Great Xia, Not for Sale

The old official did not hesitate.

He immediately took out the seal of the Ministry of Revenue.

“By order of the Ministry of Revenue!”

“Effective immediately!”

“All copper coins, silver, gold, spirit stones, and banknotes within Great Xia—”

“Are to be temporarily withdrawn from circulation!”

“All transactions will henceforth be recorded through household registers and merit credits!”

The news traveled along the Imperial Dao River.

It spread throughout the Nine Provinces.

In the streets,

all the copper coins suddenly lost their luster.

Inside the money houses,

banknotes turned into blank sheets of paper.

The spirit stones still retained their spiritual energy,

but they no longer held any meaning as Great Xia’s currency.

The golden eyes trembled violently.

The prices above the heads of the people throughout the Nine Provinces

simultaneously grew blurred,

but did not disappear completely.

The desires deep within every person’s heart

continued to provide power to the Scales of All Beings.

The desire to live.

The desire to become stronger.

The desire to bring a loved one back to life.

The desire to give one’s children a better life.

There was nothing wrong with these desires in themselves.

Yet they were exploited by the Scales of All Beings,

becoming the basis for assigning a price.

The voice of the Heavenly Lord of the Scales

came from within the golden eyes.

“Abolish currency?”

“Do you think the desires of all living beings”

“can be abolished as well?”

“Wang Hao.”

“As long as people have something they seek,”

“there will be a price.”

“And as long as the price is high enough,”

“loyalty, kinship, and dignity”

“can all be sold.”

Wang Hao looked toward the golden eyes.

“You seem to know a great deal about buying and selling.”

“This old man has governed the Lifeless Merchant Alliance for seventeen hundred years.”

“The worlds I have dealt with”

“number more than the people you have ever seen.”

“Then have you ever learned about”

“bad debts?”

The voice of the Heavenly Lord of the Scales fell silent.

Wang Hao raised his right hand.

His Imperial Soul transformed into a golden brush tip.

Upon the Wordless Imperial Covenant,

he slowly wrote a line:

“All subjects of Great Xia”

“shall be excluded from all buying and selling of life and death.”

“Should anyone forcibly assign them a price,”

“that price”

“shall be borne by the Emperor.”

The old official from the Ministry of Revenue abruptly looked up.

“Your Majesty!”

Wang Hao set down the final stroke.

Boom!

The Wordless Imperial Covenant burst into flames.

Throughout the Nine Provinces,

a majestic imperial voice rang out at the same time.

The prices above the heads of all the people

began to shift toward Wang Hao.

One copper coin.

Ten.

A hundred.

Tens of millions of top-grade spirit stones.

Materials of the seventh realm.

Divine weapons of the eighth realm.

Immortal treasures of the ninth realm.

Every desire,

every life that had been assigned a price,

transformed into a heavy burden

and pressed into Wang Hao’s Imperial Soul.

His soul had only just recovered to fifty-one percent.

In an instant, countless cracks appeared across it.

Wang Hao’s body swayed.

His newly regrown right arm

exploded once more in a cloud of blood mist.

From the severed stump of his left arm,

black-gold blood dripped continuously.

In his ears,

countless voices rang out:

“I want to live.”

“I want my mother to wake up.”

“I don’t want to go hungry anymore.”

“I want to become a martial artist.”

“I want to see the snow in the Northern Frontier one more time.”

“I want my son to come home.”

These voices

did not belong to greedy people.

They were merely the wishes of ordinary folk.

Yet the Scales of All Beings

turned every one of those wishes into chains.

Wang Hao alone

bore the prices of all the people in the Nine Provinces.

The Imperial Dao River suddenly sank.

The earth rumbled as though it could no longer bear the weight.

The silver-haired youth rushed into the imperial treasury

and saw the countless golden threads wrapped around Wang Hao.

He raised the New Heavenly Son Sword,

but did not dare bring it down.

Whenever the blade pointed at a golden thread,

a commoner’s face would appear before his eyes.

There were old men.

Soldiers.

And newborn babies.

“Master.”

The silver-haired youth’s grip on the sword

trembled faintly for the first time.

“Where should I cut?”

Wang Hao replied:

“Don’t cut anywhere.”

“Then you’ll crack apart.”

“I’m used to it.”

The silver-haired youth gritted his teeth.

“Why don’t you just cancel the debt?”

“I might be able to think of a solution.”

Wang Hao glanced at him.

“Taking advantage of the crisis.”

“Add ten years to your punishment.”

The silver-haired youth’s face darkened.

He knew it.

His master wasn’t going to die anytime soon.

Above the golden eyes,

an aged hand had already reached out from the void.

A ninth-realm ring adorned each of its five fingers.

A golden balance beam followed,

piercing into the Nine Provinces.

The figure of the Heavenly Lord of the Scales

was slowly crossing the world barrier.

He looked down at Wang Hao from above.

His voice carried an aloof indifference.

“You can bear the price of ten billion people.”

