Until news arrived: Fang Fengqi had declared himself emperor in the south, keeping the state title of Li. Because they had a new monarch, the people of the Li state fought so fiercely.
Teng Shuchang was both shocked and furious. Fang Fengqi? Wasn't he in the capital?
He couldn't figure it out no matter how hard he tried. He immediately sent someone back to the capital to inquire about the situation. The news he received astonished him: shortly after Grand Commandant Yi took over, Fang Zhiyi got drunk again, ran into Fang Fengqi, beat him up in the street, and threatened to drive him out of the capital. And Grand Commandant Yi actually agreed to it!
He had heard about Fang Zhiyi severing ties with his son earlier and considered it a trivial matter, so he immediately had Fang Fengqi driven out. Consequently, Fang Fengqi vanished.
"Bastard!" Teng Shuchang slammed the table and cursed. "This jerk has ruined everything!"
Previously, although he allowed Fang Zhiyi a certain degree of freedom, many matters still had to pass through his own hands. Frankly, he never trusted Fang Zhiyi. But as soon as his nemesis, Grand Commandant Yi, arrived, he actually hooked up with Fang Zhiyi, that stray dog?
"I'm going to impeach him!" Teng Shuchang's roar echoed out of the tent. "Fooling around with that puppet every day—is he trying to get my southern expeditionary army killed?"
Outside the tent, two deputy generals suddenly exchanged a glance, their eyes holding a profound meaning.
But Fang Zhiyi was still useful. Teng Shuchang immediately ordered his subordinates to bring Fang Zhiyi over. He wanted to see if the Li dynasty's army dared to strike their former emperor!
To his surprise, however, the men he sent returned very quickly.
Empty-handed.
"Where is Fang Zhiyi?" Teng Shuchang's eyes blazed with fury.
"Well, Grand Commandant Yi said that Emperor Fang cannot leave right now; he has too many affairs to handle." The subordinate looked uncomfortably at the ground.
"Bastard! What time is it now? What affairs does he still need to handle? Have they forgotten that Fang Zhiyi is just a puppet emperor?" Furious, he immediately dispatched more men.
But this time, not only did Fang Zhiyi not show up, but the men sent were also detained.
"Are they trying to rebel?" Teng Shuchang's eyes widened in anger.
"To answer the general... because he entered the palace wearing a sword, Grand Commandant Yi ordered his men to apprehend Deputy General Guo."
"Good, very good!" Teng Shuchang laughed out of extreme anger. "I will go personally. I want to see just how capable this Fang Zhiyi is. A sovereign of a fallen nation actually managed to have a general under my command detained!"
He admitted that Fang Zhiyi had some skills, but he hadn't forgotten the fact that Fang Zhiyi was merely a pawn.
Teng Shuchang temporarily left the encampment and rushed toward the capital. He barged straight into the imperial palace. Fang Zhiyi wasn't there, so he stormed over to the bank. Sure enough, he found Fang Zhiyi there, looking at him with a bewildered expression.
"Fang Zhiyi, come with me, won't you?"
Fang Zhiyi paused for a moment, then nodded. "Sure."
Teng Shuchang hadn't expected Fang Zhiyi to be so compliant and was momentarily taken aback.
But just as he was about to leave with Fang Zhiyi, his horse was blocked.
Grand Commandant Yi stood ahead, smiling alongside several officials of the Mang dynasty. Teng Shuchang's anger surged. "Get out of the way! If you delay military matters, I will submit a memorial to impeach you!"
He was already at odds with this Grand Commandant Yi; seeing him now, he felt like eating him alive.
Grand Commandant Yi, however, was unhurried. He slowly raised the imperial edict in his hand. "General Teng, receive the edict, will you?"
Although extremely reluctant, Teng Shuchang had no choice but to dismount and listen obediently.
