"So what?" Fang Zhiyi appeared quite relaxed.
"Grand Tutor Fang, this is no joke. Zhangye Commandery is currently mostly populated by commoners, with barely a thousand capable fighters. How can we withstand Traitor Guo's army of hundreds of thousands?" Lin Shucheng's tone was anxious. In his eyes, no matter how eloquently Fang Zhiyi spoke, he was still just a civil official; fighting a war was an impossible feat for him.
Fang Zhiyi turned to the Young Emperor. "Your Majesty, tell me your reflections on today."
"You..." Lin Shucheng felt a sense of powerlessness. How could this Grand Tutor Fang have absolutely no sense of crisis?
Unexpectedly, the Young Emperor also looked completely unconcerned. "Grand Tutor, I feel that the saying 'he who wins the hearts of the people wins the world' seems simple, but it is not easy to put into practice. Below the imperial court are the noble families, below the noble families are cruel officials, and at the very bottom are the commoners." He paused. "In the past, I thought being imprisoned in the palace was miserable enough, but today, seeing those commoners, I realized that what I experienced was nothing... The commoners only seek a full meal and a bit of stability. Yet, whether it is the Grand Marshal or Chancellor Huang, they do not even want to leave the commoners a way to survive..."
Fang Zhiyi listened with his eyes closed, only slowly opening them after the emperor finished speaking. "The people are like water; water can carry a boat, but it can also overturn it."
When these words were spoken, the few people present all revealed expressions of profound astonishment, especially a scholar like Lin Shucheng.
"Water can carry a boat, but it can also overturn it. Brilliant, absolutely brilliant!"
The Young Emperor looked at the Grand Tutor with burning eyes. "Grand Tutor, I think I understand."
"Merely understanding is not enough; you must put it into practice." As Fang Zhiyi spoke, he reached out and pulled over a rough map spread out on the table. "Your first practical task is... here."
Zhao Wu and the others craned their necks and saw Fang Zhiyi's finger pointing at Jianxi, right next to Zhangye Commandery, feeling somewhat baffled.
"Ten days. We will take Jianxi in ten days." Fang Zhiyi's words shocked everyone present.
"Grand Tutor, as far as I know, marching and fighting wars is not your strong suit..." Zhao Wu said.
Fang Zhiyi frowned. "Brainless brute, all you know is fighting."
Little Hei was highly amused. "If you had the means to fight, you'd be jumping higher than any of them."
Just as Fang Zhiyi had predicted, Jianxi was the first to receive the news of the emperor's appearance. The local noble families were originally remnants of Huang Huaili's faction and were currently raising an army to oppose Guo Siwei. Upon hearing this news, they knew their opportunity had come.
That was a living emperor. Throughout history, raising an army for rebellion always required a righteous cause. With the emperor in their hands, wouldn't they be acting in accordance with the will of Heaven?
However, the noble families were mostly cautious. They only sent out a few descendants leading a private army to welcome the emperor. This so-called welcoming was actually no different from holding him hostage, just put on as a show for others to see.
The army set off in a hurry, but no news ever came back.
This left the noble families of Jianxi somewhat bewildered, unsure of the situation.
Could the noble families over in Zhangye have beaten them to the punch? That shouldn't be. If a fight broke out, they would surely have received word.
But three days later, the private army actually returned. The noble families finally relaxed and specially prepared lavish gifts to welcome the imperial carriage. Of course, this was just for show. Once the emperor entered their estates, how to manipulate him would be entirely up to them.
However, after the private army entered the city, a horn sounded, and the city descended into chaos. The generals guarding the city gates were captured on the spot, and many soldiers had weapons pressed to their necks by their own comrades, forcing them to obediently surrender. Even more outrageously, the forcibly conscripted recruit camp mutinied almost simultaneously. Officers were hacked to death in public, and massive numbers of soldiers who had been forced to lay down their hoes and take up swords surged onto the streets. They merged with the returning private army and charged mightily toward the government offices and the estates of the noble families.
"You, are you rebelling?" the family head asked in terror, watching the estate's captain who had suddenly killed the steward.
The captain laughed. "Rebelling? Yes, we are rebelling, but we are rebelling by imperial decree!"
"Rebelling by imperial decree?" The family head's brain couldn't quite process it. How could those two concepts be combined?
"My parents sent me a message. The emperor loves the people like his own children. Not only did he distribute grain to them, but he also exempted them from taxes. Even my eldest uncle's family received two acres of land. The emperor said that this world belongs to the common people." The sword in the captain's hand gleamed with a cold light as his gaze swept over the few soldiers protecting the family head. "What, do you not have parents, wives, and children? Did you come out to risk your lives just to help evil scum like this oppress your fellow townsfolk?"
The family head's face turned deathly pale. The emperor said these things? What kind of nonsense was this!
But the few soldiers who were originally protecting him clearly showed hesitation.
"What are you standing around for! Kill him! I'll reward each of you with ten, no, a hundred taels of silver!"
"Pah, a hundred taels of silver. Do you not know in your heart where your money comes from?" The captain's face was full of disdain. Listening to the heaven-shaking shouts of killing outside, he smiled. "Are you going to risk your lives for your families, or for protecting this kind of evil scum? Choose for yourselves!"
The few soldiers looked at each other and, without any hesitation, turned around and stabbed.
That head of the noble family fell unwillingly into a pool of blood just like that.
The chaos in Jianxi occurred in the morning, and by the afternoon, the emperor entered Jianxi City. There were no tall steeds, nor were there guards clearing the streets. There was only the Young Emperor, walking step by step from the city gate into the city center. Both sides of the road were filled with commoners, all curiously watching this legendary emperor.
It was unknown who took the lead, but the commoners began to kneel down one after another. However, seeing all this, the Young Emperor stopped his steps.
"Do not kneel, everyone stand up!"
The Black Armor Guards beside him immediately passed the word along.
"The Emperor says, do not kneel, everyone stand up!"
One person after another passed the message along, and the commoners looked up at the emperor in astonishment.
"I have arrived late and let the people suffer. It is my fault. The world is the people's world. You may kneel to heaven and earth, kneel to your parents, and kneel to your revered teachers, but you must absolutely never kneel to me!" The Young Emperor straightened his back. "Long live the people!"
The entirety of Jianxi practically exploded with excitement.
Every commoner was moved to tears. The legends were true; the news sent by their relatives and friends was true! The Son of Heaven truly held the common people in his heart!
Lin Shucheng stared blankly at the lazy-looking Fang Zhiyi. "Grand Tutor Fang's methods... are too fierce."
Hearing this, Zhao Wu turned his head and glanced at him.
"Zhangye and Jianxi are close to each other. Whether they are volunteers or forced conscripts, most of their relatives and friends are nearby. By simply having their families ask people to write letters and bring messages, he was able to directly disintegrate the armed forces of the noble families, and even... make those soldiers willingly come to surrender. With such methods, the Grand Tutor is truly a rare genius of the ages."
Zhao Wu said nothing; he had originally expected a bitter battle.
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.
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?!
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."
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.
