Unsheathed

His head had been placed into a box and delivered to the late emperor, who had sat in his imperial study for an entire night, reading through a file until daylight arrived. After that came an imperial edict, ordering the Ministry of Rites to arrange Song Yuzhang’s appointment as the new Downtrodden Mountain God. Only the head of his deity statue in the temple was gilded in gold, and that was why he was also known as the Gold Head Mountain God.

Over twenty years ago, several elderly individuals in the Imperial Clan Court, which was responsible for keeping the genealogical records of the Song Clan, had perished. Several more had perished this year and the year before, and all of them had died from “natural causes.”

The truth was that the previous group had been forced to perish under the late emperor’s imperial edict, while the latest group had brought about their own demise, placing their bets on a prince with no foundation to speak of, supporting his claim to the throne just because he was technically the true eldest son.

Song He departed, leaving the empress dowager to sip tea on her own with a myriad of emotions in her heart.

Despite her decision to cast him away, Song Jixin or Song Mu was still her own flesh and blood, so how could she not have some type of emotional attachment to him?

Her tears had been filled with eyes as she gazed upon her adorable eldest son, who had been wrapped up in swaddling clothes at the time, and she had murmured to him, “This is all because you’re the elder brother. It’s all because you were born in the Song Clan. It’s all because you were unfortunate enough to have been given such a pair of cruel parents.”

The late emperor had been present at the time, but he hadn’t been angry at her in the slightest.

Ever since she was reprimanded by the late emperor for breaking the rules to access those secret files, she had completely lost hope and regarded her son as dead.

However, as time passed, more and more guilt accumulated in her heart, and she became afraid of facing Song Jixin, even afraid of hearing anything about him.

She was even more afraid that Song Jixin would ruin the bright future that had been paved out for the “only son” that she had kept by her side.

Song Yuzhang had a chance to not have to die. At the very least, he could’ve died a little later and more glamorously. According to the late emperor’s initial plans, Song Yuzhang would’ve first spent a few years in the Ministry of Rites, then assigned to serve as an authority figure in some insignificant place.

Essentially, he would’ve been “imprisoned,” left to live out his days in peace and prosperity, and following his death, he would’ve received a glowing posthumous title for his contributions to the Song Clan.

One had to realize that the covered bridge, the construction of which Song Yuzhang had overseen from beginning to end, concealed the Song Clan’s greatest scandal. If that scandal had been revealed, then Lake View Academy would’ve had significant leverage against the Great Li Empire, and that would’ve perhaps even hindered the empire’s plans of conquering the entire Eastern Treasured Vial Continent.

Hence, the late emperor had already been extremely tolerant and benevolent to Song Yuzhang.

That was until Song Yuzhang made a grave mistake. Over in the small town, there had already been rumors circulating that Song Jixin was Song Yuzhang’s illegitimate son. The rumors had become extremely prevalent, but not only had Song Yuzhang not tried to stamp out these rumors, he had even dared to display emotions similar to fatherly affection to Song Jixin.

Deep down in Song Jixin’s heart, he certainly resented Song Yuzhang, but at the same time, there was a part of him that wished that Song Yuzhang really was his birth father. This had all been clearly recorded in that secret file, and for that, Song Yuzhang had to die, particularly in the wake of his determination not to change his ways even after returning to the Dragon Spring Prefecture as an official of the Ministry of Rites.

Hence, even following Song Yuzhang’s demise, the late emperor still wasn’t willing to let him off the hook. He had allowed the empress dowager to sever his head before having it delivered to the capital, following which he appointed Song Yuzhang as the Downtrodden Mountain God, making the Gold Head Mountain God the laughing stock of the entire new Northern Mountain.

Even though the late emperor had already passed, there was still lingering fear toward him in the empress dowager’s heart.

She loved him dearly, just as she deeply admired and revered him, but she was very pleased that he had died at just the right time.

For some women, love was like a cooking condiment. It would be ideal to have the condiment, but it was far from mandatory, and she could always compensate with other condiments and ingredients.

The old white-robed immortal who had tucked the immortal covered bridge up his sleeve earlier stroked his beard as he chuckled, “It sounds like our empress dowager is educating her son once again.”

Xu Ruo smiled and offered no response.

The ship of the Great Li Empire returned south, while the Skeleton Shoal intercontinental ship continued northward.

The old man turned his gaze to the north as he asked, “Why was Dong Shuijing chosen instead of him?”

“Those who are too kind cannot rule over armies, just as those who are too morally upright cannot be entrusted with wealth,” Xu Ruo replied with a smile.

The old man scoffed in response, making no effort to hide his disdain.

Xu Ruo rested his hands on the hilts of the swords behind him in a casual and relaxed manner as he cast his gaze toward the distant scenery.

