His Work Done, He Brushed Off His Robes and Left, Returning Home!!

Three years later.

The capital.

The streets, once desolate from war and harsh rule, now bustled with carriages and people, their voices rising in a great clamor.

Shops lined the streets in close rows, their vendors' cries rising and falling. Children held candied hawthorn skewers as they chased and played through the alleys, carefree smiles on their faces.

In the teahouses, storytellers held forth, spittle flying as they spoke. They no longer told old tales of the previous dynasty, but of how the reigning emperor had held up the falling sky in a time of peril, slain the khan of the grasslands, opened the granaries to distribute grain, and eased labor levies and taxes.

The tea drinkers listened, spellbound, breaking into thunderous cheers whenever the tale reached an exciting turn.

The imperial city, the Hall of Mental Cultivation.

Chen Ye put down the vermilion brush in his hand and rubbed the slightly aching spot between his brows.

Over the past three years, he had scarcely rested for a single day.

He had set the bureaucracy in order, punished corruption, and uprooted the deeply entrenched aristocratic clans that knew only how to suck the lifeblood from the people.

He had struck at the military commands that relied on their troops to defy central authority and brought military power back under central control. Swords had naturally flashed and blood had flowed in rivers along the way.

But before Great Zhao's iron army, those so-called interest groups were nothing more than mantises trying to stop a chariot, crushed to pieces in the blink of an eye.

Once the dust had settled, Chen Ye began implementing new policies, reducing and remitting taxes, encouraging farming and sericulture, and cracking down on land consolidation, allowing countless displaced people to own land once more.

Under this series of policies, the Great Zhao dynasty, once tottering with age, had come alive with astonishing vitality.

And he, His Majesty Yang Zhao, had long since been deified.

Across Great Zhao's provinces and prefectures, countless people had built shrines to him of their own accord, offering incense day and night and praying that he would live ten thousand years without end.

But Chen Ye knew in his heart that he did not ultimately belong here.

Now his great vengeance had been accomplished, and the realm was at peace.

It was time for him to leave.

As for the question of a successor after he left, there was no need to trouble himself over it.

Chen Ye had come here by transmigrating in spirit, and when he left, he would leave a self-awareness behind in this body. It would then continue to rule Great Zhao like an avatar of Chen Ye.

"Your Majesty, it's time to rest!" an old eunuch called respectfully, his eyes full of heartfelt reverence.

"All right, you may go ahead. I'll sleep after I finish reviewing this memorial," Chen Ye replied offhandedly.

The old eunuch sighed inwardly, but dared not say anything. He could only withdraw quietly.

After finishing the memorial, Chen Ye rose and went to the window.

Looking at the brilliant lights outside, he felt a perfect clarity in his heart.

At that moment, Chen Ye thought of many people: Fang Tao, whom he had met when he first arrived, Wu Xiaorui at the Eight Schools Arts Contest, and others. A slight ripple stirred in his heart.

But the Eight Great Schools were no longer the seedy underbelly of the martial world they had once been. Under the government's guidance, they had become an important force in maintaining order in the capital, which could be considered a good place for them in the end.

Everything was well.

"It's time to go home."

Chen Ye murmured to himself, then closed his eyes.

[Return]

In an instant, the entire world seemed to turn into flowing lines and shifting light and shadow, rapidly fading and disintegrating.

The imperial city beneath his feet, the mountains and rivers in the distance, and the starry sky overhead all vanished into nothingness in an instant.

An irresistible force tugged at his consciousness, pulling it down into endless darkness.

When his senses returned, he found himself in a wildly shifting, kaleidoscopic vortex of chaos.

And beneath his feet was a battered dugout canoe.

It was the very Boat of the Other Shore on which he had come.

But in the next moment, Chen Ye saw a succession of images: from a humiliated book boy who had died in disgrace, to a master thief whose name shook the capital, then the Moon-Treading Great Hero who fought for justice, and finally the emperor who ruled the realm and set its mountains and rivers in order once more...

Whenever an image flashed past, the canoe beneath his feet gave off a faint glow.

Its rotten wood flaked away and reformed in the light, while the hull lengthened and widened at a speed visible to the naked eye.

Finally, when the image of him ruling the realm and receiving the kneeling homage of countless subjects froze, the boat's form settled as well.

The dugout canoe that had once looked ready to fall apart at any moment had become a small boat that, though somewhat old, at least looked much sturdier.

At that very moment, a realization welled up in Chen Ye's heart.

He instantly understood the Boat of the Other Shore's true purpose.

The boat was not merely a vessel for traveling between worlds.

Its size was also determined by what the traveler did in a world and the magnitude of the impact he had on that world itself.

On the way there, the spiritual object offered in sacrifice determined the size of the boat and the standing of his initial identity.

On the return journey, the size of the boat determined how much "Great Dao Fruit" it could carry back!

The so-called Great Dao Fruit was everything he had obtained in this world!

Classes, skills, insights... and so on.

The bigger the boat, the more he could bring back, and the higher his class level would be!

"So that's how it is..."

Chen Ye looked at the small boat beneath his feet, which could only be described as not quite so dilapidated, and felt a trace of regret.

He had thought he had done well enough over the past three years, but now it seemed there were still many things he could have done better.

Perhaps, if he had unified the realm and ushered in an era of prosperity unlike any before it, the boat would have grown larger?

Before he could think any further, the small boat beneath his feet jolted violently, carrying him into the vast river ahead that stretched through the endless void.

What a river it was!

It seemed to cascade down from infinite heights and flow away into infinite distance.

Every wave and every surge in the river seemed to reflect the cycle of a world's birth and destruction.

Countless equally spectacular tributaries flowed into it from all directions, a scene so magnificent and breathtaking that it surpassed the limits of what words could describe.

Chen Ye felt like a grain of millet in the vast ocean, laughably small.

But the magnificent sight vanished in a flash.

The next second, Chen Ye felt his whole body plunge downward, as though he were falling from a height of ten thousand zhang.

Cold, damp air, a breeze tinged with the fishy smell of water, and the gentle rocking of the wooden boat beneath him pulled him back to reality in an instant.

Chen Ye's eyes snapped open.

The familiar sight of Blackwater Lake met his gaze.

Dazzling sunlight struggled through gaps in the dark clouds overhead and shone on his face, leaving him somewhat unaccustomed to it.

Judging by the sun, it was clearly still noon on the day he had left.

He had spent several tumultuous and magnificent years in that world, yet only an instant had passed here.

If his memories had not been so clear, he would almost have thought it was all a bizarre dream beneath the southern bough.

Just then, a panel slowly appeared before his eyes.

[Class: Nightwalker (lv3)]

[Talent: Child of Shadow]

[Skills: Deft Hands lv10, Swift Blade lv10, Running on Eaves lv10, Shadow Concealment lv5, Throwing lv5]

[Boat of the Other Shore (cooldown complete, can be activated again)]

Seeing the information on the panel, Chen Ye let out a long breath.

His achievements this time had ultimately been enough only to bring back the Nightwalker class and its skills.

Although he had been unable to bring back the Thief Ancestor he had finally become, this was already a heaven-defying stroke of fortune!

Feeling the power surging within him and the techniques that had long since become instinct in his mind, Chen Ye raised his head and looked through the layers of mist into the distance.

A boat floated there, with people aboard peering furtively in his direction.

It was Zhao Qiu and the other two!