Heaven-Warring Great General!

Heaven-Warring Great General!!

Those words were like a heavy hammer, slamming viciously into Mu Xuehuang's heart.

For an instant, she struggled to breathe and felt as though she might faint.

These rebels were outrageously bold.

They actually dared to style themselves the "Heaven-Warring Great General"?

Warring against heaven—did they intend to defy the heavens themselves?

From a certain perspective, "heaven" could also refer to her Great Li Dynasty.

They meant to wage war against me!!

"Hah, hah, hah..."

Mu Xuehuang was furious, her breathing heavy.

At the same time, the sight made her scalp prickle.

Nothing like this had appeared in the previous simulation.

Although Mu Xuehuang was puzzled, she soon began to understand—the previous simulation had only shown her a broad outline, informing her that the Dynasty might fall in the future.

This time, however, it clearly contained far more information.

Mu Xuehuang continued watching.

As the view drew closer, the government soldiers' faces showed neither resentment nor anger.

They did not even seem to consider opening the gates and letting the rebels in a humiliation.

Their numb indifference only deepened Mu Xuehuang's anger.

These men had lost even the courage to be soldiers!

Yet as the scene shifted, that thought soon changed.

After entering the city, the rebels did not go on the killing spree she had imagined, slaughtering civilians.

Instead, they distributed grain to the common people.

Nor did the civilians in the city fear them; instead, they cheered and leaped for joy.

Mu Xuehuang was dumbfounded.

For a moment, she wondered whether her eyes were playing tricks on her.

These civilians were actually thanking the rebels?

They were rebels!

Rebels were supposed to be condemned and slain by all. How had they won people's love instead?

She had seen that look in the common people's eyes before, but only when Great Li won a battle and civilians lined the streets to welcome its troops.

To think she would one day see it directed at rebels—unbelievable, utterly unbelievable!

Soon, the scene went dark.

A new scene appeared.

Once again, an army bore down on a city, and once again, its gates stood wide open.

The city's people lined the streets to welcome them.

They were clearly rebels, insurgents, yet they were treated like heroes.

At the head of the road, Mu Xuehuang even saw a little girl in patched clothing come running.

Her hair was tied into little horn-shaped pigtails, and her eyes were utterly clear as she personally slipped a flower wreath she had woven around the rebel leader's neck.

That leader, too, was a young man.

He raised a banner atop the city wall, bearing the words "Heaven-Charging Great General"!

Mu Xuehuang's breathtakingly beautiful face instantly turned pale.

Heaven-Warring Great General, Heaven-Charging Great General... they were clearly all in league!

Now I understand. That rebel leader just now was not the young man who had truly stirred up the uprising!

He was merely another subordinate!

The scenes that followed shifted one after another, with similar sights appearing endlessly.

City after city fell, and banner after banner rose—

Heaven-Warring Great General;

Heaven-Charging Great General;

Heaven-Soaring Great General;

Heaven-Defying Great General;

Heaven-Slaying Great General;

Every time another banner rose, Mu Xuehuang swayed as though she might collapse.

Her face was pale, her chest heaving violently.

"This... how is this possible?"

Mu Xuehuang could not help crying out.

Across two simulations, these rebels had shocked her more deeply each time.

For instance, they were better trained and more orderly than she had imagined;

Why were ordinary rebels and bandits easy to capture? Because they were nothing but a disorderly rabble of wine sacks and rice bags, driven solely by profit.

But these rebels seemed to have an expert guiding them from behind the scenes. Their duties were clearly divided, and they knew to split their forces and advance along several routes simultaneously;

Then why had each city's Provincial Governor opened the gates and let them in?

They must have been bought off!

Only by knowing both oneself and one's enemy could one fight a hundred battles without peril.

Taking a city did not always require military strength; brains could do the job as well.

More chilling the longer she considered it was why the city's people welcomed them warmly rather than loathing and fearing them.

Among the many sovereigns throughout Great Li's history, Mu Xuehuang could be considered an enlightened ruler.

She understood the principle that "water can carry a boat, but it can also overturn it."

She represented the realm and commanded the people's allegiance.

Then what did these rebels represent?

Mu Xuehuang's brow furrowed ever deeper, her scalp prickling.

She knew there had to be something special about these rebels that she had overlooked...

Just as Mu Xuehuang pondered this, a new scene appeared.

This time, it was no longer an army bearing down on a city, but natural calamity and human disaster.

Murky floodwaters swept over everything, like the waters of the celestial river pouring down across the sky.

Wherever they passed, houses collapsed, cattle and sheep drowned, and countless people vanished into the deluge.

As though the flooding were not enough, rain continued to patter down from the sky.

It made the flood spread even more fiercely, inundating fields and crops, sweeping away dams, drowning waterways, and filling rivers.

The sight of such a natural calamity made Mu Xuehuang's heart clench, and even her breathing grew strained.

She saw a five- or six-year-old boy swept into the water, desperately clutching a broken tree beside him while his parents wept as though their hearts were being torn apart;

She saw desperate people lose the will to live in those troubled times and choose to throw themselves into the flood;

She also saw hundreds of thousands, even millions, die, while the losses in silver reached an astronomical sum;

Yet this was only the beginning.

That had been the south; soon, the scene showed the plight of the north.

It was a sight utterly unlike the flooding in the south.

Beneath a blazing sun, a drought rarely seen in a hundred years swept across the entire south.

The earth cracked, rivers and lakes dried up, and crops withered. The common people gazed up at the scorching sun, bowls set before them, begging heaven to grant them a little rain.

This was a natural calamity, but also a human disaster.

Charlatans knew the villagers yearned for rain, so they came to perform rain-summoning rituals, charging exorbitant sums of silver and continuing to suck away the people's lifeblood.

Under these natural calamities and human disasters, countless victims perished in the scorching heat.

Along both sides of the sun-baked roads, stark white bones lay everywhere, with crows perched upon them, pecking at blood and flesh that had yet to dry.

Even those who survived were as thin as firewood, their skin dark, their eyes deeply sunken. They were not far from death.

Compared with the floods, the drought was even more harrowing to behold.

Mu Xuehuang was too shocked to speak.

She had never imagined that such a severe natural calamity would strike in the near future.

As far back as she could remember, Great Li seemed never to have suffered such a severe drought.

Even if it had, as Empress, she had felt little of it.

How could she possibly have experienced the hardships of the common people firsthand?

But after seeing all this, she was stunned.

Not only would rebels rise in revolt, but such natural calamities would also descend in the future!

It was as though heaven itself were deliberately seeking Great Li's destruction.

"No... this isn't real..."

Mu Xuehuang could not help letting out a hoarse cry.

The rebels had already given her enough of a headache. She had never expected a great natural calamity as well.

Every natural calamity meant an enormous expense for the Dynasty's treasury.

She had not believed in fate before, but now she was beginning to.