“But can you bear the price of an entire world?”

“In one quarter of an hour,”

“my true body will descend.”

“At that time, the Scales of All Beings”

“will completely weigh Great Xia.”

“Then the entire Nine Provinces”

“will become merchandise of the Lifeless Merchant Alliance.”

Wang Hao wiped the black-gold blood from the corner of his mouth.

He raised his head and asked:

“You want to buy Great Xia?”

“That’s right.”

“I can sell it.”

The old official from the Ministry of Revenue froze.

The silver-haired youth also turned sharply.

Throughout the Nine Provinces,

countless people heard those words at the same time.

The abacus in the Heavenly Lord of the Scales’ eyes began to turn wildly.

“You’ve finally come to your senses?”

Wang Hao said:

“I’m merely curious.”

“What price are you prepared to offer?”

“What’s the problem?”

Wang Hao looked toward the people of the Nine Provinces.

“Great Xia”

“does not belong to me alone.”

“If you want to buy it,”

“you’ll have to ask them whether they’re willing to sell.”

The Heavenly Lord of the Scales descended upon the Nine Provinces.

Only a hundred breaths remained.

Beneath the black-gold giant scales,

the mountains and rivers of the Nine Provinces

were gradually losing their color.

The grass and trees withered yellow.

The rivers solidified.

One city after another

seemed to have become a lifeless object placed upon a shelf.

Above Wang Hao’s head,

countless price figures

already filled the sky.

The numbers pressed against his Imperial Soul,

forcing the spirit that had yet to fully recover

once again toward the verge of collapse.

The Heavenly Lord of the Scales looked down upon the Nine Provinces.

“Ask them?”

“The common people are ignorant.”

“What could they possibly know about a complete world?”

“That is a treasure surpassing even ninth-realm materials.”

“Once the two worlds are merged,”

“Great Xia’s territory can expand tenfold.”

“The spiritual energy of heaven and earth can increase a hundredfold.”

“Everyone will be able to reach a higher realm.”

“Why would they refuse to sell?”

Wang Hao said:

“Then ask them.”

The Heavenly Lord of the Scales sneered.

The Scales of All Beings

once again let out a thunderous roar.

Golden images appeared

before every person in the Nine Provinces.

An old frontier soldier saw his severed right leg

grow back.

His age vanished.

His qi and blood returned to their peak.

The comrades who had died in the past

climbed out of their graves one after another.

Smiling, they reached out their hands to him.

“Sell Great Xia.”

“They can all return.”

The old soldier’s eyes reddened.

He reached out,

wanting to touch those familiar faces.

But just as his fingertips were about to reach the images,

the old man suddenly drew his spear

and pierced through his own illusion.

“If they were truly alive,”

“they wouldn’t let me sell my country.”

In a village in the Southern Lands,

a frail woman held a gravely ill child in her arms.

Before her lay a golden pill.

“Sell your allegiance to Great Xia.”

“And the pill will be yours.”

The woman looked at the child in her arms,

who was coughing up blood nonstop.

Her fingers slowly reached toward the pill.

She had never seen the emperor.

She did not understand the Imperial Dao.

She knew only that her child was dying.

Beside her,

the sick child, too weak to speak,

raised a tiny hand

and pressed it against his mother’s wrist.

He shook his head.

Tears streamed down the woman’s face.

She hugged her child tightly.

“We won’t sell.”

In the mines of the Western Lands,

mountains of spirit stones appeared before tens of thousands of miners.

“Sell Great Xia.”

“You will possess wealth enough to last you a lifetime.”

A miner, his entire body covered in black dust,

looked up at the sky.

“His Majesty just lowered the mining tax,

and you come here to buy our country?”

“Do you really think we’ve never had enough to eat?”

He took off his shoe

and hurled it at the golden screen.

“Get lost!”

On the eastern coast,

a youth in the Skin-Tempering Realm

stood before the crashing waves.

The price over his head

was only three low-grade spirit stones.

“Sell Great Xia,

and you can become a Grand Astral Qi expert.”

The youth thought for a moment,

then asked seriously:

“Can I become a general?”

“Yes.”

“How many men would I command?”

“One hundred thousand.”

The youth’s eyes lit up.

“Then I’ll lead a hundred thousand men

to attack the Wusheng Merchant Alliance.

Would that be allowed?”

The golden voice fell silent.

The youth’s face immediately filled with disdain.

“If you can’t even attack the Merchant Alliance,

what’s the point of being a general?”

He raised his head and roared:

“I won’t sell!”

That first refusal

came from a single youth.

Then came a second voice.

A third.

A fourth.

Ten million voices.

A hundred million voices!

“We won’t sell!”

The soldiers of the northern frontier

struck the city walls with their spears.

“We won’t sell!”

The artisans of the Ministry of Works

raised the hammers in their hands.

“We won’t sell!”

Farmers stood along the field ridges.

Merchants stood before empty bank entrances.

Children stood atop their schoolhouses.

