Nine Dragons Vie for the Throne, Secrets of the Imperial Family

Over the past two months, Chen Du had not only been reading martial arts manuals at a frantic pace, but had also leafed through the jianghu miscellanies, martial world histories, and court gazettes kept in Qianchuan Hall.

Through these books, he had gradually gained a clear understanding of the world's system of martial power.

In the martial world, practitioners were divided into several distinct levels. From lowest to highest, they were Third-rate, Second-rate, First-Rate, Houtian, Xiantian, and Martial Arts Myth.

A Third-rate expert had achieved initial mastery of martial arts, and his punches and kicks followed established forms. He could serve as an escort leader in an ordinary escort agency, and was more than qualified to be a head constable at a local county yamen.

In the army, he could lead a hundred-man squad as a centurion.

A Second-rate expert had developed a substantial reserve of true qi, and fierce gusts arose naturally from his fists and palms. In the jianghu, he could already open a school and take on disciples.

With the Black Tiger Fiend Palm and the Flying Bird Body-Flicker Technique, Chen Du had previously stood firmly among the upper ranks of this level. In the army, he could have been a chiliarch, commanding a thousand men.

A First-Rate expert could release and retract true qi at will, and his martial arts had reached a realm of consummate mastery.

Across the vast jianghu, those who could join the ranks of First-Rate experts were one in ten thousand.

In the imperial guard, a First-Rate expert was qualified to serve as a commander, like Zhou Tiejun, who led two hundred red-armored imperial guards dedicated to protecting the inner palace.

In the frontier army, he could be granted the rank of guerrilla general and command a battalion of three thousand armored troops.

In the capital's imperial army, he could be appointed commandant, placed in charge of a guard force of five thousand men, and granted the fifth official rank, with the right to attend court and deliberate on state affairs.

A Houtian expert's true qi had liquefied, returning to simplicity and truth, and his cultivation was beyond the ability of ordinary people to fathom.

Houtian and First-Rate appeared to be separated by only one level, but in truth, a heavenly chasm lay between them.

Of a hundred First-Rate experts, only one or two could enter the Houtian realm.

In the jianghu, a Houtian expert could found a sect and become a grandmaster of his own domain.

At court, he could be appointed a great general, placed in command of military affairs in a region, and given more than a hundred thousand troops, with an official rank of third grade or higher.

A Xiantian expert's true qi transformed into force that could be projected a hundred paces; flying petals and plucked leaves alike could kill.

Such figures were already First-Rate earthly immortals. Their whereabouts were hard to trace, and they rarely appeared in the world.

According to an incomplete copy of the Royal Secret Archives in Qianchuan Hall, a Xiantian expert stood guard in the Great Sheng imperial palace. Passed down from generation to generation, this protector ensured only that the imperial bloodline endured, paying no heed to the rise and fall of dynasties.

But no one outside knew who this Xiantian expert was, where he was hiding, or how old he was. Even among the imperial family, only the emperor himself knew the truth.

For hundreds of years, Martial Arts Myths had existed only in legend.

Some said they were fabrications; others said such people truly existed. Opinions varied, and no one could agree.

Chen Du closed the Record of Martial World Sightings in his hands and let out a quiet breath.

If his surname were not Su, if he were not a prince, he could walk out with his abilities and sit firmly in Zhou Tiejun's position as commander.

In the frontier army, he would be a guerrilla general; in the imperial army, a commandant. With five thousand troops under his command and a fifth-rank title to his name, wherever he went, the various factions would vie to win him over!

Unfortunately, he was a prince, and princes did not become commanders or generals.

A prince's battlefield was not on the frontier, but at court! And among his eight brothers.

Over the past two months, between reading martial arts manuals, Chen Du had also gone through a large number of court gazettes and inner palace records.

Although Qianchuan Hall was a deserted palace in the cold palace compound, it was still a repository for the imperial book collection, with gazettes from past years kept on file.

From these scattered scraps of information, he had gradually pieced together a picture of the princes who were truly competitive in the struggle for the throne.

Of the nine princes, the eldest, third, and fifth had all entered the realm of First-Rate experts.

First-Rate experts were one in ten thousand in the jianghu, yet the imperial family had produced three in this generation alone.

And that was only what was known openly. No one could say whether anyone was hiding their strength in secret.

The third prince, Su Yuanli, held the title of Prince Qi. His mother was an imperial noble consort, and her family was the Yandang Yun Family, the foremost Martial Dao family in Jiangnan.

The Yun Family had built its power in Jiangnan for hundreds of years, controlling grain transport and the salt and iron trades. Experts gathered under its banner like clouds, and it retained more than a dozen Houtian experts alone.

Su Yuanli himself practiced the Yandang Thirteen Swords, a superior martial art passed down through the Yun Family. His swordsmanship was graceful and nimble, and he wielded its thirty-six sequences of sword moves with supernatural mastery.

A group of officials at court, led by the minister of revenue, secretly supported Prince Qi, because the Yun Family held the purse strings to half the court. Such wealth was difficult for the other princes to rival.

