Chapter 407 – Ocean Province’s General’s Temple; 3,000 Ghost Cavalry Surge North, Sweeping Aside All Foes; and the Son of Heaven Pays his Respects at the Xie Residence - Part 1

Within the Xie residence, before an antique bronze mirror, Xie Yu slipped her arms around Li Yuan from behind. Her soft body pressed against his back; she tilted her head over his shoulder and admired the intimate tableau reflected in the mirror.

Her lively eyes flicked downward and caught sight of the blade resting across her husband’s knees. A moment’s silence passed. She lifted her gaze again and gave the mirror a gentle smile.

“Early May is the General’s Festival. You missed it last time. Want to go together?” she asked.

“The General’s Festival?” Li Yuan raised a brow.

“Mmhmm!” Xie Yu nodded, a playful light in her eyes. “You’ll like it. The temple we worship at sits in a haunted region, a proper ghost domain. The shrine’s buried in the hills, but everything at the foot of the mountain has turned into a riotous market.

“A few days before the festival, the place explodes with activity. You’ll see lanterns of every shape, food and trinkets galore, and anything new or clever you can think of. Boys and girls slip off to stroll among the lights, bump into each other, trade names, and maybe kindle a bit of fate.”

Li Yuan pictured a crush of warm, living bodies, life-scent thick in the streets. The thought made his stomach twist. Only by abandoning his present cultivation—throwing away all his progress and crawling back to the start—could he shake that revulsion.

Yet he had already tasted the benefits of sharpening his soul through skill and pricking it with a thread of Yin energy; secrets of power and the very fabric of the world lay hidden there. He had no wish to quit.

“Forget it, then,” Xie Yu said softly, her eyes dimming.

“No,” Li Yuan said. “We’re going.”

“But you don’t enjoy crowds.”

“If you want to go, I’ll be with you.”

However strange Li Yuan had become, his feelings for his new wife were still intact. Even if flesh and blood repelled him, he knew the woman before him was his bride.

A sudden thought of Yan Yu flashed through his mind. Did she live every moment with this same feeling after becoming a ghost? She had never said so.

˙·٠✧🐗➶➴🏹✧٠·˙

Several days later.

At dawn, the Xie Clan caravan rolled out of the manor gates and rumbled westward.

After traveling all night, they reached a small county on the edge of Bright Moon Prefecture.

The place was already ablaze with life, sparks blossoming like silver flowers, lanterns everywhere, performers dressed like generals leading long processions, dancing and singing down the streets. Scarlet lanterns hung in strings overhead, and children darted beneath them, squealing with delight.

When the Xie caravan appeared, the crowd instinctively parted, bowing back to either side of the road.

Li Yuan lounged in the carriage’s velvet darkness, a darkness that felt like balm. Beside him, Xie Yu’s warmth and scent were soft as carved jade. He decided not to think of her as flesh and blood at all; instead he slid an arm around her and drew her close.

If Yan Yu could manage ordinary affection, why couldn’t he?

Just then the Xie convoy jolted to a stop. Up ahead, the steward’s voice crackled with anger. He was arguing with someone, though the words were lost in the clatter.

Xie Yu lifted her head from Li Yuan’s chest and flipped the curtain aside.

A maid galloped up, face pale.

“What happened?” Xie Yu asked.

“Third Miss, I’ll have a look.”

She wheeled away, then was back in moments. “Third Miss, General Wang is blocking the road.”

“Which General Wang?”

“General Wang Gong.”

Of course, the Wang Clan served the Xie Clan, but they kept closer to her uncles than to her father. Wang Gong, already an elder, had clawed his way to fifth rank, but endless military drills and border skirmishes had left him no time to marry.

Two years ago, when Xie Jian’an announced the tournament for her hand, Wang Gong had strutted onto the stage...only for Li Yuan to swoop in out of nowhere and snatch her away.

The maid lowered her voice. “General Wang says he wishes to speak with you.”

Since becoming a wife, Xie Yu had shed much of her girlish naiveté. A single heartbeat and she pictured the swarm of petty intrigues buzzing behind this scene. Every great power teemed with them.

The maid shrank a little farther. “He’s brought a thousand cavalry. No armor. It looks as though they only came to see the lanterns.”

“Do they really think they can kidnap me?” Xie Yu snorted. She rose and stepped out of the carriage.

Seeing her go, Li Yuan followed.

They mounted and nudged their horses forward.

A thousand riders swayed in the road, half drunk, glaring at the carriages. The burly man in front. wine cup still in hand, jabbed a finger at Li Yuan. “So you’re the pup who stole my bride?”

Li Yuan let his gaze skim the steaming masses of flesh, then fixed on Wang Gong. Beside the general’s head, a combat power of 1,450~2,740 shimmered.

“Feel like a wager?” Li Yuan asked calmly.

Wang Gong blinked. “What kind of wager?”

Li Yuan pointed at him. “Everyone here’s a witness. You beat me, I become your servant. I beat you, you become mine.”

