Chapter 536 - Curtains Fall, The Emperor in Mourning, the Khagan Raises His Axe, and the Strongest of the New and Old Eras - Part 3

Far to the north.

A young Emperor, clad in dragon robes, was riding steadily forward on horseback.

Behind him, the imperial army had just crossed out of the Kingdom of Qi’s borders.

The rebellious kings who once stirred unrest were gone and erased.

The lands behind the young Emperor had been reclaimed and redrawn, folded neatly back into the territory of Great Zhou.

His head held high, he rode through blooming spring fields, the wind at his back.

Above the rivers and mountains, streaks of golden light shimmered like threads of destiny, all converging on his figure.

From behind, he looked every bit the picture of majesty. But from the front, his face was monstrous.

His army was a ragtag collection, assembled from forces subdued along the way.

Yet despite their mismatched banners, not a single one of the tens of thousands of soldiers or their dozens of generals dared show even a flicker of disrespect.

Because they had seen the Emperor in action. They had witnessed it. And what they saw was not human. It was divine.

Just then, a scout galloped up from the front lines and dropped to one knee.

“Your Majesty,” he reported, “the borders of the Kingdom of Han are just ahead. The barbarian army has already breached the kingdom. The kings of Chu and Wei have fallen in battle. The King of Han has fled, his whereabouts unknown.”

The young Emperor fell silent.

The scout remained kneeling, frozen in place, not daring to move.

Only after a long, tense silence did the Emperor finally respond, “Understood...”

The scout bowed again and retreated.

From the rear, one of the generals, dressed like a scholar, hesitated briefly, then urged his horse forward.

Dismounting, he knelt and said, “Your Majesty... the barbarian army lies ahead. Might I suggest we swiftly seize Northflow Prefecture before advancing further? Secure the stronghold, then strike at leisure.”

This man was none other than Ying Shanxing, former governor of Hidden Dragon Province.

A brilliant strategist in domestic affairs and human nature alike, he had advised the young Emperor during the difficult campaigns in Yan, Zhao, and Qi.

By all logic, the Emperor shouldn’t have trusted him. After all, Ying Shanxing had once been the right hand of Imperial Tutor Gao during the coup, the very man who wrested power from the Empress Dowager and handed it to the Emperor.

Back when Imperial Tutor Gao staged his coup, Ying Shanxing had not lifted a finger to help him.

Afterward, he knelt outside the Hall of Heaven for seven days and seven nights, begging forgiveness.

When questioned, he only said, “In the past, there was no wise ruler. Naturally, I wavered. Now that Heaven has bestowed its mandate upon Your Majesty, I offer my life in your service.”

And Ji Hu had taken him in.

Ying Shanxing didn’t disappoint.

For all of Ji Hu’s divine power, he needed ministers to manage the realm and a general with strategic insight. He might’ve been the sharpest blade in the world, but even the sharpest blade couldn’t cut everything down alone.

“Permission granted.” The young Emperor’s voice was calm.

Ying Shanxing bowed, accepted the order, and immediately set out to execute it.

The Emperor himself, however, led the central army straight toward Northflow Prefecture, at the northern tip of Silkfloss Province.

As they neared the border, he dismounted and walked alone to the base of the walls, sword in hand.

Behind him, a beautiful woman followed closely, bearing the imperial dragon banner.

She was He Si, second in rank among the powerful He Clan of Harmony Province.

The governor of Harmony Province also bore the He name, one of the first noble lines to be absorbed by the imperial court.

He Si was only second because the clan’s elder patriarch still drew breath, though barely. Like the elder of the Xie Clan, he was already half-buried in the grave.

In contrast, He Si had taken full advantage of the resources flowing from the Grand Union of Yin and Yang and had broken through to the fourth rank.

Yet even as a fourth rank martial artist, she bowed her head before this teenage Emperor, becoming his personal standard bearer, the woman who held high the dragon flag.

As the imperial army arrived outside Northriver Prefecture, the gates immediately raised a white flag in surrender.

Without resistance, the Emperor walked calmly through the massive, fortified gate.

But his eyes turned west toward the barbarian army.

News spread like wildfire:

The Emperor who had conquered Qi and united six provinces was now stationed in Northflow Province, preparing to march west and crush the barbarians.

And yet, no one could say for certain who would win.

