Pacifying the Realm

At the start of the new year.

A new emperor ascended the throne and adopted the era name Hongchang.

Li Wu was appointed Nation Protector General and ordered to thoroughly investigate the Dragon Treason Case.

Households were confiscated and lineages exterminated, blood flowing into rivers.

Nine out of ten households in the East City market district stood empty. Fewer than half the court officials remained for morning audience, yet they ultimately seized a total of 170 million taels of gold and silver.

The Emperor Hongchang issued an edict exempting the Fengyang Kingdom from grain taxes for five years.

In June of the same year.

Li Wu was appointed Grand Marshal and led an army north to campaign.

He crushed rebel forces on every front, pacified the six northern provinces, and swung his army south.

Shenjing.

The Zhang residence.

Mourning banners had been planted before the gates, a funeral canopy erected in the courtyard, and white mourning drapes hung along the walls.

As far as the eye could see, everything was a bleak expanse of white, miserable and desolate.

Zhou Yi entered the funeral canopy and offered three sticks of incense for Zhang Zhou. After kneeling three times and bowing three times, he completed the rites.

The filial son, Zhang Jin, returned the courtesy with a kowtow, and Zhou Yi hurriedly helped him up.

"Brother Jin, restrain your grief and accept what has come."

Zhang Zhou had retired from the Heavenly Prison last year, with Zhang Jin taking over his post as a runner. He had spent more than half a year drinking medicine, but in the end, he still could not make it through the winter.

Heavenly Prison guards never lived long. Zhang Zhou reaching fifty-four already counted as longevity; Zhou Yi's father had died before reaching forty.

Scientifically speaking, they worked year-round in dark, damp conditions while coming into contact with all kinds of hardened criminals—the darkest face of society. It placed enormous pressure on both body and mind, which was why they aged early and died young.

Yet people believed they had suffered retribution. They committed too many wicked deeds in their daily lives, damaging their hidden virtue and cutting short their lifespans. Even many prison guards believed so themselves!

After offering a few words of comfort, Zhou Yi was invited by a steward to rest in another courtyard.

"You brat came so late. Did you go to Spring Breeze Pavilion again yesterday?" Niu Xiaowei sat with the imposing air of a great general, servants on either side specially attending to his tea.

"Uncle Niu's temper has grown fiercer by the day. Are you planning to retire?"

Zhou Yi was thirty-two now. Once a man reached middle age, he had no choice but to make do. His face had been coated with a layer of specially made yellow wax, making him look at least forty—quite fitting for the early-aging traits of a Heavenly Prison guard.

"Lord Zheng secured a position as Imperial Guard Commander for Little Four. Such a tremendous favor—we can't keep squatting in the latrine without shitting."

Niu Xiaowei was speaking of his fourth son. His first three sons loved studying and were unwilling to serve at the Heavenly Prison.

After all, they were young masters born to wealth and honor. None wished to muddle about in such a filthy, foul-smelling place. Niu Xiaowei had worried over this matter for years, and now he had traded his position as a captain for an Imperial Guard Commander's post.

They were both part of the Heavenly Prison system, and the connections cultivated by the Niu family would still be useful. It was the best of both worlds.

Five years ago, just as Zhou Yi had expected, the court had parachuted Zheng Gaoyuan in as warden.

The moment Warden Zheng arrived, he launched sweeping reforms with great vigor, punishing corruption. Whenever the Brocade Guard arrested someone, there was no need to transfer them elsewhere—they merely found an empty cell and threw them inside.

More than half of the former warden's old subordinates had been ruined. Niu Xiaowei was the first to throw himself under Warden Zheng's command, ruthlessly turning on colleagues who had once called him brother.

Of course, no matter how turbulent things became, it never affected the prison guards delivering meals!

"Then congratulations, Uncle Niu."

Zhou Yi looked at Niu Xiaowei's grizzled hair. A faint air of death lingered between his brows; once he retired, who knew how many years he could endure.

When parents loved their children, they planned deeply for their future.

The Niu family's foundation lay in the Heavenly Prison. Once they abandoned the network of connections built over a hundred years, how could they safeguard such a vast family fortune with those three wastrel young masters who could not even pass the provincial examination?

How many high officials and nobles were imprisoned in the Heavenly Prison? Zhou Yi stood to one side, listening and watching.

When great lineages were attacked from without, they did not collapse all at once. More often, they first rotted from within, then the moment the wind blew, they came crashing down!

