Wang Changlin did not believe Fang Zhiyi would actually dare to kill him. After all, even the late emperor had been wary of the powerful families behind him.
If Prince Qi wanted to become emperor, he would have to win over the aristocratic clans.
At least, that was what Wang Changlin believed.
He had even figured out what leverage he could offer. But Fang Zhiyi had disappeared into the shadows and never reappeared.
It wasn’t until his own son’s head hit the ground that Wang Changlin finally realized—the other man truly intended to take their lives.
“Prince Qi! You will regret this! The powerful families will never let you off! Do you think killing me will solve the Great Zhou’s troubles? Hahaha! Let me tell you the truth—I’ve long had dealings with the Liao Kingdom! I’ll go first today, and soon enough, you’ll follow!”
Several soldiers aimed their spears at him.
“Let me go? Old man, do you still remember the illegitimate son your Wang family once cast out?”
Fang Zhiyi’s voice made the soldiers pause.
“Rest assured. After you die, with my support, he will inherit your position as head of the family.”
“You... you—” Wang Changlin trembled. He had never imagined that such a hidden secret had already been uncovered by Fang Zhiyi.
“Also, the Liao Kingdom? I don’t need to wait for them to attack. I intend to go after them myself. Just watch. You men, remember to hang his head and send it to the frontier in a few days.”
As Fang Zhiyi’s words fell, several spears thrust into Wang Changlin’s chest in unison.
With a brief order, Fang Zhiyi rode his horse toward the capital on his own.
There was still one final step ahead.
Inside the palace, the Emperor sat on the dragon throne, his demeanor calm.
Until a familiar figure slowly walked into the hall and gave a very sloppy bow. “Imperial Brother, I haven’t seen you in days. You’ve grown thinner.”
“Second Son, don’t mock your elder brother like that. Dealing with these people has kept me awake night after night,” the Emperor said with a bitter smile. “Now that you’ve gone this far, what’s your next step? Is it—”
Fang Zhiyi just stared at him.
The Emperor let out a resigned laugh. “Second Son, Father was wrong about you back then, and so was I. In today’s Great Zhou, you are more fit to sit on this throne than I am.”
Though mild in temper, he was no fool. Prince Qi’s maneuvering— orchestrating from the ground up to finally besiege the capital— had exposed the kingdom’s decay and the ugly faces of those so-called pillars of the state.
The Emperor had long realized that no one who reached this point would refuse to take the throne. He had come to terms with it. After all, he had always been a figurehead emperor, just as he was now.
“What nonsense are you talking about?”
Fang Zhiyi’s words caught him off guard.
“Be emperor? Even a dog wouldn’t do it,” Fang Zhiyi spat. “If you like doing the dirty work, you can keep it. I’m not interested. In a bit, issue an edict for me to leave the city and negotiate surrender. I’ll just make a show of it. Then incorporate the rebel army into the imperial troops. Reward who deserves it, appoint officials where needed. Peace under heaven.”
“You actually don’t want...”
The Emperor’s words were cut short.
“Of course he doesn’t want it. And he doesn’t need to.”
A sharp, reedy voice rang out from the side. Then Li Shanxiang stepped out from the shadow of a pillar.
Fang Zhiyi looked at him without surprise.
“Prince Qi, your methods are impressive. I truly admire you. But you’ve been far too careless,” Li Shanxiang said, grinning smugly. “From the moment you helped me become the Grand Director, I was already thinking about a day like this. I just didn’t expect it to come so soon!”
Footsteps echoed outside the hall, and then a troop of the Imperial Guard rushed in.
“How dare you! What are you doing?!” The Emperor’s face went pale.
“Your Majesty, they are the Imperial Guard, here to protect your safety—and to arrest this rebel leader. Rest assured, once Prince Qi is taken, the rebel forces outside the city will retreat,” Li Shanxiang said, but his eyes held no trace of respect.
Fang Zhiyi kept watching him.
