Witch Wind

Chapter 411 Unstoppable Momentum (Part 2)

The Holy Dynasty of Dali.

The capital city of Lixing.

Brilliant and magnificent, elegant and cultured.

Li Xing is the ancestral star of the Dali Holy Dynasty.

Before the arrival of the Shu Han dynasty, the indigenous people of the Dali Holy Dynasty had already developed a distinctive civilization on their ancestral planet.

They worshipped many ancient gods and built huge and magnificent temples for them on the earth. The followers of these gods, inspired by the noble lords, launched one magnificent religious war after another and embarked on one religious expedition after another in order to make the glory of the gods cover a wider area.

Under the radiance of the gods, the little people's technology has developed to a certain level.

On the high seas, massive ships carrying tens of thousands of tons of cargo cut through the waves.

On the land, steam locomotives roared and sped by.

On the battlefield, heavy artillery shatters everything.

Soldiers clad in heavy metal armor, shouting slogans of divine protection, wielded heavy breech-loading flintlock muskets, unleashing flames of destruction and spraying bullets that shattered everything on the battlefield.

Under the banner of the gods and driven by technology, one old minor noble family after another was crushed. On the planet Li, which is over a million miles in diameter, the seven ancient gods protect the seven great dynasties, and every thirty to forty years, a world war that sweeps across the land will inevitably break out.

Consuming population, competing for resources, and pleasing the gods with bloodshed, the seven emperors secretly peeked into the secrets of the gods and secretly stole their power in the bloody battlefield sacrifices, attempting to ignite the divine fire with their mortal bodies and become eternal and immortal gods!

Then, the Shu Han dynasty came to power.

The seven great dynasties thus came to an end.

The Dali Holy Dynasty was unified here.

The benevolent Liu Bei personally captured many ancient deities hidden behind the seven dynasties from their lair and imprisoned them in specially made magical cages. He then paraded them through the streets of Lixing, revealing their ugly faces to the people!
What kind of bullshit deity is this?

However, it is merely a product of the Heavenly Dao of the world, not yet fully developed. It can only use a few leaked spiritual fluctuations within its womb to bewitch its representatives on earth—those greedy and arrogant emperors—to wage wars for it and use the flesh and blood of the people as sustenance for its growth.

They were a group of greedy and cruel beasts, no different from the emperors and nobles of the seven great dynasties.

And so, the little beings of Lixing awakened.
Thus, the unified Dali Holy Dynasty was established.

Thus, under the influence of Prime Minister Zhuge Liang's Trojan Horse and Flowing Ox technology, the technological level of the Dali Holy Dynasty advanced by leaps and bounds. Millions of years ago, the Dali Holy Dynasty began a vigorous interstellar colonization movement, opening up habitable planets one after another. The people of the Dali Holy Dynasty established themselves on each planet, and the population expanded exponentially.

During this process, countless crises broke out between the new colony star system and the Dali Holy Dynasty.

The struggle for interests between the new and old aristocracy.

Conflict between the empire's homeland and its colonies.

The conflict between the closed-off and outdated subjects of the old empire and the progressive and enterprising people of the colonies.

Even the ancient imperial system was no longer in line with the development of the times. New political systems were constantly being proposed among the colonies, only to be swept away time and time again by the imperial army's suppression forces...

On many occasions, the Dali Holy Dynasty was on the verge of collapse.

Time and again, the power of Shu Han, working behind the scenes, patched things up and saved the Dali Holy Dynasty from the brink of collapse time and time again.

The more this was the case, the more Shu Han demonstrated its overwhelming power.

The more this happened, the more wary the Dali Holy Dynasty became of Shu Han. From the Holy Emperor to the nobles, and then to officials at all levels, and the high-ranking members of large and small aristocratic families, they used every means at their disposal, even colluding with foreign enemies, to frantically block news from Shu Han and isolate the civilization spread by Shu Han, racking their brains time and time again to strike at the power of Shu Han.

Just like the border conflict that broke out in Bailuanxing this time.

Zhang Bao, Ma Su, and Ma Liang's reinforcements were fiercely blocked by the armies of Cao Wei and Sun Wu!

If it weren't for Xing Tianli's unreasonable and domineering appearance, Zhang Bao and his men would have suffered a great loss this time—at least half of their army would have been lost, and these were all sons of the Nine Provinces, the core backbone of Shu Han!

Li Xing.

