"What? Xue Qingsong is actually a spy?" The King was stunned. He had specifically checked with the system, and the system said the man was just an ordinary person.
"That's right, Your Majesty. I led troops to pursue him, but he had already fled! These are the evidence!" The Right Wing Commander pointed behind him—two whole chests of items, all seized from Xue Qingsong's home.
"Bastard!" The King gnashed his teeth in fury. Now that the firearm development had finally broken through, and war was in sight for next spring, he never expected a spy to have infiltrated his court!
"Who discovered this?" he asked.
"Your Majesty, it was Mu Ling, the youngest son of the former Chancellor. He had long suspected this Zhou citizen."
The King froze. He had once found the Chancellor troublesome and dismissed him outright, causing a stir among the ministers, which he suppressed with an iron hand.
"Hmm... not bad. Who recommended this Xue Qingsong? Investigate!" The King held a blueprint in his hand—a structural drawing of a firearm he had drawn himself, and Xue Qingsong had copied it stroke by stroke!
The Right Wing Commander accepted the order and left.
With a problem like this cropping up at such a critical moment, the King was naturally at boiling rage. So when he saw the group of officials led by Prince Zuo, he laughed in anger.
These people had always opposed him, going on and on about ancestral traditions, and now they had pulled a stunt like this!
"Arrest them all! Execute them!"
The Right Wing Commander was dumbfounded: "Your Majesty, perhaps—"
"Shut up! Are you questioning me?"
"I wouldn't dare!"
"Then do it! By the time spring comes, I will use their heads to consecrate the battle flags!"
The Right Wing Commander retreated in silence.
A palace guard trotted in: "Your Majesty, Young Master Wang's wagon train has arrived. There are two extra carts of iron this time, but they say—"
"Say what?"
"The Great Zhou is cracking down hard on private iron these days. They need to charge more."
The King sneered. "Pay it!" Then he muttered under his breath, "It'll all be mine in the end anyway."
"Yes!"
Ever since he had established ties with the Wang family, that young man Wang had shown his true merchant nature—if you paid the price, he'd sell anything. Because of this, the King of Liao had received tremendous support for his firearm development.
He liked Wang Qingzhi's character. Greedy people had weaknesses, and could even be without morals.
Chaos erupted in the Liao court. The Prince Zuo faction was thrown into prison. In the King's eyes, these people were far less valuable than his firearms.
When the Prince Zuo faction was imprisoned, some old ministers stepped forward to speak out, but the King shot them all down.
Mu Ling, however, stood on his side. This greatly increased the King's fondness for him, so he simply appointed Mu Ling to take over his father's former position, to argue with those clueless courtiers on his behalf.
He had no time to waste bickering with them now; he had to rush the production of firearms. Just thinking about crushing the Great Zhou made his heart race with excitement.
After barely making it through to spring, the King of Liao personally led the campaign. Watching his well-trained Firearm Battalion filled him with a sense of accomplishment. And after witnessing the power of the firearms, even the old ministers who had opposed him fell silent.
He hadn't forgotten his own words. In front of everyone, he beheaded the Prince Zuo faction, then led the army on its march.
Staring at the approaching city walls, the King grinned savagely and ordered the Firearm Battalion to wheel out the cannons. For the first battle, he wanted a resounding victory. After all, these cannons required a massive amount of iron. Even with the meager mining output and the iron smuggled by the Wang family, he only had enough for one or two uses. But one or two uses were plenty to shatter the morale of the Zhou border troops.
But before he could give the order to fire, a thunderous roar erupted from the city walls across from him.
The King looked up in shock. Dozens of iron cannonballs were hurtling through the air, getting closer.
"Protect the King!"
"The enemy has cannons too!"
"Stay calm! Steady the horses!"
As the shells rained down, the King of Liao's mind buzzed in chaos. How was this possible?
Xue Qingsong hadn't even managed to smuggle out the stolen blueprints. So why...
Even more puzzling to him was that he had attacked without declaring war—so why had the Zhou border forces reacted so swiftly? It was as if they had been waiting for them all along.
"Your Highness, sometimes I really admire you..." Watching the chaotic Liao army in the distance, Li Wenlong felt inexplicably pleased.