Colleagues and friends gathered to chat, but in the end, their topic always turned to the battlefield suppressing the rebellion. It had been the great matter of the Fengyang Kingdom for the past five years.

The Grand Marshal had pacified the north in two years, then led his army south for more than three years. The fighting had been exceedingly fierce, and court gazettes often published reports of the Grand Marshal defeating tens or even hundreds of thousands of enemies.

Prison guard Ye Cheng chuckled. "The enemy numbers defeated in the court gazettes add up to three or four million already. If the southern rebels had an army that large, wouldn't they have directly surrounded Shenjing?"

Zhou Yi reminded him, "Brother Ye, watch your words. If the Li family hears that, you may as well find yourself a cell."

The Li family's prestige in the Fengyang Kingdom now exceeded even that of Chancellor Long in his day. After all, no matter how much power civil officials grasped, they could not compare to a military officer commanding hundreds of thousands of troops.

Rumors had long circulated among the common folk that the south remained unsettled after three years because Li Wu was nurturing bandits to bolster his own power!

"What the hell do you know?"

Niu Xiaowei barked, "The south has more than rebel troops. His Majesty declared five years free of grain taxes, so the northern rebels' morale collapsed. But the south is different—the land rents have not been reduced by so much as a fraction."

Among those who had come to pay respects to the Zhang family, Niu Xiaowei held the highest status. Hearing this, everyone else crowded around.

"Who would dare defy the court's decrees?"

"Hmph, hmph!"

Niu Xiaowei did not continue. Changing the subject, he asked, "Brat Yi, have you tempered yourself to the organs yet? At your age, your vital blood has already begun to decline. It will only grow harder from here on."

"I'll need a few more years."

Zhou Yi shook his head. Another five years had passed, and he had tempered his sinews and bones to great accomplishment. Yet using vital blood to temper the organs was a bottleneck.

Skin and flesh, sinews and bones were hard arts. With daily accumulation and long years of grinding, one could achieve something. Tempering the organs and washing the marrow, however, were soft arts and absolutely could not be forced. Many people forcibly tempered their organs and directly trained their five viscera until they ruptured and bled.

"You were clever your whole life, yet in the end you were muddled this one time. You threw all your silver into martial arts and the pleasure quarter, and never even settled a marriage. When you grow old, who will care for you?"

Niu Xiaowei seemed to have recovered some face. He wanted to burst out laughing, but felt the occasion was inappropriate.

Over these years, he had often sought Zhou Yi's advice. Every time, Niu Xiaowei had the illusion that he himself was some stupid, boorish brute.

"What if one day, I break through to become an Innate Grandmaster?"

Zhou Yi spoke in earnest, but everyone present only thought he was joking.

The Fengyang Kingdom currently had two confirmed grandmasters. One was Grand Marshal Li Wu, while the other was the southern rebel commander known as the Azure Sky King.

At that moment.

Someone hurried in and loudly announced.

"Someone just saw soldiers reporting victory. They said the Grand Marshal annihilated the rebels' main force and captured those two Heavenly Kings alive!"

The crowd erupted in uproar.

With the court deliberately spreading the news of victory, it swiftly traveled throughout Shenjing.

The fifth year of Hongchang.

The twenty-first day of the ninth month.

Today was the day the Grand Marshal returned in triumph, and Shenjing's eastern gate was packed so tightly that not even water could pass through.

Imperial Guards stood along both sides of the road, continually pushing the commoners back to leave a path for the army.

Zhou Yi had specifically taken leave and claimed a window seat at a tavern along the street early in the morning.

That night, darkness had obscured everything and he had been too far away to witness an Innate Grandmaster's bearing. Today, he could finally make up for that regret.

Around noon.

The ground trembled, and the sound of hoofbeats rolled in.

The first to enter the city were four columns of cavalry. Their black armor was covered in sword and blade marks, their killing intent awe-inspiring.

"Every one of them has the strength of the skin-and-flesh realm. No wonder they swept through north and south as easily as turning a hand. Back then, that dog emperor stripped the realm bare not only to refine pills and pursue the Dao, but also to secretly cultivate this iron cavalry of martial artists."

Looking back now, Zhou Yi felt as though the dog emperor belonged to a very distant past.

He could no longer clearly remember the appearance of Chancellor Long, who had once held the court in his palm, nor that of the arrogant and overbearing Young Master Long.

At the end of the cavalry rode Grand Marshal Li Wu. He still looked like a young general in silver armor. In five years of pacifying north and south, his face remained as fair as jade, untouched by even a trace of wind and frost, like a young master who had merely gone sightseeing.

