611 With a Bang

[POV: Nongmin]

Nongmin had not expected Lai Lan to return alive.

There was far more to Lai Lan than the fool he had pretended to be. It had been an amusing performance while it lasted, but Nongmin had never mistaken amusement for trust. A man who could conceal his intentions so readily was precisely the sort who warranted greater caution.

“If you were indeed there, then why didn't you do anything?” Lai Lan demanded, his eyes narrowing. “How is Wu Yong's death my responsibility? How about no? How about I turn the question around? How do you intend to make up for your mistake of getting our comrade killed?”

So the wolf had finally stopped pretending.

Nongmin's expression remained indifferent. Lai Lan's defiance did not anger him. If anything, it made the situation considerably simpler. There was another fool he knew back in the Hollowed World far more convincing than this wolf, but even that fool had understood when to lower his head. Lai Lan, however, had decided to bare his fangs before the wrong person.

“I don't need to explain myself to you,” Nongmin said calmly. “But fine. I will explain it so that a mutt like you can understand what happened.”

Lai Lan's ears twitched.

“I was testing the two of you. I deliberately ordered Wu Yong to continue monitoring the royal court of He and keep track of Tian Mei. But what did you lot do?”

His voice remained composed, yet every word carried the weight of reprimand.

“There was an entire plan built around that order. We intended to bring the full might of our champions down upon Tian Mei and ensure her death. The same applied to the other champions of the Supreme Bearer. If Wu Yong had simply followed my orders and continued observing her, we would have eventually obtained clues regarding the whereabouts of the other two enemy champions. Instead, you abandoned the plan.”

Nongmin leaned back slightly, his gaze becoming colder.

“If there is anything that should be called into question, it is you. What are the chances that you incited Wu Yong? Who can say that her decision wasn't your idea from the beginning? If that is the truth, then the severity of your disobedience is far greater than I initially believed.”

Wu Yong's mission had been deliberately assigned to her alone. She was a demon, and among all the champions, she possessed the greatest experience and ability when it came to infiltration. That was why Nongmin had trusted her with such an important task.

For an entire decade, their side had worked relentlessly toward a single objective. Every maneuver, every sacrifice, and every battle had been part of a greater struggle against their counterparts. They had endured setbacks without complaint because victory had always remained within reach.

And now, their side had suffered its first casualty.

Wu Yong had died because she had chosen valor over obedience.

Nongmin's eyes narrowed slightly.

In the end, even that death could be made useful.

“What do you want me to do?” Lai Lan asked.

“Good.”

A faint smile appeared upon Nongmin's face.

“I can finally get through to you.”

The words of the Supreme Heart carried immense authority. His reputation alone could move the champions beneath him, but authority had its limits. They could obey his commands, yet they could never truly share his vision of the outcome he desired.

Wu Yong had been the perfect example.

She had disregarded his orders in pursuit of greater merit and battlefield glory. If the others saw her death as an act of valor rather than disobedience, they would inevitably follow her example. The consequences would spread until the entire structure Nongmin had spent years building began to collapse beneath the weight of individual ambitions.

But with Lai Lan standing before him, things could be different.

At the very least, Nongmin had extracted every last bit of value from Wu Yong's death.

“Bring the Sword Emperor with you.”

Nongmin reached beneath the table and withdrew a parchment. He unfolded it briefly before sliding it across the table.

Lai Lan picked it up and glanced over the contents.

“These are confirmed locations of factories producing industrial-grade weaponry far beyond the level of this world's civilization,” Nongmin said. “Destroy them.”

Lai Lan's expression changed.

Nongmin watched him carefully.

“You wanted to know how you could make up for your mistake. This is how.”

His voice became cold and absolute.

“Find those factories. Bring the Sword Emperor with you. Leave nothing behind.”

…

..

.

[POV: Mai Duyi]

A hundred years had passed since the first conflict.

Tian Mei had resurrected her fallen disciple from death, and the same miracle had been extended to the members of the royal court of He who had perished. It had earned their side a devoted ally, but more importantly, it had revealed a piece of Tian Mei's heritage that could not be ignored.

Tian Mei came from a long lineage of legendary figures renowned for healing, a tradition that stretched back to an era predating even the Holy Emperor. Mai Duyi was well-versed in the histories of both the Hollowed World and False Earth, and few could appreciate the significance of that lineage better than him.

It had begun with Wen Yuhan, a woman who possessed countless mysterious arts and carried the lofty title of Destiny-Bound Seer. Her disciple, Shouquan, inherited much of her knowledge and eventually mastered both mysticism and medicine. His accomplishments had been so extraordinary that he had unofficially earned the title of Divine Physician.