“Don’t look at me like that, Prince Qi. You wanted to use me, and I was using you too.” Li Shanxiang dropped all pretense. “If I’m not mistaken, the Ningxi faction is finished by now, isn’t it? And right now, both the Imperial Guard and the Capital Garrison are under my control. Did you not expect that? You thought I was completely loyal. I played along while you dealt with the Ningxi faction—I was building my own power behind your back!”
He even walked triumphantly down the steps.
“Rebel Fang Zhiyi attempted to assassinate the Emperor and was killed by the Grand Director Li Shanxiang. Hahaha!”
Fang Zhiyi looked around.
“Don’t bother searching. Zhu Hong is already down there ahead of you. Did you think the Surveillance Department was under your control? I’ve known your every move!”
“Zhu Hong and his men are dead now. Before you made your move, I had already sent a secret order to call in the Yuxi reserve forces. They will reach the capital within three days. By then, your peasant army will be finished. The Great Zhou remains the Great Zhou!”
“Li Shanxiang! How dare you!” The Emperor was burning with rage.
Li Shanxiang feigned a bow. “Your Majesty, I am acting for the sake of the Great Zhou, for the sake of your empire.”
“I do not need you to act for me! Have you eunuch factions done any less underhanded deeds?”
“Your Majesty, just sit on your throne and leave the rest to me. Otherwise...” Li Shanxiang finally showed his true face.
“Ahem...” Fang Zhiyi coughed twice. “Say, may I add a word?”
“Speak. Let the Grand Director see if you are afraid in your last moments!”
“Why do you think I came here alone?” Fang Zhiyi asked a question that seemed entirely out of the blue.
“Why?” Li Shanxiang was puzzled. Did Fang Zhiyi have some hidden plan?
“Because I’m very good at fighting.” Fang Zhiyi’s face turned grim.
The next moment, he moved. With a hand like a blade, he struck a guard in the throat, while his other hand snatched the guard’s saber.
“Pointless struggle! Kill him!” Li Shanxiang shouted. These men had been handpicked for their absolute loyalty to him, all to await this very day.
Though Fang Zhiyi’s people had secretly seized control of the eunuch factions, the men actually in the posts were still eunuchs, giving Li Shanxiang a chance to strike back.
But then Fang Zhiyi suddenly shouted, “One thousand taels! For the head of Li Shanxiang!”
Li Shanxiang froze. The Imperial Guards froze too.
“Playing these games at death’s door?” Li Shanxiang laughed in disbelief.
Then Fang Zhiyi yelled again, “Three thousand taels!”
The guards exchanged strange glances.
“Arrest Prince Qi, and receive a hundred gold pieces!” Li Shanxiang sneered.
“Five thousand taels! A thousand taels per slash!”
The hall fell dead silent. Five thousand taels? The annual expenses of an ordinary family were less than two taels of silver!
Li Shanxiang panicked. “Do you think he will let you live? Kill him, and I, the Grand Director, will give you whatever money you ask for!”
But then—Li Shanxiang never expected this.
“Arrest Li Shanxiang! Promoted three ranks in a row, and I will personally bestow a title!”
Li Shanxiang spun around in shock. The Emperor himself had joined the bidding?
