Chapter 814

The moment the cover was pulled away, a dull roar erupted from inside the pipeline.

The sound was like a wild beast trapped in an iron cage struggling, surging from the deepest part of the pipe toward the outlet.

Nothing flowed out of the pipe mouth.

One breath.

Two breaths.

Three breaths.

In the crowd of commoners below the cliff, a bitter smile of "I knew it wouldn't work" appeared on some faces.

The old man squatting by the canal snapping wheat stalks stood up, shaking his head, and prepared to walk back.

"I told you, how could water flow up to the sky..."

He didn't finish his sentence.

A roar ten times louder than the previous rumbling exploded from deep within the pipe mouth.

Immediately after, a thick column of water gushed out from that dark iron-wood mouth, crashing heavily onto the bottom of the dried-up diversion canal with a massive sound that made eardrums ache.

Water splashed three zhang high.

The layer of mud at the bottom of the canal, dried into powder, instantly turned into a slurry under the impact of the water column, which rolled and spread toward both ends of the canal.

The water flow did not stop.

It grew thicker and faster, rapidly expanding from the thickness of an arm to the size of an adult's waist, carrying the cold and power from the depths of the Heaven Pool, surging down along the diversion canal.

The cracks that had been in the canal for over a month disappeared one by one under the washing of the water; the mud on the canal walls was moistened to a deep brown, and the water level rose, rose, and rose again at a speed visible to the naked eye.

The old man who was preparing to walk back stopped in his tracks.

He turned around, watching the water flow gushing endlessly from the pipe mouth; the tobacco pipe in his hand slipped from his fingers and clattered twice against the stones.

His mouth was wide open, and the tuft of gray beard on his chin trembled in the wind.

Then, he knelt down.

It wasn't just him who knelt down.

Tens of thousands of people knelt down at the same time.

The dull sound of knees hitting the mud merged into one, spreading outward from both sides of the diversion canal like a tidal wave, row after row, patch after patch.

The crying started first.

Some knelt on the ground holding their heads and wailing, some slammed their foreheads against the mud, some gripped the hands of their spouses who were already sobbing uncontrollably, their bodies shaking as if they had just been fished out of the water.

Then came the shouting.

No one knew who shouted it first, but once those three words were out, it was like lighting a pile of dry firewood soaked in oil.

"A miracle!"

"This is a miracle!"

"Water has come from the sky! The Heaven Pool water has crossed the precipice!"

Tens of thousands of voices exploded in the same instant, the roar echoing through the entire valley, shaking gravel from the cliff face.

Chu Ci stood beside the diversion canal, the splashing water wetting half his face; those droplets mixed with the tears welling up in his eyes, making it impossible to tell which was Heaven Pool water and which was his own.

His lips trembled, wanting to say something, but his throat was blocked by a massive surge of emotion, and not a single word could be squeezed out.

He simply bowed deeply toward the figure standing in the twilight on the cliff top.

Zhang Wenqian stood behind the crowd, his hands clutching the proclamation that read "Within ten days, water shall surely descend," his fingers creating deep wrinkles in the silk scroll.

His lips were trembling, his eyes shimmering with moisture, and when his voice squeezed out from between his teeth, it carried a tremor that everyone beside him could hear.

"Four years. I have followed the Zhuguo for four years, thinking I had already seen the Zhuguo's most remarkable methods."

He pressed the silk scroll to his chest.

"Only today do I realize that I hadn't even touched the surface of the Zhuguo's abilities."

Lu Ming's honest, broad face was devoid of any expression; it wasn't that he didn't want to smile, but his brain had completely crashed.

He kept his mouth open, eyes wide, staring at the water column gushing from the pipe mouth for a long time, before a foolish sentence finally popped out of his throat.

"D-did this water really go up?"

Ye Zhuxi glanced at him.

"Are you blind? The canal is full of water, and you're still asking?"

Lu Ming scratched the back of his head and grinned foolishly.

"In this life, I only admire two people: one is my father, the other is the Zhuguo. From today on, my father is second."

Gu Yuci stood on the periphery of the crowd, silent, but he raised his right hand and performed the highest-ranking military salute toward the direction where Chen Yan stood on the cliff top.

That gesture lasted for a long time, so long that his arm began to ache, yet he did not lower it.

Above the cliff top, Chen Yan sheathed his sword.

The twilight shrouded his face in a play of light and shadow, making it impossible to see the expression on his face.

He looked down at the sea of people kneeling below the cliff, at the commoners kowtowing, wailing, and frantically shouting "miracle."

The water roared.

The water flow in the diversion canal had already spread to the edge of the distant dry fields; the moment the first cracked field was moistened by the water, the mud emitted a slight "hiss," like a sponge that had been thirsty for a month finally touching water.

