Loophole

After viewing the three Life-and-Death Paintings, everyone found it hard to calm their hearts for a long while.

Liu Chengchao said, "So far, we have only found over a thousand corpses. If the murals are true, that means our excavation has only covered a small portion. A much larger number of bodies still remain buried."

There had been over ten thousand Wolf Guards.

Yet fewer than two thousand corpses had been excavated.

"If we dig up all ten thousand Wolf Guards and Giant Wolves, would that prove the authenticity of what is depicted in the murals?" Wang Jiao asked from beside him.

As a woman, even though she was already twenty-seven, she still dreamed of heroes.

Especially men like Heize, who had practically protected all of Great Xia.

Yet in the end, he had fought and bled for his country, cut off his own retreat, and still was not mentioned in any historical record.

It was both awe-inspiring and heartbreaking.

One who carried firewood for the people must not be allowed to freeze to death in the wind and snow.

Heize's deeds deserved to be known.

Heize deserved to be respected as well!

Liu Chengchao shared Wang Jiao's thoughts, though his feelings were less intense.

What he valued more was the historical event itself.

As for historical figures, he would feel awe and regret for them, but he viewed them through a rational lens.

At this moment, even after seeing the Shrine of Life and Death, he felt that the matter was riddled with loopholes.

The Wolf Guards were not so easily defeated.

Dafeng at the time was weak, rotten to the bone.

There was not a single army capable of fighting.

To avoid having the capital surrounded, the emperor at the time had led thirty thousand Imperial Guards to hunt on East Mountain.

As a result, two thousand scattered Wolf Clan soldiers appeared on East Mountain.

Those mere two thousand Wolf Clan stragglers scattered the thirty thousand Imperial Guards and nearly captured the emperor alive.

It sounded utterly absurd, yet it was true.

The Imperial Guard had been one of Dafeng's two strongest armies at the time.

One was the Imperial Guard; the other was the Border Army.

If even the Imperial Guard had been that pathetic, there was no need to mention the other armies.

Therefore, Heize simply could not have organized an army capable of confronting the Wolf Guards.

Even if the Wolf Guards had been crippled by the natural disaster, they still retained the strength to fight.

Moreover... there was another loophole in all this.

So far, they had not discovered a single...

Liu Chengchao could not help recalling the image of Heize in the mural, standing alone against ten thousand.

"Just this alone cannot prove that Heize wiped out the Wolf Guards."

Liu Chengchao answered Wang Jiao.

Proving a historical event, especially one with no records in official histories, was exceedingly difficult.

It required an unbroken chain of evidence.

Otherwise, couldn't anyone fabricate anything they wanted?

For example, a rich man could build himself a Shrine of Life and Death and bury it deep underground.

Then tell everyone that he had saved the world and had also been the top scholar in the civil examinations.

But there was no such top scholar in the historical records, nor had anyone saved the world.

If that Shrine of Life and Death were excavated, could it prove any of those claims?

Of course, it could serve as one link in the evidence chain, allowing for bold speculation.

"Even this isn't enough?" Wang Jiao froze slightly, sinking into thought. After a long while, she said, "Right. Unless we find other historical materials to corroborate it, or identify which army this force belonged to and what its designation was."

Beside her, Liu Chengchao's gaze became deep, glinting with an eerie light. "Have you noticed something?"

"Huh?" Wang Jiao immediately asked. "What is it?"

"So far, the remains we have excavated and tested all belong to the Wolf Clan or Giant Wolves."

"What about that?" Wang Jiao was somewhat bewildered and did not grasp it at once.

"There isn't a single corpse here from the Great Feng Dynasty—or rather, from our Great Xia Clan!

Not one!

How could there not be a single Great Feng soldier's corpse when two armies fought?"

"Could they have collected the bodies?" Wang Jiao offered her guess.

"This is a death trap. There was no opportunity to collect bodies at all!" Liu Chengchao said excitedly. "There must be something here that we've overlooked."

Gun God Heize making the trending searches did not come as much of a surprise.

It drew the attention of many people.

In particular, Heize's image in the Life-and-Death Paintings—dressed all in black, strikingly handsome.

Although the mural itself was crudely painted, it still presented people with a lofty, imposing figure.

"This Heize must have slept with Dafeng's Empress Dowager. Otherwise, with his achievements, he would absolutely have gone down in history."

"The person above has seriously heavy tastes. You could even go after an Empress Dowager? Wouldn't an Empress do?"

"You don't get it! Empress Dowager Feng of Dafeng was only in her thirties then, still brimming with mature charm. You could squeeze water out of her."

"When you are young, you do not know an older woman's worth, and mistake a loli for treasure."

"Could we discuss something serious? How did Heize defeat the Wolf Guards?"

"Isn't this serious?"

"Isn't this serious?"

"I'd rather see how Heize defeated the Empress Dowager."

At this moment, Heize had already attracted quite a bit of attention online.

The Justice Association had livestreamed the matter and gained a large wave of likes as well.

At this moment, Lin Chao looked at the information online and felt rather speechless.

He had no relationship whatsoever with Empress Dowager Feng.

However, he truly had met Empress Dowager Feng before.

Empress Dowager Feng was far more beautiful and alluring than Liu the Wife next door.

He had nothing to do with Empress Dowager Feng, but his junior brother—later Emperor Fengxing—had an ambiguous relationship with her.

The two were not related by blood, but Empress Dowager Feng was Emperor Fengxing's grandmother in name.

Of course, none of this had ever been recorded in history.

What history did record was that Emperor Fengxing had been exceptionally filial.

Unofficial histories once recorded that Grand Empress Dowager Feng's toes had festered with pus, and Emperor Fengxing, being filial, knelt on the ground and sucked it out.

Lin Chao could only feel that the circles of the powerful were truly a mess.

Emperor Fengxing ought to have been renamed Emperor Fengxiao. He was a thoroughly filial son.

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