Yes, the Emperor had shown godlike strength. But the Khagan...was said to be invincible.

Then came the whispers. The rumors. The first-hand accounts from those who passed through Northflow Prefecture.

They saw the emperor...in mourning garb. He sat quietly atop the city wall, dressed in white linen, the cloth of grief. Why? To mourn the souls lost across the land. And more than that, to pray for peace in the human realm, to drive out the barbarians, and to unite the rivers and mountains once more.

It was Ying Shanxing’s idea.

During his time by the Emperor’s side, he had pieced together a rough picture of the world’s changing fate. Now, he was testing a theory that winning the people’s hearts might actually make the Emperor even stronger.

With no heirs to replace the fallen Kings of Wei and Chu, he wanted to see if the people believed in this Emperor, would Heaven itself respond?

The result left Ying Shangxing speechless.

In just over a month, golden threads of power began to seep from the land itself, from the mountains, the rivers, and from the people’s hearts.

All of it surged toward the Emperor in mourning robes, bathing him in divine radiance.

𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎

He no longer looked human. He radiated something far beyond.

Even looking into his eyes filled one with awe and dread.

During one military report, Ying Shanxing dared steal a glance at the Emperor's face.

But instead of pupils...he saw an entire world. He saw endless mountain ranges, wide and ancient rivers, and countless souls.

Just one glimpse, and Ying Shanxing nearly collapsed.

He staggered back, drenched in sweat, body trembling, and fell prostrate to the floor, barely able to breathe.

And from his lips came a single whisper.

“Human Emperor...”

Ying Shanxing had never even heard of the concept of the Imperial Human System, and yet when he saw what stood before him, he had cried out the words

Human Emperor

from the depths of his soul.

That day, when the young Emperor donned mourning robes, he won the hearts of three entire realms.

The kingdoms of Chu and Wei, whose kings had perished, had their lingering fate and fortune flow unbidden into his hands.

Even Han, whose king still lived, bowed in spirit. The kingdom itself had already accepted him.

As for the King of Han, after his crushing defeat at the hands of the Khagan, he descended into despair. Fleeing to Chu territory, he hoped to indulge his worst instincts and sow chaos without consequence. But within days, his powers were stripped away, and he was swarmed and slain by a group of passing martial artists.

It was as if all of heaven and earth had decided to help this teenage Emperor ascend.

˙·٠✧🐗➶➴🏹✧٠·˙

Four months later.

After long bouts of maneuvering, feints, and probing skirmishes, the Emperor of Great Zhou and Nine Flames Khagan finally met in full-scale battle, on the banks of the Eternal Rest River.

Li Yuan couldn’t be there. Without the Nine Provinces Patrol Token, he was barred from witnessing the battlefield in person. But his mirage sparrow had flown in with the little crow and now perched quietly on a distant hilltop, watching.

The little crow stared in awe as the sky darkened and the land quaked beneath the clashing armies.

But Li Yuan didn’t need the spectacle, he saw the numbers.

The Khagan's force was composed of 20,000 elite fifth rank warriors mounted on twin-headed direwolves. Their combined might, unified under his command, generated a terrifying combat power of 3.5 million.

As for the young Emperor, his figure was already lost in the blinding gold radiance, the human form barely visible. But his power number floated there, unmistakable—8.1 million.

There was no comparison.

Li Yuan had fought with the envoys of the Eastern Sea’s Immortal Domain before. He knew that even for third rank cultivators, the theoretical ceiling for combat strength was around a million. Anything beyond that...wasn’t just rare; it was unthinkable.

And yet here it was.

3.5 million versus 8.1 million.

These were not numbers mere individuals could ever reach.

At this point...it was no longer a battle between mortals.

Anyone who stepped into the wrong side of this fight would die.

And yet, it made sense why the gods of the Deathless Tomb had been so confident. In their eyes, such power was already invincible. A force no mortal could oppose.

But

invincible

was only relative.

It meant nothing when another invincible force stood in the way.

And now, the world could only wait for the outcome.

It would be the end of one era, and the beginning of another.

Li Yuan, however, had already let out a long sigh.

“Prepare to save your little brother," he said quietly.

The little crow had been preparing for that reluctantly. But she still couldn’t fully believe it.

“But the battle just started, Papa. How can you already tell who’s going to win?”

