Severance

Li Yaoxuan turned and headed toward the troop formation, utterly decisive, never looking back.

With the death of State Preceptor Ran Jianli, this was no longer the moment to completely tear off all pretenses. For the time being, the Imperial and Prime Minister's Factions needed to cling tightly together in public to resist the sects. But the moment Xu Yinhe refused Li Yaoxuan, the rift between them had already become irrevocable.

Treading across the rain-dampened grass, Li Yaoxuan walked forward at an unhurried pace. On the horizon ahead stood the grim troop formation, sternly arrayed for battle.

Nearly a hundred years old and approaching the end of his life, Li Yaoxuan, a man with one foot already in the grave, no longer viewed things with the childish naivety of his younger days. He had become clear-sighted. Yet after turning it over in his mind a thousand times, he had never imagined that the Imperial and Prime Minister's Factions would ultimately collapse and split over the matter of their descendants.

When they were young, the two had drunk and talked merrily together about many things. Among them, they had mentioned that Xu Yinhe's attitude toward his own family was not that of a qualified ruler.

Man was not grass or wood—how could he be without feeling? Li Yaoxuan had also wished for a household as joyful and whole as the Prime Minister's Mansion, but the lonely burden of supreme power forced him to restrain such emotions.

One's descendants were the inheritance of one's bloodline, the continuation of one's existence, and the vessel for one's affections.

But every generation of the imperial clan faced people who had risen to the very peak from among hundreds of millions! Without ruthless training, without meticulous discipline, what right did you have to contend against them?