Chapter 395 – A Change of Tactics, Aiming to Become the Emperor’s BrotherinLaw, and the Court of Judges Takes Shape - Part 1

Relying on alley cats and stray dogs as eyes could never compare to using birds. A bird paid no heed to mountains or rivers. Its wings could carry it straight to its destination. Cats and dogs, however, had to scramble up slopes and slink down hills. What a bird could fly across in a single minute could cost a four-legged beast a full hour.

Lu Yuan could only concede that Lu Xuanxian’s

no-fly zone

had truly half-succeeded in keeping him from snooping. And before long, he realized it had succeeded outright.

The last thing one of his feline agents caught was a shrill voice informing the two guests that Peng Guang and Zhao Gutong would lead the way ahead. After that, the voices dissolved into a muffled, unintelligible drone, as if they’d been swallowed like fog over deep water.

His spying was blocked, and he had no countermeasure. This round, he had lost. They’d accurately targeted his flaws, plain and simple.

Yet Li Yuan refused to sulk. Instead, he laughed aloud. Within the depths of Little Ink Mountain, and still disguised as a woodcutter, he simply sat beside a creek, twirling a bamboo twig through the current.

After being foiled, it would be natural to panic. When this much effort was being put into keeping a conversation under wraps, it had to involve secrets of real weight. And if he couldn’t listen in, he should at least try to move in a little closer.

Li Yuan certainly had the strength and qualification to do so.. Yet he felt no such urgency.

If you won’t let me listen, then I simply won’t, at least not yet...

He smirked. Arm outstretched, fingers loose, the green tip of his bamboo dipped and tapped the water, never disturbing so much as a ripple.

From afar, it looked like the laziest fishing rod in history.

Serenity filled him.

Jiang Taigong was in his eighties when he fished for fortune. Why should I be in a rush?

[1]

He yawned, kicked off his boots, gripped the bamboo between his toes, and rocked it back and forth while gazing at the sky.

High summer clouds drifted in great billows overhead. Thought flickered across his eyes. He whistled up a flock of sparrows.

Small, common, masters of the air, sparrows made the finest scouts. Once formed, his new eyes” skirted the range of Lu Xuanxian’s air blockade and winged toward distant Antelope Pass.

Since they’re honored guests, they’ll have to leave after calling on their host. And when they leave, they have to pass through Antelope Pass.

Parting ways a thousand miles out is still a farewell. The pass lies in Lotus Cult territory, so they’ll definitely have people escorting them as far as the Eternal Rest River. If my guess is right, someone may be waiting on the far bank, though perhaps not...

All I need is for one ear to catch where they cross, then I can meet our two honored guests face to face. As long as I’m polite, they should answer anything I ask.

Leaving a few cats and dogs on listening duty, Li Yuan set out for Antelope Pass himself. To cross the river he would have to swim; ordinary birds could not fly that span, and he had no ninth rank demonic bird up his sleeve.

˙·٠✧🐗➶➴🏹✧٠·˙

Three days later...

Li Yuan lounged on a dirt shelf above the pass, filthy from head to toe and thoroughly bored, idly kneading mud pies. Patience he had in spades; he could play with mud for three months straight if need be.

Meanwhile his scattered eyes had blanketed the entire area. He had even swum the river to plant watchers on the far bank. The moment those two honored guests made a move, he would know.

With a fingertip he traced circles on the ground. Wherever the line went, the earth gathered, drawn by unseen force, into tiny pointed mounds.

He looked as though he were killing time, yet he was honing his power. Unleashing strength was easy; reigning it in was hard.

He pondered how his abilities might evolve in the fourth rank. He possessed the explosive Yang energy, the vibrational power of his ancestral seal. With his newly comprehended restraining power and the expanded power of his domain, would they fuse into a crimson crescent of blade qi? Would his Nine by Nine Formless Blades blaze with flames? Or would they morph into something else entirely. The thought thrilled him.

But wonder alone would not suffice. He still had to tangle with the Son of Heaven himself—if not to kill him, then to make his path thorny, to turn every single step into two, or even three or four.

Li Yuan could only blame his father‑in‑law for this mess, really.

Zhu Ban had been a run‑of‑the‑mill weaponsmith, until he stumbled onto the Great Zhou Treasury’s mysterious inheritance and actually mastered it. When a man could hammer out twenty spirit artifacts in one go, he was no longer a backyard blacksmith; he became a wholesale dealer in premium armaments, the sort of craftsman whose single pair of hands equaled a hundred ordinary ones. Rumor even claimed he could forge fourth rank weapons now, which made him priceless.

The Emperor naturally wanted that kind of talent shackled to his war machine, which meant reviving the previous in-law connection. Whether or not Cui Huayin ever shared a bridal night with the Emperor was irrelevant; her real purpose was to bind father‑in‑law to son‑in‑law.

In short, the bridegroom the Emperor truly covets is the old smith himself.

Previously, the conflict between Li Yuan and the Emperor was ideological. Li Yuan had no interest in the Grand Union of Yin and Yang, while the Emperor did. Now a personal grudge had been added to the mix. If Li Yuan didn’t strike from the shadows soon, then once the Emperor steadied his reign, he would come after Li Yuan with a vengeance.

These thoughts flashed past as the youth looked up to see white clouds darken into iron‑grey hounds, the sky as black as a cauldron bottom.

Thunder cracked, and the clouds seemed to burst; columns of rain crashed down, drumming a deafening downpour over everything. Countless sounds merged into a boisterous pandemonium, and the lashing rain turned the world into a blurred watercolor.

Most folk, caught in such a downpour, would sprint home or dive for shelter. Li Yuan merely smiled, spread his arms, and lay back to be drenched, soaking in the raw power of heaven and earth, thoroughly at ease.

He opened his eyes to the storm. Arrow‑like drops stabbed at his pupils, only to ricochet away.

A rainstorm,

he mused,

is its own eruption of power. Vapor rises from rivers and seas, gathers above, then detonates, returning as rain that flows back to river and sea, an endless cycle, never truly spent. What about my power? When I unleash it, can I draw it back?

Internal circulation was nothing new, but could he build an external loop? Once he broke into fourth rank and claimed a true domain, might he weave such a cycle within it, a force fierce and limitless, burning no fuel, enduring as long as he lived, like nature itself?

Daydreams, yet tantalizing ones.

With no map ahead, Li Yuan had only intuition to guide his next breakthrough.

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You can read about the tale of Jiang Taigong here.

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