/n/jackal-among-snakes-1520/c-568
chapter-567

Ji Meng stood still as his honor guard put his armor on again. Some time ago, he thought he’d never again experience this feeling. He thought he’d grow fat, like a pig fated for slaughter, until Argrave’s hammer came down. But there was a new path—one where he didn’t need to worry about the excesses of the imperial court, the scheming, because someone else would handle it for him.

Perhaps he was simply broken after being in captivity. Regardless, as his guard tightened the last strap of his armor, one stepped forward with his dadao in hand. He took it up. It felt heavy, weighty, after he’d neither seen nor touched it for so long. But Ji Meng hefted it firmly in hand and strode toward the door, flanked by his own men who were similarly unchained.

When he left the room, an army waited for him. They watched him as he walked toward his horse, the tension of a battle soon to come set over the field. There was chatter, silence, and laughter in equal amounts—various mechanisms to deal with the anxiety of battle. For Ji Meng, there was only a hunger. A hunger to earn, to prove, and lastly, to rule. He no longer cared in what capacity—the Great Chu was his.

Wordlessly, he straddled his horse and placed his weapon in a sheathe tied to the horse’s saddle. He held out his hand, and his honor guard delivered to him a familiar ornate horn. He raised it to his lips and blew. Wyverns flew up into the sky as a low, rumbling note echoed throughout the battlefield, drawing the attention of all. When the sole focus of an army fell upon him, Ji Meng gathered his breath to speak.

His vital force empowered his speech, echoing out louder than the horn that preceded it. “We march to save our countrymen. We march to destroy the gods that would fracture our empire with imposters, then set it aflame. We march, children of the empire, to restore the balance of heaven.”

Nothing more needed to be said. Ji Meng raised the horn back to his lips, and blew it thrice—the signal for a march. And an army that had been on the cusp of falling apart hours before… it advanced to where the carnage of gods in their ivory tower above left its mark on the earth.