Return, a New Identity!

After a bout of cursing, Wang Ping obediently sat back down.

"Looks like I'll have to be more careful from now on."

He had no intention of returning to the Immortal Sect's world anytime soon. After all, the Six-Desire Demon Banner was now in the hands of that young Qi Refiner.

The moment Wang Ping went there, the boy would probably realize something was wrong.

Then it would all be over.

"Right. Back to Great Shun."

At least compared with the Immortal Sect, which operated on a cosmic scale and casually traveled between stars, the Great Shun Court's Divine Weapon Martial Dao seemed far less dangerous.

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"As I thought, I was born to be a martial artist. Even after cultivating immortality, my heart for Martial Dao hasn't changed a bit."

He still loved fights against easy prey.

The Great Shun Court had murky depths of its own, but surely they could not be so deep that someone could reverse time with a snap of his fingers like that Qi Refiner had.

With that thought, Wang Ping looked once more at the scripture of the Otherworldly Celestial Demon.

[Current identity: Constable (low-ranking officer).]

[Current Destiny: Seven (local hero).]

[Spend Destiny to obtain a new identity?]

"Do it."

Wang Ping nodded slightly. He had squeezed nearly all the value he could from his identity as a constable. If possible, he naturally wanted to start with a better one.

To his surprise, although his Destiny had risen sevenfold since last time, the rank of his new identity was still low-ranking officer. There had been no qualitative leap; only a trace of blue and red had appeared within the mysterious light.

"Zero Destiny means a commoner, while one through ten all mean low-ranking officer, then."

Understanding dawned on Wang Ping. The words on the scripture shifted continuously, one identity replacing another, until they slowly settled on one.

[Golden Cavalry Guard.]

"Another official?"

Wang Ping frowned. Information about the Golden Cavalry Guard flashed through his mind. It seemed to be a post directly under the capital's imperial guard, something like a personal attendant to the emperor.

A little like the Embroidered Uniform Guard.

Seen that way, there was still a difference between one Destiny and seven. The former had only let him serve as a county constable; the latter had placed him in the capital's imperial guard.

Wang Ping then looked toward the other side of the platform.

There, pills were piled so densely they resembled a small mountain. To his Spirit Sense, the immense Life Essence within them felt like a vast ocean.

He had pocketed all of it inside the Six-Desire Demon Banner, stealing the Life Essence with Life-Stealing Thief. A third had come from the corpses of those Marauder Cultivators. The remaining two-thirds had all been generously provided by You Xuexin, at a quality that left him marveling.

"This time, I can eat my fill."

Wang Ping eagerly wondered how far he would grow once he returned to Great Shun and absorbed all that Life Essence.

The next moment, he strode into the Great Shun Celestial Dynasty within the scripture. The towering pages before him burst into light and swallowed him whole.

Wang Ping opened his eyes again.

An unfamiliar ceiling greeted him. Dressed in fitted clothes, he seemed to be resting on a bed. He immediately rolled over and checked the condition of his body.

Only after a moment did he breathe a sigh of relief.

"...It hasn't changed."

His reborn body had perfectly retained the martial arts of the life before last. Heavenly Roc Force roared within him, and his Lesser Celestial Circuit Body was at its peak.

"The pity is that none of my cultivation from my last life came back. Is it because I was refined into an artifact spirit? ...Well, never mind. All I'd have brought back was a Defective Spiritual Root anyway. Life-Stealing Thief and the Life Essence are what matter most."

Wang Ping soon came to terms with it.

He walked to the bronze mirror in the room. As expected, the handsome face reflected in it was still his own.

Even his age looked little different from the life before last.

"This won't do."

Wang Ping frowned. Once or twice might pass, but if he kept appearing under different identities with the same face, even a fool would know something was wrong.

He recalled the glimpse he had caught within the Peace Scripture: that Qi Refiner descending from the sky, reversing time, and bringing You Xuexin straight back to life. Wang Ping could not help sighing. The Peace Scripture's resurrection mechanism was still not shameless enough. Why couldn't it rewind time?

"Looks like I'll have to find a martial art for changing my appearance."

Such martial arts were not hard to find. The difficult part was changing his appearance without leaving any flaws others could spot.

Just then, memories suddenly surfaced.

"Here we go again."

Wang Ping rubbed his brow and began absorbing the memories of his predecessor. By now, though, he had a vague idea of what these memories really were.

Rather than a predecessor's memories, they were more like a backstory.

