Amid wave after wave of fervent, thunderous cheers.
Not a ripple stirred in Li Xinge's eyes.
He simply stood with his hands behind his back.
Watching quietly.
Watching the ancient capital before him, six thousand years old, without a word.
Behind him.
Cui Yuan, Li Xuantong, Ming Tianchen, Sky Eater, and the others followed quietly.
No one spoke.
At some point, the thunderous cheers fell silent.
Li Xinge's gaze slowly swept across Shenjing City's towering walls.
It swept over the defenders on the battlements, trembling like chaff in a sieve, before finally settling on the resplendent Great Zhou imperial palace in the deepest reaches of the city, its end nowhere in sight.
He suddenly smiled.
More than twenty years ago.
His grandfather, Li Xuanfeng, had died suddenly in his secluded cultivation chamber.
Li Xinge had been entrusted with command in that hour of peril.
He had taken over as head of the lineage.
The Li Family back then.
Had been tossed about by wind and rain.
A few ants in the Body Realm, a mere Su Family, had driven him and the Li Family into a corner.
On the night he became the lineage head.
He had stood in the Li Family ancestral hall, looking at the memorial tablets of the Li Family ancestors filling the hall. Remembering his frightened, anxious clansmen, he had stood there for a long time and thought for a long time.
Back then.
He had not thought of much.
All he had thought about was how to preserve the Li Family, how to lead it to become the foremost lineage in Baihe County.
He had not dared think of anything else.
That year, to oppose the Su Family.
He had entered the prefectural city for the first time to bid on a Qi and Blood