The Fall of the Luminous Empire, Marshal Lin Feng, Defender of the Empire!

News of the Emperor and Marshal's disappearance at the front reached the Empire, causing a tremendous upheaval, but everyone was still watching and waiting.

What if the Emperor and Marshal were not dead yet? Still, the Empire's central military forces had undeniably suffered an epic-scale blow.

Of the 800,000 elite Royal Legion troops, nearly the entire force had been wiped out. Fewer than 100,000 escaped back to Far Capital.

With the frontline army routed, every imperial clan had begun preparing for a massive demonic invasion.

Yet, to everyone's surprise, along one stretch of the route through the Ancient Strange Mountain Range—

The demon race suddenly withdrew in force, returning directly to the Far East without launching a full-scale invasion of the perilously weakened Luminous Empire.

Though no one knew what had happened, everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

However, it also gave the many clans a sense of urgency.

They began drastically expanding their armaments, lest a major war truly break out and threaten their status.

By then, Lin Feng had already returned to River Hill, where he served as Naval Marshal and trained the Empire's navy of fewer than 100,000 men.

When he received the urgent report from the front, his vision went dark, and he nearly fainted.

He did not dare open his eyes, hoping it was all an illusion.

The Empire's 800,000 elite Royal Legion troops had been wiped out by the demon race just like that?

Even eighty pigs would not have been defeated that quickly, would they?

Fortunately, the demon army encountered an abrupt setback while crossing the Ancient Strange Mountain Range and withdrew.

Lin Feng thought that Brother Lin and Brother Zuo Chuan Mingwang must have made their move.

The two of them had held back a demon army of a million. They were truly incredible. A true man should be like that.

"So I can't slack off either. There has still been no news of the Emperor and Marshal. The Empire must prepare for the worst!"

In March of the 554th year of the Luminous Empire, no news had emerged for a long time regarding the imperial Emperor and Marshal. They had likely already died amid the chaos of the battlefield!

In April, Zichuan Yun, commander of the Empire's southeastern garrison, used the excuse that the Emperor was dead and his bloodline had been cut off to be the first to declare the Southeast Legion independent. From that day onward, it changed its banners and renamed itself the "Zichuan Army."

Faced with such open rebellion, the weakened and feeble Far Capital regime lacked the strength to dispatch troops to suppress it. Meanwhile, the warlords commanding heavy forces watched on with a sense of shared unease.

At this time, only Imperial Naval Marshal Lin Feng of River Hill stepped forward. He contacted Flowing Wind Heng, commander of the Imperial Capital Military District, as well as Ming Lin, commander of the Northwest Military District, and other generals commanding large armies.

They agreed to jointly dispatch troops to Jiashan Fortress to suppress the rebellion.

Yet after the order for punitive action was sent out, Lin Feng never saw the assembled armies arrive. Instead, another piece of bad news reached him.

Flowing Wind Heng, commander of the Imperial Capital Military District, had rebelled and murdered his sovereign. He also publicly announced that Princess Lin Fengxi, the late Emperor Lin Jianyi's surviving daughter, had died in a palace fire.

Soon afterward, Ming Lin, commander of the Northwest Military District, also declared independence.

Immediately after that, imperial warlords and clans across the land declared independence one after another.

Among those independent clans, Flowing Wind Heng of the Flowing Wind Clan possessed the greatest military strength. He controlled the eleven provinces formerly under the direct control of the imperial center, and his ambition to dominate the realm and unify the continent was plain for all to see.

Even Zichuan Yun, Ming Lin, and the other rebel conspirators feared his aggressive ambition, terrified that the powerful Far Capital army might arrive at their gates at any moment.

The Luminous Empire had already fractured into pieces and fallen into division. It existed in name only!

At this moment, Lin Feng stepped forward. He intended to follow in the footsteps of his idol, the Empire's Third Prince—Lin Junyu—and end this chaos!

In just one month, he shocked the entire realm.

The River Hill Army, fewer than 100,000 strong and reorganized from the Imperial Navy, continuously crushed 400,000 Far Capital troops, captured twenty-five cities in succession, and advanced all the way to Far Capital.

At the Battle of Heshan, Lin Feng led 50,000 sailors against Flowing Wind Heng's 50,000 infantrymen. Flowing Wind Heng was beaten so badly that he fled in panic with only five personal guards.

In the Binyang Campaign, 150,000 Flowing Wind troops were utterly defeated. The routed army fled wildly for three hundred li, and Flowing Wind Heng himself nearly became a prisoner, escaping only by hiding among a pile of corpses.

At the Blue City Battle, nearly 200,000 Flowing Wind troops collapsed completely. Then came the Saiwei Fort Campaign, where another 30,000 Flowing Wind troops were crushed...

