Chapter 678 – The Martial Hero Remains Uncrowned, The Emperor Stands Too Proud, Mountains and Rivers Bear Witness, Knowledge Through Inquiry - Part 3

The baby boy, meanwhile, was growing fast.

Not even a year old, and he already looked like a child of three.

Lady Yu, sovereign of the martial world, squatted beside the boy, speaking softly.

“True insight,” she said, “is a perfect recognition of some truth between Heaven and Earth. And once you grasp that truth, it seeps into your martial arts without you even realizing it until your skills become...something else entirely.”

She paused, then added, “That something is divine radiance.”

As she finished speaking, she spread her arms gently. With a sharp

crack

, like a string of firecrackers igniting, a flurry of feather-like projectiles burst from her sleeves. Silent no longer, they surged forward in a chaotic, dazzling stream.

Ordinary hidden weapons scream through the air with a piercing

whoosh

, the sound of steel slicing wind.

But Lady Yu’s were different.

Each feather sliced through the sky and, upon touching the air, sang. Not a whistle, but a strange harmony, notes rising and falling, crisp and resonant, mixing like an orchestra of wind and steel. It was beautiful, achingly, hauntingly beautiful.

And in that beauty...her enemies died.

Because these weapons didn’t just sound divine; they killed.

“Fifty years ago, when I first met Tang Eleven, I showed her my power. I called it Peacock Plume because it was beautiful enough to deserve the name.

“Thirty years ago, I realized that no matter how beautiful it was...it was still just a worldly thing. And worldly things don’t deserve me. So I created something new, this skill, Celestial Plume.

“Celestial sounds are born from nature itself. They are purer than any peacock. But even that... wasn’t enough.”

As she spoke, a faint golden glow began to radiate from her body. Or perhaps not a glow, more like a veil, a shimmering membrane of light. It was hard to tell. But it emanated a solemn majesty, like the divine aura of a golden deity enshrined in a temple.

This time, she didn’t launch any hidden weapons.

Instead, she rose. Gently, silently, she lifted into the air.

And then, with a single wave of her sleeve, thunder cracked.

The sky howled. The wind reversed.

And within that golden radiance, the storm transformed, splinters of wind and light weaving into a torrent of gleaming, radiant feathers.

The feathers shot forward in a breathtaking arc, crossing a hundred feet over a deep ravine, each one like a blade of divine punishment. The power behind them was immense, unstoppable.

As Lady Yu touched back down, her voice was calm.

“That...is divine radiance. With it, my skill is no longer Celestial Plume. It has become the Plume of the Divine. That kind of power once allowed me to obliterate an entire cavalry charge. An iron cavalry, brutal, unstoppable, an engine of war. But with one sweep of my sleeve, I wiped them out, three hundred armored horsemen, dead in an instant.”

Li Yuan watched in silence.

Ever since their marriage, he and Lady Yu had shared meals and a bed. She treated him not just as a husband, but as someone worthy of her deepest trust.

She made time for him always. Even with the countless affairs of the Tang Sect to manage, she carved out hours to sit with him and explain the mysteries of the extraordinary.

These truths were priceless in the outside world.

But to him, she withheld nothing.

Li Yuan had been right all along.

The breathing method left behind by the Human Emperor truly was a cultivation technique. And indeed, his

Dusk

character was a genuine skill.

What he lacked wasn’t comprehension, but qualification. He had no right yet to draw upon the power of the land, the essence of mountains and rivers.

And the path to gaining that qualification was...peculiar.

In simple terms, you had to

conquer.

.

You had to dominate a region so completely that everyone knew your name, spoke your name, until your legend echoed through the land. But even that wasn’t enough. To truly awaken the right to draw upon the breath of the earth, you had to perform a

bestowal

ritual.

Bestowal was an ancient rite, a ceremonial offering to Heaven and Earth.

No one really knows why it unlocked this authority. It was as if the land itself gained sentience, and only then granted permission.

But that’s how it worked.

Lady Yu, always drawn to glory and grand gestures, chose to emulate the ancient emperors after she rose to power. She performed the ritual, not out of reverence, but vanity.

What began as a display of ego opened the door to an entirely new world.

Li Yuan couldn’t help but think of the former Human Emperor.

The Human Emperor had once unified all under Heaven, and in doing so, gained terrifying power.

But his approach had been too crude. Too forceful.

Now, the path was different.

It wasn’t enough to rule. You had to

conquer

hearts. You had to perform a ritual. And even then, it didn’t grant you immediate godlike might. It simply gave you one thing, the right to cultivate the extraordinary.