Young and handsome, overwhelmingly powerful, meritorious beyond measure, with authority towering over all!

Such a figure was like the protagonist of a storybook. The moment he appeared, the common folk burst into cheers.

Zhou Yi lowered his gaze. Innate Grandmasters are even more formidable than I imagined. And these are only mortals—what of the legendary immortals and demons...

Behind Li Wu came two prison carts, both forged from refined steel, with only the prisoners' heads exposed.

One held an old man with hair white as frost, the other a disheveled Daoist.

"Could these be the Yellow Sky King and Azure Sky King? Rumor says they stand twelve feet tall, with backs like tigers and waists like bears, and eat three to five living people every meal. How did they end up so old, weak, and thin?"

"What do you know? The Azure Sky King was once the martial alliance leader of Jiangnan. He commanded four sects and eight schools; that is where the rebel army's many experts came from." The man speaking wore a fitted black outfit and carried a treasured sword at his waist. He was plainly a man of the martial world.

"If he became the martial alliance leader, why the hell would he rebel?"

"Back then, who didn't want to rebel?"

"Brother, what is the Yellow Sky King's background? I heard he was the true leader."

"Legend says he was originally a Daoist. One night, he dreamed of a strange man who passed on Immortal Techniques to him. He could draw spirit talismans and scatter beans to turn them into soldiers, claiming to be the reincarnation of Immortal Yellow Heaven..." The man shook his head as he spoke.

Such mysterious and unfathomable claims existed only to brainwash the rebels. Nine times out of ten, they could not be trusted.

To raise public morale, the court likewise proclaimed that it had defeated two or three million rebels!

The next day.

Zhou Yi came to the Heavenly Prison for duty and saw Black Riders standing guard from far away.

Everyone entering had to be searched, and they then found a dagger, sleeve arrows, a hand crossbow, unidentified poison powder, black pills...

"These are truly for self-defense!"

Zhou Yi explained again and again. In the end, only after Warden Zheng stepped in was he allowed into the Heavenly Prison.

"My lord, what is going on?"

Warden Zheng said, "The Azure and Yellow rebel commanders have been imprisoned in the Heavenly Prison. The Grand Marshal has dispatched three thousand Black Armor Army soldiers to guard them."

"Why not take them to the Imperial Prison? That place is far more heavily guarded!"

Zhou Yi frowned slightly. The Azure and Yellow pair were anything but ordinary.

One had been the martial alliance leader, the other an extraordinary figure of the Daoist sects. If they escaped, they could gather troops again, raise the banner, and rebel once more.

Warden Zheng said darkly, "You brat, just deliver your meals properly. Why concern yourself with so much? If they truly escape, will you be held responsible?"

"Thank you for your guidance, my lord."

Zhou Yi could not be bothered to ponder court struggles. Instead, he was quite interested in the Azure and Yellow pair.

Black Armor Army soldiers were likewise stationed throughout the Heavenly Prison, with a guard every five steps and a sentry every ten, while experts hid in the shadows to keep watch.

Cell A-One.

Zhou Yi opened the cell door and saw the Azure Sky King up close.

A refined steel torture rack had been hastily made overnight. Iron locks and chains as thick as thighs bound the Azure Sky King's limbs and neck fast.

The Black Armor Army soldiers outside stared intently. Zhou Yi silently ladled food and fed it into the Azure Sky King's mouth.

"Your inner force is pure, seeming to come from a Daoist inheritance. What a pity—even if you train until death, you will only reach the second-rate. This old man can teach you a supreme divine art. In ten years, you can reach the innate realm. Do you want to learn?"

An aged voice entered Zhou Yi's ears. He glanced at the Black Armor Army outside, but they showed no reaction whatsoever.

"This voice-transmission technique is this old man's exclusive secret art. Forget these little brats—even Li Wu can dream of hearing it."

Zhou Yi nodded faintly and listened for what came next.

"Let your inner force whirl like a vortex. Pass through Zhongfu, cross Yunmen... and emerge from Qishe."

Another passage entered his ears. Yet it was not some supreme divine art, but the technique of voice transmission itself.

Zhou Yi moved the inner force in his Dantian according to the Azure Sky King's instructions and tried coughing twice.

"Cough, cough!"

The Black Armor Army soldiers at the door showed no reaction, still watching Zhou Yi feed the prisoner.

After feeding him half a bucket of food, Zhou Yi carried the bucket away without paying any heed to the Azure Sky King's repeated voice transmissions.

"You little thief, how dare you deceive this old man!"