Qinhuai River.
In ancient times, it was called Longcangpu; in the Han dynasty, it was called Huai Water.
It stretched from Lu Mountain in the west to the East Sea in the east.
Until modern times, it had always been the largest regional river around the Yangtze River Delta.
Its waters ran swiftly and its resources were abundant, earning it the name "Ten-Mile Qinhuai."
"The Qinhuai River didn't flow into the sea through the Yangtze before the pre-Qin era?"
Zhu Yuanzhang was hearing this for the first time.
"My father told me this when I was a boy. It's a story passed down by word of mouth among Jinling's old natives."
Huzi crouched on the ground, carefully scrubbing a wooden bucket with a stiff brush made from a horse's tail.
A trace of remembrance passed through his eyes.
Then, as he thought of his father, his expression darkened.
"When Qin unified the realm, the First Emperor made an eastern tour of Kuaiji and passed through Jinling."
"Lu Sheng, a fangshi by the First Emperor's side, advised him, 'The royal aura of Jinling stretches across the land. In five hundred years, an emperor will rise here.'"
"After receiving Lu Sheng's advice, the First Emperor immediately ordered a hundred thousand corvée laborers to sever the three ley lines running through Fang Mountain, Lion Mountain, and Ma'an Mountain on either side of the Qinhuai River."
"Then he dug a channel to the Yangtze, diverting the Qinhuai River into it and draining away the royal aura of this place."
"He also changed the name of the city King Wei of Chu had named 'Jinling' to suppress the Qinhuai water vein, renaming it 'Moling.'"
"He meant to sever the Qinhuai dragon vein once and for all!"
At this point, Huzi shook his head.
He sighed.
"And in the Qin people's language, Moling means a stable where horses are fed."
At Huzi's words, Zhu Yuanzhang's expression turned thoughtful.
As an ancient man from the twenty-first century,
Zhu Yuanzhang already believed about seventy percent of it.
Throughout history, any dynasty that hoped to establish itself in the south had inevitably made Jinling its capital.
Yet every dynasty that made Jinling its capital had met an early end. Most were short-lived regimes that had controlled little more than the Jianghuai region.
Gazing out at the rippling waters of the Qinhuai River, Zhu Yuanzhang stared into the distance, deep in thought.
"Xiao Liang," "fate," "prophecies," "dragon veins," "predictions," "the promotion of Buddhism," "the nine-story Pagoda"—and even the "Taiqing Catastrophe," which Emperor Wu of Liang had deliberately allowed Hou Jing to unleash.
It seemed as if an invisible thread connected them all.
Though Zhu Yuanzhang still couldn't figure out what that thread was,
he had more or less pinpointed where it led.
"Taicheng!"
Zhu Yuanzhang's eyes grew unfathomable.
He wanted to see for himself what secret Xiao Liang concealed here, by the banks of Huai Water, in Jinling City—a short-lived separatist regime scarcely mentioned in history, all but unknown to anyone but a handful of history enthusiasts.
"Your disciple Minghe pays his respects to Uncle Faming."
This time, Zhu Yuanzhang didn't hesitate.
He went to the meditation room on the left, knocked on the door with the bronze knocker, and rapped on the door.
As always, the three meditation rooms in the Zen Courtyard were silent.
A faint smell of blood hung in the air.
That meant it would be some time before the three strange monks of Tongtai Temple awoke.
After a long while...
A nearly inaudible wooden fish tapped inside the meditation room.
"Fahui's disciple, empowered by three secret mantras. Not bad... Come right in."
The voice was obscure and difficult to make out.
It sounded like wind, like fog... or perhaps something else.
It was dark and cold,
like a whisper from something inhuman, something that did not exist in the real world.
"A ghost... or something else?"
Zhu Yuanzhang pushed open the door and saw a mass of dark gray mist swirling above a meditation cushion, lingering without dispersing.
The shadow he'd seen through the window wasn't the corpse of a real monk after all.
It was a mass of fog.
A mass of fog that had congealed, refused to disperse, and could speak.
"Uncle, please save me. Save the legacy of Tongtai Temple."
As soon as he entered, Zhu Yuanzhang performed a monk's salute and spoke, as though he hadn't noticed the eerie figure lurking in the darkness at all.
