Chapter 710: Who Dares to Pretend to Be Destiny, Who Dares to Pester Again?

Chapter 710: Who Dares to Impersonate Fate, Who Dares to Come Pestering Again

“You once solemnly swore to me that your lifelong aspiration was to rectify the chaos of the sequences, abolish the distinctions between the Three Teachings and Nine Schools, and rid the world of all sequence divisions. To rewrite the fate of all under heaven. From then on, heaven would command fate, and human hearts would command fortune!”

“You said that back then, Emperor Yizong created the sequences to save the people from life and death, so I would take on a righteousness beyond the reach of ordinary men, with a public heart devoted to the nation and the people, to completely end the turmoil brought by the sequences and restore fairness and justice to the common folk. Thus I would stand alongside Emperor Yizong in the annals of history, eternal and immortal!”

The great fire within the city burned the night into a twilight sunset, and the thousand-year-old capital still echoed with the rising and falling cries of battle.

“When you spoke those words, I truly believed you, thinking you were genuinely sincere in wanting to assist me in becoming a wise sovereign. Yet every single thing you did afterward told me that the path you wished to tread was clearly the opposite, and everything you said was nothing but a hastily woven lie!”

Zhu Yiyan stared fixedly at the figure that seemed almost fused with the withered tree, his face etched with bone-deep hatred.

“I treated you as my esteemed teacher, yet you regarded me as a foolish and ignorant disciple. I treated you as a statesman of the realm, yet you saw me as a benighted ruler unfit to bear great responsibility. You spurned the bond between teacher and student, betrayed the righteousness between sovereign and subject. Zhang Fengyue, tell me, is there a single word I have spoken wrongly, or is there anything I still fail to comprehend?”

His furious voice roared, the withered tree trembled in fear, its branches and leaves rustling and shaking.

“Then do you think, why did I deceive you?”

After a long pause, Zhang Fengyue’s voice finally sounded slowly.

“Because in your eyes, I am merely a tool, a tool to help you completely overthrow the Great Ming dynasty!”

Zhu Yiyan answered without hesitation: “From the very beginning, you knew full well that eradicating the sequences was utterly impossible. Whether the Three Teachings or the Nine Schools, sequences are the most intense manifestation of human desire and ambition. The more you suppress them, the more you stir the world’s pursuit and craving. Since the day sequence practitioners appeared, they could never be completely eliminated.”

“Moreover, you do not dare to sever the sequences, because you understand the advantage and power of the Zongheng Sequence in ‘Karma’, and you fear that one day I might slip from your control, turning all your ambitions to nothing.”

Zhu Yiyan sneered: “But you also need me desperately—you need the Spring and Autumn Society, the Honghu, the Liutao to help you achieve your goals. So you painstakingly schemed, step by step pushing me in the direction you envisioned…”

Zhu Yiyan’s words suddenly halted, a cold smile slowly curling at the corner of his mouth.

“Even now, you are still scheming against me!”

The figure beneath the tree gave no response, as if all the secrets within his heart had been laid bare, leaving him powerless to refute, forced to meet it with silence.

Seeing this, the young emperor’s excitement grew even stronger, even the ten fingers hidden within his sleeves trembling slightly.

The sounds of sequence breaking echoed unceasingly in his ears, and the rapidly surging power of Zongheng made him feel as though he held the entire Southern Zhili in his grasp; to make it his ‘Karma’, he needed only a single thought, and he could sway even the most resolute rebel into becoming a lackey under his command.

Uniting vertical and horizontal to establish Karma, with the great momentum in hand, he was invincible.

Looking at the withered old man in the chair, Zhu Yiyan now felt that the shadow which had loomed over him for so many years had finally dissipated completely.

He was no longer the trembling young master of the empire, but the true Jiaqi Emperor!

“This siege of Jinling was also a carefully orchestrated play by your own hand. For the sake of those ants, Zhang Fengyue, you truly went to great lengths.”

Zhu Yiyan showed a trace of emotion: “It’s a pity that even if you have to pay with your life for this, in this empire, only I am truly capable of understanding you. Eternal fame, in the end, has nothing to do with you.”

“Do you truly understand?”

The same question as before, in the same calm and indifferent tone.

But in Zhu Yiyan’s heart, it could no longer stir even a ripple; his gaze even held a hint of pity.

“You do not trust me, nor do you trust Li Jun, and even less can you trust Zhan Shun. The only thing you are willing to trust is two words: checks and balances!”

Zhu Yiyan raised his head to gaze at the night sky; the scent of blood carried by the cold wind was still strong, but it did not prevent him from feeling exceptionally refreshed at this moment.

“You tore down the threshold for entering the sequence and lowered the difficulty of breaking it, but to achieve universal entry into the sequence still requires a long time. And time is precisely what you lack most now—you cannot wait until that day.”

