At dusk, the endless stretch of tents was dyed dark red by the setting sun.
Big Black Horse, who had followed Ye Jingtang for ten thousand miles, slowly walked out of the deathly silent crowd and into the equally hushed marketplace.
Ye Jingtang sat on horseback holding the black royal banner, watching both sides of the street out of the corner of his eye. His furrowed brow did not relax after he left the gathering.
He had killed Sima Yue today purely to strike first and eliminate future trouble. As a wanderer of the martial world from Liangzhou, he had only his adoptive father in his heart. He truly could not find much resonance with the loves and hatreds that predated his birth.
Although the chiefs of the Western Sea Tribes each had their own designs, the ordinary people living here were different.
Northern Liang levied heavy taxes and forcibly conscripted able-bodied men, but the taxes never fell on the rulers, nor did the conscription reach the chiefs' families. All these oppressive policies and heavy taxes weighed on the shoulders of the common people living among the Western Sea Tribes.
Ye Jingtang did not care what the tribal chiefs thought, but after leaving the gathering, he clearly noticed the looks in the eyes of the shepherds, laborers, and elderly herb farmers-an unaccountable admiration, trust, and yearning.
That yearning came from the comfortable lives of decades past, from the three generations of Tianlang Kings who had treated their tribespeople as family.
He did not know those three men and had no real conception of them, but these people clearly regarded him as someone like those three.
It was an invisible pressure, so much so that even Ye Jingtang, whose conscience had always been clear, felt a bone lodged in his throat