Severing the Dragon Vein

Qinhuai River.

Anciently known as Longcangpu, it was called Huai Water during the Han Dynasty.

It originates in the west at Lu Mountain and reaches the East Sea in the east.

Before the modern era, it was consistently the largest regional river surrounding the Yangtze River Delta.

With its rapid currents and abundant resources, it was renowned as the "Ten-Mile Qinhuai."

"The Qinhuai River did not flow into the Yangtze before the pre-Qin era?"

This piece of information was something Zhu Yuanzhang was hearing for the first time.

"My father told me this when I was a child; it's a legend passed down among the old natives of Jinling."

Huzi squatted on the ground, carefully scrubbing a wooden bucket with a stiff brush made from horse mane.

A flicker of memory flashed through his eyes.

Then, thinking of his father, his expression turned somber.

"When Qin conquered the world, the First Emperor toured east to Kuaiji and passed through Jinling."

"Lu Sheng, a fangshi by the First Emperor's side, advised him: 'Jinling is filled with the aura of kings; in five hundred years, a Son of Heaven shall emerge from here.'"

"Upon receiving Lu Sheng's counsel, the First Emperor immediately ordered the conscription of one hundred thousand laborers to sever the three earth veins of Fang Mountain, Lion Mountain, and Ma'an Mountain on both banks of the Qinhuai River."

"They then dug through the Yangtze waterway, diverting the Qinhuai River into the Yangtze to drain the local royal aura."

"He also changed the name of the city that King Wei of Chu had established to suppress the Qinhuai water vein—'Jinling'—to 'Moling'."

"The intention was to completely sever the Qinhuai dragon vein!"

Speaking to this point, Huzi shook his head.

He sighed, "And in the context of the Qin people, Moling meant a fodder field for feeding horses."

Hearing Huzi's words, Zhu Yuanzhang's expression became thoughtful.

As an ancient man who had arrived from the twenty-first century, Zhu Yuanzhang actually believed this seven-tenths.

Historically, every dynasty that sought to achieve greatness in the south inevitably chose Jinling as its capital.

However, every dynasty that made Jinling its capital had a short-lived fate, mostly consisting of short-lived regimes that could only control the Jianghuai region.

Gazing at the shimmering Qinhuai waters outside the window, Zhu Yuanzhang narrowed his eyes in deep thought.

"Xiao Liang," "fortune," "apocryphal prophecies," "dragon veins," "prophecies," "promotion of Buddhism," the "nine-story Pagoda," and even the "Taiqing Catastrophe" that Emperor Wu of Liang had deliberately allowed Hou Jing to incite.

Within all of this, there seemed to be an invisible thread connecting everything together.

Although Zhu Yuanzhang could not yet figure out exactly what that thread was.

But...

He had basically determined the location of that thread.

"Taicheng!"

Zhu Yuanzhang's eyes were profound.

He wanted to see what secrets this short-lived, separatist dynasty—which was obscure in history and unknown to all but a few history enthusiasts—was hiding here on the banks of the Huai Water, within the city of Jinling!

"Disciple Minghe, greets Uncle-Master Faming."

This time, Zhu Yuanzhang did not hesitate.

He walked to the meditation room on the left, grasped the copper ring, and knocked on the door.

As always, the three meditation rooms in the monastery were deathly silent.

A faint scent of blood permeated the air.

This meant that the three treacherous monks of Tongtai Temple would still need some time to awaken.

After a long while...

A barely audible sound of a wooden fish came from within the meditation room.

"A disciple of Fahui, blessed with three secret mantras—not bad... come in."

The voice was extremely dim and obscure.

It was like the wind, like fog... or perhaps something else entirely.

It was eerie and cold.

It sounded like a whisper that did not belong to a human, nor did it exist in the real world.

"A ghost... or something else?"

Zhu Yuanzhang pushed the door open to see a mass of dark gray mist swirling above a prayer mat, refusing to dissipate.

It turned out the shadow he had seen through the window was not the corpse of a real monk.

It was a mass of mist.

A solidified, lingering, speaking mass of mist.

"I beg you, Uncle-Master, save me, save the legacy of Tongtai Temple."

Upon entering, Zhu Yuanzhang acted as if he were completely oblivious to the eerie nature of the figure hidden in the darkness, immediately performing a monk's salute as he spoke.

"How could the legacy of Tongtai Temple ever be extinguished?"

The voice was ghostly, drifting from the depths of the room.

In an instant, the candlelight in the room turned deathly pale.