The vast plains stretch as far as the eye can see, and beside a giant lake as wide as the sea, several exquisitely beautiful peaks rise. Between the mountains and the lake, a colorful city stands. The streets and markets are neatly planned, and the wide streets, dozens of meters wide, divide the city into an extremely neat chessboard pattern.

Ancient temples, temples rarely worshipped anymore, stand tall in the center of a grid of squares, like somber old men sitting quietly on their self-made tombstones, silently overlooking this vast and prosperous city.

Ships of all sizes, ranging from thousands to tens of thousands of feet above the ground, busily crisscrossed the air along planned routes, like a swarm of locusts crossing a river. This city, stretching for thousands of miles, was home to nearly 10 billion distinguished nobles of the Great Li Holy Dynasty.

Every day, the city's food, drink, and daily necessities amount to an astronomical figure.

Countless ships of all sizes converged here from all corners of the empire, providing the respectable people of the capital with the fine wines, delicacies, flowers, and beauties they craved. The finest products from tens of thousands of habitable planets throughout the entire Dali Holy Dynasty were continuously delivered here via these ships.

However, all the ships obediently avoided those few mountains that were rather inconspicuous against the backdrop of the vast city and huge lake, with the highest peaks only five or six hundred feet high.

These mountains, stretching for no more than a hundred miles, are dotted with palaces nestled among lush vegetation on their not particularly steep slopes. These mountains are the domain of the royal family and nobles of the Dali Holy Dynasty. To possess even the most inconspicuous and smallest palace among these mountains, one must at least hold the rank of Marquis.

Sunrise Peak is the most central location of the Dali Holy Pilgrimage Capital.

Deep in the mountains, beside a beautiful lake that stretches for seven or eight miles and is shaped like a crescent moon, a vast expanse of bright red maple leaves, as vivid as blood, surrounds a palace that is entirely white, with its exterior walls decorated with numerous ancient god statues in gold leaf, making it both magnificent and somewhat vulgar.

This enormous single-building hall, large enough to accommodate two or three thousand people, belongs to the ninth prince of the Dali Holy Dynasty.

Warm sunlight streamed through the enormous French windows, illuminating the huge bedroom, which was over fifteen feet long and wide, making it bright and even a little scorching. Everywhere were vases of all sizes, celadon, white porcelain, polychrome porcelain, and even overly ornate enamel porcelain... The vases were filled with flowers of all colors and sizes, and the air was filled with an overly pungent floral fragrance.

Dozens of beautiful maids, dressed in thin, even somewhat shabby, clothes barely covering their bodies and exposing large areas of skin, flitted about in the huge bedroom like nimble butterflies.

They number in large numbers, about 70% of them, but they are actually idle and have nothing to do.

They were just wasting their time. They pretended to be busy, going in and out of the house, bringing in a basin of water and taking it out, bringing in two plates of pastries and taking them out again, huffing and puffing as they dragged two pets in and then chasing them out of the bedroom...

They were busy working, panting and sweating profusely.

Their master, the ninth prince of the Dali Holy Dynasty, had recently gotten drunk and brazenly flirted with the grandniece of Zhang Bao, a general of Shu Han. The guy who was beaten up by Zhang Bao lay quietly on a bed big enough for two bears to roll around on, with a smile on his face, watching these beautiful little girls busy themselves.

It's all about being busy.

Raising these beautiful little people doesn't cost him any money; all the expenses of his palace are covered by the royal treasury... But the royal treasury and the royal coffers will surely belong to him, the Ninth Prince, in the future!

Ultimately, it's still about spending his money.

Since that's the case, he can't just sit idle—he, the Ninth Prince, doesn't keep idle people around.

His guiding principle is this: there can be no idle people among his subordinates and around him; everyone must demonstrate their unique value; everything must have its necessary value.

For example, he was beaten up a few days ago.

Of course, this is not something to be proud of or respectable.

He was severely beaten by Zhang Bao, a general of Shu Han who was staying there. His left hand was broken, two ribs were broken, and he was even slapped hard across the face, knocking out seven of his left molars.

Fortunately, when Zhang Bao hit him, he compressed his body and transformed into a height of more than three feet, which allowed him to pin him to the ground and beat him severely. If Zhang Bao had used his original height of nearly ten feet to beat him, he would probably have been smashed to pieces with just one slap!
Alright, the details of how Zhang Bao beat him are minor incidents that can be ignored.

Anyway, he got beaten up. As for Zhang Bao, he was sent to a prison—in this respect, the Ninth Prince quite admired that Liu Bei.