“Thus you need a situation of checks and balances to ensure that after your death, all the plans you left behind can still continue along the path you designed.”

Zhu Yiyan’s expression was confident, his tone resolute: “Zhan Shun is the incarnation of Huangliang’s will; the evil desires bred by countless dreams have made it paranoid, mad, and greedy. You know it will sooner or later be unsatisfied with merely existing in falsehood, and one day it will reach out into the real world under my rule. Thus between Zhan Shun and me, there is an inevitable struggle for Karma, and sooner or later we will be irreconcilable enemies.”

“Li Jun is the representative of billions of ants; even if he himself is unwilling, there are too many people and things in this world he cannot abandon, which have formed chains to trap him. He should have been an unfeeling beast, but now he is a prisoner in a sea of love and desire. A man who walked alone can no longer walk alone. Reluctance, unwillingness, resentment—these ensure he will never compromise with either Zhan Shun or me.”

“And to give me the power to contend with Zhan Shun and Li Jun, you are willing to sacrifice yourself, allowing me to reshape the royal Karma and ascend to the Zongheng Sequence as the Sovereign of Twenty Thousand Domains.”

Zhu Yiyan smiled: “Thus the divine power of Huangliang, the human power of Li Jun, and my imperial power will form a tripartite balance. This is the check and balance you, Zhang Fengyue, need after your death! Only thus can the great undertaking of universal sequence entry you desire possibly continue.”

Zhang Fengyue’s gaze was calm: “Since you believe you have seen through everything, why have you come here?”

“Precisely because I have seen through your conspiracy, I am naturally fearless.”

“Do you think you can have the last laugh?”

“Why not?”

Zhu Yiyan said matter-of-factly: “Not only Zhan Shun and Li Jun, but also Zhang Siyuan, Chen Qisheng, Zou Sijiu, Tianque, Chishe, Moyuan—every person or force connected to you that could become your backup—after today, they will all be loyal dogs of my Zhu family. No one will be spared.”

“Zhang Fengyue, the checks and balances you desire are nothing but wishful thinking; I will never let them come to pass!”

In the vast world howling with blizzards, the pitch-black fanaticism spread for a full ten li, like a huge swamp spewing endless hatred.

Midair, Chen Qisheng shook his shoulders, shattering the seal-script thunderfire all over his body; his silver-white armor was now covered in scars.

“Mount Longhu is already gone, but your Wudang…”

Zhang Xiji, who had returned to the human world from the underworld, muttered to himself, his eyes filled with eerie blackness, the malevolence in his features growing fiercer.

“Why hasn’t it perished yet?!”

The murmur suddenly turned into an angry roar; Zhang Xiji’s white hair danced behind him, his divine thoughts surging like a black wave, shooting into the sky.

In an instant, intense pain flooded Chen Qisheng’s mind, and a host of illusions sprang before his eyes.

The snow-covered Liaodong plains vanished, replaced by a majestic mountain peak submerged in blinding thunderlight, everywhere burning temples and collapsed palaces, broken corpses strewn across the mountain stone steps.

Beneath the mountain gate arch inscribed with the four great characters ‘Daoist Ancestral Court’, Chen Qisheng stood alone.

And before him, covering the mountains and fields like bloodthirsty demons, were the New Faction Dao Sequences, howling as they swarmed forward.

The hellish scene, like fate’s entanglement, appeared before him once more, constantly pounding at Chen Qisheng’s mind.

“Chen Qisheng, you were originally just an ordinary modulated acolyte on Mount Longhu, your sole destiny to devote yourself to the Dao. How could you possibly become the protagonist of the Dao Sequence? Because all the coincidences you experienced were nothing but predestined designs laid out by others.”

“You think you are the junior disciple they recognized, but in truth, you are just another living tomb they chose, another pitiable soul to avenge them.”

“Vengeance begets vengeance, destined to be endless. Even if you have now destroyed Longhu, the New Faction Dao Sequence will never be cut off; they will appear before you in all kinds of guises. What you see now will repeat itself without end.”

Shi Qing’s voice chattered in his ears, tempting Chen Qisheng.

“Cultivators long to become immortals and patriarchs; all they do is pursue the Dao for eternal life. Chen Qisheng, rather than being bound by hatred all your life, why not simply let go of all obsessions and become a carefree Daoist, begging heaven for eternal life?”

“Beg heaven for eternal life…”

The Daoist finally spoke, his tone flat without any fluctuation.

“Who is heaven, and who grants eternal life?”

Shi Qing’s voice carried a smile: “You know it in your heart, so why ask knowingly?”

Clang!

The sword sang shrill, a colossal dharma apparition rose into the air, sweeping a huge azure sword, cleaving thousands of evil ghosts in two.

“It should be your Zhu family’s heaven that begs this Daoist not to seek eternal life. You know it in your heart, so why ask knowingly?!”

Boom!