“...” Wang Gong stared at him, speechless. Then he laughed, still feigning drunkenness. “Hear that, lads? Little fool’s babbling, hahaha! You stole my—”

“Trash,” Li Yuan cut him off, his voice as cold as steel.

Wang Gong was still chuckling to himself. He had marched in with a thousand riders to bait the Xie Clan’s new son-in-law, test the youngster’s skills, and then push him into some rash blunder his own masters could exploit later.

But he never expected the man to wager everything so bluntly.

Li Yuan glanced around at the mounted soldiers, fixed his eyes on Wang Gong, and repeated, “Pathetic.”

The meaning was plain.

You strut in front of your own men, yet you quake like this. What else could you be but trash?

Wang Gong caught the jab and rolled his eyes. “I’m a general. These thousand cavalry are part of me. If we fight, I fight with them. Do you dare?”

“Pathetic,” Li Yuan said again, his eyes clearly saying,

You won’t step up alone and need a thousand shields?

Wang Gong’s face darkened. He had come to humiliate someone; somehow the tables had turned.

“What a sad excuse for a man. He needs his lackeys to hold his hand. By your logic, does that mean my husband gets to bring a thousand reinforcements too?” Xie Yu chimed in. Chin high, she flashed a wicked smile. “If you’re too scared, clear the road.”

Catching her husband’s look, she added, “You insulted me in public and insulted my lord. Drop to your knees, three loud kowtows, and beg forgiveness before you leave.”

She had boundless faith in her man.

The words had barely faded when Wang Gong roared, “Form ranks!”

The thousand riders snapped into perfect order; their fighting auras fused with his, welding them into a single force.

It was clear Wang Gong would press on. Shame was a small price to pay.

Even so, the combat power floating before Li Yuan’s eyes read only 16,450~17,740, well within the 30,000 limit he set for himself.

Power flooded Wang Gong, making him dizzy with confidence. He cackled arrogantly. “Beg for forgiveness? Forgive thi—”

Li Yuan transformed into a blur, his white robe leaving an afterimage.

Wang Gong froze. Instinct jerked the army’s energy into his palm; he slashed, hurling a blinding crescent of force.

Li Yuan answered with one clean cut. Steel met energy.

BOOM!

The glittering wave shattered instantly.

Li Yuan tore through the fifth rank elder’s army-fused power, closed the gap, and in one brutal stroke lopped off Wang Gong’s head, then cut up the body for good measure. Only a lone heart hit the dirt, thumping uselessly in the dust.

The thousand riders felt their morale implode under that single stroke. Faces ghost-white, they simply froze where they stood.

Li Yuan had moved too fast; by the time anyone understood what had happened, only raw, wordless terror remained.

“Trash,” he muttered. Raising his blade and nose wrinkling, he puffed away the filthy blood before wheeling his horse back toward the carriage.

Xie Yu reacted in an instant. “Pack up Wang Gong’s heart! Bring it with us!”

Only then did the stewards scramble into motion. A fifth rank martial artist was no joke; even without a body, a heart like that could grow one back.

Li Yuan rode on at an unhurried pace.

To him, Wang Gong’s show of force felt no different from that day back in Gemhill County when some ninth rank hothead had challenged the Blood Blade Patriarch he used to be. People like that were best dealt with by a single, decisive stroke of the blade.

Later that day, Xie Yu gleefully dragged Li Yuan to a scarlet-painted temple to knock their heads on the stone and pray for safety.

Li Yuan eyed the place. It was an honest-to-goodness ghost domain crowned with a lurid, blood-red question mark. He marveled at the weirdness of local custom.

On the ride home, Xie Yu began to tell the story.

“That general served at the founding of the realm, almost a thousand years ago. He was loyal to the bone. They buried him here, never imagining the tomb would turn into a ghost domain. Odd thing is, the ghosts here almost never hurt anyone. Folk say if you carry an imperial decree inside, you can actually issue orders to the old general, and he’ll obey.”

“Then why hasn’t the Emperor come and commanded him?” Li Yuan asked.

She lowered her voice. “Father says the Dragon Seal is missing. Without it, His Majesty can’t issue a proper edict.”

“The Dragon Seal?”

“Mhm. The jade seal every emperor has held. Rumor says the last dynasty used the same one. Must be some powerful treasure.” She thought for a moment, then changed the subject, “What should we do with Wang Gong’s heart?”

“Wang Gong? Who’s that?” Li Yuan said blandly.

She blinked, then broke into giggles. After a moment she hugged him. “They took such a beating today, they’ll never bother us again.”

Li Yuan said nothing. He wasn’t convinced. His father-in-law was a real-life hidden master, forever making a fool of himself and somehow enjoying it. No telling when the schemers behind him, surely the old man’s own brothers, would try something else.

Whatever games they played, Li Yuan didn’t care. He was busy counting the days until the Son of Heaven arrived. It couldn’t be long now.

The Emperor wouldn’t wander into Ocean Province on his own. He’d fight his way to the province first, plant his army outside the walls, then enter the prefecture, seal the marriage alliance with the provincial governor, merge their forces, and sweep the realm clean.