Shu Han clearly possessed the terrifying strength to swallow the Dali Holy Dynasty whole, but for so many years, Liu Bei had been trying to reason with the Dali Holy Dynasty—in every sense and on every level.

Zhang Bao beat up his Ninth Prince, even if the Ninth Prince, in his drunken stupor, harassed Zhang Bao's grandniece... well, of course, a tiny little guy, only three feet two inches tall, harassed Zhang Bao's grandniece, who was handsome and dashing, eight feet tall, and capable of piercing a resource star with a single spear thrust...

Haha, a little teddy bear that just lost its baby teeth is harassing a wolf king howling at the moon in the jungle!
It seems a bit ridiculous.

But it is precisely this absurdity that reveals a strange 'suspense' and 'strangeness'... Obviously, how could the Ninth Prince, who is only the size of Zhang Bao's grandniece's arm, possibly harass a 'tall person' who is five feet taller than him?
So, he was framed.

So Zhang Bao was imprisoned in solitary confinement...

"Therefore, Zhang Bao's elite cavalry unit on Bailuan Star is now without a commander." The Ninth Prince smiled and coughed lightly. He coughed slightly, and the wounds on his left arm and ribs caused him excruciating pain, bringing tears to his eyes.

The maids rushed forward in a panic, carefully protecting the Ninth Prince's precious body.

A bowl of warm, bitter medicine, so bitter it made one want to cry, was sipped down by the Ninth Prince. He opened his mouth, and a piece of refined honey was quickly placed inside, suppressing the bitterness of the medicine.

With the technological power of the Dali Holy Dynasty, or with the power of the cultivators.

The Ninth Prince only had a few broken bones. Whether it was a high-tech medical pod or a cultivator's elixir, his broken bones could be repaired in just two or three breaths at most.

but……

As is widely known, the Ninth Prince is a representative figure of the "restorationist" faction in the Dali Holy Dynasty.

The so-called retro trend is an extreme rejection of today's overly advanced high technology—because this high technology was developed from the wooden horse and flowing ox technology of the prime minister of Shu Han.

At the same time, although they themselves were also practicing the cultivation methods spread by Shu Han, the retrogressive faction represented by the Ninth Prince was extremely averse to using any power brought by cultivation, except when fighting or protecting their lives.

This naturally includes taking elixirs!

Even after his bones were broken, the Ninth Prince used magic to suppress his powerful physical body's natural and strong healing ability... It takes a hundred days to recover from a broken bone, and he would absolutely not allow his injuries to heal until he had been lying down for a full hundred days.

retro.

retro.

Let go of all the changes brought about by the Shu Han dynasty, and let your body, your mind, your life, and everything else return to the perfect era of ancient times, when the legendary ancient gods looked down upon the earth.

This is retro!
Of course, many of the retro styles are quite flexible.

For example, the Ninth Prince's arm and ribs, still broken, are slowly and naturally repairing themselves. However, the few teeth that were knocked out of his mouth have already been reborn and bent back into their original shape in just a few breaths using some kind of ancient, divinely bestowed technique.

After all, losing a few molars makes eating and other things quite troublesome.

"Bai Luan Xing should be almost done, right?" the Ninth Prince muttered to himself. Once Bai Luan Xing fell, Zhang Zhu and Zhang Lan, these Shu Han generals who had clashed with the Ninth Prince, would be eliminated by the Sima clan…

Of course, the fates of Zhang Zhu and Zhang Lan are not important.

Once the Sima clan's army crosses the White Phoenix Star line, they will be able to directly threaten Ziyang Pass. As for Ye Lan, the commander-in-chief of Ziyang Pass, he is one of the representative figures promoted by the powerful Ye family of the Holy Dynasty in recent years. He is absolutely no match for the Sima clan's surprise attack.

Ye Lan must face the sudden attack of the Sima Jin Dynasty's army alone.

Meanwhile, the conservative faction behind the Ninth Prince had severed communication between Ziyang Pass and the three prefectures behind it—Ziyan, Ziyun, and Zijue. They had to defend against the invasion of foreign enemies on their own… but the Ninth Prince was certain that Ye Lan wouldn't be able to stop them.

If Ye Lan were to perish in battle or desert his post, the Ye family behind him would certainly be affected.

Even if the Ye family is deeply entrenched and complex, and this incident cannot damage their strength, it is enough for the Ninth Prince to gain some benefits from them.

