"Because you have the hearts of the people..." Fang Zhiyi explained. "The realm had already suffered the ravages of war, followed closely by those two traitors, Guo and Huang, taking the Emperor hostage to seize the empire. The noble families exploited the commoners at every turn. Then you appeared. You ate and lived alongside the common folk, punished the corrupt nobles, executed wicked officials, and reduced taxes... The people might be uneducated, but they are not fools. They can tell who truly treats them well."
"But what about those noble families and the armies..."
"They are even less foolish. At this point, who holds the legitimate claim doesn't matter. What matters is that they feel betting on you is far better than betting on Guo Siwei. After all, they have all witnessed Guo Siwei's brutality toward the Huang family."
"These people deserve to die too!" Zhao Wu said in a deep voice.
Fang Zhiyi shook his head. "All you have in your head is killing. If you slaughter all the noble families in the world, will no new ones emerge? Won't the commoners you save today become the new noble families a few generations down the line?"
"Uh... please enlighten us, Grand Tutor Fang."
"Previously, we killed the nobles to win the hearts of the people, and for money. But why didn't I let you wipe them all out?"
The young emperor had not yet answered.
Fang Zhiyi said, "It is because you are a benevolent ruler."
At that moment, everyone present looked at Fang Zhiyi. His name was quite renowned now. The merchants who once relied on the noble families secretly cursed him as a butcher, but only Zhao Wu and the others knew that Fang Zhiyi was shouldering this infamous reputation on behalf of the Emperor.
Fang Zhiyi himself did not care at all. Exterminating noble families? He had done plenty of that.
"Therefore, now facing the noble families who are actively showing goodwill, Your Majesty, you must focus on pacifying and winning them over. If you step forward, this matter can be accomplished; if I step forward, it would be a disaster."
The young emperor was a little confused. Weren't the noble families all bad people?
"The reason we have been so successful is that the world is in turmoil, the noble families are fighting their own battles, and the Guo and Huang families were desperately slaughtering each other. You held the advantage of time, terrain, and popular support. But now that Guo Siwei has wiped out the remnants of the Huang family, he still holds quite a few trump cards in his hand. Moreover, there are still many noble families across the Central Plains watching closely. If, and I say if, you reject their goodwill, then they will have no choice but to defect to Guo Siwei. Again, who is legitimate does not matter."
"Do you remember what I said? To put it bluntly, Guo Qianyue and Huang Huaili were both businessmen, and most of the noble families are the same. All they want is profit. So who becomes the emperor is irrelevant to them; the key is who being emperor benefits them more."
"So, Your Majesty, how do you think you compare to Guo Siwei?"
The young emperor thought for a moment. "I don't know."
"Guo Siwei is cruel and tyrannical. In his clash with the Huang family this time, his ruthless methods have already aroused the disgust and vigilance of the other noble families. Let me ask you, if you were doing business, would you rather deal with a tolerant person or a violent one?"
The young emperor understood instantly.
"And there is one more thing... This war must be fought. Guo Siwei has already proclaimed himself emperor, and there are still many people taking his side. Can you bear to let the fathers, brothers, sons, and nephews of these commoners die in this war?"
Li Yunzhi recalled the scenes of himself chatting with the commoners and shook his head repeatedly.
"So, if someone is willing to provide the funds, why refuse? Using other people's money to accomplish your own goals is the best strategy."
Zhao Wu looked at Fang Zhiyi. Why did he sometimes feel that this guy was incredibly cunning?
"But to accomplish this, Your Majesty, you must first do something else." Fang Zhiyi narrowed his eyes.
Soon, those noble families who maintained a wait-and-see attitude received massive news. The butcher Fang Zhiyi had repeatedly defied the Emperor's will and acted on his own authority, making it truly unbearable for the Emperor. However, considering his great contributions and hard work, he was stripped of his title as Grand General and reverted to the position of Grand Tutor, forbidden from interfering in military affairs any longer.
The noble families were not stupid. For the Emperor to release such a signal at this moment was an indirect expression of goodwill toward them.