Most concerned his new identity. There were no memories of ordinary things like eating, sleeping, or going to the toilet.

Wang Ping soon frowned.

According to the memories, he was a Golden Cavalry Guard directly under the capital's imperial guard. He had been ordered to Longxing County in Changle Commandery to serve as supervisor of the Black Armor Battalion.

"Why Longxing County again?"

At this point, Wang Ping wondered whether Longxing County was some kind of anomaly. Once or twice could be coincidence, but all three of his rebirths had been connected to it.

That meant there was a plot, and someone was pulling the strings.

Wang Ping dug further into the memories:

"By this point, about four months have passed since I raised hell at the county office. With the office badly hit, the court's foothold in Longxing County has been shaken."

"Afterward, someone apparently used connections at the Changle Commandery Office. In the end, the commandery governor overruled all objections and sent a battalion to Longxing County first, supposedly to help the county office maintain order. Only then did he report it to the capital and request a supervisor... He acted first and asked permission later. Where did the commandery governor get the nerve?"

Moving troops without authorization, interfering in county affairs, and blurring official duties.

"According to the news from the capital, an influential noblewoman spoke up. That was what prompted the Changle Commandery Office to break the rules this time."

Wang Ping did not know exactly who she was.

"Whatever the case, the Black Armor Battalion is already in Longxing County, and I'm the supervisor sent by the court. My official duty is to help the county magistrate maintain order..."

But he had also received a secret order.

At that thought, Wang Ping reached into his robe and drew out a length of bright yellow brocade inscribed with cloud patterns, mounted on a black rhinoceros-horn rod.

It was an imperial edict.

More precisely, it was a secret edict bearing the emperor's seal. It ordered him, after reaching Longxing County, to covertly support the civil unrest and help the rebels breach the county seat!

Accompanying the edict was a bronze military tally that let him command any battalion-sized force. Clearly, he had been given the authority to act on his own when necessary.

Wang Ping was stunned.

Why?

If the emperor's seal on the edict had not been genuine, he would have thought he had misread it. Was the court digging up its own foundations?

"...There's definitely something strange going on." Wang Ping was more certain than ever that Longxing County was special. Then he let the matter go. He was no longer the man he had once been. Once he absorbed the Life Essence stored in the Morgue, he was confident he could grind that dog of an official, Xu Bingzheng, into the ground!

"I still need to train my martial arts."

He could now be considered half a cultivator, but he had received no true teachings. By any reasonable measure, he was a Rogue Cultivator, with cultivation but no arts to protect himself.

In the early stages, martial arts ought to make up for that weakness.

Wang Ping also had a new idea for his path in Martial Dao. If it worked, he would walk a road no one else had ever taken.

Outside Longxing County.

Unlike a few months ago, when the area had been empty countryside, a towering military camp now stood there, smoke rising thickly from its cooking fires.

Under the Great Shun Dynasty's military system, a battalion had five hundred soldiers in fifty tents, ten to a tent. It had five centurions, one hundred squad leaders, fifty leaders of ten, and a commander to oversee them all. The soldiers served full-time and were supplied by the court, lacking neither martial arts nor weapons. Their standing was higher even than that of constables.

That was especially true of a battalion with a title like the Black Armor Battalion.

Across all of Changle Commandery, they were the elite of the elite. Working together, its five hundred soldiers had enough combat strength to defeat most Titled Martial Masters on the Weapon Ranking.

But at that moment,

Wu Xintai, commander of the Black Armor Battalion, had a terrible headache as he faced a beautiful woman whose lovely face was cold and whose expression said she would not leave until she got what she wanted.

"Commander Wu, are you sending out your troops or not?"

The beautiful woman's voice was low.

"Madam Su, it's not that I don't want to. I simply can't... That's the county seat. I've already broken the rules just by setting up camp here..."

At that, Madam Su's expression grew colder still. Yet Wu Xintai remained firm despite his deferential tone, and she could not help feeling powerless.

Everything she had been through over the past four months came rushing back.

After she had reestablished contact with her family in the capital, a close friend from her youth, a sister in all but blood, had gone to the Changle Commandery Office and procured the Black Armor Battalion for her.

Madam Su had refused to leave.

For four months, no body had been found of the young constable whose promise had been worth a thousand gold. She wanted to avenge him by killing the dog of an official hiding in the county office.

"Mother of mercy..."

