Chapter 1135

On a hill washed in faint moonlight, his sudden appearance seemed utterly out of place.

Not just to Ma Sanbao. To all of them.

Then the voice that slipped between his pale lips revealed the source of that unease.

“So, was playing traitor worth it?”

His tone was as calm as still water. Yet beneath it lay an authority only a ruler could possess.

It was dignity.

Neither his black robe, blending into the darkness, nor the bamboo hat pulled low over his face could conceal it. He needed no elaborate imperial robe or crown of hanging beads. That dignity was his by birth.

“It’s been a long time, Palace Attendant Ma.”

He spoke down to Ma Sanbao as if looking at him from a dizzying height.

Ma Sanbao stifled a groan at the Son of Heaven’s unexpected appearance, then spoke in a low voice.

“What brings Your Majesty all the way here?”

“I came to take care of some urgent business.”

“Was it important enough to leave the Imperial Capital?”

“How curious. Why don’t you think I prepared thoroughly enough to leave the capital?”

“…!”

“A mere traitor like you needn’t worry about the capital’s safety. Not while the Twelve Palaces of the Zodiac are guarding it.”

The Son of Heaven fixed his deep, sunken gaze on Ma Sanbao, who had fallen silent.

The Twelve Palaces of the Zodiac.

Twelve Supreme Peak masters who protected the imperial household.

Though few remained after the rebellion led by the Eastern Heaven Demon Lord, now that they knew the Moving Formation’s location, those masters and the Imperial Guards under their command were more than enough.

Provided, of course, that the enemy attacked the capital.

“Enough bluffing. If you’d planned to strike the capital in the first place, you and I wouldn’t be facing each other here. Isn’t that right?”

The remark hit home. Ma Sanbao quietly licked his dry lips.

The Son of Heaven was right.

The instant he received word from the strange birds, Ma Sanbao had erased the Imperial Capital from his mind.

If he captured the capital and took the Son of Heaven, he could bring the world to its knees. But the Murim of the Central Plains, already left with a massive gap in its defenses, was far more tempting prey.

Why take the hard road when a faster, easier one lay open?

And that assumption had been Ma Sanbao’s greatest blunder.

“…Not bad, Zhu Di.”

Speaking the Son of Heaven’s personal name was high treason in itself.

Ma Sanbao didn’t care. He had never once considered himself the Son of Heaven’s subject.

Now, with nowhere left to retreat, he wanted an answer to the one question that remained.

“How did you find this place?”

It wasn’t the Son of Heaven who answered, but Zhuge Feng.

“Two years.”

“What?”

“Ah, don’t misunderstand. I wasn’t calling you a bitch. I know you’re a eunuch, but you certainly look like a man, not a woman.”

Zhuge Feng smiled at Ma Sanbao’s stiffened face and continued.

“Since we discovered the Moving Formation, we’ve searched the whole world with a fine-tooth comb. Not quite two years, actually. More like a year and a half.”

“…!”

“Oh, yes. When I started this madness, I had exactly the look you have now. My retainers looked even worse. My seniors, the Sword King and Fist King, tried to strangle me. The late Blade King was worse still.”

Zhuge Feng rubbed the back of his neck at the memory. Ma Sanbao stared at him in disbelief.

“You searched for them? You even brought in the Ten Kings?”

“I understand how you feel. But what else could we have done?”

With a sigh, Zhuge Feng gently waved the feather fan in his hand.

The first month or two had been hell.

No, worse. At least hell had sulfur fires burning here and there. They had felt as if they were adrift in the middle of an endless ocean.

But it hadn’t taken long to find their first result.

“We found one after three months. Hidden deep in Mount Huang in Anhui. Fortunately, the search went much faster after that.”

The entire operation had been conducted in the utmost secrecy, using only people who had passed the Hidden Shadow Pavilion’s screening.

Membership in the Nine Sects and One Gang or the Five Great Families made no difference. Not even a Sect Leader was exempt.

They answered to one person alone—the Alliance Leader—and faithfully carried out their assigned tasks.

Myriad-Mile Pursuit, Gung Gibang’s master and the Beggars’ Sect Leader, mobilized every trusted subordinate he could alongside the Lower District Sect to look for places where a Moving Formation might be hidden. The Zhuge Clan’s and Hidden Shadow Pavilion’s strategists used what they brought back to narrow down the locations.

