When I Grow Up, I Will Protect You Too

Ao Qing's face shifted from pale to ashen, and finally, suppressing his fury, he presented the state letter with both hands:

"The Sea Dragon Clan's escape from peril is entirely thanks to Your Majesty's divine might. His Holiness the Saint King has already set out and will lead the elite forces of the demon race to Zhennan Pass to personally apologize to Your Majesty, arriving within seven days."

Wang Hao set down his bowl of porridge, took the state letter without even glancing at it, and tossed it to Wei Zhongxian.

He leaned back in his chair and stared for a long time at the dragon horn on Ao Qing's forehead. Then he said something completely off-topic:

"I heard your nephew—your Saint King—has taken three new concubines in recent years, and his fifth wife just gave birth to a daughter. The full-moon banquet for the girl lasted three days and three nights. Over here, my soldiers have to ration even a single bite of meat—and over there, he's throwing a full-moon feast?"

Ao Qing lowered his head, his hands clenching and unclenching inside his sleeves—over and over again.

He was an elder of the demon race, having lived over eight thousand years. He had dealt with countless human emperors, but he had never met anyone like Wang Hao—speaking in tangents, seemingly careless, yet every word hiding a barb.

"Your Majesty," Ao Qing said through gritted teeth, "the Dragon King does indeed bear fault—the decision to withdraw troops was ill-considered. But the Saint King was also intimidated by the decree of the Sixteen Holy Lands at the time. With forty Martial Gods pressing down upon us, if my Azure Dragon Division's fifty thousand elite troops had not withdrawn, we too would have been branded as allies of the Sixteen Holy Lands. The Saint King chose to preserve his strength—"

"—in order to be the first to abandon an ally at the very moment I needed him most." Wang Hao finished the sentence for him, his smile still bright, but now carrying a chill that made Ao Qing's spine run cold. "Ao Qing, I only ask you one thing. That night, when I said to Li Cangming, 'I am weak, and so I deserve to die'—when you withdrew your troops, did you think the same? The strong eat the weak, he was weak, so he deserved to die?"

Ao Qing opened his mouth to argue, but Wang Hao raised a finger and shook it. "Don't rush to explain yourself. Go back and tell your nephew—I don't need his apology. I'm only giving him two choices."

"First: the Azure Dragon Division will no longer exist as an independent demon tribe. It will be formally incorporated into the territory of the Great Xia Empire, and the South Sea shall henceforth belong to Great Xia. Whether he comes to Zhennan Pass to kowtow is his business. But all military forces of the southern demon race will henceforth be under Great Xia's unified command. Not an alliance—a subordinate relationship. Your people answer to me. Your territory belongs to me."

"Second." Wang Hao took a sip of his porridge. "He can choose not to come. But after I deal with the South Sea anomaly, I will personally lead the Eastern Wasteland army to the Southern Frontier to have tea with him. And that tea—won't go down easy."

Ao Qing's dragon horn trembled slightly. He knew Wang Hao was not bluffing—this man had just snatched five million lives from the jaws of a half-step tenth-order anomaly.

The blood on his shoulders had not yet cooled, and the remnants of the blood oath wine still lingered at the corner of his mouth. An emperor like this—if he said something, he would follow through.

"Your Majesty, I will deliver your words." Ao Qing's voice was hoarse, barely audible. His hands, clasped in salute, were white-knuckled, veins bulging across the backs. "But the Saint King is the master of an entire clan as well. Some matters—they take time."

"The time I give is generous—three months. The same amount of time Li Cangming gave himself." Wang Hao stood up. His porridge bowl was empty, and he casually set it on the table. "Within three months, the Holy King Canglong will come to Zhennan Pass to sign the surrender agreement. After three months—"

He did not finish the sentence. He just smiled.

That smile made Ao Qing feel more terrified than the anomalous tide of the South Sea.

After Ao Qing left, only Wang Hao remained in the war room.

He sat on the stone chair, tapping his fingers against the armrest, his gaze fixed on the black dragon banner on the wall that had been shaken loose by the anomalous shockwave.

