Su Hu? Hadn't that hothead written a rebel poem and decided to revolt? Now he was coming to rescue his king?
Huang Feiying? Who was that-Noble Consort Huang of the Western Palace? You went off to lead troops into battle? Did you really take the battlefield for a chessboard?
Yin Pobai? I don't remember the name, but that armor marks him as one of the Royal Guards I ordered to strip off their armor. What's with the crowd of commoners behind him, swaggering around with farming tools?
I sent you to prey on the villagers, and you set up a police station instead? Serving the people? You even formed a militia and armed the masses?
Looking at the thousands of troops beneath the Beacon Tower and the Great Shang banners fluttering in the wind, Zi Shou felt the deepest sorrow of all: a heart that had given up.
You could come, but did you have to time it so perfectly?
Misfortunes never came alone!
According to Zi Shou's deductions, the Foolishness Value assessment depended on the final outcome of each four-month period.
Whatever happened along the way, if people considered him foolish at the moment of settlement, he was foolish. If they considered him wise, he was wise.
The weight assigned to each person was balanced according to their standing.
Court officials and feudal lords carried more weight, but there were few of them. Commoners carried less weight, but there were many of them.
To obtain a huge amount of Foolishness Value, he had to make several groups consider him foolish at the same time.
His earlier method of earning Foolishness Value by skipping morning court was the least efficient approach. It merely made the ministers think their king was a little foolish and lazy. What did the commoners care whether he attended morning court?
In fact, Zi Shou had initially done very well during this settlement period. The Mandate of Heaven Theory made the nobles think he had no respect for Heaven, his furious rebuke of Yun Zhongzi made the commoners think he had insulted a true cultivator of the Dao, and his beacon-fire prank made the feudal lords feel they had been toyed with.
Add in the scattered curses directed at him in the streets, and that was why he had expected a substantial haul of Foolishness Value.
Admittedly, there had been a small mishap: someone had actually rebelled.
But at the time, Zi Shou had thought only his final beacon-fire prank had failed. His other deeds could still make up for it.
The commoners and nobles would surely still consider him foolish, leaving him a decent harvest at settlement.
The problem was that Su Hu had arrived, and so had Yin Pobai.
With Su Hu's arrival, the rumors collapsed without a single rebuttal. All that talk of King Zhou nearly driving Daji to her death was false.
Everyone in Chaoge knew Su Hu's explosive temper. If King Zhou had truly done such a thing, would Su Hu have been the first to rush into Chaoge to rescue him?
Jizhou was hardly the closest feudal domain to Chaoge!
Clearly, everything had been planned.
Yin Pobai was an even bigger problem. He had brought commoners directly to Zi Shou's aid. After things had gone this far, would the commoners still think their king foolish?
It's over. In the commoners' eyes, I've surely become a wise king who willingly used himself as bait to sweep the traitors out of his court.
As for the Mandate of Heaven Theory, it would need time to slowly ferment.
For instance, if he were inexplicably struck by lightning and suffered Heaven's punishment, those feudal lords would conclude he was a foolish ruler. For now, it could provide a little Foolishness Value, but not much-only enough to exchange for a few elixirs to munch on like candy.
Zi Shou had long since closed the system panel. He no longer even dared to estimate the settlement time, because the more he thought about it, the more despair he felt.
Four months! Another four months wasted!
He desperately wanted to tell everyone below to leave, go home, and run back to their mothers.
But he could not do that.
Leaving aside whether they could understand that order, even if they took their troops away, it would not instantly reverse the commoners' opinion. Besides, he had no Foolishness Value and could not deal with the remaining rebels.
Zi Shou finally understood how little control the kings of every dynasty had over their own lives.
Being a foolish king was already this difficult. Surely being a wise one was even harder!
Standing atop the Beacon Tower with Daji in his arms, Zi Shou was overwhelmed by conflicting emotions.
Fortunately, he was strong enough. A ruler could not shed tears lightly.
Unless crying would make others consider him foolish.
