Annihilating the Clan

"Rest assured, Teacher. I made a rough tally back then. Over more than a century, the Guan family traded weapons and crossbows to foreign peoples for vast sums of money. The silver alone amounted to more than ten million taels.

"I buried all those treasures in the cesspit back then.

"And with Guan Family Fort abandoned, no one would ever imagine the treasure was buried in a cesspit."

Tian Hao chuckled. He had been taken to Guan Family Fort and enslaved for over a decade, only escaping when he was fifteen.

His escape had involved plotting to poison them and provoking infighting within Guan Family Fort, then emerging to finish off the survivors with crossbows made by the fort itself.

It was not that he was cruel. The people of Guan Family Fort were guilty of every conceivable evil.

On the surface, Guan Family Fort was a distinguished, respectable power of the righteous path. Its lord, Azure Dragon Saber Guan Xiong, was revered and admired by martial artists of the righteous path.

But no one knew that Guan Family Fort secretly manufactured fine weapons and crossbows to sell to foreign peoples, who then used those superior weapons to invade the Southern Ming Kingdom. Who knew how many soldiers and civilians had died beneath the weapons Guan Family Fort forged for those invaders?

Even ten thousand deaths would not be enough to quench his hatred for people like that.

"Utterly despicable!"

At the thought of Guan Family Fort's deeds, Ru Zhigang's face turned livid, murderous intent boiling off him.

"Hao, just how did you kill so many people at Guan Family Fort back then?"

Ning Zhongze finally could not resist asking. The question had weighed on her mind for three whole years, and she still could not understand how Tian Hao had wiped out everyone in Guan Family Fort.

Yue Buqun and Ru Zhigang also cast curious looks his way. They were equally baffled.

They were not the only ones. After the massacre at Guan Family Fort, countless people had gone to investigate, including both government officials and many people from Jianghu.

Yet no one had managed to identify the poison afflicting the people of Guan Family Fort. The coroners and the physicians summoned before the massacre could only establish that it attacked the liver.

Tian Hao smiled. "Remember how I threw out all those moldy things in the kitchen last year? You have to be careful about what you eat. It's best to eat everything fresh. Never try to save money on that, or the consequences could be severe."

As a new-era citizen endowed with the four virtues, his knowledge and experience far surpassed anything people of ancient times could match. Even without materials at hand, he could find ways to produce them.

Aflatoxin, for instance, was easy to produce, and in large quantities at that. After that man brought him out of the underground workshop, he deliberately recreated dishes he had seen on a certain short-video app in his previous life. The people of Guan Family Fort assigned him to the kitchen, giving him his chance.

Perhaps the people of Guan Family Fort thought poison could only be obtained from outside, so they felt entirely at ease around someone like him and let down their guard.

Moreover, to forge weapons in secret, Guan Family Fort had enclosed its grounds with tall, thick walls. After the incident began, Fort Lord Guan Xiong ordered the gates sealed and forbade anyone from leaving, hoping to preserve the secret of the family's weapons trade with foreign peoples.

But as the saying went, better to channel a flow than dam it. Such heavy-handed suppression naturally sparked panic, and some members of the Guan family banded together in rebellion. The two sides fought until they had nearly annihilated each other.

Even Guan Xiong, the strongest among them, lost an arm and a leg. In the end, Tian Hao, who had prepared well in advance, finished things off perfectly with a crossbow in hand.

In truth, Tian Hao had not originally intended to wipe out Guan Family Fort. He had some sense of his own limits. Who could have imagined that the fort was already riddled with internal conflicts? All those long-suppressed grievances erupted, and they plunged into a vicious fight to the death.

When he finally emerged from his hiding place, he discovered that nearly everyone in Guan Family Fort was dead. Even the survivors were gravely wounded, barely clinging to life.

Seeing that, he got an idea. He took the risk of finishing them off, then found both the manual for Guan Family Fort's supreme technique, the Martial Sage Dragging Saber Slash, and the treasury.

The Martial Sage Dragging Saber Slash was the first sword strike he had used against Linghu Chong earlier. It unleashed strength and speed beyond the user's limits-a veritable killing blow.

"Truly, all things beneath heaven follow yin and yang, giving rise to and overcoming one another!"

Ru Zhigang took a long time to recover from his astonishment. He had never imagined that everyday food could undergo such mysterious changes. Of course he knew spoiled food was bad to eat, but he had never thought it could be so lethal.

"You still need enough of the stuff for it to work. Luckily, it was easy to cultivate, and I deliberately mixed it into bitter dishes to hide the taste."

Tian Hao was deeply moved by this as well. The saying that illness entered through the mouth was no lie.