At the moment, the ship was passing over a series of rivers that were fanned out like a broom.

The old man was the spokesperson for the Mohist main branch after it decided to back the Great Li Empire on the Eastern Treasured Vial Continent.

He and Xu Ruo had always been on very good terms with one another, but in the wake of the defeat suffered by the latter in his attempt to claim a spot as one of the leading figures of Mohism, he had left the Middle Earth Divine Continent and ultimately chosen the Great Li Empire.

Their Mohist branch had been joined by a side branch of the Naturalist Lu Clan at the time, and the two branches had come together instantly, privately constructing the blasphemous White Jade Capital replica that was capable of trapping and killing Immortal Tier cultivators.

Additionally, that Naturalist cultivator had even more snide tricks concealed up his sleeve. He was going to coerce the late emperor of the Great Li Empire into going against the rules of Confucianism to cultivate to the Middle Five Tiers, and once he did so, he would retain his intelligence, but be secretly reduced to a puppet.

Furthermore, his cultivation base would cease to exist, returning him to a mere mortal. Hence, even if Mountain Cliff Academy in the Great Li Empire’s capital or Lake View Academy in the central region of the Eastern Treasured Vial Continent were to notice that some fishy business had transpired, there would be no leads for them to follow. Only the almighty Naturalist Lu Clan could’ve been capable of hatching and executing such a plan.

Even the “old carpenter” with the Luan surname had been completely kept in the dark, remaining oblivious to the plan despite his close proximity to those involved, and that was sufficient testament to the meticulous nature of that Lu Clan cultivator, as well as the shrewdness of the Great Li Empire’s late emperor.

Both Cui Chan and Qi Jingchun’s Mountain Cliff Academy only chose the Song Clan after those two branches. The two of them had already turned on each other, but were forced to become neighbors, and it was difficult to say what their respective true objectives were.

However, the arrival of A’Liang had completely altered the state of the Great Li Empire and the entire Eastern Treasured Vial Continent.

In the wake of that sword strike from A’Liang, the White Jade Capital had been rendered dysfunctional, and the sword formation within would be incapable of activation for the next few decades.

As a result, the Song Clan had truly been dealt an extremely heavy blow. However, the silver lining on the situation was that Branch Master Lu Chen, who had secretly come to the Jewel Small World, seemed to have given up on the idea of lashing out at the Great Li Empire, choosing to spare the White Jade Capital replica in an act of mercy that still confounded many powerful figures in lofty positions to this day.

Even if Lu Chen had stepped out of line slightly and struck out at the Great Li Empire in addition to the White Jade Capital replica, the sages of the Middle Earth Divine Continent’s Confucian temple wouldn’t have intervened.

After that, the Great Li Empire’s forces accelerated in its southward expansion.

It had cost the Great Li Empire immensely to construct the White Jade Capital replica, and on top of that, the Great Li Empire had commissioned Luan Changye and the Mohist Mechanists to construct eight mountain ships, funding the project on credit while also securing funds through a certain secret avenue.

It could be said that if the Great Li Empire’s southward expansion had been obstructed somewhere, all it would’ve taken would’ve been three to five years of stagnant progress, and the Song Clan would’ve been unable to support the war efforts any longer, even if the Great Li Empire’s forces remained largely intact.

Hence, the Luminous Vermilion Empire definitely hadn’t been acting on impulse in its decision to try and stop the Great Li Empire’s forces at all costs. Similarly, all of those surrounding subsidiary nations had opposed the Great Li Empire’s army with all their might, and that had also been done under the orders and guidance of powerful figures pulling the strings from behind the scenes.

Otherwise, the Great Li Empire was clearly an inevitable juggernaut, and anyone could see that any nation that stood in their path would be subjected to heavy defeats, so no one would’ve been willing to oppose them under normal circumstances.

In the past, the old Mohist cultivator had a terrible impression of Cui Chan, thinking it impossible for Cui Chan to live up to his glowing reputation and that his feats had to have been heavily embellished. So what if he had played the Iridescent Cloud Go Manual with the lord of White Emperor City?

So what if he had once been a disciple to the Scholarly Sage? So what if he were a twelfth tier cultivator? He had no background or territory to speak of, and even back on the Middle Earth Divine Continent, he still couldn’t have been considered to have been among the cream of the crop.

What could he possibly amount to after being cast out of the Scholarly Sage’s scholarly lineage and scurrying back to the Eastern Treasured Vial Continent with his tail tucked between his legs?

However, only after the old man had been convinced by Xu Ruo to come to the Eastern Treasured Vial Continent did the former finally begin to understand what was so remarkable about Cui Chan.