Admiration shimmered in the eyes of Daji, nestled in his arms.
Daji felt fortunate-fortunate to have met a King Zhou like this, possessing both the valor to fight the rebels and the wisdom to hold everything in his grasp.
She found it harder and harder to believe Nuwa's claim that Cheng Tang's realm had only twenty-eight years of fortune remaining. With a king of such magnificent talent and vision, even if dark clouds briefly veiled the sky, he would be like the sun, his radiance too brilliant to contain, eventually parting the clouds and bringing daylight.
Just as Zi Shou was trying to encourage himself and regain his confidence, shouts rang out in the distance.
"Kill!"
More people?
Would this ever end?
Huh? This lot seems a little different?
There were roughly seven thousand of them. They wore no armor, but all carried sabers or swords. Charging in from the countryside outside the north gate, they immediately clashed with the Jizhou army.
Rebels?
Zi Shou was puzzled. Lei Kai had brought only the soldiers originally under his command, with no additional troops. Chong Heihu's Caozhou troops and the Marquis of the North's army should both have been defeated; otherwise, Noble Consort Huang and Lu Xiong would not have appeared here.
Then where had these rebels come from?
Daji's soft voice reached him. "Your Majesty, these villains should be the bandits from Yellow Flower Mountain."
The rebels had even colluded with bandits?
They really had prepared for everything.
Zi Shou searched his memory. The novel had mentioned the bandits of Yellow Flower Mountain, and some of them seemed to know a little Daoist magic.
This could be trouble.
Both Su Hu and Yin Pobai possessed outstanding martial skill among ordinary mortals, but against extraordinary men who knew magic, they would be at a severe disadvantage.
The bandit chief, Deng Zhong, had a blue face, red hair, a huge mouth, and protruding fangs. He smashed his Mountain-Splitting Axe about with boundless strength and extraordinary ferocity. Fortunately, Su Quanzhong performed brilliantly. With only his halberd, he even held a slight advantage.
But the others were not so easy to handle.
Take their second-in-command, Xin Huan, who had wings sprouting from his sides and flew through the sky with a hammer and chisel, utterly unstoppable.
He was clearly a bargain-basement Lei Zhenzi. Every meeting of his hammer and chisel claimed another life, and because he could fly, no one could even reach him.
Their third-in-command, Zhang Jie, wielded a long spear. Yin Pobai faced him with a Bronze Plow and suffered from the disadvantage of his weapon. Fortunately, his considerable weight and solid footing allowed him to fight desperately without retreating.
The fourth, Tao Rong, was the most outrageous. He brought out his magic treasure, the Wind-Gathering Banner. One wave sent sand and stones flying, whipped up earth and dust, and darkened heaven and earth. Many soldiers were blinded by the grit.
Even the morale of the bandits and Lei Kai's rebels rose along with it.
The fiercer the commander, the higher the troops' morale.
"My beloved consort, remain on the tower for now. I will be back shortly."
After giving Daji his instructions, Zi Shou descended from the Beacon Tower.
His settlement would certainly yield little Foolishness Value, leaving him unable to sweep away the rebels in one stroke. With the bandits launching a surprise attack as well, the battle was turning against them. It was dangerous.
These people had disrupted all of Zi Shou's plans. Now he had neither the means nor the time to worry about Foolishness Value. He had to deal with the rebels first and survive this rebellion safely.
He had recovered some strength earlier, and his boundless might allowed him to fight a hundred men alone. He could certainly influence the battle. Seeing their king fight so bravely would also restore the soldiers' morale and ease the pressure on them.
At the very least, fewer people would die.
Though he was deliberately trying to be a foolish king, Zi Shou was still a normal person at heart. He could not stand by and watch his soldiers fall while protecting him.
Before he was a foolish king, he was the king of humanity and the ruler of Great Shang.
The settlement time has passed anyway. I'll just work hard to earn back my foolish reputation over the next four months.
"I shall fight alongside you, share your robes and your hardships, and lay down my life with you!"
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