Chapter 113: A Single Call, Ten Thousand Respond

【July, the fourth year of the Shanghe era of Northern Wei. This was the fourth year since the new emperor of Northern Wei ascended the throne. The Shanghe Emperor, unable to bear the humiliation and growing older, became increasingly aware that his power was being manipulated by the Pei family. Resentful, he united with like-minded individuals who remained loyal to Northern Wei and drew his sword to declare war on the Pei family.】

【"How can Northern Wei have a puppet emperor?!"】

【"My ancestors exhausted themselves for hegemony, and the blood of emperors flows in my veins. I do not fear death; you lot shall not insult my integrity!"】

【The Shanghe Emperor's uprising in the capital of Northern Wei was difficult for the Pei family to control. Seeing the situation turn dire, they mobilized the Imperial Guards within Jingshi and drove the garrison troops under their command to surround him tightly.】

【Facing the troops of the Pei family who dared not advance and only dared to confront him, the courageous young Shanghe Emperor laughed three times toward the sky, raised his sword, and sang as he cut his own throat.】

【When Pei Shixin learned the news, his vision suddenly went black.】

【The Records of the History of Wei refer to this event as—"Jade Shatters at the Capital Gate".】

【The Shanghe Emperor led the loyalists of Northern Wei to launch an uprising against those treacherous ministers headed by the Pei family. Although it did not succeed and was suppressed by the Pei family's incredibly swift actions, his act of suicide caused the Pei family to lose their claim to legitimacy and solidified their status as treacherous ministers.】

【While the Northern Wei Imperial Family completely lost its prestige, this greatly accelerated the chaos in various regions. Even though the Pei family wanted to select another person from a branch of the Northern Wei family to be the new successor emperor, the Shanghe Emperor's counterattack had already destroyed the Pei family's reputation and prestige.】

【And the Northern Wei Imperial Court, which had already lost the ability to restrain the noble families, saw the Hundred Schools in various regions begin to grow wildly and unscrupulously after this major blow.】

【The Wang Family of Liangzhou lost their hold on Beiliang.】

【This was originally your complete life, and now fate has turned again, returning to the original starting point. However, you must now reshape this fate and guide everything in the direction you believe is most correct.】

【Arrogant noble families vie for the heritage of local powerful clans, local powerful clans plunder the accumulations of ordinary noble families, and ordinary noble families squeeze the space of those from humble backgrounds.】

【September, the fourth year of the Shanghe era of Northern Wei. The Wang Family of Liangzhou purged the degenerate clans within Beiliang, yet this instead ignited the brave and warlike nature of the people of Beiliang.】

【And when the Wang family was defeated and retreated from Liangzhou, Beiliang fell into a situation of chaotic warfare among several families, all vying for territory.】

【Previously, such an understanding was mostly tacitly accepted by all families; now, it has been placed out in the open.】

【And as the founding master of the Shushan sect, after spending several years on the path of seeking your true self, you gradually realized the meaning of Reincarnation.】

【July, the fifth year of the Shanghe era of Northern Wei. The people of the Hundred Schools gained a new understanding of the strange arts, naming low-level strange arts as Technique Formulas, middle-level strange arts as Unique Learning, and high-level strange arts as Divine Abilities.】

【Power, strength, wealth, and even ambition all expanded rapidly in the short term.】

【Their gaze was not only on the strange arts of these people, but also on Daoism and Buddhism.】

【After your heart truly became strong, you visited your father in this world, Gu Zhangqing. Although he was old, he sincerely supported your ambitions.】

【March, the fifth year of the Shanghe era of Northern Wei. Pei Shixin grabbed a random royal relative from a branch of the Northern Wei Imperial Family to succeed to the throne of Northern Wei. However, this approach was of no avail. The Pei family suffered the backlash of "righteousness" and was soon raided and killed by the Li Family of the Earth Array Profound Strategy.】

【These people were waiting for an opportunity at every moment.】

【In this process, Wang Qinghe gained a deeper understanding of the usage of the Heavenly Gang Five Thunders.】