During the perilous period of time in which the Great Li Empire’s forces were being kept at bay by the Luminous Vermilion Empire, Cui Chan, who had remained largely hidden behind the scenes up to that point, finally made a rare appearance, presumably to provide a sense of calmness and reassurance during such an uncertain time.

He had gathered together a bunch of old geezers, and they had sat down together for a candid conversation. He hadn’t declared to them that the Great Li Empire was sure to succeed, nor had he discussed with them how the spoils were to be distributed once the empire succeeded.

Instead, he merely spoke about every single step of the procedure of advancement that the Great Li Empire’s forces were going to follow for the next ten years, going into such exceptionally fine detail that he was virtually mapping out every single battle that the three branches of the army would fight, including who their opponents would be, where the battles would take place, how many casualties each side would suffer, and the corresponding state of the Great Li Empire’s National Treasury.

After that, he spoke about the minute changes that would arise in the attitudes of Lake View Academy, True Martial Mountain, the Wind Snow Temple, and other top-tier immortal powers on the Eastern Treasured Vial Continent at the different stages of his ten-year plan, as well as when Qi Zhen of the Divine Edict Sect would get involved and when he would finally be willing to meet with the envoys of the Great Li Empire.

He had even predicted the uprisings of nations that the Great Li Empire’s forces had already conquered, including the catalysts to these uprisings and how they were to be quelled, as well as what the Great Li Empire was going to gain and lose in those battles.

In the end, Cui Chan had told everyone to wait and see, and that they didn’t have to make any rushed decisions on whether they believed him and whether to withdraw their backing of the Great Li Empire, or lend it even more of their support. Instead, they could simply observe the situation as it unfolded and see if things would pan out according to Cui Chan’s predictions.

As it turned out, Cui Chan was correct every step of the way, and the old Mohist cultivator was forced to concede that Cui Chan really was an exceptional Go player.

However, he retained his skepticism and visited Cui Chan to ask him exactly how he had accomplished this. In his mind, there was no way that a true clairvoyant could possibly exist in this world, at least not one capable of seeing the future to such fine detail. After all, a continentwide war was undoubtedly far more complex than any game of Go.

In response, Cui Chan had taken him to a tightly guarded archive of the Great Li Empire, which had been constructed on the outskirts of the capital.

There were close to five hundred people there, half of whom were cultivators, and all of them were doing intelligence-related work, including gathering and compiling intelligence, as well as receiving reports from spies all over the continent.

They had extensive information on all of the empires and subsidiary nations on the entire continent, including the extent of their military prowess, the layout of their immortal powers, the personal files of important officials…

The belly of an entire mountain had been completely dug out and was laden with these files that had been accumulating there for a century, and that wasn’t even what had stunned the old Mohist cultivator the most. Instead, what he was most horrified by was a “trivial matter” that could’ve very easily been overlooked.

At the time, Cui Chan had led him on a tour of this restricted area of the Great Li Empire that he had named “Book Mountain,” and along the way, not a single person that they encountered observed any formalities such as kneeling or bowing to Cui Chan.

Instead, the only courtesy that they extended toward him was getting out of his way, and even then, they only moved the most minimal amount possible, often brushing shoulders with him as they rushed past him. There were no pleasantries exchanged whatsoever, and even if Cui Chan raised any questions, all parties spoke in the most concise fashion possible before parting ways.

The old man was a master Mechanist, and at the time, he felt as if Book Mountain were an enormous and complex mechanical structure in which the qualities of efficiency, precision, and cohesion were valued above all else.

There were many cultivators throughout history who had supported the ascensions of certain mortal empires, but compared with Cui Chan’s work, they may as well have been children playing in the mud, overjoyed at achieving even a tiny fraction of what Cui Chan had achieved.

Funnily enough, as the eight mountain ships rose up into the heavens and the Great Li Empire’s forces officially commenced their southward march, barely anyone cared about what Cui Chan was doing on the Eastern Treasured Vial Continent.

On the way to the Northern Complete Reed Continent, Chen Ping’an had been conscientiously studying the continent’s official language.

The Northern Complete Reed Continent was superior to the Eastern Treasured Vial Continent and the Parasol Leaf Continent in this regard in that its official language was spoken continentwide.

Each nation had their own official and regional dialects, but it was nowhere near as complex as the other two continents, and whenever one was out traveling the continent, they always communicated using the official language, thereby sparing Chen Ping’an a great deal of trouble.

This was something that had proven to be quite a problem for him on Stalactite Mountain, where cultivators of other continent couldn’t understand the official language of the Eastern Treasured Vial Continent, and if they did, then they would only look down on him for coming from the Eastern Treasured Vial Continent.