"How could the legacy of Tongtai Temple ever be destroyed?"
The voice drifted out from the depths of the room.
In an instant, the candlelight turned ghastly white.
It illuminated the boundless darkness in the room.
And revealed the monk's "shadow." Sitting at the center of the meditation room, the gray mist hovering above the cushion "smiled."
In an instant, the fog spread and the ghostly shadows split apart.
Countless shadows appeared, some close, some far away.
Some coiled around the beams.
Some clung to the curtains like illusions.
Some looked compassionate, others ferocious, but every one of them watched Zhu Yuanzhang from a different direction.
They surrounded him completely.
The sinister voice came from all around him.
"As long as I'm alive, the legacy of Tongtai Temple will never be destroyed."
Countless "Faming"s emerged from the ghostly shadows, some young, some old.
"Xiao Liang is on the verge of collapse. I have a way to escape this calamity and survive, but I'll need to use Minghe's fate to refine a magical artifact."
Darkness rapidly spread in his direction.
Zhu Yuanzhang sensed something was wrong.
But he didn't panic.
He had never believed Faming's lies in the first place.
He had chosen to enter Faming's meditation room only after weighing his options.
First, Fajue in the central meditation room was undoubtedly the strongest.
When Zhu Yuanzhang had died last time, he had still been in the courtyard when a flood of blood dragged him into Fajue's meditation room.
During all that, Faming had done nothing but run his mouth. He hadn't actually taken any action.
Faming was far weaker than Fajue.
That much was clear from the fact that he'd only made his move after Zhu Yuanzhang entered the room.
The room on the far right had shown no reaction at all.
Either its occupant was the weakest,
or they were terrifyingly strong.
To be safe, Zhu Yuanzhang had chosen to enter Faming's meditation room.
All three Zen masters of Tongtai Temple had been gravely wounded by the backlash of the Xiao Liang Royal Aura.
Although the blood corpse Fajue controlled had felt unbeatable to Zhu Yuanzhang,
he still intended to give it a try.
Could he break out by force?
Ordinarily,
with Zhu Yuanzhang's meager cultivation, there was no way he could outplay these ancients, who had practiced from childhood.
But—
"Dingguang Demon-Subduing True Fire."
Layer upon layer of flames spiraled around Zhu Yuanzhang, making him look like a blazing human candle.
In an instant, sixty years of his lifespan burned away.
Strands of black hair fell from either side of Zhu Yuanzhang's topknot.
His cultivation surged to an astonishing level.
The true fire raged!
One bloom! Two blooms! Three blooms!
He had reached the pinnacle of what the Dingguang Demon-Subduing True Technique could achieve through internal cultivation.
With the fully mastered Mountain-Shrinking Fist to bolster him,
the cultivation he'd gained from burning sixty years of life might well exceed what an ordinary person could gain through a century of painstaking practice.
In an instant, the entire courtyard of Tongtai Temple blazed with fire.
So this is the power of the perfected Dingguang Demon-Subduing True Technique?
Zhu Yuanzhang clenched his fist.
He had a feeling he was powerful now—terrifyingly powerful.
A flicker of astonishment crossed the eyes of the ghosts around him.
Zhu Yuanzhang gave a cold snort.
"Wretch."
True fire burst from his entire body and soared into the air.
"Take my punch!"
"Mountain Shrinking!"
A mountain made entirely of flames formed in Zhu Yuanzhang's palm.
Then Zhu Yuanzhang clenched his five fingers into a fist and punched.
"No!!!"
An exasperated cry rang through the meditation room.
Did it work?
Zhu Yuanzhang had used up all his vital essence and was now frail with old age. He barely managed to open his eyes.
But what he saw was beyond his understanding.
As the blazing true fire broke through the darkness, it revealed a massive Bronze Incense Burner standing in the center of the meditation room.
Wisps of smoke rose from the enormous incense burner.
As if time were flowing backward, the walls, which had been burned to ashes by the true fire, slowly repaired themselves as time passed.
The smoke drifting from the incense burner transformed into clusters of ghostly faces made of black mist, wailing as they charged toward Zhu Yuanzhang!
They burrowed into his orifices, clung to his skin, and devoured him completely!
[You are dead]
A few large, scarlet characters appeared before Zhu Yuanzhang's eyes.
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