"How dare you not kneel before this general! Is this how Fang Zhiyi taught you? Whip them!" Li Xiang bellowed.
Before him knelt a row of soldiers, pinned down by guards. The whip lashed across their bodies, and though every soldier's face burned with indignation, they held their heads high and refused to bow.
"Your Grand General Fang is finished! Still hoping he'll return? Dream on! You are my men now, and you will follow my rules!" Li Xiang's eyes swept over the soldiers below. "Hmph, it's time I made an example of you! Guards—take these men and behead them in public as a warning!"
"And whose head do you intend to take?" A slow, unhurried voice drifted over.
Li Xiang flew into a rage and turned to look. He saw Fang Zhiyi draped in a robe, followed by dozens of personal guards, strolling toward him.
Li Xiang was taken aback, but quickly regained his composure: "General Fang, you can actually get out of bed now?" What surprised him was that the men he had sent to keep watch on Fang Zhiyi had not come to report!
Fang Zhiyi ignored him entirely, instead looking at the soldiers. They too lifted their heads and saw Fang Zhiyi, joy shining in their eyes.
"I asked you—whose head do you intend to take?"
"Grand General Fang, I still show you respect by calling you 'general,' but as you well know, the military authority and the command token of the frontier army are in my hands now. I suggest you mind your own business. Since you can walk, you'd best return to the capital as soon as possible." Li Xiang was arrogantly dismissive.
Fang Zhiyi simply shook his head: "Military authority? Command token? Do these things alone decide who lives and who dies?"
"Fang Zhiyi!" Li Xiang slammed his hand on the table. "Don't be ungrateful! I am the Frontier Guardian General now!"
But Fang Zhiyi walked straight to a pinned soldier and, as one of his guards shoved aside the man who was holding the soldier down, Fang Zhiyi helped the soldier to his feet.
"Brothers of this general need not kneel."
"Fang Zhiyi, you—" Li Xiang sensed something was wrong and shot a meaningful glance at his trusted subordinate, his intention clear: take Fang Zhiyi down directly.
But the moment the trusted subordinate started to move, he turned and had his throat slit.
Wang Hui's hands trembled slightly. By now, he knew there was no turning back—the entire Wang family had already been dragged into Fang Zhiyi's camp. First they had secretly transported salt and iron for Fang Zhiyi, then they had mobilized censors connected to the Wang family to speak up for him. Life at home was hardly easy these days, with frequent suppression from other court officials.
"Damn you! Deputy General Wang, are you rebelling?!" Li Xiang was shocked—he never expected them to kill his own man in broad daylight!
In response, Fang Zhiyi's personal guards drew their blades and struck without hesitation. In an instant, Li Xiang's trusted men collapsed in a heap.
"Grand General Li," Fang Zhiyi said with a smile, "you didn't really think that just because they made you a general, you could command the frontier army, did you?"
"Guards! Seize them!" At Li Xiang's command, the commanders of each battalion drew their swords—but the very next moment, they were overwhelmed by their own soldiers and promptly had their throats slit, clean and swift, without a moment's hesitation.
"You've got nerve..." Fang Zhiyi turned around, walking up the steps as if he hadn't just witnessed a bloodbath.
"You, all of you—this is mutiny! Killing your own superiors means the extermination of your entire clans!" Li Xiang was truly panicking now.
"Their superiors weren't transferred away by you all?" Fang Zhiyi stopped in his tracks. Behind him, his personal guards charged the platform with murderous intent. Li Xiang's furious cursing did him no good at all—until the sound cut out entirely.
After a long moment, Fang Zhiyi took a step forward again. One of his guards kicked a corpse out of the way.
When he finally came to a stop, his eyes swept across every soldier below.
"I, Fang Zhiyi, led you all against the barbarian hordes of the grasslands and earned our glory!"
"And yet the Emperor could not stomach me! He secretly ordered the Marquis of Ding'an, Wei An, to ambush and kill me!"
"If they would do this to a Frontier Guardian General like me, then what do you think they'd do to you?"
Behind him, Wang Hui just shrugged. Kill you? You were literally wrapped in a blanket, playing mahjong for days with a few buddies. But he wouldn't say that out loud—he was Fang Zhiyi's man now.
He glanced at the headless corpses nearby and shook his head with a sigh. Coming to Fang Zhiyi's territory to take over his army? These fellows thought it would be just like the old days, didn't they? Fang Zhiyi had embedded two political commissars in every battalion. They held no official rank, only tasked with guiding ideological work. Under their influence, these soldiers would never recognize anyone else as their Grand General! You could send the Emperor himself down here, and these men would still cut anyone down on command!