Li Yuan didn’t answer. His eyes were fixed on the field below.

He knew the power of the barbarian army intimately. Their strength didn’t come from flashy skills or supernatural cheats, but from something deeper, discipline, training, and the will of the collective.

Their formations were refined to perfection, every warrior’s breath and movement synchronized into one enormous living force, the army itself becoming a vast, shadowy entity forged of Yin and Yang.

But such strength demanded an equally powerful commander, one who not only understood these formations, but who had

poured

themselves into them, mind and soul.

And the Khagan had done exactly that.

He had sacrificed sleep, bled for it, shaped every piece with his own hands. Everything he’d done, he did to carve out a future for his people. So that they wouldn’t be enslaved, or crushed, or forgotten.

As the saying went,

To catch the bandits, first capture their king.

And in this case, there was only one king left on the board.

The Khagan, now fully awakened as an Earth Soul, was wrapped in a thick swirl of Yin energy, black mist pouring endlessly from his form. But in Li Yuan’s eyes, it wasn’t just swirling, it was

anchored

to the land itself, rooted deep into the earth.

Combined with what Sheng'er had told him before, he understood clearly now. Naran had become something akin to a ghost, not just strong but also undying.

Compared to this force, the 3,000 ghost cavalry from the Lotus Cult were child’s play.

This wasn’t just a powerful army.

It was an

invincible

one.

But fate had a cruel sense of timing. Naran’s army just so happened to run headfirst into the monstrous juggernaut known as the Imperial Human System, born from the shattered Dragon Vein of the land itself.

It was the strongest weapon of the old era...crashing straight into the apex of the new.

And what made Li Yuan feel the most conflicted was that both sides of this legendary battle...were his sons.

Yet, the Emperor’s power was something he couldn’t comprehend at all.

On the surface, it seemed simple. Unite the mountains and rivers, win the hearts of the people, gather strength from the land. But the power itself didn’t follow the natural laws of Yin and Yang. It was completely separate, utterly alien.

In any given world, the fundamental nature of power doesn’t change.

Even the great conflict over the throne of the Archon Star was still a battle fought within the system.

But the power Li Yuan now saw, these golden streams of light, didn’t obey any of that.

They flooded into Ji Hu, the young Emperor, and flowed along a structure of terrifying complexity, so intricate and abstract that it couldn’t be explained with human words.

On impulse, Li Yuan tried to memorize the pattern of its flow.

But just a few seconds in, his head started to pound. Every time he tried to remember one part, the part before it would vanish from his mind.

The deeper he tried to go, the more convinced he became. This wasn’t ordinary power. This was something

fundamental

, something that might hold the key to stepping into a higher realm. And so, gritting his teeth, he kept trying.

Remembering. Forgetting. Forgetting. Trying again.

All while the battle raged below.

By now, the clash was reaching its peak.

With a deafening crack, both sides finally revealed their trump cards.

On the barbarian side, a thousand-foot-tall phantom soared into the sky, with eight arms, eight legs, twin horns on its head, and gripping a massive golden battle axe in one hand.

On the other side, the imperial shadow rose. It was made of pure golden light, regal and boundless. It grew from a hundred feet, to a thousand, to ten thousand feet tall. And still, it kept rising, until no one could even see its peak.

Only when it towered above the clouds, so high it seemed to touch the heavens themselves, did it finally stop.

The imperial figure looked down upon the eight-armed Khagan. Then, without fanfare, it swung its sword.

It was a simple stroke.

The Khagan raised his massive axe to block, but all he saw was gold. He didn’t see a sword or light.

The entire sky seemed to be falling.

BOOM!

His giant axe shattered into fragments.

He roared, all eight arms lifting upward, trying to hold the heavens themselves at bay.

His massive body cracked, shattered, reformed, again and again.

In the span of a breath, he seemed to die and revive a dozen times, caught in a cycle of resurrection and annihilation. But even that wasn’t enough.

Before long, a final, world-shaking crash rang out. Golden light surged to the earth. Dust rose like a tidal wave. The waters of the Eternal Rest River erupted upward, reversing their flow like a waterfall crashing skyward for 30,000 feet.

And then, the imperial shadow raised its hand and pressed down gently.

The river, like a chastened child, quieted. The water dropped, soft and slow, flowing eastward once more. Obedient, calm, and tamed.