It illuminated the boundless darkness within the room.

It also revealed the "shadow" of the monk. Sitting in the center of the meditation room, the gray mist floating above the prayer mat "smiled."

In a flash, the mist expanded, and the ghostly shadows split apart.

Countless shadows appeared, some near, some far.

Some circled the rafters.

Some clung tightly to the phantom images of the curtains.

Some were compassionate, others hideous, but without exception, they all stared at Zhu Yuanzhang from different directions.

They surrounded Zhu Yuanzhang completely.

That sinister voice came from all directions.

"As long as I am alive, the legacy of Tongtai Temple will not be extinguished."

From within the ghostly shadows, countless versions of "Faming," some young and some aged, stepped out.

"Now that the Xiao Liang is on the verge of collapse, I have a method to avoid this calamity and survive, but I need to borrow Minghe's destiny to forge a magical artifact."

The darkness spread rapidly toward him.

Zhu Yuanzhang realized something was wrong.

But he did not panic.

Because from beginning to end, he had never believed a word of Faming's ghostly nonsense.

The reason he chose to enter Faming's meditation room was entirely a result of weighing the pros and cons.

First, Fajue's strength in the central meditation room was undoubtedly the greatest.

The last time he died, Zhu Yuanzhang was still in the courtyard when he was dragged into Fajue's meditation room by blood.

During that process, Faming had only spouted empty words and had not actually reacted at all.

Faming's strength was far inferior to Fajue's.

This could be seen from the fact that the opponent only acted after he had already entered the meditation room.

As for the meditation room on the far right, it had shown no reaction from start to finish.

Either its occupant was the weakest.

Or they were terrifyingly strong.

To be safe, Zhu Yuanzhang chose to enter Faming's meditation room.

These three Zen masters of Tongtai Temple were all severely injured by the backlash of the Xiao Liang Royal Aura.

Although the blood corpse of Fajue gave Zhu Yuanzhang the feeling that it was invincible.

Zhu Yuanzhang still intended to give it a try.

To see if he could break the situation with force!

By all logic.

With Zhu Yuanzhang's meager cultivation, he clearly could not outplay these ancients who had been practicing since childhood.

But—

"Dingguang Demon-Subduing True Fire."

Layers of flames swirled around Zhu Yuanzhang, making him look like a giant, burning human candle.

In an instant, sixty years of his lifespan were burned away.

Strands of black hair fell from the sides of Zhu Yuanzhang's topknot.

Raising Zhu Yuanzhang's cultivation to an extremely high level.

The True Fire surged!

One bloom! Two blooms! Three blooms!

He had reached the most consummate state achievable through internal cultivation of the Dingguang Demon-Subduing True Technique.

With the augmentation of the Mountain-Shrinking Fist in its perfect state.

The single jia-cycle of lifespan Zhu Yuanzhang possessed was likely far greater than the hundred years of bitter cultivation of an ordinary man.

In an instant, the entire small courtyard of Tongtai Temple was engulfed in raging flames.

Is this the power of the Dingguang Demon-Subduing True Technique at its perfection?

Zhu Yuanzhang clenched his fist.

He had a feeling that he was strong now—terrifyingly strong, one might say.

A flicker of astonishment flashed through the eyes of the surrounding ghostly shadows.

Zhu Yuanzhang let out a cold snort.

"Evil spawn."

True fire erupted from every inch of Zhu Yuanzhang's body, soaring into the air.

"Eat my fist!"

"Mountain-Shrinking!"

A mountain composed entirely of flames coalesced in the palm of Zhu Yuanzhang's hand.

Then, Zhu Yuanzhang curled his five fingers into a fist and punched out.

"No!!!"

A frantic, exasperated cry rang out from within the meditation room.

Did it succeed?

Having exhausted all his vital essence, the elderly and frail Zhu Yuanzhang struggled to open his eyes.

Yet, he saw a sight he could not comprehend.

As the raging true fire tore through the darkness, it illuminated a massive Bronze Incense Burner placed in the center of the meditation room.

Wreaths of smoke rose from the massive incense burner at the center.

As if time were flowing backward, the walls that had been scorched to ash by the true fire were slowly restoring themselves as time passed.

The smoke drifting from the incense burner transformed into clusters of shrill, howling ghost faces made of black mist, charging toward Zhu Yuanzhang!

They burrowed into his seven orifices, clung to his skin, and devoured him completely!

[You have died]

Several scarlet characters rose before Zhu Yuanzhang's eyes.