How many descendants did Dayu have?

After hearing Zhu Yuanzheng out, Su Chen let out a long sigh and nodded slightly.

"General Zhu is right. Our country's strength today wasn't stolen or plundered."

"Generations of people built it, one step at a time, through countless hardships."

"The whole world is now facing tremendous upheaval. With Huaxia's foundations, its rise is inevitable."

"But that outcome is precisely what many powers don't want to see."

"If problems arise within Huaxia at a time like this, the efforts of countless predecessors could all go to waste."

"So General Zhu has every reason to be cautious, no matter how cautious he is."

Zhu Yuanzheng gazed intently at Su Chen.

"Good!"

"After hearing you say that, I trust you!"

"Whatever you need from now on, the country will give you its full support!"

Unlike before, Zhu Yuanzheng's words were no longer a personal courtesy.

He was speaking on behalf of the country, placing its complete trust in Su Chen.

Li Shuhua wiped his eyes and remained silent for a long time.

He still remembered two things Dayu had said earlier.

"With such descendants, the Nine Provinces are fortunate indeed!"

"With such a descendant, I am fortunate indeed!"

And wasn't Huaxia just as fortunate to have Su Chen?

Li Shuhua cleared his throat and spoke loudly.

"All right, all right, enough of that for now!"

"Mr. Su becoming an inheritor today has shocked the entire world!"

"Those powers secretly plotting against us will certainly have to rein themselves in now."

"Huaxia won't face as much pressure as it did before, either."

"Old Zhu has carried quite a burden this past year. He can finally take a breather!"

Zhu Yuanzheng laughed too. After inviting Su Chen to sit down, he said,

"Old Li is right. This past year nearly worked me to death!"

"Now that young Su is here to shoulder the load, I can slack off a little."

"By the way, young Su, you and Old Li were whispering away back there for ages. You were talking about Huaxia's history, weren't you?"

"But there's something I don't understand! None of that history appears in our records. Where did you learn it?"

At those words, Li Shuhua immediately turned his gaze toward Su Chen.

That was his greatest question as well.

Su Chen considered it, then raised his eyebrows and said,

"Would you believe me if I said I learned it in a dream?"

A dream?

Zhu Yuanzheng and Li Shuhua exchanged looks.

He could dream about lost history?

Wasn't that complete nonsense?

What they didn't know, however, was that Su Chen's previous life already felt like one long dream to him. Saying he had learned it in a dream wasn't entirely untrue.

"I've got it!"

Li Shuhua suddenly clapped his hands and cried out, his eyes wide.

"It must have been a dream visitation! The ancestors must have visited you in your dreams!"

"The Nine Provinces Cauldron appeared a year ago, but it was never activated."

"Although Dayu passed away thousands of years ago, a remnant of his soul has remained inside the Nine Provinces Cauldron!"

"Our ancestor's spirit must have sensed what was happening. He couldn't bear to see Huaxia suffer, so he visited Mr. Su in a dream!"

The more Li Shuhua spoke, the more certain he became. Even his old, yellowed eyes began to shine.

"That also explains why Mr. Su never appeared during the past year."

"Yet when Haidong Country came to provoke us and tried to seize our ancestor symbol, Mr. Su suddenly appeared and saved us from the brink of disaster!"

"Because before that, even Mr. Su didn't know Dayu existed!"

"Our ancestor must have foreseen Huaxia's peril, so he visited Mr. Su in a dream the night before."

"Am I right?"

Hearing Li Shuhua's explanation, Su Chen couldn't help his mouth falling open.

Good grief!

What an imagination. No wonder he'd spent his whole life studying history.

Give him the slightest clue, and he could spin an entire story.

"So that's how it was!"

Zhu Yuanzheng's eyes went wide.

As a soldier, he had originally been a staunch materialist.

But over the past year, ancestor symbols had appeared out of nowhere, and remnants of ancestral souls had returned to the world.