Fang Zhiyi, lounging lazily in his chair, smiled and said, "Oh? So now you're not calling me an ignorant commander?"
"Your Highness, to be fair, you really don't know much about war. When it comes to fighting, you're not even as good as Li Zizai."
"What's so great about war? I've told you before, sometimes you don't need brute force to destroy a country. Throwing money at it works just fine."
"I'll give you that. I can't believe you actually bought those strange contraptions they were researching."
"Well, it didn't cost that much. And since we made a good profit selling them iron, the money balanced out."
Li Wenlong licked his lips. "But you were dead right about one thing, Your Highness: on the battlefield, intelligence is everything."
From the moment the Liao army had left their doors, they had been watched constantly. By the time they reached the border, their intelligence network had never missed a beat.
Li Wenlong felt a bit envious. "Your Highness, how about you ask the Emperor to give our border troops an agency like the Surveillance Department too?"
Fang Zhiyi rolled his eyes. "You're pretty ambitious. Do you have any idea how long I've been laying the groundwork to infiltrate Liao? Since you were still a junior officer!"
Li Wenlong sighed.
"I'll never get it," he muttered. He turned around. "Notify the central army: after one round of cannon fire, open the gates and charge!"
The Liao army was thrown into disarray by the Zhou artillery barrage. Then, to make matters worse, the Zhou soldiers charged out. The King of Liao tried to use his firearm advantage to fight back, but was horrified to find that the enemy also had identical firearms—and even more of them!
The battle ended quickly. The Liao army was chased by Zhou forces for hundreds of li, and their slow-moving Firearm Battalion was completely wiped out.
The King was dumbfounded.
"System, what happened?"
"Host, it's highly likely there's another transmigrator on the opposing side, or a very capable native."
"Damn it! Damn it all! Why didn't you warn me?"
"Host, I can only provide what I'm able to provide. I cannot interfere in matters of intelligence."
"Useless! You're all useless!" the King yelled in fury. "Wait, System—use points to exchange for blueprints!"
"Coming right up!" The System suddenly sounded cheerful.
"I'll just wait another year!" The King fumed, leading his defeated troops back.
But he failed to notice the strange atmosphere brewing within Liao.
He went on as before, starting from the moment he returned to the palace. Everything and everyone annoyed him. He even had a servant beheaded for stumbling.
"Summon the artisans from the firearm workshop!" the King barked.
Strangely, no one responded.
. As long as he maintains the villain image and follows the plot to the grand finale, he can obtain generous rewards and return to the real world. So Gu Chen'an entered the role and began to act as a scumbag villain, but who would have expected that the female leads could hear his inner thoughts. Miss Su from the Su family was shocked: "I originally thought Gu Chen'an was a scumbag, but I didn't expect he turned out to be a gentleman! What? You said I have to call off the engagement? I definitely won't, I'll piss you off!" Bai Yuan Tian was dumbfounded: "Young Master Gu is usually unreasonable and a complete brat, but he actually calls me little sweetie in his heart? What, Young Master Gu even said he likes me?" As the female leads' images collapsed more and more, the plot also collapsed with it. Gu Chen'an looked at all this chaos. "Ladies, don't aggro me, if you keep this up the male lead really will stab me, I still need to survive to the grand finale!"
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?!
iaobai: "Councilor Dad, front me some funds. I want to hire ten thousand professional miners for a project!" [Five-Star Mission Issued: Capture the leader of the Blood Heaven Pirate Gang, who is on the run in the Radiant Star Sector. It is said the gang has over a hundred members. Proceed with caution.] Lu Xiaobai: "Councilor Dad, lend me the family's hundred-thousand-strong Lu Army!" [Seven-Star Mission Issued: Subdue a juvenile Void Dragon Beast.] Lu Xiaobai: "Councilor Dad, I'm taking your tamed Void Dragon Beast King out for a family reunion!" I said, System, don't you have any slightly more challenging missions? You're just not up to par! [Nine-Star Mission Issued: Become the Human Councilor.] Lu Xiaobai: "Dad, there's a small matter I'd like to discuss with you..."
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!
