting costs and the military merit rewards for his soldiers, left him with only 6 billion. The 2 billion in banking deposits were reserve funds that could be withdrawn at any time—they couldn’t be counted as true assets.

He needed more money—not billions, but hundreds of billions.

The 300 billion the Dark City owed him was the real prize.

“Your Majesty,” Wei Zhongxian’s voice sounded from outside the tent. “Shadow has fled back to the Dark City.”

“That fast?” Wang Hao raised an eyebrow. “His injuries haven’t healed yet, have they?”

“Indeed not, but he used the Dark City’s secret technique ‘Blood Escape,’ sacrificing thirty percent of his vital essence for a twofold speed boost.” Wei Zhongxian pushed the tent flap open, entering with a fresh intelligence report.

“Additionally, the Eight Guild Alliance of the Dark City has entered maximum combat readiness. The Eternal Night Canopy has activated its third layer of defense, and all agents stationed outside are being urgently recalled.”

“Oh?” Wang Hao perked up with interest, sitting upright. “Are they preparing to fight me?”

“On the surface, yes,” Wei Zhongxian placed the intelligence report on the table. “But according to my inside sources in the Dark City, the Eight Guild Alliance is far from unified. Black Wind Guild’s master Feng Wanli favors negotiation, Blood Fiend Sect’s lord Xue Wuhen advocates war, and Dark Moon Tower’s master Yue Ji’s stance is unclear. However, she is currently the de facto decision-maker of the alliance. Her choice will decide the final outcome.”

Wang Hao picked up the intelligence report, read it carefully, and suddenly smiled.

“Yue Ji? Interesting name. What’s her background?”

“Yue Ji, real name unknown, age unknown—the only certain thing is that she’s lived for at least twelve hundred years. Dark Moon Tower is the second-ranked guild in the Dark City, specializing in intelligence and assassination. Yue Ji herself is a mid-stage War God—adept in illusory arts and mental attacks. Her personal dark instrument, the Illusory Moon Wheel, ranks forty-third on the artifact list.”

“Mid-stage War God?” Wang Hao stroked his chin. “Stronger than Shadow.”

“Yes. But what makes Yue Ji truly terrifying is not her combat strength—it’s her patience.”

“She once spent a hundred years weaving a scheme, step by step, ultimately driving a late-stage War God sect leader to take his own life. Her schemes run deep. Your Majesty must not underestimate her.”