Prince Min chuckled darkly. Though he was a lovesick fool, he still had brains.
Once Wei An was done for, wouldn't that mean one less competitor for him?
But the emperor's next words left Prince Min bewildered: "If Fang Zhiyi isn't dead..."
"Your Majesty, Fang Zhiyi has fewer than a hundred riders with him. From what I know, the Marquis of Ding'an led six thousand men out of the city to intercept him. Even if he had three heads and six arms, he couldn't possibly survive." Prince Min's tone turned cold. "Fang Zhiyi went too far this time—smashing Miss He's shop, of all things. Never mind the Marquis of Ding'an, even I would want his head!"
That logic made sense, yet the emperor still felt a knot of unease in his chest.
Fang Zhiyi and his small band of fewer than a hundred men were ambling along the road when one of his men suddenly reined in his horse. "Hoofbeats."
His ears twitched again and again, until one of the men beside him couldn't take it anymore and reached over to thump him. "Would it kill you to just look back?"
They all turned to see a dense, dark mass of soldiers bearing down on them.
"Fang Zhiyi! You harbor treasonous intentions, you disrespect the throne, you bully the court officials, and—and you deliberately damaged another man's property! You're nothing short of a rebel and a traitor!" Wei An shouted.
The moment Fang Zhiyi saw him, he broke into a grin.
"Well, well, if it isn't the Marquis of Ding'an?" His tone was teasing.
Wei An suddenly remembered the time Fang Zhiyi had pretended not to know him, and his fury boiled over. "Fang Zhiyi! You've humiliated me time and time again! You won't be able to bear the consequences of insulting the House of the Marquis of Ding'an!"
As he spoke, the thousands of men he'd brought had already taken their positions.
Fang Zhiyi just smiled. He looked around, and the several officers beside him wore faces of pure contempt.
Wei An was smug. "Fang Zhiyi, if you get off your horse right now, kowtow in surrender, and come with me to beg the emperor for mercy, I might spare your life. Otherwise, don't blame me for what happens next."
Fang Zhiyi looked at him, then at the soldier holding his horse's reins. "I mean, really—you can't even ride a horse properly, and you think you can lead troops?"
The men around Fang Zhiyi burst into laughter.
"General, this pretty boy's got a thick layer of powder on his face. It might even stop a couple of sword blows!" one officer joked.
Wei An's face twisted with rage, and because of it, the powder on his face flaked off in clouds, making Fang Zhiyi's officers laugh even harder.
"Kill them!" he roared, raising his saber and pointing it straight at Fang Zhiyi. At least he had some presence.
Fang Zhiyi spread his hands. "Alright, everyone here's my witness—he struck first! Give me a spear!"
One of his officers tossed him a long spear, and Fang Zhiyi caught it smoothly.
"Form up!" The command was terse. In an instant, the dozens of soldiers who'd been laughing a moment before turned serious. They spurred their horses and took formation behind Fang Zhiyi.
"Fang Zhiyi, do you think you're some kind of god? A few dozen men trying to fight your way out? Take them! Take them all!" Wei An shouted, and the soldiers on both flanks surged into motion.
As Fang Zhiyi's warhorse began to accelerate, the patrol camp soldiers braced themselves. To everyone's eyes, six thousand against eighty—this was basically a guaranteed victory.
But the front-rank soldiers hadn't expected the sheer terrifying momentum of these few dozen men charging in formation.
Their shields were struck by something with tremendous force, sending both man and shield flying. One spearman's weapon had barely gotten close to Fang Zhiyi when a swing of Fang Zhiyi's spear sent him spitting blood. Another soldier tried to strike from the side and suddenly found a second spear—it pierced straight through his body and carried him several meters before it stopped.
Someone realized, perhaps, that this encirclement had been a mistake from the very start.
Fang Zhiyi was the tip of the spear, and wherever he aimed, his soldiers followed. Though they were merely several dozen riders, they tore through like a thousand-strong cavalry charge! The archers hadn't even drawn their bows before Fang Zhiyi was already at their throats.
What followed was an outright slaughter. The screams never stopped.
"You bastards! How do you train on normal days?! Surround them! Surround them!" Wei An yelled.
But by then, the patrol camp soldiers had lost their wits. Who could have imagined that less than a hundred men could shred their defensive line so completely? And then carve straight into their rear?!
The killing intent radiating from those men was almost tangible. Their techniques were clean and ruthless—no fancy forms, no elegant moves. Just simple thrusts, stabs, and chops, and yet they'd already punched a hole through their eastern flank!
Watching Fang Zhiyi and his men break through the encirclement, Wei An was furious: "What are you all standing there for?! Get—"
The word "chase" never left his lips. A sight stopped him cold: the riders who'd broken out formed up again, still with Fang Zhiyi at the tip, and charged right back in!
His proud square formation shattered under that second assault. The shield-bearers, hit by that massive impact, were sent flying. Especially Fang Zhiyi, racing at the front—no one could stop him! In the space of a few blinks, he'd stabbed through seven or eight soldiers who'd tried to block his way.
Wei An panicked. How was this Fang Zhiyi so brutally ferocious?
The same terror rippled through the remaining patrol camp soldiers. Were these border troops even human?!
The only answer to their fear was the repeated, relentless charges of Fang Zhiyi and his men.
After they tore open yet another gap, they should have been scared themselves—but Fang Zhiyi seemed nowhere near done. He turned his horse once more, and just that one gesture made someone on Wei An's side scream and turn to flee.
One man running dragged three with him. Three running dragged nine.
In an instant, the fearsome patrol camp collapsed.
Fang Zhiyi frowned. That was it? That fragile?
He instinctively looked for Wei An, only to realize that the man, unable to ride a horse properly, had tossed his mount aside long ago and joined the fleeing troops. Hard to pick him out in a crowd.
Fang Zhiyi suddenly yanked his reins and let out a loud cry: "Ah! A hidden arrow! Fall back! Fall back fast!"
Wei An, who'd just been running for his life, glanced back and saw the officers crowding protectively around Fang Zhiyi as they hurried away. He was confused for a moment, but the truth dawned quickly.
"Fang Zhiyi's been hit! Don't run! After them!"
But the patrol camp by then was chaos, and no amount of shouting could piece it back together.
"What a shame—there were so many horses and so much gear and weaponry. We can't just leave it all for nothing!" one officer grumbled quietly.
Fang Zhiyi slumped over his horse, a little exasperated. These fellows were good at everything except one thing—they'd picked up his own mercenary streak. They were the sort who'd count it as a loss if they walked out without picking up something on the way.
Still, it was fine. They had a lot of people to feed, and being thrifty never hurt.
"Remember this: get back to the border at top speed, and no matter who asks, tell them I was hit by a stray arrow—wounded badly!"
"Yes, sir!" These men had all been picked by Fang Zhiyi himself, and their loyalty was beyond question.
transmigrates into the role of a villainous rich second-generation kid in an urban fantasy novel, and gets bound to a god-tier choice system. Right at the start, he catches the female lead stealing exam papers! This triggers the villain's choice options! [Choice 1: Pretend you didn't see anything] [Choice 2: Loudly call her out, drawing everyone's attention] [Choice 3: ...] And thus, a twisted villain is born. To avoid getting killed by the protagonist, he has no choice but to take down all the protagonists first. Jiang Che: Nobody understands being twisted better than me!
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!
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?!