The corner of Chen Yan's mouth moved.

A very light curve—not pride, not satisfaction, but more like the relaxation after finally blocking a blade that had been hanging over his head.

But that curve lasted only a breath before it vanished.

He turned and looked at Hongye standing behind him.

"Let's go, down the mountain."

Hongye nodded slightly and followed him down the small path along the cliff face.

When the commoners below the cliff saw Chen Yan's figure walking slowly down the cliff, their kneeling posture lowered by another third, and the force with which their foreheads hit the ground increased by another third.

"Long live the Zhuguo!"

"The Zhuguo is a living immortal!"

"To receive the Zhuguo's grace is to receive Heaven's grace; we will never forget the Zhuguo's great virtue for generations to come!"

The roar of tens of thousands of people merged into a sound wave, rolling out of the valley and traveling over ten li.

Those refugees who had previously been hesitant about whether the Three Principles and Five Constants were truth or a joke completely uprooted the last shred of doubt from their minds at this moment.

What the Zhuguo said was the law of Heaven.

If the Zhuguo could make water flow up to the sky, what else could the Zhuguo not do?

Chu Ci walked through the crowd and squatted down in front of a group of refugees who were still wailing.

"Remember today."

His voice was hoarse but clear.

"In the future, if anyone tries to fool you with white feather letters again, you tell them: the Zhuguo can even make water cross a precipice; do you think the Zhuguo would lie to you?"

Those refugees raised their tear-stained faces and shook their heads frantically.

"No, the Zhuguo wouldn't lie to us; the Zhuguo is a clear sky, a living Bodhisattva!"

Chu Ci stood up, wiped the corner of his eye, and turned to meet Chen Yan, who was walking down.

On a distant hilltop, a man dressed in hunter's attire crouched behind a giant rock, the grass stalk in his mouth bitten in two by his teeth at this moment.

He had seen everything.

He saw the water gushing from the pipe mouth, saw tens of thousands of people kneeling on the ground, saw how the young man standing on the cliff top had instantly turned himself into a god in the hearts of the Xiazhou commoners.

His complexion changed from initial disbelief to shock, from shock to fear, and from fear to a despair that left his hands and feet icy cold.

He crawled out from behind the giant rock, hunched over, and ran frantically in the opposite direction along the mountain ridge.

After running for two li, he pulled a palm-sized bamboo cage from his bosom, inside which a gray carrier pigeon was curled up.

With trembling fingers, he stuffed a slip of paper covered in tiny script into the copper tube on the pigeon's leg, lifted the pigeon out of the cage with both hands, and threw it into the sky with all his might.

The pigeon flapped its wings and flew up, flying higher and smaller toward the eastern horizon, eventually disappearing at the end of the twilight.

The East.

The direction of Yecheng.

Three days later, in a secret chamber at the headquarters of the Shadow Department in Yecheng, a solitary lamp illuminated a livid face.

The Commander of the Shadow Department read the slip of paper taken from the pigeon's leg three times, then crumpled it into a ball and slammed it onto the table.

"If this Chen Yan is allowed to firmly establish himself in Xiazhou, there will never be another day of peace for the Qi State's western defense line."

He stood up, walked to the wall in the corner of the secret chamber where a military map of the northern frontier was hanging, and pressed his palm on the location representing Xiazhou.

"Order the remnants of the Jingnan Guard to dispatch the last batch of hidden agents and suicide warriors to infiltrate Xiazhou."

He turned around, his livid face revealing a determination in the lamplight that made one's spine chill.

"At all costs."

He withdrew his finger from the map and clenched it into a fist.

"At the Spring Plowing Ceremony, take Chen Yan's head."

The door of the secret chamber was pushed open and closed again, and the sound of footsteps faded away in the corridor.

The lamp flickered twice, illuminating the last few characters remaining on the crumpled ball of paper.

"The hearts of the Xiazhou people are secured; if Chen Yan is not removed, the western border of the Qi State will surely fall."

Meanwhile, in the study of the Governor's Mansion in Tongwan City, Chen Yan was flipping through the preparatory documents for the Spring Plowing Ceremony submitted by Zhang Wenqian, his finger sliding slowly over the line of handwriting at the end of the document: "The ceremony is set for the fifteenth of the third month."

Hongye stood by the door, the position of the fine steel short sword in her right sleeve adjusted slightly.

Her gaze passed over Chen Yan's shoulder and landed on the darkening sky outside the window.

There was a scent in the wind that she couldn't name.

It wasn't the scent of mud, nor the scent of green grass.

It was the scent of killing intent.