Compared with those things, what was so hard to accept about a dream visitation?

"No wonder!"

Seeing Su Chen's dumbstruck expression, Li Shuhua thought he had guessed exactly what was on his mind, and became even more certain.

"No wonder Dayu said earlier that those old... ahem, those ancestors picked you at first glance."

"I was puzzled at the time, but now that I think about it, Dayu wasn't the only ancestor visiting you in your dreams!"

"It was precisely because these ancestors kept visiting your dreams."

"That's why you knew so much hidden history, and knew about ancestors no one else had heard of!"

Watching Li Shuhua speak with spittle flying everywhere, Su Chen was utterly speechless.

You really do have some imagination!

If a group of old men who'd been dead for centuries or millennia were waiting for me every night as soon as I closed my eyes, how would I ever get any sleep?

Still, dream visitations seemed easier for people to accept than transmigration.

So Su Chen didn't bother explaining. He merely shrugged, tacitly accepting Li Shuhua's theory.

"Out of Huaxia's 1.4 billion people, these ancestors chose young Su alone. Clearly, he really does have something extraordinary about him."

Zhu Yuanzheng clicked his tongue in wonder, looking at Su Chen as though he were some priceless rarity.

In his view, so many ancestors visiting Su Chen's dreams at once meant they must have already chosen him as their inheritor.

Even if Su Chen now shared everything he knew,

when the next symbol appeared, other people still might not be able to activate the ancestor symbol.

Moreover, doing so might go against the ancestors' wishes. It could even backfire and earn their displeasure.

But this was a good outcome, too.

By now, they trusted Su Chen completely.

In these turbulent times, Huaxia also needed a hero to unite its people.

Su Chen was undoubtedly the best choice.

"Young Su, there's one more thing."

Zhu Yuanzheng gathered his words before asking another question.

"Besides granting you his inheritance... did Dayu also give you the authority to awaken his descendants' bloodlines?"

"Yes."

Without the slightest hesitation, Su Chen nodded.

Zhu Yuanzheng and Li Shuhua exchanged a glance and both drew in a breath.

"Mr. Su."

Li Shuhua asked cautiously, "Dayu was an ancestor from four thousand years ago. Does... does his bloodline still survive today?"

He had originally assumed that Dayu would have many descendants.

But he had since learned from Su Chen that Huaxia's history was filled with constant wars, along with countless famines and disasters.

So Li Shuhua was no longer sure whether Dayu's bloodline could have survived to the present.

"It does! And there are plenty of them!"

Su Chen's voice was firm and decisive.

After receiving the absolute inheritance, he could sense every descendant who carried Dayu's bloodline, whether closely or distantly related.

With a single thought, he could awaken their bloodlines.

"Plenty... how many is that?"

Li Shuhua's eyes lit up, and even his voice began to tremble.

Since Su Chen said there were plenty, surely there were at least twenty or thirty thousand?

Among them, those harboring ulterior motives or possessing bad character would surely be only a small minority.

The vast majority of Huaxia's people were upright and loyal to their homeland.

Twenty or thirty thousand Awakened might not compare with Haidong Country's hundred-odd thousand, but they would at least be enough to defend themselves.

Su Chen looked at Li Shuhua, then at the equally tense Zhu Yuanzheng, and held up three fingers.

"Thirty thousand!"

Li Shuhua's eyes instantly shone.

But Su Chen pursed his lips.

"Good heavens! Don't tell me it's three hundred thousand!"

Zhu Yuanzheng shot to his feet.

But Su Chen still shook his head slightly.

"Th-three million? That can't be possible, can it?"

Li Shuhua and Zhu Yuanzheng both trembled involuntarily.

They couldn't believe that number themselves.

Su Chen smiled and said, enunciating every word,

"Not three hundred thousand."

"Not three million, either."

"Not counting those overseas, within Huaxia alone, Dayu's descendants number..."

"Three hundred million!"