The Gathering Storm

Li Shun silently repeated those seven words several times, one brow lifting. "Just these few words are worth five leaves?"

Zhou Xunzhen leaned back into his chair, his expression unreadable as he sighed faintly. "All you see are seven weightless words on the table. What you do not see is the bloody tempest and mountains of bones spanning several centuries behind those seven words."

Li Shun seemed deep in thought, a faint chill brushing through his heart.

It seems Zhou Xunzhen is a man carrying a heavy tale of his own.

At that moment, a thread of pale morning sunlight slanted through the crack in the door, falling precisely upon Zhou Xunzhen's side profile as he sat upright. At the boundary between light and shadow, Li Shun sharply noticed—perhaps it was an illusion, but after only a few days apart, several fine wrinkles had quietly crept into the corners of Zhou Xunzhen's eyes, once smooth as jade. His entire person inexplicably gave off the air of a setting sun, old before his time.

"You seem to stay in this bookshop all the time. I've never seen you go out," Li Shun asked, as though possessed.

Zhou Xunzhen's expression remained unfathomable. With a self-mocking chuckle, he said, "When one is in a bookshop, one sees only this Square Inch of tranquil ground. All one cares about is the buying and selling of a few incomplete volumes, and a trifling profit or two. Though the days are somewhat dry and dreary, at least one's spirit is free."

"But once you leave this bookshop..."

He raised his head and watched the motes of dust tumbling through that shaft of sunlight, his voice gradually sinking. "The troubled mortal world, the rolling red dust... Greed disorders hearts and takes lives."

Li Shun put on a half-understanding expression and nodded.

"That is enough. You should go." Perhaps feeling that he had said a little too much, weariness appeared on Zhou Xunzhen's face, and for once, he actually gave an order to see a guest out.

Li Shun did not mind. He cupped his hands in salute, turned, and pushed open the door to leave.

When he returned to the small courtyard of his home, the main gate remained tightly shut, its lock intact. There was no sign that anything had been exposed.

Just as Li Shun took out his key to open the gate, he heard a burst of urgent, thunderously heavy hoofbeats from the far end of the street corner.

His heart tightened, and he could not help looking toward the sound. A squad of Black-Armored cavalry, their Killing Intent soaring to the heavens, were galloping madly down the long street toward the county yamen.

"Is that... the unit that escorted Old Feng back home returning?" Li Shun's pupils contracted. "No! Judging by the journey, they couldn't possibly be back this quickly!"

What trouble has broken out now?

Li Shun muttered to himself by the gate. Only after the Black-Armored Army vanished completely from sight did he slip into the courtyard and bolt the main gate shut.

Night descended, and the day was nearing its end.

Inside, Li Shun wrote treasonous verses to test whether he was under surveillance. The attempt vanished like a clay ox sinking into the sea, stirring not the slightest ripple.

Only then did he finally set his mind at ease.

"Three Reflections Upon Myself!"

Amid the vast, resounding chant, time reversed once more.

Second Reflection.

Early that morning, Li Shun once again rose early and visited Jixia Bookshop.

This time, he did not ask any more about the Twelve Longevity Method, instead continuing to purchase incomplete pages of the Book of Imperial Exegesis.

[In the second year of the New Calendar, Gongshu Ji, Grand Artisan, presented a memorial to the throne: "Your servant has observed the lay of the realm. Mountains and rivers interlace, barriers rise one upon another, causing the king's civilizing influence to travel with difficulty and government orders to go unheard. Your servant requests the conscription of laborers: where there are mountains, cut roads through them; where there are waters, build bridges across them. Weave official roads through the Nine Provinces and gather the earth's qi within those roads. Let fine horses and light carriages travel upon them as though riding wind and clouds, departing at dawn and arriving by dusk. Thus, the majesty of Heaven may arrive in an instant, and the Four Seas may lie within one's palm."

The Qian Emperor was greatly pleased upon hearing this, deeming it an achievement for ten thousand generations. He accordingly issued an edict conscripting a million able-bodied men to cut through mountains, fill valleys, and channel qi into formations. Thus, construction flourished throughout the realm, and laborers were scattered from their homes. Even the qi of the mountains and rivers changed because of it.]