“No matter how difficult a problem is, you can find the answer once you know how to solve it. Fortunately, finding the Moving Formations worked the same way.”

Even for Zhuge Feng, renowned as a prodigy since childhood, it had been an extraordinarily difficult problem. But before long, he worked out the method.

He looked for places few people visited, where qi flowed with unusual strength, where there was room for at least several hundred people, and where no grass grew.

Zhuge Feng selected sites that met those conditions. Once he made his choice, renowned formation masters from the Zhuge Clan and masters with exceptional Qi Sense went to verify them in person.

Supreme Peak masters such as the Azure Sky Sword King, Grand Family Head of the Namgung Family, and the Fist King were among them.

“But no matter how hard we tried, we didn’t have enough people. We had a fair number, but searching the vast Nine Provinces¹ thoroughly while keeping the secret was beyond us.”

Not a single mistake could be allowed.

Even the sturdiest wall could begin to collapse with one tiny crack.

In that sense, each Moving Formation was a vast powder keg. A single one going off could set the whole world ablaze.

Then, a few months ago, help came from an unexpected source. Zhuge Feng could finally put the last of his worries to rest.

“I heard a certain person of high standing told the Alliance Leader he’d do anything he could to help. And he was a tremendous help.”

At Zhuge Feng’s words, the “person of high standing” spoke up.

“Surely you mean the person of highest standing?”

“Ah, forgive my discourtesy, Your Majesty.”

“Of course. I’ll forgive anything short of high treason.”

Ma Sanbao had listened blankly to their exchange. Now he clenched his teeth.

They got me. Completely.

The enemies in the Central Plains must have waited for this very moment.

Though they could have shut down the Moving Formations they found, they had left them alone and laid a perfect trap instead.

They had let their prey come running, mouths watering, so they could root out their last remaining concern.

“Is that how you dealt with the advance party, too?”

Zhuge Feng gently waved his feather fan.

“Huashan wiped them out as soon as they arrived. The Murim Alliance’s elite, led by the Alliance Leader, took their place.”

“Our information clearly said they’d joined those two bandit bastards.”

“What’s so hard about that? We only needed a similar number of people dressed in black. Word was bound to spread on its own. And it did.”

The ten thousand fanatics who were supposed to join the Green Forest Alliance and the Yangtze River Channel League had died before they ever boarded the league’s ships.

And the Seafaring King, Pa Ryun, had kept the truth thoroughly concealed.

Even subduing his disciple, Ship-Fire Boy Mu Song, had been a way to protect the secret. If Mu Song, who hadn’t been told the plan, acted on his sense of justice, he might expose the fact that the people aboard the rear ships—deliberately kept separate—belonged to the Murim Alliance.

“But then what about the fleet of hundreds of ships the river bandits destroyed…?”

Ma Sanbao trailed off.

The Son of Heaven’s cold smile had given him the answer to his last question.

“I see. So that’s what happened.”

At last, Ma Sanbao understood everything. A hollow laugh escaped him.

He had forgotten for a moment.

Beneath the Son of Heaven’s pale skin, instead of hot, red blood, ran cold iron and blood.

“The palace’s underground prison must be empty by now. Zhu Di, was this your doing?”

The Son of Heaven answered evenly.

“There were so many traitors eating away at the nation that killing them one by one became a chore. They paid a price of their own, so it wasn’t such a bad end for them.”

After the Eastern Heaven Demon Lord’s rebellion came a purge without precedent in the Great Nation’s history.

The Son of Heaven had made an offer to the many prisoners who survived it and still awaited punishment.

They could die with their families, as the law required, or spend the rest of their lives as slaves. Or they could lift even a little of the stain from their family names.

Naturally, most chose the last option.

Freed from the chains and restraints that bound them, they accepted spears and blades with trembling hands and boarded the Great Nation’s ships.

All the while, they repeated the Son of Heaven’s promise to themselves: because of their choice, someone of their blood would survive to carry on the family name.

“Right. No wonder it went more smoothly than I expected. Rotten as their forces were, it was strange for them to suffer a defeat that crushing.”

They hadn’t been trained soldiers. Even with hundreds of ships and cannons, their annihilation had been inevitable.

Now that he knew the full extent of the audacious plan—one only the Son of Heaven could have carried out, throwing all those prisoners to the enemy as bait—Ma Sanbao could only laugh.

No. He had to laugh.