Wounded soldiers lay in their hospital beds.

The elderly leaned on their walking sticks.

The voices of everyone

merged into the River of Imperial Dao.

“Great Xia is not for sale!”

Boom!

The willpower of nearly a billion living beings

boiled over at that moment.

The River of Imperial Dao,

which had already dimmed,

erupted with golden radiance

unlike anything it had ever displayed before.

Color returned to the mountains and rivers.

The lights of ten thousand homes

flared to life at the same time.

[An exceptionally unified will has been detected among the people of Great Xia!]

[The Divine Ability: Protection by the Will of the People has been reformed!]

[The current total of the people’s will can withstand one full-force attack from a peak Martial God!]

[Shield formation complete!]

Wang Hao stood at the center of the willpower of hundreds of millions.

His shattered imperial soul

was lifted up by countless ordinary faces.

He lowered his head and looked at the Wordless Imperial Pact.

The pact, which could originally last only a quarter of an hour,

had not dissipated.

The voices of the people

left a second line of writing upon the pact.

“The realm of Great Xia

is not the private property of the emperor.

“The lives of its people

are not commodities.”

The instant these words appeared,

the Scale of All Beings

tilted violently.

The prices above the heads

of the people throughout the Nine Provinces

all shattered.

The expression of the Heavenly Lord of the Scales

turned utterly grim for the first time.

“Fools!”

“A complete world is right before your eyes!”

“You would rather remain ants

than gain power?”

Zhao Ergou stood atop the city wall

and raised his head weakly.

“You’re the ant.”

The beads of the abacus

in the Heavenly Lord of the Scales’ eyes

suddenly stopped turning.

“What did you say?”

Zhao Ergou grinned.

“His Majesty once said

that anyone who dares come to Great Xia to steal

counts as an ant.”

Wang Hao glanced at him.

“I never said that.”

Zhao Ergou froze.

“Then am I guilty of spreading false words in Your Majesty’s name?”

“Considering that you’re seriously wounded,”

Wang Hao said,

“I’ll punish you by docking half a year’s military pay.”

Zhao Ergou’s face fell.

“Your Majesty,

I nearly sold ten years of my lifespan just now,

but I still didn’t sell that dragon banner.

“Can’t that count for something?”

Wang Hao replied:

“No.

“Lifespan is not Great Xia’s currency.”

The Heavenly Lord of the Scales’ upper body

spanned the sky.

The pressure of a peak Martial God

was completely ignored by the two of them.

Behind him,

the countless merchants in black robes

all stopped moving their abacuses at once.

An indescribable sense of oppression

spread across the Nine Provinces.

The Heavenly Lord of the Scales slowly raised a hand.

“If you won’t sell,

“then we’ll take it by force.”

Rumble!

The enormous golden scales

suddenly tipped over.

From one of the pans,

a burning star

plunged toward the Imperial City.

Before the star had truly descended,

the earth had already begun collapsing layer by layer.

This was the full-force strike

of a peak Martial God.

It was powerful enough to erase

the Imperial City of the Nine Provinces,

along with the mountains and rivers stretching tens of thousands of miles around it.

[A lethal attack from a peak Martial God has been detected!]

[The Protection by the Will of the People has been activated automatically!]

A golden shield

erupted before Wang Hao.

Countless faces,

nearly a billion in all,

appeared across its surface.

The burning star

crashed heavily into the shield.

Boom!

Every voice throughout the Nine Provinces

vanished at that instant.

Boundless flames

engulfed the Imperial City.

Yet the seemingly fragile golden shield

did not shatter.

Nearly a billion people of Great Xia

had joined forces to hold up a star.

After several breaths,

the star gradually went out

and turned into ashes that filled the sky.

The golden shield dispersed with it.

[The Divine Ability: Protection by the Will of the People has been expended!]

[Reforming...]

The pupils of the Heavenly Lord of the Scales contracted sharply.

“With the willpower of mortals,

you blocked an attack from a peak Martial God?”

Wang Hao raised his head.

“What’s wrong with mortals?”

“If they didn’t grow your food,

what would you eat?”

The Heavenly Lord of the Scales replied:

“This old man ceased consuming mortal food long ago.”

Wang Hao said:

“No wonder you have no human touch.”

“You’re courting death!”

The Heavenly Lord of the Scales stopped waiting.

He seized the world’s barrier with both hands.

The power of a peak Martial God

erupted in full.

Crack!

The firmament over the Nine Provinces

was torn open by a rift stretching hundreds of thousands of miles.

The complete body of the Heavenly Lord of the Scales

stepped into Great Xia.

Behind him

came three more Martial Gods:

one at the early stage,

and two at the mid stage.

Farther behind them

was an endless army of the Merchant Alliance.

Black-and-gold warships

crowded the spatial rift like locusts.

“Kill!”

The three Martial Gods

charged toward Wang Hao at the same time.

The Heavenly Lord of the Scales,

meanwhile,

reached out toward the central treasury.