Later, following the creation of the Heavenly Temple, Shouquan accepted a disciple named Tian En. She inherited his knowledge of medicine and continued the medical practices she learned.

Generations later, Empress Dowager Xin Yune of the Grand Ascension Empire learned from both Tian En and Shouquan. Through her travels, she elevated the name of Divine Physician to unprecedented heights within the Hollowed World, healing countless people and spreading medical knowledge wherever she went.

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Mai Duyi had little doubt that her only son, the Final Emperor Nongmin, had inherited at least some of that knowledge.

That explained much.

It explained how Nongmin had managed to resurrect the dead at the beginning of the match and, in doing so, turned what should have been a balanced confrontation into one in which Mai Duyi's side was suddenly outnumbered. The Final Emperor had not merely inherited the knowledge of healing. Somehow, he had taken it further.

Among Nongmin's generation, the person who came closest to embodying the legacy of the Divine Physician was Tian Mei.

Even then, her abilities were not truly comparable to those of her ancestors. Her greatest distinction was her ability to resurrect people on a massive scale, something that made her invaluable in a prolonged conflict. Anna, despite being a priestess of the Great Guard, lacked the aptitude for resurrection. She could heal injuries and strengthen others through divine blessings, but bringing the dead back to life was beyond her.

That was precisely why Nongmin had targeted Tian Mei first.

He had sent an immortal-level spy after her.

Mai Duyi could not help but find the choice terrifyingly rational.

Tian Mei had spent much of the past century teaching her disciple cultivation and spreading the knowledge she had inherited. Mai Duyi had been doing much the same, though his own efforts had taken a considerably different form.

He had built a moving merchant caravan that dealt primarily in weapons manufacturing. It traveled between territories, establishing connections, trading technology, and quietly expanding the foundation of their side's strength. Beneath the appearance of an ordinary merchant organization, however, it had become something far more complicated.

Mai Duyi occasionally weeded out spies among his people.

Some had been obvious.

Others had been frighteningly difficult to detect.

The fact that he continued to discover them after a century was proof that the Final Emperor's skills had not dulled with time.

If anything, Nongmin had become more troublesome since his supposed retirement.

Anna had things considerably easier in that regard. Her Divine Sense allowed her to discern the nature of people around her, making it difficult for spies to remain hidden for long. Her creation of a church and faith center had only strengthened that advantage. Within her circle, anyone who did not belong stood out like a stain upon white cloth.

Anna had practically become untouchable.

Countries had begun flocking toward her, seeking the protection offered by her faith. What had begun as a religious institution gradually became a unifying force among nations that stood outside Nongmin's camp. Anna could not resurrect the dead as Tian Mei could, but her healing abilities were still formidable. Her Bless spell could restore vitality, improve one's health, and even bring a degree of fortune to those under its influence.

With Tian Mei's resurrection, Anna's healing, and Mai Duyi's technology, their side had managed to survive for a century.

From the outside, it almost looked like everything had gone perfectly.

Mai Duyi knew better.

There had never been anything perfect about their situation.

Immediately after the first conflict, Mai Duyi had enacted his contingency plan. He began selling gun technology throughout the world, deliberately allowing countries beyond their immediate sphere of influence to acquire firearms and the knowledge required to manufacture them.

It had been a dangerous decision.

It had also been necessary.

By distributing the technology, Mai Duyi had made conquest considerably more difficult. Any faction or country that openly sided with Nongmin now had to consider the possibility that its enemies possessed weapons capable of threatening its armies. The resulting arms race had triggered a technological boom, with factories appearing across the world and entire industries emerging within a few decades.

It had bought them a hundred years.

For Mai Duyi, that had been enough.

Until now.

He sat behind his desk, staring at the report lying before him.

Roughly a quarter of his holdings had been destroyed overnight.

The damage was not limited to a few warehouses or merchant outposts. Several facilities that had been kept hidden from the public had been discovered and attacked with alarming precision. These were not the factories Mai Duyi allowed the world to know about. They were his actual holdings, the ones protected by layers of secrecy and false information.

Someone had found them.

Mai Duyi's fingers tapped lightly against the desk.

There were only a few possibilities.

A spy could have discovered the locations and sold the information. Someone within his organization could have talked. A captured operative might have revealed something under interrogation.

Or perhaps Nongmin had simply figured it out.

Mai Duyi's expression gradually darkened.

That possibility was the most troublesome.