A hollow laugh, as though he had given up, was the only way to conceal his last chance.

Not yet. It’s not over yet.

His mouth smiled. His eyes did not.

Ma Sanbao quickly swept his sunken gaze around.

On the hills encircling them, countless arrowheads poked quietly through the thick grass. He sensed his subordinates holding their breath, waiting for his command.

They outnumber us at least five to one. Maybe more.

It didn’t matter.

If he could capture just one of the enemies who had prepared so thoroughly, he could turn this desperate situation around.

No—he might do more than that. He might seize everything.

That was what the Son of Heaven represented.

Besides, Ma Sanbao and his men had no other choice.

“Now—!”

It all happened in an instant.

Ma Sanbao’s mighty shout as he kicked off the ground and shot upward.

The taut bowstrings released their arrows all at once.

And—

Whoosh!

Before the countless arrows that couldn’t keep up with his lightning speed had even finished sweeping across the ground, a low whistle of air split through the space above Ma Sanbao’s head.

No Shadow…!

Ma Sanbao clenched his teeth at the masked figure who had appeared in his path.

It was him.

Ma Sanbao had never seen his face clearly, but he knew of the Son of Heaven’s hidden bodyguard.

The imperial household’s greatest assassin, who never even revealed his shadow, was bringing down a dagger wrapped in Force beneath the faint moonlight.

Just as Ma Sanbao had expected.

Shhk!

With a gruesome sound of torn flesh, the blade sank into his forearm.

Ma Sanbao paid it no mind. He thrust out his half-severed left hand and struck No Shadow.

Crack!

No Shadow went flying from the force of the blow. Ma Sanbao drove internal energy into the tips of his feet and released it.

Boom!

He shot down toward the hill like a falling star.

The White Illusion Jiangshi Art, grown stronger still since the bloody battle at the imperial palace, let him forget pain and fear.

“Zhu Di!”

Ma Sanbao roared.

A dozen or so arrows shot from his blind spots and buried themselves across his body. Zhuge Feng and Baek Yeon blocked his path. But his corpse-gray eyes remained fixed on one person alone.

The Son of Heaven, his pale face still bearing the unmistakable signs of illness, just as it had the last time Ma Sanbao saw him.

Shhk! Thud!

Crack!

There was no blood left to spill from a body already little different from a jiangshi. Only chunks of flesh and pieces of bone flew through the air.

But his desperate will remained.

Slash!

Baek Yeon’s crescent-bladed polearm bit into Ma Sanbao’s left shoulder and sliced diagonally through his upper body.

Crack!

Ma Sanbao’s one remaining hand finally closed around what he wanted.

The Son of Heaven’s throat.

“Everyone, stop.”

Silence fell.

Before the Son of Heaven could draw the sword at his waist, Ma Sanbao had seized and immobilized him with lightning speed. He smiled faintly.

Then he whispered into the ear of the Son of Heaven, whose pressure points he had struck.

“Thank you. You came all the way here yourself, so—”

Thud.

Ma Sanbao blinked.

Why?

How could the Son of Heaven move after his pressure points had been struck?

And why, now that they were face-to-face, was the Son of Heaven’s skin so much like his own?

“…You. Don’t tell me—”

Crack.

The Son of Heaven slowly twisted the hand that had pierced the center of Ma Sanbao’s chest and spoke.

“A few months ago, someone gave me a great gift. Something you know well.”

“…!”

“I thought long and hard about it. It was a blessing, but every bit as much a curse.”

The Son of Heaven’s deliberation had not lasted long, though. His only remaining blood relative, the sole heir who would inherit the realm, had made him a request.

“He told me to live a thousand years. Not as the Son of Heaven, but as family—as someone he wanted to stay with for a long time.”

Moved by Prince Shangshan Zhu Bao’s sincerity—no, Imperial Younger Brother Zhu Bao’s—the Son of Heaven made his choice.

Even if it meant breaking a taboo. Even if he might one day regret it, he would stay with his younger brother for as long as he was allowed.

And that choice had brought them to this moment.

“Now I understand why Jin Taekyung gave me the White Illusion Jiangshi Art. It wasn’t just for me… It was for my brother, who would otherwise be left alone again.”

At that moment—

“By the law of the Great Nation, I punish this traitor.”

Crack!

The Son of Heaven’s voice was the last Ma Sanbao would ever hear. The world before his eyes went black.