What this incomplete page recorded was the construction of the empire-wide official roads during the early founding of Great Qian.

Since arriving in this world, Li Shun had never left Cold Mountain County even once, so he had naturally never seen Great Qian's official roads with his own eyes.

Yet the memories of the original owner of this body retained some awe and shock toward those roads.

"Ordinary laborers can travel upon the official roads without carriages or horses, covering two hundred li a day without feeling weary."

"Great Qian's official roads spread across the Five Lakes and Four Seas, reaching every corner of the realm. Even a place as utterly remote as Cold Mountain County is connected..."

"They truly deserve to be called an achievement for ten thousand generations."

"To arrive in an instant, with the Four Seas in one's palm... It truly deserves to be called an achievement for ten thousand generations, one capable of suppressing the realm."

Li Shun knew deeply how important convenient transportation and the transmission of information were to a vast empire, and he could not help nodding to himself.

After putting away the incomplete page and leaving the bookshop, he reached the street corner, where the tracks of history overlapped—once more, he came face-to-face with that squad of Black-Armored Army cavalry racing back in haste.

This time, in that fleeting glimpse as they passed one another, Li Shun clearly caught the grave expressions on their faces.

After careful consideration, relying on the fact that he still had one final reversal left, he decided to investigate in secret.

Yet he had not expected...

Before he could obtain even the slightest reliable inside information, disaster came crashing down upon him instead.

Toward evening, with a heaven-shaking BANG, the gate of Li Shun's new residence was brutally kicked open.

A squad of constables filed inside, brimming with Killing Intent.

The lead constable, Wu Kuang, narrowed his eyes and looked Li Shun up and down before waving a hand with a cold sneer.

The constables under him immediately pounced like starving tigers, wrenching Li Shun's arms behind his back and roughly seizing and restraining him.

"Honored officers, this humble man has been wronged!" Li Shun cried, feigning extreme panic.

Wu Kuang snorted coldly, his eyes filled with savagery. "Wronged? A lowly laborer like you was prying into military secrets all over the streets and alleys today. What were you plotting?!"

"This constable chief already thought an old thing like you acted suspiciously. That useless Sun Wu failed to get anything out of you last time, but now that you have fallen into my hands, Wu Kuang will make sure you beg for life but cannot live, beg for death but cannot die!"

Wu Kuang could not even be bothered to hear Li Shun's defense. He directly tore off a rag and stuffed it tightly into Li Shun's mouth, then forcibly dragged him all the way to the deepest part of Cold Mountain Prison.

What followed was another inhuman bout of brutal torture.

The methods were even crueler than before, the carnage of torn flesh and spilled blood even more horrific.

Yet Li Shun's consciousness remained safely hidden within the [Square Inch] space, entirely unharmed.

Military secrets?

Simply making inquiries had already touched a taboo.

Watching the miserable state of his physical body outside with cold eyes, a thoughtful gleam flashed through Li Shun's gaze.

Third Reflection.

A new day arrived, and Li Shun once again returned safely to his own residence.

As he carefully recalled what he had seen and heard "yesterday," he vaguely caught the dangerous scent of black clouds pressing upon the city, of a mountain storm about to come.

It seems something major is going to happen in Cold Mountain County again.

I must prepare early.

Li Shun's gaze deepened. Without the slightest hesitation, he directly released the puppet [Li Shun], ordering it to immediately begin work in a concealed location and dig a tunnel.

"This time, it needs to be dug deeper."

Perhaps because he had repeatedly summoned and dismissed the puppet several times lately, Li Shun found that his soul had adapted considerably. The sensation of his soul being torn apart was nowhere near as unbearable as it had been the first time.

For some reason, as he watched the tireless substitute puppet, an inscrutable premonition gradually rose in Li Shun's heart:

Perhaps the day when he could open up the new region within the [Square Inch] space, shrouded in white mist... was not far away.