The defeats in these major battles frightened Flowing Wind Heng out of his wits. He hurriedly sent envoys to sue for peace, but Lin Feng refused outright.

At this point, the various warlords came to their senses. If even the strongest among them, Flowing Wind Heng, had been defeated, then they had even less ability to resist. Once the Luminous Empire succeeded in restoring itself, they would be the ones to suffer.

They had already gone all the way down the path of rebellion. Anyone could bring this all to an end, but it absolutely could not be the Luminous Empire's imperial clan—the Lin family.

Thus, Flowing Wind Heng, Zichuan Yun, Ming Lin, and the other warlords formed the Anti-Lin Alliance.

The rebel armies swarmed forward with the forces of the entire nation, while their enemy had fewer than 100,000 troops.

Though he knew the disparity in strength was immense, Lin Feng fought more fiercely with every battle. Clad in a strange suit of armor impervious to blades and spears, he was like a war god descended to earth, possessed of boundless strength.

Every time, he fought until his eyes turned red, charging alone into enemy formations, capturing enemies and slaying generals, entering and leaving seven times as he led his army in repelling wave after wave of encirclement.

With his martial prowess and exceptional military command, his isolated army actually fought the armies of an entire nation to a standstill—and even gained the upper hand.

Within one month, he fought fifteen armies, crushing eleven and driving back four. Beneath the walls of Far Capital, Lin Feng achieved a brilliant record.

Lin Feng's might shocked the rebel factions. So long as Lin Feng remained alive, they would know neither peace nor sleep.

In him, everyone saw the shadow of that man from more than two hundred years ago.

That man was Lin Junyu, the peerless genius who broke enemy formations, slew marshals, and saved the Empire in its hour of peril—the invincible war god, the Third Prince!

The two sides entered an even more grueling struggle, plunging the imperial lands that had enjoyed a century of peace and tranquility into war in an instant.

More and more people died in the war, families were torn apart, and homes were destroyed.

Just as the flames of war intensified and the continent seemed poised to plunge into a disaster even worse than the demon invasion, Zuo Jia Mingwang appeared.

He entered River Hill City with a little girl.

After joining Lin Junyu in stopping the demon army's massive invasion, he and Lin Junyu had parted ways.

He wanted to see what the human empires of this era were like.

Unexpectedly, upon arriving in Far Capital, he encountered the Flowing Wind Clan's rebellion, which burned the entire imperial palace to the ground.

He rushed inside and rescued a fourteen-year-old girl—Lin Fengxi—who was wailing amid the sea of flames.

Since he truly had no experience caring for children, he took the little girl to find Lin Junyu.

Who would have thought that neither of them knew how to care for a little girl? They made her cry every day, leaving them both at their wits' end.

Lin Junyu in particular—perhaps because Zuo Chuan Mingwang's face was too cold and unapproachable—

Fourteen-year-old Lin Fengxi latched onto Lin Junyu instead.

Whatever Lin Junyu did, she followed right behind him.

It gave Lin Junyu a terrible headache. When it was time to sleep, she insisted on curling up in his arms even if it killed her.

Especially when he went to bathe, she even wanted to follow him to the mountain hot spring.

If Lin Junyu had not been quick enough, and if her short little legs had been able to catch up, she would probably have clung to him long ago.

But because she felt she had been left behind, when Lin Junyu returned refreshed after his bath, he saw her suddenly run over, sobbing pitifully.

Feeling that he might get tied down for good, Lin Junyu decisively handed her over to Zuo Chuan Mingwang and had him take her to River Hill, where Mingyue and that fellow Lin Feng could look after her.

Thus, thinking that handing the royal bloodline to Lin Feng would also help him end the chaos in the name of righteousness, Zuo Chuan Mingwang gladly agreed to the request.

"What? That heartless bastard finally sends word, and it's just to make me babysit for him!"

Zuo Chuan Mingwang expressionlessly brought Lin Fengxi to the address Lin Junyu had given him: Snow Moon Tower.

There, he was thoroughly berated by a breathtakingly beautiful woman who came out from inside. Though he was a robot and felt nothing, it was still unpleasant. No wonder Lin Junyu had made him deliver her!

Watching Zuo Chuan Mingwang hand over the little girl he had been holding, along with a letter, then hurriedly leave without the slightest expression, Zichuan Mingyue was so angry she wanted to grind her teeth.

Silently, she added ten more offenses to the tally owed by that bad man who never came home. No, make that twenty!

"Hello, Sister!"

Young Lin Fengxi suppressed her sorrow, then became timid and submissive before Zichuan Mingyue, unwilling to anger the woman she would be living with day and night from now on.

Having lost her family, she had to tread carefully with every step. Even though she had once been the Empire's noble princess, now she had nothing!

But she still had Brother Junyu. He had said that once he finished what he was doing, he would come find her in a year.

For now, she would endure here for one year!