Chapter 397 – A Change of Tactics, Aiming to Become the Emperor’s BrotherinLaw, and the Court of Judges Takes Shape - Part 3

Before long, Li Yuan slipped into a hidden clearing and fetched one of his whitewood caskets, a little box carved from pale timber.

𝒻𝑟𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝑛𝘰𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝘤𝘰𝘮

Liu Tie’s severed hair went in; the interrogation began.

There was plenty of hair, and Liu Tie was no great powerhouse, so Li Yuan questioned him for a long while before the strands inside were almost reduced to ash.

Sunlight broke through the canopy, sprinkling coin‑sized dapples across the forest floor. Chin in hand, the youth lounged against an old tree and stared at the dwindling coffer. Cause and consequence were now clear.

So, the Emperor, determined to leave nothing to chance, means to marry into Ocean Province’s governorship. Ocean Province guards the main gate to the Jade Capital, and its military strength is monstrous. Any governor who can keep three sects of the Five Elements Alliance and two major Buddhist temples on edge is not merely provincial in power.

Those two envoys were sent to size up the Emperor’s hand, and what a frightening hand it is.

The first of the Emperor’s trump cards was the ghost cavalry project, 3,000 elite cavalry made from exotic beasts, Green Lotus fearless soldiers, matching weapons, and a custom battle array.

This was an invincible cavalry.

Normally, exotic beasts were impossible to tame. However, the exotic beasts and Green Lotus fearless soldiers shared the same origin.

The exotic beasts were born from the memories of sixth rank Bladeseeker disciples, and the empty vessels were converted into Green Lotus fearless soldiers. Fuse soldier and beast, and a ghost cavalry rider was produced.

Meanwhile, the weapons were forged by Zhu Ban who’d inherited an ancient legacy within the Great Zhou’s treasury.

Forget 3,000. Ten such riders would spell disaster for any power. What happens then if 3,000 such riders create a formation? They’ll be undefeatable. Put me in their path and I’d be minced in an instant. Luckily they’ve bred fewer than a thousand so far, but in three years they’ll reach full strength.

The second trump card was the Lotus Bloom. Shu Shiyuan and Liu Tie knew nothing of its workings, only that when the lotus opened, an entire city would vanish. It was basically the equivalent of a nuclear bomb.

The third and final trump card was the warm snow. As suspected, the phenomenon was a secret art of the Lotus Cult for channeling Yang energy. Paired with the merging of ghost domains, it concentrated life-force to produce high rank meat fields. More resources, stronger experts, deeper reserves.

So...what do I do?

Li Yuan mused.

The otherworld art of war hammered home a lesson. No single hero could stand against a real army. However mighty he was, a head‑on clash with a force like that would end badly, especially with first‑rate powerhouses tagging along.

Not even he, or Lu Xuanxian, could hold against such might. The Lotus Cult had plotted for years; the Emperor had joined them; and the board was about to flip.

Li Yuan brooded for a long while. Suddenly his gaze slid to the whitewood casket.

“This fiancée of the Emperor’s is named Xie Wei. Does Xie Wei have any sisters, unmarried, close to her?”

Liu Tie’s voice drifted from the box.

“Xie Wei has three people she considers as close as sisters.

“The first is Xun Qiongyan, her senior sister, already fifth rank. Finding the Dao hard alone, she seeks a worthy man to walk the path with her, and now lives reclusively on Lotus Blossom Mountain.

“The second is Xie Yu, Xie Wei’s blood sister and a sixth rank. Our lord hopes to marry her to a hero of great strength. The suitor must also promise to marry into the Xie Clan. She currently resides at the governor’s mansion

“The third is Gongyang Xiaoxue, a clan friend, also sixth rank. She often travels with Xie Wei, and likewise seeks a suitable match. She’s at the Gongyang estate.”

Li Yuan’s eyes gleamed. After a moment he said, “Tell me everything about Xie Yu.”

The whitewood casket smoldered in the shadows while he listened intently, interrupting now and then for detail. At last, just as he finished, the box burned away to nothing, spiraling into blue smoke on the breeze.

A few loose ends remained, but nothing critical.

Li Yuan rose with a smile. Another intriguing avenue had opened. He had to kill the Emperor. Yet he couldn’t tell which Emperor was real, much less get near him. He’d encountered three different Emperors already, and he still had no way to judge the true from the false.

He had already tried slipping close to the Emperor with murder in his eyes; it ended badly. If finding and approaching the true Son of Heaven was that hard, why not flip the board, make the real Emperor come to him instead?

An emperor taking a wife won’t send a body double.

First, no man of sense would let a body double consummate his own wedding night.

Second, the Ocean Province governor was powerful enough to know about the decoys. If he did use a stand-in, the entire match would collapse.

So the Emperor who would appear at the governor’s banquet on the wedding night—deep inside Ocean Province’s private capital of Bright Moon Prefecture, under another man’s roof—would be the genuine article, and at his least guarded.

Li Yuan stretched lazily and rose. The path was suddenly simple.

The senior apprentice‑sister? Too remote. The socialite friend? Practically a stranger. Xie Yu, the younger sister. That’s the one.

The governor wants a hero among men for her. Well, if heroes are being weighed, who ranks above me?

Li Yuan made his decision. He’d never met Xie Yu, but that was irrelevant; this wasn’t about love or beauty. It was about waiting for a man he meant to kill.

With patience, he wouldn’t have to battle through layers of guards and traps. He just needed to pick a place his target had to visit, where they’d relax, and when they least expected it he would swing the blade. It was that simple.

Time was on Li Yuan’s side, and the novelty of the scheme even amused him. Eternal youth would be dull without fresh and risky games to play; he wanted to keep his zest for living.

Hunting the Emperor, and the thrill of a new role, were reason enough. What he would never do was crawl into the governor’s estate as a servant, bow and scrape, and swallow abuse. Senseless self‑humiliation had never been his style.

Before setting out, Li Yuan returned to Dawn Manor and told Xue Ning, Cui Huayin, Yao Jue, and Jing Shuixiang, and the others that he’d be away for a while. Then he visited the black market ghost domain and laid everything before Yan Yu.

Yan Yu stood like a queen from the underworld. With her blue gown, ancient wooden hairpin, and lips painted a cold crimson, she listened silently before the black and crimson membrane.

When Li Yuan finished, she said softly, “Husband, be careful. Our fates are truly one now. Your fall would drag me down as well.”

Then Yan Yu shared her own news. Pang Yuanhua had passed away. The undying husk had come to Yan Yu at the end, begging to die inside the ghost domain so she could rise again as a ghost.

Yan Yu agreed. She beckoned, and from the shifting shadows rolled a wheelchair bearing a white‑robed ghost girl, head bowed.

Li Yuan sighed. He’d made Pang Yuanhua his sworn sister in the past, but their lives seldom overlapped; her unseen adventures now belonged to others.

“Yuanhua helped me build a faction of undying husks in Cloudpeak Province,” Yan Yu continued. “I’ve named them the Court of Judges. Each member will mete out reward and punishment.

“Do you remember the two I saved in Hidden River Province’s ancient ghost street? The man in white, Xie Qing’an, and the woman in black, Fan Chouwan, both fierce haters of evil. Fan Chouwan has slaughtered countless villains; Xie Qing’an has rescued just as many innocents. After becoming undying husks, the two drifted to Cloudpeak Province and met Yuanhua; I made them the Court’s chiefs.”

She paused, gaze darkening. “The ice coffin ghost is restless. Something new is about to drop from the glacial rift, some corpse bearing a grudge deep enough to spawn a great ghost. The lower rift is always empty and frozen; I’ll investigate when it falls.”