【Especially when watching the formidable physical body he tempered after cultivation, which was nearly that of a Buddhist Golden Body Arhat, it inevitably aroused greed in people.】

【In the same year, the Shushan Six Heroes all sensed the ulterior motives of these people. While they performed good deeds and subdued demons to uphold the righteous path, one could not know how many eyes were staring at the skills they possessed.】

【And for strange arts of different levels, there is a huge gap in their power and even their effects.】

【December, the fourth year of the Shanghe era of Northern Wei. The Shushan Disciple Wang Shengxuan, who had risen to fame in the south, was coveted by a large number of cultivators for the supreme techniques he possessed.】

【There is a rumor that—as long as one obtains the strange arts of other families and gathers the strengths of the Hundred Schools, one can comprehend the Dao and attain immortality.】

【The Li family thus obtained the Pei family's ancestral unique skill—"Withered Wood Returns to Spring".】

【Because the Wang family started late on the path of cultivation, their control in many places was not secure. Although they were quite benevolent to the local commoners, in the final analysis, one must speak with strength. The mutiny of the powerful clans of Beiliang forced the Wang family to flee the area.】

【These strange arts that can be classified as Unique Learning are so because the power of this level of strange art can allow a family to rise strongly in one place, be passed down in one territory, and even exist for a long time.】

【Like the families among the Hundred Schools that can bring out something of note, their ancestral strange arts have mostly reached the level of Unique Learning.】

【Under such great chaos and strife, it has become a general trend for cultivators to appear frequently, and the path of cultivation in this world has instead been promoted.】

【August, the fifth year of the Shanghe era of Northern Wei. Wang Shengxuan often stood up for the local commoners in various places in the south. Whether it was demons or local cultivators, as long as someone suffered an injustice and he knew about it, he would use his iron fists and his unique way to uphold justice.】

【The Shushan Disciples are currently in the limelight, and the Hundred Schools feel that the other party's strength is astonishing. They are gradually willing to give the Shushan Disciples some face, but the problem is, face is face, yet Wang Shengxuan is aggressive and can be said to be bullying others too much.】

【Every time they took a step back, Wang Shengxuan would advance further.】

【During the floods in Jiangnan, the commoners were hungry and exhausted. Wang Shengxuan went straight to the local government and openly opened the granaries to provide food to the starving people. Such an overbearing act was trampling on their faces.】

【And it was not just Wang Shengxuan who acted this way; even the other Shushan Disciples held almost the same stance. They were all willing to help these lowly mortals and stand against the Hundred Schools.】

【September, the fifth year of the Shanghe era of Northern Wei. The Hundred Schools publicly acknowledged the orthodoxy of Shushan and recognized the status of Shushan in the world, but they elected a nominal Hundred Families Alliance Leader, wanting to discuss worldly affairs in detail with the Shushan Venerable Master Gu Jiangming.】

【Gu Jiangming knew their intentions; it was nothing more than giving Shushan a lofty status, pulling Shushan into this game, and sharing this feast with mortals as the main course, thereby turning enemies into friends.】

【But, Gu Jiangming would never eat such human-blood buns.】

【The Hundred Schools, who were together in name only, were eager to divide their respective interests. Under Gu Jiangming's firm stance, they stopped discussing these matters, temporarily yielding for the time being.】

【They believed that what Shushan was doing was a meaningless cause. Burning one's own remaining glow to illuminate the long night of mortals was not greatness, but ignorance.】

【Sooner or later, they would wake up, because this hollow, pale ideal could never compare to the huge benefits placed right before their eyes.】

【October, the fifth year of the Shanghe era of Northern Wei. The Yongding River embankment, due to years of disrepair, caused floods in the areas around Baoding, and disaster victims fled everywhere, endangering the counties of Beiping Prefecture.】

【Gu Jiangming went there together with his disciple Xu Qingyun.】

【Facing such a monstrous disaster, it was not something that current cultivators could easily solve with Divine Abilities. After spending several months, with the Hundred Schools doing nothing, Gu Jiangming used his understanding of the water situation to protect local farmland and the safety of the commoners, while trying every possible way to control the floods.】