The fifth prince, Su Yuancheng, held the title of Prince Yan. His mother came from a military family, and his maternal grandfather was He Lianshan, a renowned general of Great Sheng's Northern Border and the great general who guarded the north.

The He Family had built its power on the frontier for three generations and held command of a hundred thousand frontier troops. In the three provinces of the Northern Border, it could be said to cover the sky with one hand.

Su Yuancheng had grown up scrambling and rolling in the Northern Border military camps from childhood. He practiced the Northern Desert Ironblood Art, a superior martial art passed down through the He Family. It excelled in killing intent: the more battles its practitioner survived, the more rapidly his cultivation advanced.

A group of Martial Generals at court, led by the vice minister of war, secretly supported Prince Yan, because the He Family's frontier army guarded the gateway to Great Sheng's Northern Border. That military power was more solid than any treasure.

Su Yuancheng himself was permanently stationed in the Northern Border. Though he was not in the capital, his prestige among the frontier troops meant none of the princes dared underestimate him.

As for the eldest prince, he was the only one of all the princes to have entered the Houtian realm!

The eldest prince, Su Yuanzhang, held the title of Prince of Qin. He was thirty-two this year, exactly ten years older than Chen Du, and he was also the crown prince.

His mother, the empress, had died long ago, leaving him no powerful maternal family to rely on. At court and beyond, the assessment of him was summed up in a few words... "Diligent to the point of obsession."

Chen Du had read about the eldest prince's martial training in an old gazette. The gazette itself had merely recorded the news of the Prince of Qin entering seclusion as a matter of routine.

Beside it, however, was a handwritten note, seemingly jotted down by an inner palace historian. The writing was hurried, but every word weighed a thousand jin.

The note read... At fifteen, the Prince of Qin read every martial arts classic in the imperial collection from cover to cover. At sixteen, he entered the First-Rate realm. For the sixteen years that followed, he trained every day without stopping, rain or shine, sleeping only four hours a day.

He once traveled to the miasma-filled forests of the Southern Border to temper his will, surviving an entire summer alone with his sword among swarms of venomous insects and ferocious beasts.

He once traveled to the great deserts of the Western Regions to temper his body, sitting motionless for a hundred days in the scorching sun and windblown sand. He ate not a grain of rice, drinking only the morning dew.

His sinews and bones were broken inch by inch seven times, his meridians ran backward three times, and he returned from the brink of death on several occasions.

On the winter solstice of his thirtieth year, he suddenly let out a long roar in the training ground, shaking the roof tiles. The true qi in his dantian liquefied and became true essence, and thus he entered the Houtian realm.

The threshold of First-Rate could be crossed with talent.

But the threshold of Houtian required not only talent, but also great perseverance, great determination, and great opportunity.

The liquefaction of true qi was not an accumulation of quantity, but a leap in quality.

The true qi unleashed by a First-Rate expert was a pile of loose sand, while the true essence unleashed by a Houtian expert was like a blade.

Only one or two First-Rate experts out of a hundred could enter Houtian, not because the others lacked talent.

Rather, most people abandoned the thought of crossing as soon as they saw that heavenly chasm, or died before they had the chance to cross it.

Su Yuanzhang had spent sixteen years crossing that heavenly chasm, each day of those sixteen years like the last. Behind that grueling effort was willpower far beyond that of ordinary people; it could almost be said that he had paid for it with half his life.

For that very reason, although the eldest prince had no deeply rooted maternal family at court to support him, and although his court influence, wealth, and military power were all less prominent than those of Prince Qi and Prince Yan, he himself was his greatest foundation.

His status as a Houtian expert spoke for itself, and the Martial Generals at court who truly understood martial arts all held a measure of respect for him.

That respect had nothing to do with money or military power. It was purely the instinctive awe a martial artist felt for the strong.

As for the other princes... the second, fourth, sixth, and eighth princes all hovered around the Second-rate level. Each had forces backing him, but compared with the three princes at First-Rate or above, the gap was clear.

And the seventh prince, Su Yuanzheng—now Chen Du—was still, in everyone's eyes, a frail scholar with no martial skills whatsoever.

He had been drugged and framed, dragged off to the imperial prison, then banished to Qianchuan Hall and placed under house arrest. From beginning to end, not a single person had considered him any kind of threat.

A prince born of a concubine who did not even know martial arts could be tossed into the meat grinder of the struggle for the throne without making so much as a splash.

That was good!

Chen Du put the gazettes in order and returned them to the bookshelf, then walked back to his place. His gaze fell on the manuals laid out before him.

A low rumble came from outside the window. Spring thunder burst forth and rolled across the sky.

The wind tossed the branches and leaves of the locust tree in the courtyard, and raindrops began to patter against the roof tiles.

Chen Du raised his head and looked out at the gloomy sky.

The eldest prince had taken sixteen years to enter Houtian,

while he had only come to this world two months ago.

Time was something he had plenty of.