"Unfortunately, the powers behind Guan Family Fort are too great and too far-reaching. We simply don't have the strength to bring them down. Otherwise, I'd make sure their reputations were utterly ruined!"

He spoke bitterly. He hated that sort of scum more than anything.

"Guan Family Fort was only one part of that group. Even people in the imperial court were secretly involved."

Ru Zhigang sighed again, feeling that the court was truly nearing the point of no salvation.

Among the populace, wealthy merchants and powerful clans secretly traded prohibited supplies to foreign peoples. They even sold them weapons and crossbows.

Officials at court colluded with those wealthy merchants like wolves and jackals, while the emperor and his ministers schemed against each other. A court like that truly offered no hope.

"No dynasty lasts forever. Great Ming's time is almost up, too. Eastern Ming was conquered and occupied by foreign peoples long ago, and they even founded the Qing Kingdom there. Things aren't looking good in Southern Ming either. We have to plan ahead, or we'll end up sharing the Eastern Ming Kingdom's fate."

Before the three people closest to him, Tian Hao would not conceal his ideals.

For one thing, Old Yue and his wife were people of Jianghu, with little natural affection for the court. They could not care less whether it lived or died.

His teacher, Ru Zhigang, certainly would not care either. His entire family had been executed, leaving him all alone. It would have been absurd for him to feel any affection for the court or that emperor. Otherwise, he would not have left the court in despair after the new emperor's enthronement and returned home to retire.

"You want to use the Mount Hua Sect as the foundation for a new dynasty?"

Ru Zhigang was astonished. He had thought his final disciple had no ambitions in this direction, only to discover that the boy's aspirations were greater still.

Yue Buqun and his wife also looked at him in shock. Neither had anticipated this.

"I have a few ideas. But an institution like the imperial court must maintain its purity and always stand on the common people's side, because they are the largest and most important foundation. Other strata of society can disappear without bringing everything down, but once that foundation is gone, the entire structure collapses.

"Power and profit must be completely separated. Otherwise, things will inevitably fall into a vicious cycle of fighting for power and wealth, and even collusion between officials and merchants, hastening the court's demise."

Tian Hao did not actually want to build a nation upon the Mount Hua Sect. He did not even want to get involved.

The pinnacle of martial arts, becoming a human nuclear bomb, and living forever-those were his goals!

But the situation in Ming was truly grim. In fact, no feudal dynasty could satisfy him.

After all, the limitations inherent in feudal dynasties were too great. He needed a world where everyone was a dragon, better able to support his own martial advancement, so he could reach this world's pinnacle and perhaps even transcend it.

That required a sufficiently vast foundation, and the common people, who were by far the most numerous, were his only choice.

Besides, he was a commoner himself. The gentry naturally looked down on him and excluded him. Even if he wanted to enter their circles, it would be difficult.

Nor would those people ever accept his ideals. There was not the slightest room for compromise.

Since that was the case, he might as well establish a perfect dynasty himself.

He would bring lasting peace and stability to the world as far as possible, creating an ideal environment for development and raising the overall level of martial arts.

After all, resources came first in martial training. To secure enough resources, the world had to remain stable. Otherwise, a single dynastic upheaval would destroy everything they had worked so hard to develop.

Moreover, in the nations of this world, the courts and martial arts existed separately. That was precisely why Jianghu and the martial world had emerged.

The two had to be united, lest they continue opposing each other and wasting their strength on internal strife.

Only then could he maximize his own development.

Of course, these were merely ideas, and realizing them would be countless times harder than simply cultivating martial arts. But if he could eventually reach the level of a walking natural disaster, it should become possible.

After all, in any world, the bigger fist was always the strongest truth. In this world, that fist was martial arts.

Ru Zhigang sank into thought, deeply affected by his disciple's words.

As a scholar, he naturally desired lasting peace and stability. Yet every dynasty had followed the same course, as though trapped in a vicious cycle. None had endured forever.

It was like a human life: full of vitality at birth, advancing boldly in youth, reaching its peak in middle age, then declining, until old age brought a body riddled with illnesses and unbearable suffering.

He had never quite understood it before. Now, after hearing his disciple's words, he grasped the crux of the matter.

For instance, people like that were now gradually infiltrating and corroding Ming's court, seeking private gain. Corrupt officials at court were beyond counting, and some even sold official posts in secret.

Guan Family Fort was only one of them. Across the entire world, there were countless other powers just like it.

With so many woodworms gnawing away at it, lasting peace and stability would have been a miracle.

Though the common people occupied the lowest rung, they were an irreplaceable foundation.

Ordinarily, they seemed insignificant. But once driven to their limit and left with no way to survive, the power they could unleash was unimaginable. Before that power, any dynasty would crumble like earth and shattered tiles.