"Dead? Who did you say died this time?"
Ever since the defeat at Yonggu Pass, the Ten Crows Great King's smooth-sailing life had fallen into a vicious cycle. His fortunes had begun to rise and fall and fall and fall... Nine out of ten things went wrong. What bothered him most was that the Ten Crows capital had been destroyed, most of the trusted aides he had cultivated and courted had been lost, and his elite forces had suffered devastating casualties. He could clearly feel that his grip on the other tribes was far weaker than before.
The tribes that had once lived at his beck and call had recently begun paying lip service while secretly defying him, constantly making little moves behind his back in an attempt to replace him. The Ten Crows Great King had ruled with an iron fist for years and was long accustomed to having everything his own way. How could he put up with things not going his way?
He wasn't without guile; on the contrary, he stopped at nothing to achieve his aims. Otherwise, back then he wouldn't have married a woman with a questionable relationship with Su Shi Yilu's own brother just to win over his tribe, then arranged for his original wife to "die of illness" and made her take the fall.
If he could endure it back then, he could endure it now.
To wipe out all those disobedient bastards in one fell swoop, the Ten Crows Great King began putting on an act of dejection and despair. He drank himself into a stupor every day and caroused every night, with women constantly coming and going from his tent. He never got up before noon, and his thunderous snores could be heard from his royal tent all the way to