The banner had not been re-hung, still leaning against the corner, its fabric stained with black remnants of the anomaly.

Xiao Chen should be nearing the Dark City by now.

By his estimates, he would reach the abandoned minefield on the outskirts of the Dark City in three days—the largest of the seventeen mines abandoned by the Central Province, producing two billion spirit stones annually.

Li Cangming wanted to reclaim those mines in three months, but they had abandoned them too hastily. The infrastructure inside was largely intact. Xiao Chen only needed to rebuild the fortifications and station troops, and those mines would belong to Great Xia. Li Cangming wanted them back? Then he'd be fighting on foreign ground, with reinforcements from the Eastern Wasteland able to strike from both the Dark City and Zhennan Pass simultaneously.

The Demon Lord's integration of the dark legion was progressing slightly slower than expected.

Not because the Demon Lord was slacking—but because the old members of the Eight Alliances had grown accustomed to ruling their own fiefdoms. Merging them into a single unified command required time to grind down the friction.

Still, with the Demon Lord at the Dark City having been the de facto leader of the alliance of chiefs, integration was only a matter of time.

As for the Holy King Canglong—Wang Hao did not actually expect him to truly yield.

That Saint King had broken his promise once atop Tianxu Peak, and again at the Dark City. A man who made a habit of breaking promises was unlikely to change overnight.

But now it was no longer a question of promises—it was a matter of whether his life mattered more than his pride. The Southern Frontier bordered the Eastern Wasteland. Great Xia's borders had already stretched from the Northern Frontier all the way to the Southern Sea coast. The Holy King Canglong's territory was now surrounded on three sides by Eastern Wasteland forces. If he refused to submit, the four-sided siege was only a matter of time.

The greatest lingering threat remained the half-step tenth-order anomaly in the South Sea.

Wang Hao closed his eyes and sank his consciousness into his dantian.

The cracks in his Martial God foundation had healed to roughly seventy percent under the nourishment of the people's collective will. But the remaining thirty percent was healing slowly—that was a deep wound at the very root of the foundation, an old injury from over-pressurizing his vital aura. With ordinary meditation, it would take at least three months to recover.

He needed a high-tier healing treasure, or he needed a breakthrough in cultivation—the power of heaven and earth at the moment of breakthrough could cleanse his meridians and directly clear the blockage within his foundation.

Either through external aid, or through breakthrough.

For external aid, he would need to gamble with the system's daily check-in. For the breakthrough, he needed patient grinding. There was a hidden realm atop Tianxu Peak outside the Dark City that had not been fully explored, but the dangers within were unknown. With his current injuries, it was not wise to take the risk.

"Old Wei," he opened his eyes and looked at Wei Zhongxian in the corner. "I'm going into seclusion for a few days to recover from my internal injuries. During this time, all military affairs will be jointly managed by He Lanyue and Han Shanyue. If an urgent situation arises, wake me directly."

"Your servant obeys." Wei Zhongxian bowed. "Your Majesty, there is one more thing—the people of Nan'an City sent you some gifts."

Wang Hao walked to the table and looked at the pile of assorted items—a pair of cloth shoes with soles layered thirty-six times, stitching as dense as fish scales; several boxes of pastries wrapped tightly in oil paper; a pile of eggs wrapped in straw, each one drawn with a crooked smiling face.

At the top was a letter. Scrawled across the envelope in crooked handwriting: "To the Emperor Brother." He tore it open. Inside, there was only one sentence, each character a different size, ink shades varying—clearly written by a child.

"When I grow up, I want to protect you too."

Wang Hao turned the cloth shoes over to check the soles, then carefully placed the eggs back into the basket, and finally folded the letter and tucked it into his sleeve. His face showed no expression, but the way he folded the letter and slipped it into his sleeve was slow and deliberate, as if what he held in his hand was not a piece of paper, but a protective charm.

Nightfall settled completely, and sparse oil lamps on the city wall were lit one after another. The sea breeze poured in through the gaps, making the flames sway back and forth.

The lights of Zhennan Pass were sparse, but they burned bright.