【Compared to Wang Shengxuan's simple and crude method of opening granaries to provide food, Gu Jiangming used a comprehensive water management plan to resolve the crisis.】

【And Gu Jiangming spent half a year controlling the floods here. When the commoners heard that he had settled the floods and was leaving with his disciple, without counting on any reward from the villagers, and knowing that Shushan Disciples traveled everywhere to help the world and ran around for mortals, the people in the Yongding area vied to paint portraits of Gu Jiangming to worship him.】

【Some Shushan Temples slowly appeared in Yongding, and the local commoners were willing to offer incense to them; Shushan thus gained the deep love of the people.】

【April, the sixth year of the Shanghe era of Northern Wei. The many actions of the Shushan Disciples finally completely touched the bottom line of the Hundred Schools.】

【They were enduring, not retreating. Since Wang Shengxuan opened the granaries to provide food, the Shushan Six Heroes had increasingly stopped taking the people of the Hundred Schools seriously. Whenever they encountered an indecisive matter, they would just take from the granaries to help the people.】

【Not only that, the Shushan Disciples often stood up for these mortals, and had no fewer than several arguments and conflicts with the disciples of the Hundred Schools.】

【Under the long-term pressure of contradictions, the people of the Hundred Schools and the Shushan Disciples finally had a further change in the situation.】

【But soon, the people of the Hundred Schools noticed a problem.】

【On the Shushan Six Heroes, the strange arts they held were mostly unfathomable, and even had a flavor of infinite change. It was hard enough to grasp, and many of the moves were things the people of the Hundred Schools had never even seen before.】

【Apart from the Flying Sword that could take a head from a hundred steps away, there were those varied techniques, and these techniques were even more powerful than the strange arts that could be called Unique Learning among the Hundred Schools!】

【In this Heaven and Earth, there were not many strange arts that could be called the level of Divine Ability, yet every Shushan Disciple possessed such Divine Abilities, and what was even more miraculous was that the Divine Abilities each of them possessed were different.】

【And with the outbreak of this conflict, the people of the Hundred Schools no longer hid their hostility toward Shushan.】

"Those whose Dao is different cannot make plans together."

"The existence of Shushan only destroys their most fundamental interests."

"They are existences that simply cannot be reconciled, because their views, methods, and principles in many areas are diametrically opposed."

"After completely tearing off their already hideous masks."

"Their greedy pursuit of the divine abilities possessed by the Shushan Disciple became increasingly unmasked."

"The evil of human nature is manifested to the fullest in the Hundred Schools, because the way they started out was never very clean to begin with."

"To become stronger, one must seize, and keep climbing upward by stepping on the heads of other schools."

"This is the most primitive method of accumulation for the Hundred Schools."

"It is just that, this time, such a thing has fallen upon the head of Shushan."

"The Hundred Schools, each with their own agendas, after probing the profound cultivation of the Shushan Disciple, chose to formally form an alliance, agreeing not to attack each other wantonly until they had seized the Shushan Daoist lineage and obtained the cultivation techniques and divine abilities from the Shushan Disciple."

"The Hundred Schools Rebellion entered a brand-new stage."

"In order to test the bottom line of Shushan, the people of the Hundred Schools decided to first take Wang Shengxuan as a target to see if Shushan was truly willing to stand up for a single disciple."

"However, they underestimated the temperament of Gu Jiangming, underestimated his pride, and even more so, underestimated his protectiveness toward these Shushan Disciples."

"It is precisely because of this that these Shushan Disciples would sincerely acknowledge, admire, and follow their master—Gu Jiangming."

"This time, Gu Jiangming's turning around marks an era gone forever, and what will welcome this Heaven and Earth will be an era named Shushan."

"Whether it is all of you, or just me alone."

"Let us simply have a satisfying struggle of the Great Dao!"

"Do you think it is only you who have reached the limit of your patience?"

"The one who has truly reached the limit of patience should be me."

"It is time to leave behind a clean world for the juniors of this world."

"I should also let you witness what true, boundless Daoist magic is, and what true karmic retribution is."

(End of this chapter)