shall grant"] ["Inscribing the glory of our race upon tombstones"] ["All that is threatened, I shall protect"] How his younger sister sees her brother: A brother who only makes eye contact once a day, mostly fading into the background as he tinkers with who-knows-what in his room all day. Their life paths should have remained largely separate. Until one day. Su Qi created an equipment card for his never-met "online girlfriend." His sister fell into silent contemplation upon receiving the "white stockings." [Card can be upgraded] [Upgrade by fulfilling any of the following conditions] [Condition ①: Consume one hundred higher-tier cards] [Condition ②: Complete one 'Heart-Pounding Adventure'] What constitutes a Heart-Pounding Adventure? [Heart-Pounding Adventure (Beginner Level): Equip the card and invite 'Su Qi' to admire it.] [Heart-Pounding Adventure (Easy Level): Equip the card, invite 'Su Qi' to touch it, and analyze the equipment's texture.] [Heart-Pounding Adventure (Entry Level): Equip the card and invite 'Su Qi' to...] [Heart-Pounding Adventure (Challenge Level): Freely combine the words 'Brother' 'Out' 'Brother' 'Me' 'Please' into a complete sentence...] "Please help me analyze both teams' mistakes in this match, brother..." His sister exhaled in relief—surely... surely there couldn't be anything more difficult? [Heart-Pounding Adventure (Suicide Mission Level): Sneak a peek at the names of the galgames in 'Su Qi's' hidden E-drive folder]
transmigrates into the world as the sect master of the Heavenly Yan Sect, which is on the verge of being wiped out. He binds a system that grants him cultivation power based on the number of disciples he has: for each disciple, he automatically gains a year's worth of cultivation every single day! Take one disciple: every day he gains 1 year of cultivation power. While others struggle through a year of bitter training, he gets the same just by sleeping through a single night. Take ten disciples: every day he gains 10 years of cultivation power. Foundation Establishment, Core Formation, Nascent Soul—he breezes through all bottlenecks without lifting a finger. Take one hundred disciples: every day he gains 100 years of cultivation power. Even a Soul Transformation Venerable before him can’t survive a single blow. Take ten thousand disciples: every day he gains 10,000 years of cultivation power! With a wave of his hand, he topples empires. With a single step, he crushes the sacred grounds of the universe. ... While others fight tooth and nail for secret techniques, Lin Yan casually hands out Nascent Soul-level cultivation manuals as beginner textbooks. While others strain to find talented recruits, Lin Yan opens his doors to anyone—so long as they’re human. In just three short years, the Heavenly Yan Sect went from a backwater sect made up of three crumbling huts to a sacred land that every cultivator under heaven would kill to enter. ... One day, otherworldly demon gods invade, with a million demon soldiers pressing down upon the realm. Lin Yan, yawning, rises from his lounge chair and glances at the system panel: [Current Disciples: 1.28 million] [Daily Cultivation Increase: 1.28 million years] He waves his hand casually, and the countless demon soldiers are reduced to ashes in an instant. “So noisy… interrupting my fishing.”
ing gift was a patch of barren land, and disciples were all picked up along the way. He spent fifty years diligently building three "ramshackle little sects," thinking he could finally live a carefree life relying on his disciples. But right at the fifty-year mark, he was suddenly swept away by a spatial rift and exiled to the Chaos Desolation, the Disorderly Ruins. There was no spiritual energy there, only slaughter. Relying on the cultivation feedback from his disciples, Gu Changyuan hacked his way through a sea of blood for eleven hundred years. When the system finally fished him back out, he discovered the ramshackle little sects he'd built back then had developed a rather... unusual style. Hold on... I vanished for a thousand years, so how did my ramshackle little sects become holy lands?!
ut it can buy an entire year of absolutely perfect training results! Su Yu stared at his empty wallet and decisively opened up various online loan platforms. “Borrow a thousand bucks! Recharge my vitality!” Boom! His vitality broke a hundred points, shattering the limits of the human body! “Borrow ten thousand bucks! Recharge my combat skills!” Boom! A basic punching technique so common it was everywhere instantly maxed out, revealing the ultimate assassination technique of Five Elements Unity—Inner Force! When a rich kid hired assassins for a midnight ambush, aiming to break both of his legs, they instead ran headfirst into a monster—a human-shaped tyrannosaur, brimming with dragon-like vitality. With just two fingers, Su Yu snapped a steel staff reinforced with alloy. Staring at the killer’s stash of stolen cash—a staggering quarter-million dollars—he showed a corporate-sincere smile: “Thanks for the pre-exam gift pack, Mr. Zhao! I’m gonna go re-invest this!” Three days later, at the National Martial Arts College Entrance Exam, while everyone else struggled just to reach the passing line, Su Yu threw a single punch—and more than a thousand vitality points literally detonated the entire arena!