Looking at Madam Su, Wu Xintai could not help lamenting inwardly. This woman must be mad. I don't know what the Longxing county magistrate did to offend her.

She was even urging him to send troops to kill the magistrate.

What a joke. Sending troops would be a revolt; killing an official would be rebellion! He was doing perfectly well as commander. Why would he destroy his own future?

Besides, the Black Armor Battalion's presence here already broke the rules. Those above him had bent them by acting first and issuing the order afterward. If he sent troops out without orders and killed the magistrate in public, he might as well slit his own throat and join the Longxing magistrate in death.

Wu Xintai had a bellyful of things he wanted to say.

But in the end, he swallowed them. He could not afford to offend the woman before him, mad as she was and ignorant of martial arts.

He had made inquiries.

Madam Su herself was nothing remarkable. Though she had once been a noble daughter of the Su Household in the capital, her name had long since been struck from its rolls, and she had ended up in the countryside.

The problem was a close friend from her youth, a cousin she had been like sisters with.

That woman was another matter. She had been chosen by the Way of Fangxian years ago and had since become a Transcendent—an outstanding one at that!

When Madam Su had run into trouble years earlier, her cousin had been cultivating with the Way of Fangxian. Now that she had returned and heard the news, she had rushed to the Changle Commandery Office and arranged the Black Armor Battalion's deployment herself. Her reach seemed boundless, and her backing was frighteningly strong.

"What a pity."

If she hadn't had to leave suddenly, I could have sent the troops with her to shoulder the blame. Killing a county magistrate would have been no great matter then.

But with only himself here, things were different.

Wu Xintai had no intention of sticking his neck out. He would rather make a wrong choice than break the rules. Without an order, his troops would stay put.

Madam Su grew still more agitated.

"That magistrate abuses his power for private gain, and the officials of Changle Commandery shield one another. Liu Ye has been arrested. Even if you won't send troops to kill the magistrate, at least rescue him..."

That was why she could wait no longer.

Her dear friend had said she needed to leave for a while and would deal with that official who preyed on the people when she returned.

She had also made arrangements for Liu Ye, who had carried word for Madam Su. He was meant to be sent to another commandery, but Liu Ye had not wanted to leave his home. In the end, they chose Changle Commandery. Xu Bingzheng, however, had connections there. As soon as he learned of it, he laid a trap for Liu Ye.

Liu Ye was arrested on the charge of "disrespecting a superior official."

The entire process complied with the Great Shun Code. Liu Ye was returned to his native place as a commoner, which sent him right back to Longxing County. He was thrown into the county office dungeon that very day.

Madam Su had come to Wu Xintai this time chiefly to save him.

But Wu Xintai still shook his head. "I'm terribly sorry. The battalion cannot move without orders."

He knew about Liu Ye's case, too. To his mind, another faction within the court was clearly at work, and it might be no weaker than Madam Su's dear friend.

How could a mere battalion commander involve himself in a clash of power between such formidable people?

After thinking it over, he decided the only thing he could do was remain faithful to his duties. That way, even if the sky fell, no one could hold him responsible.

"..."

Madam Su sank into despair.

It was not just because of Liu Ye. To her, both Liu Ye and she herself had been saved by that young constable at the cost of his life.

Yet Liu Ye still could not escape disaster.

In the end, it had all been for nothing.

Did that mean her dear young man had died in vain? Whenever the thought struck her, she felt his fate was cruelly unjust, and anger and helplessness filled her heart.

Just then,

"Commander, he's here! He's finally here!"

The tent flap was pulled open, and one of the Black Armor Battalion's centurions ran in shouting. "The supervisor sent by the court has arrived. He's waiting outside the camp..."

"Calm down."

Wu Xintai shook his head, looking disappointed. "A commander must keep a cool head when things happen. How many times have I taught you that?"

"He's only a supervisor. You're acting as though you've never seen one."

"Put plainly, he's just another pale, castrated eunuch. I saw more than enough of them when we rotated north. Has it been so long since you've seen a woman that—"

"No, sir."

The centurion hastily shook his head and stressed his words. "This one isn't a palace eunuch. He's a Golden Cavalry Guard, directly under the imperial guard!"

"...A Cavalry Guard?"

Wu Xintai froze. "One of the emperor's personal guards?"

The centurion nodded vigorously.

"Damn it! Why didn't you say something that important sooner?"

In the next instant, Wu Xintai, who had just lectured him on keeping a cool head, sprang up as if shocked and rushed out of the tent without a moment's delay.