In the season of fluttering winter snow, the royal capital of the State of Ji held only flames; rarely was a lamp to be seen.
This royal city of enduring antiquity was already reduced to ruins, with only the royal palace and two surrounding neighborhoods left relatively intact.
Short-bearded Li Zhi walked along the muddy street, his gaze solemn. Broken walls and crumbled ruins lay everywhere. Snapped flagpoles and carriage shafts were strewn across the roadways, and the doors of several houses were burned down to mere frames. Corpses lay beside stone steps, some pressed beneath tattered straw mats with hands and feet protruding. The wells were choked, their rims crusted with dark stains that wound out across the ground.
In the distance, the city wall was severed in half, an open breach through which the bitter wind roared, blowing away the acrid smoke yet failing to disperse the dense stench of blood.
The entire city had been utterly destroyed by war. Ever since Qingming invented artillery, the face of warfare had changed completely.
From the moment he breached the walls to reaching the gates of the palace, Li Zhi had actually fought for nine full months. Though it was the eleventh month of winter and fresh snow had just fallen, the ground had long since turned into a quagmire beneath the trampling feet of heavily armored soldiers. Several heavy cannons were mired in the mud, immovable even by Body Casting warriors, who now waited for Dao Foundation cultivators to reinforce them.
Nine hundred thousand casualties—such was the price Li Zhi had paid to fight his way here. Nearly every house and every street had been built upon heaps of corpses. Before the war began, Li Zhi could never have imagined it would turn out like this.
Wang Zhi and Sun Chao'en—one from the eunuch faction and one a treacherous courtier—along with a foolish, corrupt monarch: what was there worth dying for? Weren't the clean-stream scholars of truly noble character all locked away in the imperial prison? Li Zhi simply could not fathom it.
This protracted war had exacted a terrible toll from Li Zhi as well. The matter of his adoption to the King of Qi had completely stalled, while Southern Qi's routine annual supplies to the Zhenshan Fief had been slashed by seventy percent. On top of that, of the twelve veteran generals who had followed Li Zhi from the earliest days of pioneering the Zhenshan Fief, three had died in battle, and his core veteran battalions had suffered over fifty percent casualties.
Every single blow shook the foundations of Li Zhi's bid to become a king.
Fortunately, all of this was finally coming to an end.
The areas surrounding the royal palace had all been secured; sixteen of the royal city's seventeen districts had fallen into Li Zhi's hands. Although a grand formation remained active within the palace, allowing supplies to be brought in from the outside, it was a drop in the ocean, having little real effect.
Now, the palace guards were down to a mere few thousand old, weak, sick, and crippled men, and their artillery shells were completely exhausted. Li Zhi thus resolved to finish it all in one final stroke today.
As if knowing the final hour had arrived, the palace gates suddenly swung open in the face of Li Zhi's advancing army, and Wang Zhi stepped forth.
At his side were imperial guards, palace attendants, eunuchs, and even maidservants, each bearing wounds, many barely able to remain standing.
Li Zhi said nothing. He merely pointed forward with his hand, and countless sword-and-shield infantry surged past him, charging toward the palace gates.
This chief supervising eunuch—perhaps not the most powerful in the history of the State of Ji, but certainly the most formidable in combat—drew his long blade and raised his arm, shouting at the top of his lungs, "If you're real men, charge with me!"
And so, this wounded rabble, the majority of whom were not "real men" in the traditional sense, held off Li Zhi's mighty army for half a shichen before finally being completely overwhelmed.
When Wang Zhi's corpse was carried before Li Zhi, only one hand and one foot remained. His body was covered in countless wounds, and nearly half his internal organs were gone.
Li Zhi suddenly flared into a rage and roared, "Why didn't you take him alive? Why?!"
The general stammered, unable to speak. Furious beyond measure, Li Zhi grabbed whatever was at hand and hurled it into the general's face, instantly leaving him bloodied and battered.
A moment later, another general arrived to report that all resistance within the palace had been mopped up. The good news was that Sun Chao'en had been captured alive. As for the King of Ji, he had been taken in the Imperial Study.
Li Zhi fell silent for a moment before saying, "Bring Sun Chao'en to the Imperial Study. Interrogate him together with the King of Ji."
Moments later, Li Zhi strode into the Imperial Study. He walked a circle around the room, carefully inspecting the furnishings, before circling behind the desk and taking a seat in the King of Ji's chair.
The King of Ji had long since been hauled to his feet by soldiers and stood in a corner. Sun Chao'en was also dragged in, severely wounded, his left arm completely gone. Unable to stand, he could only slump into a chair.
Once seated, Li Zhi hardened his expression and barked, "What are you all standing around for? Don't you know that Lord Sun is an old friend of mine? Bring medicine for his wounds!"