As the Flax Robe Sect prepared for its descent, Chen Ping’an packed up his belongings and arrived on the first floor of the ship. The army of armorclad warriors that were dragging the ship along were very intriguing entities that didn’t appear to have been purely yin entities. Instead, they were something in between yin entities and talismanic puppets.

Down below was the vast Skeleton Shoal, and it wasn’t a forbidding place abundant with ghostly qi as Chen Ping’an had envisioned. Instead, there were even several places with vibrant and colorful clouds that gave the place the appearance of an immortal paradise.

The Skeleton Shoal mostly consisted of plains and flat shoals, with only the occasional mountain dotting the landscape.

Within its territory was a single river that ran from south to north, and unlike the normal winding rivers that one would expect to see, this one ran as straight as a sword, and it barely had any branches, seemingly having been meticulously curated to be this way.

The Flax Robe Sect ship only had a single immortal shop onboard, but it possessed a tremendous amount of stock, and the two most precious items in the hop was a pair of immortal treasures of an extremely high caliber, both of which were broken swords left behind by ancient immortals.

Both swords had large sections of their blades curled and blunted, and they had also sustained fundamental damage, eliminating the possibility for them to be restored to their original condition. Otherwise, they would’ve undoubtedly been pseudo-celestial swords. There was also a story behind the swords. Apparently, they had once belonged to a pair of sword immortal Dao partners from the Northern Complete Reed Continent.

Hence, the swords were not available for sale individually. Instead, they were strictly to be sold as a set with an asking price of a hundred grain rain coins.

As a promotion of sorts, earth immortal swordsmen could enjoy a 20% discount on the swords, while sword immortals of the Upper Five Tiers would receive a 40% discount.

The problem was that the price was too steep for earth immortals, while for sword immortals of the Upper Five Tiers, these swords weren’t really worth purchasing.

Chen Ping’an naturally wasn’t able to purchase these swords, given his tight finances, and even if he did have the money, he wouldn’t have purchased something so overpriced anyway.

However, he had purchased several small and cheap items from the shop, one of which was an enchanted spirit tool connected to Temper Mountain. It was a porcelain brush washer that was similar to the water bowl in Chen Lingjun’s possession. In the immortal book from Stalactite Mountain, it had been mentioned that Temper Mountain was a renowned site where swordsmen went to settle their differences in battle.

Any vendettas that were to be settled on Temper Mountain were bound to be battles to the death, with only the survivor emerging victorious or both sides perishing in battle, and there had been barely any exceptions to this over the past one thousand years.

There was also an antiquated inkstone and a box of ten imperial stone engravings from the final emperor of a certain fallen empire.

When Chen Ping’an tried to pay for the items, the shopkeeper had personally made an appearance, informing him that Wei Bo had instructed him to place anything that Chen Ping’an purchased from his shop on the tab of Cloud Drape Mountain.

Chen Ping’an didn’t refuse. In fact, he asked the shopkeeper if he could buy a few more things.

The shopkeeper had shaken his head with an amused smile, telling Chen Ping’an that Wei Bo had specified that the agreement was to expire as soon as the shopkeeper revealed it to Chen Ping’an.

Despite this, Chen Ping’an still thanked the shopkeeper with a smile, and after a conversation, Chen Ping’an learned that even though the shopkeeper ran this shop on the Flax Robe Sect intercontinental ship, he wasn’t actually a cultivator of the sect. The Flax Robe Sect was extremely careful in its selection of disciples, and it was considered a great honor to have one’s name inscribed upon the genealogical records of the sect’s ancestral hall.

Furthermore, the sect’s founding father had stipulated that the sect would only have thirty-six internal disciples and one hundred and eight external disciples at a time, so most of the people on the Skeleton Shoal were actually outsiders like him.

The shopkeeper was a very talkative man, and he introduced to Chen Ping’an many of the Skeleton Shoal’s customs and traditions, as well as some rules and prohibitions.

While the two of them were chatting with one another, Chen Ping’an suddenly turned to discover two streaks of sword light flashing through the sky in the distance, and each time they clashed, there would be a violent explosion of light.

The shopkeeper wasn’t alarmed by this at all, and he smiled as he said, “This is a very commonplace occurrence. Those two swordsmen are just getting in some exercise. You can tell this isn’t a serious battle from the fact that they’re intentionally staying far away from the central region of the Skeleton Shoal.

“Otherwise, if these two were truly going at each other, then they wouldn’t care where their battle took them, even if it were directly above the Flax Robe Sect’s ancestral hall. Perhaps they would receive a beating from the Flax Robe Sect cultivators, but that would hardly matter to them, and if they were powerful enough to oppose the Flax Robe Sect’s cultivators, then they could even turn it into a three-way battle.”

Chen Ping’an didn’t know what to say to that.

The Northern Complete Reed Continent was truly… a great place.