An Audience with the Son of Heaven

There were only 108 men in the Four Guards of East, South, West, and North. They looked terribly thin on the ground, hardly enough to support such a grand spectacle.

What Xu Yi hadn't expected was that the Commander of the Guards had brought an army.

A sea of armored soldiers surged into the grounds under the lead of an old man in white robes. Lu Shanren walked at the old man's side.

Xu Yi had also heard about this man from the steward at the reception hall. He was Dong Xuanji, the newly appointed commander of the guards, and was said to come from the Imperial Secret Guard.

The Imperial Secret Guard was the most central force of the Great Yue royal family, and also its most closely guarded secret. No one knew how many members it had, or how strong they truly were.

All anyone knew was that the guard had existed since the founding of the Great Yue royal family, and its lineage stretched back nearly two thousand years.

The Great Yue imperial regime had changed hands three times, yet the secret guard had never fallen.

There was also a rumor that the Great Yue Royal Court had endured for two thousand years, far longer than the former Great Chu Royal Court, because it had established moral principles and founded Confucianism—and, above all, created the secret guard, securing the military foundation of Great Yue imperial authority.

Though unverified, the rumor alone showed just how prominent a role the secret guard played throughout the Great Yue Royal Court.

Xu Yi's gaze swept over the sea of black-armored soldiers. He counted them carefully: a full three thousand.

From the whispers around him, he learned that these were the Black Dragon Army, the foremost army of the Great Yue Imperial