Jinling Ferry, in the City Lord's Residence.
Lying in bed, half asleep and half awake, Li Huai felt countless soldiers rushing past him toward a sea of death.
Just like that day aboard the great ship in the South Sea, when Feng Linglong had knocked him into the depths...
Countless people died before his eyes.
For the first time, he felt fear.
These people pressed forward one after another, unafraid of death. They completely upended his understanding, changing the rules and principles of the world.
Though he was on the battlefield and knew that a successful general was built on mountains of corpses, seeing tens of thousands truly die before his eyes still shook him beyond what he could bear.
It was only because he had always thought he was about to transcend this world—or that he had already slipped free of some of its rules and restraints.
In the two great battles on the wasteland, he had felt like an outsider.
But in his dream, he came to a new understanding.
As long as he had not left, his body and soul still walked beneath the sky, across the wasteland, through blood and death.
In the past, he had been willing to die for Jinling City because of affection and duty, because he trusted the Academy and his teacher, and because he cared for the old emperor.
But ever since the old emperor betrayed his principles, ever since the day his teacher left Misty Rain Lake...
His blood had grown cold, and his heart had gone numb.
Like tea after it had boiled, it began to cool, then grow cold. In the end, it left him bewildered, then somewhat dazed.
He had a faint sense of what his teacher had said back then: "Sages do not save!"
Under Heaven's