"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.
lity and could only live as an ordinary mortal. He only wished to live a peaceful life. Yet he didn't know— The dog he adopted, because it ate his food, became a legendary demon king. The kitchen knife he casually forged became a peerless divine weapon, causing numerous experts to fight desperately for it. The young disciple he took in became an immortal lord that led an era, due to cultivating the techniques Ye Feng taught him. Even the skeletons he looked down on the most were ominous demon kings that suppressed countless worlds. Many years later, looking at the void shattered with a punch, Ye Feng murmured to himself: It turns out the peerless kings were myself all along...
nd fell into a coma while saving his younger sister from an out-of-control car. He became a vegetable. No one knew that his consciousness had crossed into a world of cultivation. Over the course of sixty years, he began as the lowest kind of mine slave, struggling to survive amid mountains of corpses and seas of blood. By sheer chance, he eventually obtained the complete memories of a fallen Immortal King. Alchemy, medicine, formations, feng shui, physiognomy, artifact forging… Every great inheritance of the cultivation world was now his. But when he opened his eyes again, he discovered that ten full years had passed in the modern world. To pay for his treatment, his father had sold the family’s shop and house, leaving himself covered in lasting injuries and illness. His mother had cared for him day and night, and more than half of her hair had already turned white. His younger sister, who had been only fifteen back then, was now twenty-five. To help repay the family’s debts, she had been forced to lower her head and put on a smiling face in places of glittering lights and endless revelry. Only then did Chen Xuan understand that what he had lost was not merely ten years. He had lost the life his entire family was meant to have. The good news was that he had brought back the memories of an Immortal King’s entire lifetime. The bad news was that his soul had returned alone—his cultivation had not come with him. Spiritual energy was scarce, resources were depleted, and the modern world still had firearms, surveillance, capital, and laws. If he wanted to protect his family, break free from everyone’s control, and become truly invincible beneath the heavens, he would have to start all over again.
for mindless slaughter, this isn't for you.] My name is Ye Shu, and I'm a transmigrator. It seems I'm supposed to be the protagonist, but that feels pretty unlikely. This world has been invaded by a system. The antagonists on the other side have suddenly become pure, flawless saints. The female leads have been force-fed the so-called "original plot," making them think they've been reborn. Now, everyone thinks I'm scum. Including the old lady in my ring. And here I am, in the Monster Beast Mountain Range, braising pork. To put my situation in perspective— It's as if, the moment Xiao Yan stepped into the Monster Beast Mountain Range, the Soul Emperor already knew he would become the Flame Emperor, and Yao Lao had been turned to the enemy's side. I have nothing right now. Oh wait, that's not true. I do have a white-haired loli child-bride who's the Heavenly Dao, and her only skill is acting cute. So, tell me guys... what are my chances of making it to the end?
s the Eldest Princess, renowned for her cold and aloof detachment, became the most docile of lambs, obeying his every command without question. But when the final move was played on the chessboard, as Gu Chenghan seized everything and ascended on the verge of apotheosis, that very Princess suddenly embraced him from behind, her tone carrying a dependence never heard before: "Wait... you haven't yet... commanded me to love you forever." Gu Chenghan froze abruptly. She... hadn't been hypnotized?! ... [The Eldest Princess's Diary] [When my soul was extracted, becoming the sole spectator outside my own shell] [At first, there was overwhelming fury, until I saw] [How he used my sword to effortlessly shatter my inescapable doom] [How he wielded my authority to eradicate fatal conspiracies I had never even detected] [Like a deity, he rescued me from the deep mire I was trapped in] [If not for those annoying vixens, he and I would be a match made in heaven] [I think I am ill, gravely ill] [My deity should belong to me alone] ... "Hypnosis? Oh, it succeeded, my dear Master." "Only this time, it's my turn to hypnotize you."