Claim dominion over the world, and the mountains and rivers shall know your name.

That...was the entry point.

Only then could one begin practicing the ancient breathing method.

But even that wasn’t enough.

Without one more ingredient, the cultivation would still fail.

That final piece...was

obsession

.

Lady Yu had an overwhelming obsession with the word

feather

. To her, it wasn’t just a motif. It was everything. Her fascination with flight, with feathers, with birds, had long since passed into madness.

She raised birds.

She adorned herself with feathers. She crafted weapons from them.

Her signature skills were Peacock Plume, Celestial Plume, and Plume of the Divine.

The man she loved bore the name Yu, which was the character for

feather

She called herself Lady Yu.

She had hysteria. A madness that stuffed the word

feather

into every crevice of her soul, until it became her entire being.

And so, after her bestowal ritual, her obsession took root and flourished. Her insight of feathers transcended form. She achieved true insight, a revelation about feathers that was absolute.

Li Yuan tried to simplify the concept in his mind,

investigate and pursue insight.

But this kind of

investigation

wasn’t idle curiosity. It demanded obsession. He had to plunge into his fixation until it consumed him.

And the insight he gained from that was the extraordinary.

Let the land know me. Seek truth through obsession.

That phrase held the secret to true cultivation.

But how difficult was it to live up to them?

For so long, no one had grasped this path. And the reason was simple.

No martial hero had yet conquered. No emperor was truly obsessed.

And even if someone managed to achieve both, they lacked the reverence for ancient rites. They had forgotten the bestowal ritual, forgotten what it meant to honor Heaven and Earth.

And if one did not revere the world, the world would not acknowledge them.

Li Yuan thought carefully. It was obvious now that this was a direct inheritance of the old Human Emperor system.

But unlike before, this was a refined, perfected version of it.

A complete evolution of the

Way of the Human Emperor

.

The Way of the Human Emperor from the old days had been a crude thing, rough and unfinished.

But now...it had evolved. It was complete.

No wonder the Human Emperor had been able to glimpse the workings of fate in advance and write down the breathing method. There was a deeper connection at play. He wasn’t just guessing, he knew.

Had the Human Emperor not forced that method into being, who knew how many centuries, hundreds, even thousands of years, might have passed before someone stumbled onto it by chance.

In a way, that alone could be called a great act of legacy, forging a path for the sake of the people.

Li Yuan glanced at the status screen in his mind, where it now read...

Divine Ability 3: Imperial System 3 (?/?)

He fell into thought, then looked up and asked, “So that’s why you’ve been spreading my name far and wide, even at the risk of exposing that I’ve been reincarnated. You want the world to know that Lord Yu is the husband of Lady Yu. That way, even the land itself will remember. If you rule the martial world, then the martial world becomes mine as well. Is that it?”

His eternal youth was his deepest secret. If people misunderstood and thought he’d simply been reborn, well, that was a very convenient misunderstanding. One he had no intention of correcting.

𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

Lady Yu nodded. “Too many eyes are watching me. They want to imitate everything I do, every word, every move, hoping to unlock the secrets of the extraordinary and gain true insight. So naturally, I have to make a spectacle of myself. Flaunt my vanity. Make every irrational act look like nothing more than my whim.”

Li Yuan asked, “But...can a single mountain and river provide cultivation for more than one person?”

“Isn’t Grand Matron Tang cultivating here as well?” Lady Yu replied. She thought for a moment, then added, “All these years, I’ve wondered what exactly divine radiance is. The more I thought about it, the more I realized. It comes from sealing and worshipping a piece of land.

“From there, you draw power for your cultivation. When the land becomes your domain, it grants you a lifeline. And if that lifeline can be passed on, then surely it need not be exclusive. I’ve heard that a hundred years ago, people on this land spoke of the Dragon Vein.

“I don’t know what a Dragon Vein really is... But if such a thing still exists in this world, then it must be the land itself protecting the imperial bloodline. And if that’s true for the Emperor, then it must also be true for me and for the Tang Sect.”

She knelt down slowly and tugged the boy’s cloak snug around his shoulders, her tone gentle, like a teacher...or a wife.

“What you should be thinking about now, my love, is how to find your own obsession. I’m obsessed with feathers. The Grand Matron is obsessed with puppets. And you, my husband? Have you found the thing you can lose yourself in?”

“...” Li Yuan blinked. Didn’t he already have the character

Dusk

as his concept?

It seemed...complex enough. If he could turn it into

true understanding

, maybe it would be passable?