For example, the garrison authority of Ziyang Pass, and several low-ranking but powerful official positions in the capital.

The Ninth Prince exhaled a sweet, fragrant breath and smacked his lips in satisfaction.

Bai Luanxing's defeat and the collapse of Ziyang Pass had absolutely nothing to do with him.

After all, he was an injured person, an unlucky one who had been beaten by Zhang Bao while drunk, breaking so many bones, and was now lying in bed struggling with serious injuries!

What does what happens on the border have to do with him?

Just as he was feeling smug, a strange energy field rippled in the air. The Ninth Prince suddenly turned his head and looked out the floor-to-ceiling window. Outside the bulletproof floor-to-ceiling window, which was more than ten feet wide, three feet high, and half a foot thick, countless red maples swayed without wind. A large number of red leaves detached from the branches and rose into the air with a 'whoosh', like a flock of startled butterflies.

Three black warships, no more than a mile long, with menacing shapes and protruding edges, silently broke through the clouds and descended. They hovered directly outside the Ninth Prince's palace, one of them hovering at the same height as the floor-to-ceiling window of his bedroom.

The Ninth Prince's pupils contracted, shrinking to the size of a pinhead, and then suddenly opened.

That's it.

These three warships were clearly the imperial guards directly under the Holy Emperor of the Dali Holy Dynasty.

The sudden arrival of three Imperial Guard legions' warships must mean that something extremely important has happened in the empire, and his father, the current Holy Emperor, has summoned all the high-ranking members of the royal family to discuss countermeasures.

"You, help me up. Hmm, bring over that soft, fragrant rattan recliner." Although there was a technologically advanced floating chair, the Ninth Prince, being a retro enthusiast, would never use such things. He would rather endure his injuries and sit in these delicate, handcrafted recliners made by his maids.

Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, the hatch on one side of the Royal Guard's assault ship slid open silently, and a large group of Royal Guards dressed in black armor, wielding energy swords, surged out like a tide.

The guards from the Ninth Prince's palace rushed forward, and the Ninth Prince was about to order them to leave.

These guards actually wielded energy swords, instantly killing the unsuspecting guards. Heads rolled all over the ground, and the wounds where the necks were severed were directly cooked by the extremely hot energy beams, without a single drop of blood flowing out.

The maids around the Ninth Prince let out a deafening scream.

The Ninth Prince suddenly shuddered. With his cultivation at the Great Luo Realm, his internal energy circulated, and the fractured bone wound that he had endured for so many days healed completely in an instant. He suddenly soared into the air and shouted sharply, "Insolence! What do you want to do? Rebellion?"

Strands of celestial light surrounded the Ninth Prince. Beside him, a three-inch-long, dazzlingly bright celestial sword spun rapidly, its extremely sharp, chilling aura tearing through the air and its menacing aura pointing directly at the group of imperial guards rushing towards them.

With a loud crash, the huge French windows shattered, sending countless shards of glass flying everywhere. Dozens of pretty maids were unable to dodge and were instantly turned into puffs of blood mist by the shattered glass, spraying blood all over the ground.

A guard, whose aura was several times stronger than that of the Ninth Prince and who was more than two inches taller than the guards beside him, with an exceptionally 'imposing' physique, swiftly rushed in. The Ninth Prince saw the blood-red emblem on the guard's chest and couldn't help but stiffen—the Imperial Guard Legion directly under the Holy Emperor of the Great Li Dynasty had nine commanders.

According to the cultivation realm classification in Shu Han, these nine commanders are all top-tier experts at the late Quasi-Saint stage or even the peak Quasi-Saint stage... And the blood-red emblem on the chest of the person in front of him clearly indicates that he is one of the nine Imperial Guard commanders who usually only exist in legends!

"What is it? What is it? How dare you kill someone close to me?" The Ninth Prince panicked.

"Hmm, Your Highness hasn't received the news yet?"

The Imperial Guard Commander said coldly, "I thought that His Highness, Ninth Prince, would be very bold and ruthless if he dared to do such a thing, but it seems that he is nothing special."

"Does Your Highness know that the three prefectures of Ziyan, Ziyun, and Zijue have fallen? The Yellow Turban rebels have occupied the three prefectures, and the vanguard fleet has annihilated the garrison of Pegasus Nebula?"

"The Pegasus Nebula, with its 1,500 habitable planets, encompasses nearly one-thirtieth of the Empire's territory, and has already been occupied by traitors."

The Ninth Prince was truly panicked.

(End of this chapter)