Chapter Sixty: Destined to Be Recorded in History

“Your Majesty, would it really be wise to offend the Holy Maiden of the Cihang Quiet Monastery in this way?”
A middle-aged man stepped forward and spoke in a low voice.
“What’s so unwise about it? It’s just a charlatan sect. Surely you don’t think Cihang Quiet Monastery is on par with the Eight Sacred Lands, do you? Hmph. If it weren’t for that old charlatan in there always being able to find me such peerless beauties, I would have sent the army to wipe them out long ago.”
Ming’s face was full of disdain.
Though Cihang Quiet Monastery, like the Eight Sacred Lands, traced its teachings back to the Dao Ancestor centuries ago, the gap between them was as vast as heaven and earth.
If it were the Holy Maiden or Holy Child of one of the Sacred Lands standing before him, even if he cursed them to their face or slapped them twice, they would not dare utter a word in protest.
“Tyrant, you lie! I have come here only at my master’s command, to aid the Chosen One in ending these chaotic times—not to serve you for your pleasure.”
The stunning woman gritted her teeth. “You depraved and lustful tyrant, cease your nonsense, stop slandering our patriarch, and do not insult my sect again!”
“Ignorant woman.”
Ming sneered, his gaze lingering with relish on the woman’s near-perfect, exquisite figure before he finally shifted his attention to the foot of the city wall.
Below, the cultivators and the grotesquely pale monsters had already clashed.
The battle erupted at once into a feverish intensity.
“Let those unruly cultivators fight these monsters. Whichever side wins, the other will be dealt an unprecedented blow.
And when that time comes, my authority will be greater than ever before.”
Ming stared unblinking at the ferocious battle below, the smile on his lips growing wider.
A bunch of brawny but simple-minded criminals—he had indeed promised them unmatched rewards, but only if they survived to claim them!
Just a few empty promises had been enough to set these troublesome elements, useless to him, into motion.
Ming’s brows rose slightly, his beady eyes darting restlessly.
Though he appeared fat and slovenly, rarely involving himself in affairs of state or administration, leaving all matters to his trusted cronies,
Those who truly knew him understood it was all an act.
In reality, all these years he had been scheming from the shadows, laying his pieces where the court could not reach.
Otherwise,
How could so many tens of thousands of cultivators have been so easily seduced by his so-called generous rewards?

But whatever the process, only the result matters.
He had achieved what his predecessors, his father and grandfather, had never managed.
“Still, where did these monsters come from? Could there be secrets along the Black Earth Road that even I do not know?”
Ming’s gaze shifted to the hulking, terrifyingly powerful pale creatures.
These monsters were several times larger than ancient apes, gifted with immense strength—a kind of horror he had never heard of.
“Could it be that when Ancestor Chi built these towering city walls centuries ago, it was to keep out these pale, hideous monsters? Did they already appear along the Great Road back then?”
A sudden thought made Ming’s eyes narrow.
The monsters had appeared so abruptly, without the slightest warning; by the time he realized, they were already at the gates.
The only thing that seemed connected was the construction of these high walls, begun during the founding of the Li Dynasty under Ancestor Chi, consuming countless resources and manpower.
These walls had been under construction since the dawn of the Li Dynasty. Ancestor Chi even conscripted nearly a third of the entire nation’s labor force, working night and day, undeterred even when the foundation of the state was shaken, and still thinking of the walls even when forced to abdicate in his old age.
In this light…
What was once condemned as tyranny now seems, in retrospect, as if he had foreseen something.
After all,
Were it not for these walls, the pale monsters might have already poured into the city, throwing all of Central Li into chaos.
Yet the era of Ancestor Chi was so long ago—nearly a millennium—and no chronicles survive to explain such things.
“A true wolf in sheep’s clothing.”
Outside the miniature world in the fish tank,
As the flow of time resumed, Fang Zhuowei could not help but spare another glance at this forty-sixth sovereign of the Li Dynasty.
Others might not see through him, but as the Creator, no being of his making—no matter how advanced—could hide from his eyes.
Ming was not only cunning; more importantly, he seemed to be a cultivator himself, and a most unusual one at that.
Because of this peculiarity, even the patriarchs of the Eight Sacred Lands could not decipher his true nature.
“Interesting, very interesting.”
Fang Zhuowei’s lips curled into a faint smile as he turned his eyes to the battlefield.
At this moment,

The battlefield had truly descended into madness.
Corpses fell one after another, and blood spurted ceaselessly.
Cultivators were cultivators; they had surpassed the limits of ordinary men, able to conjure invisible blades of wind or spears of earth to attack the pallid spore-beasts.
But war was merciless—most perished on the field. None were born heroes or gods of war; all were mortals, after all.
Though cultivators were beyond the common man, they too could die—flesh and bone, nothing more.
Many were drenched in their own blood, their clothes and the very ground beneath them stained scarlet.
The strength of the pale spore-beasts surpassed anything the cultivators had imagined—they were beings whose flesh and physical might alone could rival cultivators.
Some of the monsters fell, but compared to the number of dead cultivators, it was like a drop in the ocean.
The cultivators’ wind blades and earth spears, deadly to ordinary people, could only barely pierce the tough hide of these monsters—far from enough to bring them down.
And those techniques could not be used endlessly; each casting was taxing and required time to recover.
Thus, the only way to kill the monsters was for the cultivators to fight them physically, with their own bodies.
It was destined to be a brutal and tragic confrontation.
On average,
For every pale spore-beast slain, nearly a hundred cultivators lost their lives.
In only a short time,
Blood had soaked the earth before Central Li’s city gates,
While piles of picked-clean bones rose beneath the city walls.
The air was thick with the stench of blood, so pungent that Ming’s brow furrowed involuntarily.
His eyes narrowed, and his breath came quick.
The battle, which he was certain would end in an overwhelming victory for the cultivators, was now turning to a rout…