Because if Nongmin had discovered the factories himself, then it meant the Final Emperor had spent the past century quietly dismantling the defenses around them.

And if that was true, then the destruction of a quarter of his holdings overnight was not an isolated attack.

Mai Duyi reminded himself of exactly who they were fighting.

This was the Final Emperor.

Nongmin had built a thriving empire in the Hollowed World within a mere thousand years. Over the following two millennia and more, he had transformed that empire into one of the Four Powers of the Summit, establishing an authority that had endured through countless generations of cultivators and wars. This was also a man who had participated in the Cleanse, that horrendous affair in which countless lesser worlds fleeing from the Greater Universe had been slaughtered.

Of course, the Cleanse were far more complicated than the simple history most people knew. Mai Duyi understood that much. There had been circumstances, factions, and motives buried beneath the bloodshed that could not be reduced to a single sentence.

None of that changed the fundamental truth.

Nongmin had been forged by war.

Mai Duyi had participated in great wars himself. He had crossed battlefields where entire civilizations had risen and fallen, and he had witnessed enough slaughter to know what it meant for someone to be called a veteran. Yet Nongmin had participated in one war after another, accumulating experience across a span of time that made even Mai Duyi's own history seem modest.

It was humbling to realize what kind of enemy they were facing.

“Something's wrong.”

Mai Duyi stared at the report on his desk.

A quarter of his holdings being destroyed overnight looked terrible, but the more he thought about it, the less it resembled Nongmin's style.

If the Final Emperor truly wanted to cripple him, he would not merely destroy a quarter of his holdings and leave the rest intact. He would arrange the attack so that the entire network collapsed together, severing supply lines, eliminating escape routes, and dragging everyone connected to it into the same grave.

Nongmin would not strike merely to inflict damage.

He would strike to make certain there was no opportunity to recover.

That was when Mai Duyi realized something else.

It was too quiet.

He slowly raised his head.

The office had been silent for some time, but he had not noticed it until now. There should have been footsteps outside. Servants moving between rooms. Merchants arguing over accounts. Guards changing shifts. The distant noise of machinery from the workshops should have reached him as well.

There was nothing.

Mai Duyi stood.

His hand slipped into his pocket dimension, and two revolvers appeared in his hands. He moved toward the door without making a sound, his senses gradually sharpening.

Then he smelled it.

Blood.

The scent reached him only now, thick and metallic.

Mai Duyi's expression sank.

He had been under an illusion.

Not an ordinary illusion that merely deceived the eyes. This one had dulled his senses and altered his perception, convincing his mind that everything around him remained perfectly ordinary. It had been subtle enough that even he had failed to notice until the spell began to unravel.

Lethal poison would have been useless against him.

The Holy Empire possessed healing arts that made acquiring Ten Thousand Poison Immunity relatively easy, and Mai Duyi had long since covered that particular weakness. He had survived enough assassination attempts to know better than to leave something as simple as poison unchecked.

This was different.

He realized that he had been breathing in a hallucinogenic substance. His gaze moved toward the statue of Da Wei standing at the corner of the room.

Incense burned quietly beside it.

Mai Duyi's eyes narrowed.

So that was the source.

He stepped out of his office.

The scene before him was no longer the peaceful merchant headquarters he had perceived moments ago. Bodies lay scattered across the corridor. Several guards had collapsed without even drawing their weapons, while blood stained the floor beneath them.

Mai Duyi's fingers tightened around the revolvers.

Then he sensed them. One. Two. Three.

No.

At least four Immortal-level cultivators surrounded him.

Mai Duyi stopped walking.

Despite the situation, a faint smile appeared on his face.

“I didn't expect to see you here,” he said.

His gaze settled upon the figure standing ahead.

The figure possessed the head of a wolf and a body covered in thick fur. Those sharp eyes and familiar features were enough for Mai Duyi to recognize him immediately.

“Lai Lan.”

The wolf beastkin's expression remained cold.

Mai Duyi looked at him for a moment longer before shaking his head.

“I can't believe you're still alive.”

His surprise was genuine.

Lai Lan was supposed to be dead. He killed him. Yet here he was, standing among a group of Immortal cultivators as though the passage of a century had meant nothing.

Mai Duyi found himself almost amused.

It was frankly flattering. The enemy had brought the full brunt of their force just to deal with him.

That meant they were afraid.

And if the Final Emperor had truly sent this many Immortal-level cultivators to eliminate him, then perhaps the destruction of his factories had never been the real objective.

Mai Duyi's smile widened slightly.

“If this is the end, then let it be said—I did not die quietly.”