"Teng Shuchang, you have nurtured the enemy to elevate your own status, refusing to engage the rebels in a decisive battle. You even attempted to interfere in local government affairs and intercept tax revenues, living a life of extravagance and dissipation. You are hereby ordered to be stripped of your command immediately, demoted to a garrison commander, and the southern expeditionary army shall be handed over to someone else!"
Teng Shuchang sprang up at once. "Nonsense!"
Grand Commandant Yi glared at him. "Teng Shuchang! You are disrespecting the ruler!"
"I... when have I ever nurtured the enemy or intercepted taxes?"
Grand Commandant Yi chuckled. "You can submit a memorial to prove your innocence." He paused. "However... I think you should just accept it, General."
Teng Shuchang left, grinding his teeth in fury.
What exactly had happened?
After pondering for an entire night, he suddenly recalled a scene from that day. When he had left and glanced back, he saw Fang Zhiyi and Grand Commandant Yi walking away with their arms around each other's shoulders.
Fang Zhiyi! He suddenly realized the crux of the issue. Could he have been wrong? Had Fang Zhiyi never surrendered at all?
Going from a streak of victories to a sudden demotion, Teng Shuchang began to seriously reflect on the series of events that had occurred.
He arrived at a shocking conclusion: Fang Zhiyi hadn't surrendered! He was faking it!
Teng Shuchang took immediate action. He had to prove his innocence! Everything was a scheme cooked up by Fang Zhiyi and that guy surnamed Yi! He prepared to mobilize the troops, but the city's garrison commander stopped him.
"General Teng, troops cannot be mobilized lightly right now. It would be bad if the rebels attacked," the commander said, neither obsequious nor supercilious, though a hint of arrogance laced his tone.
Looking at his former subordinate, Teng Shuchang realized something in his heart.
Sure enough, when he sent someone to the front lines to deploy troops, the succeeding general turned a deaf ear. Teng Shuchang's heart went half cold.
His memorial of self-defense couldn't be delivered either. Teng Shuchang didn't know this; after sending it out, he tried to investigate privately. He first sought out his hidden informants, only to find that they had long forgotten about keeping an eye on Fang Zhiyi and were spending their days gambling with local thugs.
Furious, he drew his sword and killed two of the thugs on the spot. But what greeted him next was his arrest by his own people.
It took less than a month for Teng Shuchang to fall from a grand general to a prisoner.
At this moment, he finally understood. The current Li capital was no longer the Li capital of the past. That puppet emperor had woven a web of interests, tying all the officials of the Mang dynasty together. Even many of his own military subordinates had accepted bribes from Fang Zhiyi, and some officials and generals even held shares in Fang Zhiyi's businesses.
No wonder—making a move against him was tantamount to touching everyone else's money bags!
Teng Shuchang also finally realized that Grand Commandant Yi alone couldn't have impeached him. But what if his deputy generals were included?
He laughed aloud in his cell. They were wrong, all of them were wrong!
Fang Zhiyi wasn't some sovereign of a fallen nation; he was out to bring down their nation!
But no one listened to him, and no one even paid him any mind.
Even a few old fogeys within the Mang dynasty had received silver notes presented by Grand Commandant Yi and others. To them, war was war, but factional struggles still had to be fought. Although this Fang Zhiyi was good at making money, he had no power, no reputation, and no troops otherwise, so he was hardly a threat. What they truly feared was Teng Shuchang achieving the great merit of destroying the Li state.
Thus, the battle-hardened Teng Shuchang was inexplicably locked up.
Meanwhile, in Fang Zhiyi's tavern, several full tables of people were drinking and conversing merrily.
"Brother Fang's method is effective! Too effective."
"It'll be even easier to make money in the future, won't it? Now that our own people are guarding the checkpoints, doing business with the south will be much smoother."
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?!
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.
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!
g Yu was preparing for retirement when her organization decided to eliminate her. She transmigrated to a zombie apocalypse world. However, a tiny unexpected situation occurred: She somehow transformed into an adorable little girl?!