He watched Fang Zhiyi's impassioned speech, then his gaze drifted unconsciously southward. A strange thrill rose in his chest—maybe, just maybe, he'd make a name in the history books after all.
"This land is ours. These fields are ours. This world belongs to every common man!" Fang Zhiyi swept his arm through the air, and the robe draped over his shoulders fell to the ground. Silence fell over the crowd, and a sea of feverish eyes fixed on Fang Zhiyi. "My brothers, I believe the world should not be like this."
"Long live the Grand General! Long live! Long live!" At the lead of a political commissar, the cry of "Long live" shook the very sky.
"Long live the people!" Fang Zhiyi slowly uttered those four words, then raised the blade in his hand and, before everyone's eyes, cut off his own queue. The soldiers followed suit, chopping off their queues one after another.
Then came an even more frenzied roar.
"You say what? Fang Zhiyi has led the rebels all the way to the capital, and those bastards couldn't stop him?" The Emperor was frantic, his lips cracked with anxiety. "What about the Xining Army? The Xining Army I ordered you to deploy—where are they?"
"Well..." The Minister of War hesitated, then finally dropped to his knees. "The Xining Army has mutinied as well—half the soldiers have revolted! The leader is one of the officers who once served under Fang Zhiyi!"
"The Four Directions Guard Army has also mutinied!"
"The commander of the Jingning Navy was killed, and the commander's seal has been seized!"
The Emperor drew a deep breath. Suddenly it all clicked—everything was part of Fang Zhiyi's plan! He knew that the moment he fell, the court would scatter his trusted officers to different posts to break up his power.
In other words, he had used the court's own hands to lay out this entire chess game!
"There have long been rumors in the army," the Minister of War dared to look up at the Emperor. "That Your Majesty could not tolerate a victorious Han general, nor the Han soldiers who served under him! The Marquis of Ding'an's ambush on Fang Zhiyi was just the excuse he needed. That's the very grounds Fang Zhiyi used to raise his banner!"
"Outrageous!" Another teacup shattered against the floor.
Someone came rushing in, his footsteps hurried. Prince Min appeared, face pale with panic, all traces of his earlier scheming gone: "It's over! Fang Zhiyi's rebels are already approaching the capital—they'll reach the East Gate within half a day!"
The Emperor's legs gave way, and he collapsed onto the dragon throne.
"He, he—"
"Do not panic, Your Majesty! The Capital Garrison still stands! The Imperial Guard still stands!"
The Emperor looked at Prince Min, his mouth opening slightly, but before he could speak—
"Your Majesty! The Marquis of Ding'an has escaped with your consort amid the chaos!" A eunuch came rushing in.
ive and Ruthless] Before his transmigration, Ye Xuan was playing a game called "Severing Emotions to Attain the Dao." The game's core wasn't about leveling up by fighting monsters, but about conquering various "bad women" with wicked personalities and cold, fickle natures. There was only one method to conquer them: stay unwaveringly by their side, then die at a critical moment, driving them to madness after losing the protagonist. The higher their level of regret, the higher the player's score. To dominate the server, Ye Xuan conquered all the bad women. In the early stages, he showered them with boundless tenderness, only to choose to sacrifice himself for them later, making them weep bitterly and drown in regret. Among them were: Xia Lengyue, the unfaithful immortal wife who chased after powerful men and discarded her husband like trash. Ye Qingcheng, the Demonic Venerable of the Joyous Union Sect, who appeared pure and innocent but was, in reality, promiscuous. Wu Lingxiao, the Empress of the Great Xia Dynasty, who lusted after men and loved maintaining a harem. Bai Qiangu of the Endless Demonic Sect: a bloodthirsty mass murderer. However, when the protagonist transmigrated into the game world, he made a horrifying discovery. Eight hundred years had already passed. The bad women he had conquered had now each become deities and revered ancestors. Faced with the endless stream of toxic women coming for him, Ye Xuan could only rely on his god-tier acting skills to carve a path of survival through this world of treacherous women.
grated, and just when he finally managed to get into an elite academy, he discovered that he actually had a system, and the way to earn rewards was extremely ridiculous. So for the sake of rewards, he had no choice but to start acting ridiculous as well. Su Cheng: "It's nothing but system quests after all." But later, what confused Su Cheng was that while he was already quite ridiculous, he never expected those serious characters to gradually become ridiculous too. And the way they looked at him became increasingly strange... (This synopsis doesn't do it justice, please read the full story)
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."
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.
