Loushan Pass.
Outside the gate tower, a sea of people had gathered. Hearing that the authorities actually intended to behead more than a hundred people, the surrounding residents had all rushed over in anger to watch.
Atop the tower, Wang Shantang led nearly a hundred Supernatural Ability Users, along with sect leaders and cave masters renowned throughout the borderlands, to the edge of the wall to look down.
On either side, hundreds of soldiers stood with spears in hand, solemn and imposing.
Wang Shantang narrowed his eyes at the masses of common folk below, suddenly feeling as though he had returned to the pinnacle.
The feeling of wielding power was truly intoxicating.
His real name was Wei Xing, and he was twenty-two that year. His father had once been the Southern Inspection Commissioner of the Celestial Surveillance Bureau, ranking above a Qianhu, wielding immense power and enjoying boundless glory.
Unfortunately, his father had later become embroiled in the struggle between the civil officials and the surveillance faction. After two years in prison, he had been sentenced to public beheading, while Wei Xing, his legitimate son, had been exiled with his mother to Shangyu County, living a life worse than death as the family of a condemned official.
Wei Xing had only been ten or so that year, but he remembered his family's former glory, so every day in Shangyu County had been agony to him.
Only in the past two years had the surveillance faction, nearly crushed back then, shown signs of being employed again by Great Qian's Emperor Jing, gradually rising once more.
As a second-generation direct descendant of that faction, Wei Xing naturally received extra care and slowly escaped his predicament.
He had experienced the glory power brought his family; he had also fallen to rock bottom, living