A pillar of thunder crashed down, shattering half of the dharma apparition’s body.

High in the sky, Zhang Xiji was like a mad demon, stars twinkling behind him, thunder falling like rain.

“Chen Qisheng, you slaughtered my Longhu; today, you will pay with blood!”

The howls of countless New Faction spirits mingled with the thunder, resounding through the entire world.

“I will slaughter all your people, then annihilate your souls. This Daoist wants to see—who dares to impersonate fate, who dares to come pestering again!”

Boom!

The torrential rain pours down, yet it cannot quench the Yellow Millet Dream that now envelops the entirety of Chengdu.

The surging night besieges the bright great moon; a mountain-sized giant ape is trapped by chains among the row upon row of towering buildings.

Heads roll into the filthy water; a blade-bearing Ya Zi is cleaved in twain from within.

Fan Wujiu, drenched in blood, has his blunted Xiuchun Dao nailed into a corpse's chest; the hot muzzle of a gun is aimed at the face of a Yellow Millet Ghost, and he fires the last bullet without hesitation.

The roar of the mechanical heart within his chest is no longer deep, and his skin-worn knuckles reveal the cold gleam of mechanical bones.

Endless slaughter has numbed his mind; his thoughts are blank, and he throws punches on instinct.

Thump!

An incredibly heavy sound suddenly thuds against his heart; snapping back to reality, Fan Wujiu instinctively looks up at the sky.

A figure in crimson soars past above him, crashing heavily into the ground far away; the spreading shockwave kicks up countless debris and corpses, darkening his vision.

“You should now understand, Zou Sijiu, just how powerful the Yellow Millet Dream is after freeing forty percent of its restraints.”

Zhan Shun treads the void, looking down from on high at Zou Sijiu as he slowly rises from the deep crater in the ground.

“It seems that line should be mine after all: Zou Sijiu, will you surrender or not?”

“I just finished talking tough and I’m already slapped down, and in front of so many people in the real world. That’s downright embarrassing.”

Zou Sijiu gives a bitter laugh, looking down at his chest armor, which Zhan Shun has shattered with a single punch; the waves of sharp pain are all too real.

If this were in the dream, as a Three Dream Master of the Yin-Yang Order, Zou Sijiu’s injuries would be trivial and healed in an instant.

But now, Chengdu is in a strange state where dream and reality intermingle; he can use the abilities of the Yin-Yang Order here, but he is also bound by the laws of the real world.

If he cannot use dream power to heal, the frail physique of the Yin-Yang Order cannot hold out for long.

Unless he can seize from Zhan Shun the dream that envelops Chengdu.

But the terrifying strength Zhan Shun has after freeing forty percent of his restraints far exceeds Zou Sijiu’s expectations; even now with sixty percent of the authority, he can no longer suppress the other as he once did, much less wrest back the dream-making power.

Even the lords of the Eastern Palace, once like chickens and dogs, now can fight fiercely against the aid Zou Sijiu summoned with his Dream Master rule [Gods Breaking Calamity], and even gain the upper hand.

Yuan Mingfei is also tightly bound by the Yellow Millet’s dark ocean; though her life is not in danger, she cannot offer help to Zou Sijiu.

“Dreams are boundless; everything you desire can be realized within them. Even after the Yellow Millet completely devours reality, speaking truth into law will be within easy reach. So, Zou Sijiu, this conflict between us is utterly meaningless.”

Zhan Shun is not in a hurry to strike. He looks at Zou Sijiu and says: “You can no longer command the Yellow Millet’s will with the authority in your hands. Instead of continuing to resist, you might as well stop now. Cede the authority to me, help me completely break free of my bonds, and in exchange, I will write a rule oath in the Yellow Millet’s will that I will never harm you.”

“Never harm me does not mean I won’t be enslaved or imprisoned forever. Zhan Shun, we are all dream players; there’s no need for such trickery.”

“No slavery, merely the need to serve the Yellow Millet. No imprisonment, only necessary constraints. You have defied the Yellow Millet time and again; being allowed to live is already the greatest grace.”

Zhan Shun’s tone carries undeniable authority: “The authority is not your bargaining chip. Kill you, and everything will return to the Yellow Millet all the same. My forbearance now is only because, after I master the real world, the Yellow Millet will need a new proxy. Do you understand?”

“Since you are so insincere, then why even talk?”

Zou Sijiu runs his hands over his temples; his fiery red shoulder-length hair slowly turns black. The armor on his body quakes violently, clanging like human curses, but it cannot resist Zou Sijiu’s dream power and dissolves into points of light in the void.

With his black hair combed back, sleeves loosened, and shoulders rolled, Zou Sijiu’s ferocious aura does not diminish by one bit.

“What I hate most in life is having good fortune go unrecognized. If I can’t kill you, you bastard, and make a name for myself today, then I might as well die right here and be done with it!”