His subordinates were completely baffled, but hurriedly brought healing pills and fed them to Sun Chao'en. Sun Chao'en offered no resistance and swallowed them down.
Li Zhi paid no heed to the King of Ji, speaking instead to Sun Chao'en: "Brother Sun's great talent is something I have experienced to the fullest over the past two years. It can truly be said that more than a million men of my Zhenshan Army died because of you. If I remember correctly, you share an old acquaintance with Brother Wei Yuan, and you surely know my relationship with him.
"Why then did you spare no effort to stop me? As far as I know, there is no personal grievance between us."
Sun Chao'en said, "To eat the ruler's grain is to be loyal to his cause. Since the King of Ji treated me as a state hero, I repaid him as one. That is all."
"Yet Brother Sun's reputation does not seem very good?"
"Reputation is merely an external trapping. So long as my conscience is clear, that is enough. As for what posterity might say or how the histories might record it, it matters not in the least to me."
Li Zhi sighed. "Sun Chao'en, Wang Zhi—both are capable ministers of the realm. Gaining either one could bring peace to the world. King of Ji, to have gained two at once, even I am envious."
Standing in the corner, the King of Ji only now spoke: "It is our good fortune, and yet their misfortune."
Li Zhi said to his subordinates, "I hear the king has a consort named Cai Miao, whose fame has spread far and wide. Where is she now? Bring her here; let me have a look."
His subordinate acknowledged the command and left, returning a moment later with a strange expression. "Cai Miao hanged herself in the rear palace. According to the palace maid who served her, she left behind these words: 'To spare myself humiliation at the enemy's hands, this concubine departs first, to preserve my virtue and name.'"
This outcome was entirely beyond Li Zhi's expectations. He instantly exploded with fury: "A whore who would bed any man dares talk of virtue?
"A joke! What an utter joke! Fine, didn't she want to preserve her virtue? Men, strip her corpse naked and hang it from the palace gates! Let the whole State of Ji see her virtue!"
A veteran general standing nearby stepped forward and whispered, "My lord, this will tarnish your reputation. You must not!"
Li Zhi regained a measure of calm. Grabbing Sun Chao'en by the collar, he ground his teeth and said, "You were the one who presented this Cai Miao to the King of Ji! I hear that you two, along with that dead Wang Zhi, all disported with her together. Why is it that when it comes to me, she suddenly becomes a paragon of chaste martyrdom?!"
Sun Chao'en said calmly, "All that has passed was like wandering through wind and rain, through mud and water. But no matter how long one stays in the mud, there are those who still wish to glimpse the sunlight."
Li Zhi pointed at Sun Chao'en and the King of Ji, his hand trembling slightly. "Weren't you two the ones who pushed her into the mud in the first place? Could it be—"
He finally realized he was losing his composure and swallowed back the rest of his words. Yet that half-sentence lodged in his chest like an obstruction, unable to go down or come up. Li Zhi could not comprehend it no matter how hard he thought: in the heart of a woman known across the world as a wanton harlot, could he really be beneath a foolish ruler like the King of Ji and a treacherous scoundrel like Sun Chao'en?
After regaining his composure, Li Zhi told his attendants, "All of you, step outside."
Once the attendants had withdrawn, Li Zhi produced a length of white silk, wound it around the King of Ji's neck, and spoke slowly: "Did you think I wouldn't dare kill you? Did you think no one could touch you?"
The King of Ji said calmly, "How could anything under heaven be absolute? But with two beloved ministers like Sun and Wang, and Cai Miao by our side, this life was worth living."
"You truly aren't afraid of death, are you? Then how is it I heard that when Qingming attacked, you pissed and shat your pants in terror?" Li Zhi ground his teeth once more.
The King of Ji turned his head slightly. Deep within his aged, clouded eyes lay a lucid clarity that saw through the ways of the world. "That was Qingming. Who wouldn't be afraid?"
A faint grinding sound came from Li Zhi's teeth, but he said nothing. He simply tossed the white silk over a roof beam and slowly pulled it tight.
The King of Ji's body was hoisted slowly into midair. His body struggled instinctively, but suppressed under Li Zhi's dharmic power, his struggles were entirely futile.
Sun Chao'en had remained calm at first, but as the King of Ji's breath grew faint and finally ceased, his expression abruptly warped, and he shot to his feet!
Blue veins bulged on the back of Li Zhi's hand as he pulled the white silk. Ten thousand li away in Qingming, Wei Yuan walked out of his residence and looked up at the sky.
Across the celestial vault, a colossal wound suddenly tore open, slowly dripping blood like Heaven's demise.
Chapter 1365