The apprehensive noble families became active, flocking to seek an audience with the Emperor. Li Yunzhi had already learned what Fang Zhiyi taught him about tailoring his words to his audience. His attitude left the representatives of the noble families very satisfied. Then, he used the fate of the Huang family to subtly warn them. This tactic worked wonders. The representatives bitterly cursed Guo Siwei's treacherous ambitions of usurping the throne in front of the Emperor, scrambling over one another to express their unwavering loyalty. Li Yunzhi accepted it all without hesitation.
After the meeting, to show their loyalty, the major noble families eagerly contributed money and manpower. Their goal was to earn merit with the young emperor. Once the empire was stabilized in the future, it would be impossible for the Emperor not to remember this past favor. Even if they couldn't reach the heights of the Guo and Huang families, they would at least become regional overlords.
Looking again at Li Yunzhi, he was the legitimate royal heir, tolerant and benevolent, and possessed the hearts of the people. These positive attributes piled onto Li Yunzhi, making him seem as if he naturally radiated light.
It was just that Li Yunzhi always felt that the Grand Tutor was suffering too much injustice by making him do this.
But turning his head and seeing Zhao Wu, who was now leading the army, bowing and scraping as he followed the Grand Tutor, he felt like he was overthinking things. That nonsense about losing the Grand General title and not interfering in military affairs seemed entirely fake when it came to the Grand Tutor.
"Grand Tutor, we are bound to win this time, right?" Li Yunzhi asked cautiously after the people around them had dispersed.
Fang Zhiyi cast a sidelong glance at him. "Bound to win? Which organ did you use to think up that conclusion?"
"Our army is already approaching the capital, and the armies of the noble families are arriving soon, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of border troops who have surrendered..."
"Does fighting a war just depend on having more people?" Fang Zhiyi asked abruptly.
Li Yunzhi shut his mouth. He had grown a head taller now, and his skin was much darker, but in front of Fang Zhiyi, he could never put on the airs of an emperor.
"That Old Thief Yuwen has been clamoring about eliminating the false emperor, and a month has passed by now. Do you see him having conquered it?"
Li Yunzhi shook his head.
"The eighty thousand border troops who defected to us claim to be eighty thousand, but in reality, they are less than fifty thousand. And you still have to subtract the old, the weak, the sick, and the disabled. Do you expect them to lay siege to a city?"
The light on Li Yunzhi's face gradually dimmed.
"I didn't let you fight in the past battles because there was no need; after all, attacking the mind is the superior strategy. But this time is different. This is your decisive battle with Guo Siwei, and it is a tough one. Don't think those noble families are truly loyal to you. They are still watching. If you show the slightest sign of decline, they will immediately turn against you. Of course, that doesn't mean they will surrender to Guo Siwei, but rather, they wouldn't hesitate to change emperors."
"Then... Grand Tutor, what should I do?"
"What should you do?" Fang Zhiyi tapped his finger on the tabletop. "Lead the troops into battle yourself."
Li Yunzhi really went to the battlefield. There was no exchange of trash talk; his allied army tightly surrounded the four gates of the capital. Yet Guo Siwei was unafraid. Facing such a formation, he still dared to order his soldiers to open the city gates and engage in battle outside the city.
Fang Zhiyi's psychological warfare tactics had lost their effectiveness by this point. Both the defending and attacking soldiers were seeing red. The area outside the capital turned into a meat grinder. The two sides slaughtered each other for many consecutive days, yet Guo Siwei's defensive line remained rock solid.
Even Li Yunzhi could sense the crumbling morale within his ranks. He knew all too well that if things continued this way, defeat was only a matter of time. His own downfall was of little consequence, but should those noble families turn on him...
Li Yunzhi was weighed down by anxiety, whereas Fang Zhiyi, by contrast, seemed lost in deep thought.
nto another world, I bought a slave for the first time, never expecting the silver wolf girl to be so cute... Lin Feng: I know it's cold, but you don't have to sneak into my bed! Yuna: Just sharing body warmth, if you dare do anything naughty, I'll definitely...
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."
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.”
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.
