Ze Tian Ji (Way of Choices)
chapter-1170-30041322

Chapter 1170 – You’ve Lost

The Prince of Xiang died, but Cao Yunping had already fled and was now ten-some li away by the shore of the Luo River.

Even from such a distance, the people in the palace could still hear his voice trembling in fear as it repeated, “Your Majesty, spare my life!”

Eunuch Lin’s face was pale.

Tonight was the sole stain on his life.

But he was still Eunuch Lin, and he knew what the words ‘moral integrity’ meant. He could not be as shameless as Cao Yunping and grovel on the floor to plead for his life.

He turned his palm and slapped it down to the top of his head, at the same time reversing the flow of his true essence as he prepared to finish himself off. He acted with extreme determination, leaving himself no chance of survival.

But his palm stopped at the top of his head, and his true essence seemed to freeze in his meridians, unable to surge into his Ethereal Palace.

“Leave. Don’t come back to the palace. This… is not that good of a place.”

Yuren said to him.

Eunuch Lin froze.

For Emperor Xian’s sake, he had spent the majority of his life in the Imperial Palace.

Even after he was driven back to his old home by the Tianhai Divine Empress, he would spend every day thinking about his life in the palace.

No one had ever told him to not come back, not even if it was for morality and justice, reluctance, or any other reason.

And no one had ever told him that it was not a good place.

Eunuch Lin left the Imperial Palace, somewhat dejected. One could even say he was deprived of his soul.

No one cared about his departure. Everyone’s eyes were focused on Yuren.

No one had expected the emperor to possess such an unfathomable cultivation.

The sun had vanished, and the night clouds were driven by the autumn winds into once more shrouding the capital, blocking out the countless stars.

Yuren gazed at a certain place in the clouds. Upon confirming that the White Emperor had left, he looked to the north, concern visible on his face.

……

……

Xuelao City, the Demon Palace.

Chen Changsheng answered the Demon Lord’s question in a forthright manner. “Master and I are not worried about the capital because Senior is there.”

The Demon Lord sneered, “Did you think that you could trick me? When you left Xining Village, you hadn’t even started to cultivate, and he probably hadn’t either. Afterward, there was a limit to the number of times the two of you could meet. I am confident that he never once displayed his abilities in front of you.”

Chen Changsheng replied, “Yes, even now, no one has ever seen Senior display his abilities.”

The Demon Lord asked, “Then how can you determine his strength? And don’t give me some nonsense like ‘He’s my senior brother’.”

Chen Changsheng said, “I also only understood later on.”

“Understood what?”

Chen Changsheng explained, “Why Senior came out of the shrubs on the night the Tianhai Divine Empress died.”

The Demon Lord’s expression turned stern as he asked, “What do you want to say?”

Chen Changsheng continued, “He followed Master to the Mausoleum of Books during the day, which meant that he only needed one day to finish viewing all the Heavenly Tome Monoliths.”

The Demon Lord’s pupils constricted as he declared, “Preposterous! You think he couldn’t have had any other ways?”

He had never gone to the Mausoleum of Books, but he knew of its rules.

In the Mausoleum of Books, only by comprehending one Heavenly Tome Monolith could one move on to the next, gradually climbing higher and higher until one finally reached the summit.

No one had ever been able to break this law. Even Zhou Dufu needed to finish seeing all the Heavenly Tome Monoliths first.

Based on what Chen Changsheng said, Yuren had finished viewing all the Heavenly Tome Monoliths in a single day. And if one further remembered that Yuren had heard Chen Changsheng’s voice and was in a rush to save him, he must have easily passed those Heavenly Tome Monoliths by just hastily looking over them.

This really might have been the truth, but the Demon Lord could not accept it.

No one had ever done such a thing. It was rumored that Zhou Dufu had pulled off this feat, but the Li Palace had never confirmed it.

Chen Changsheng’s feat of comprehending the entire front mausoleum in a single day was enough to shock the entire continent. What did it mean if Yuren had succeeded in comprehending the entire Mausoleum of Books in a single day?

It meant that he possessed an unfathomable talent and power.

If all of this was true, the rebellion led by the Prince of Xiang and Cao Yunping was more like a farce to Yuren.

The Demon Lord could even imagine that not even the White Emperor would dare to lightly act.

The offspring of the Tianhai Divine Empress and the Chen clan was truly terrifying.

The Demon Lord even felt that the rumor about defying the heavens and changing fate was false. The suffering that Yuren had to bear upon being born simply might have been because the heavens were envious of him…

“It seems like we really can only surrender?”

“Yes.”

The black demon flames were like a swamp, absorbing all light.

The creeping Qi of the abyss made everyone feel rather uncomfortable.

The Demon Hall was very quiet and empty. There were no slaves, no concubines.

The only people present were several officials wearing small white hats and ten-some red-cloaked elders standing around the Demon Lord.

The Demon Lord pointed at those white-hatted officials and said, “They are all historians. The final moments of my race’s history should be completely recorded.”

He then pointed at the elders attired in those small red cloaks and said, “These are the wisest scholars of my race. I think you and that emperor probably have enough brains to judge that my race’s culture should be amply protected and preserved. Extermination doesn’t mean that everything needs to be exterminated.”

These two statements finally caused Wang Po and Xiao Zhang to feel a little differently about the Demon Lord.

The demeanor of a sovereign could be understood as stubborn endurance, but this sort of unaffected composure and ease had always been pursued by experts like them.

Chen Changsheng returned, “As I said in White Emperor City, there will be no extermination.”

Ten years ago, in that large courtyard of yellow sand neighboring the Xiang clan’s estate, he and the young Demon Lord had discussed many topics.

These topics had involved what lay beyond the starry sky, a thousand autumns and ten thousand generations, and, naturally, the future of the Human and Demon races.

There was also an even greater secret that only Xu Yourong, Tang Thirty-Six, and the little Black Dragon knew. Chen Changsheng and the Demon Lord had been exchanging letters for all these intervening ten years.

They did not exchange letters too often, only two or three each year, but they had never stopped.

This was also something they had agreed on in White Emperor City.

At the start, they wanted to imitate Grand Scholar Tungus and the Pope of that generation, but at the end, they helplessly realized that the contents of their letters had become negotiations.

If the humans won, what conditions would the demons need to make them willing to surrender?

There had been no answer to this.

Even now, there was still no answer.

“The servants will become slaves, living out their bitter lives in dark and damp mines. The Divine race will be forced to intermarry, and its blood will gradually be diluted, perhaps depriving them of the ability to be an independent race. In my view, this is no different from extermination. I cannot accept it.”

The Demon Lord added, “Moreover, the Divine race has always been the master of this world, of all worlds. How can we surrender to you mortals?”

Chen Changsheng earnestly said, “But you’ve still lost.”