Chapter 234

Great Dry Dynasty, Yan Capital, Eastern Warm Pavilion of the Hall of Nourishing the Heart.

A deathly silence shrouded the great hall, the air seeming to solidify. Several military council ministers and royal nobles turned deathly pale, cold sweat soaking their court robes. Prince Regent Yelü Hua held a few telegrams just received from Shen City, his hands trembling violently from anger and terror.

The contents of the telegrams, each line like a thunderclap:

——Shen City Lin Yu today held a press conference for Chinese and foreign journalists!

——At the press conference, Lin Yu publicly shot and killed a reporter from the Eastern Ocean Empire's Daily News!

——The Editor-in-Chief of the Da Qian Daily, Qian Zhi Yuan, denounced him as a traitor, and was also shot on the spot by Lin Yu!

——At the end of the press conference, Lin Yu openly declared that Shen City would, effective immediately, secede from the Da Qian Court and establish its own independent authority!

"Nonsense! Traitor!!" Yelü Hua slammed the telegrams onto the table, sprang to his feet, his eyes blood‑red like a wounded beast, "How dare he! How dare he commit such a heinous act of treason!"

His roar echoed in the vast hall, filled with incredulous shock.

"Where is Chen Jingwen?!" he snapped toward Xu Shichang, his voice hoarse, "Chen Jingwen has been in Shen City for almost seven days! Where is he?! Why hasn't a single word come back?! Shen City has just erupted in such a huge turmoil—could he……could he already……?"

He dared not continue. The imperial envoy had arrived days ago with no word, while Lin Yu today carried out such a earth‑shaking act, forcing one to think the worst—Chen Jingwen is likely to have met misfortune!

"Please calm your anger, Prince!" Xu Shichang's voice trembled, "After Minister Chen reached Shen City, indeed… indeed there has been no further word. Today's upheaval in Shen City… I fear… I fear Minister Chen has met with disaster……"

This speculation made everyone in the hall draw a sharp breath. If even the imperial envoy sent by the court had been secretly dealt with by Lin Yu, what else would he dare not do?

"Useless! All useless!" Yelü Hua trembled with rage, "I sent him to stabilize the situation, and he vanished like a stone sunk in the sea—I don't even know if he's dead or alive!

Prince Qing's face turned ashen, his lips trembling: "Your Highness… it seems… Lin Yu has long harbored ill intentions; even the envoy's arrival cannot deter him, but rather… today he has laid his cards bare… this scoundrel… has become a grave threat to the heart of the state!

"What do you need me to say for!" Yelü Hua roared, "What are we to do with the Eastern Ocean people now?! Their reporter was killed! Lin Yu even declared independence! Who's going to clean up this mess?!

No sooner had his words fallen than a little eunuch came scrambling in, crying out shrilly:

"Report——! Your Highness! Foreign Envoy Yamada……has brought military officers and stormed the palace gates! He says… says that the empire's reporter being shot in broad daylight is the gravest provocation against the Great Eastern Ocean Empire! He demands the court give an explanation immediately, or else……"

"Or else what?!"

"Or else……the imperial navy will immediately blockade Shen City! And they will land troops to……to 'suppress the rebels' for heaven……for the court!"

"They dare!" Yelü Hua's eyes nearly burst, yet his heart turned ice‑cold. Last time he could stall with "we've already sent an envoy," but now the envoy's whereabouts are unknown, their reporter was genuinely killed, Lin Yu has openly rebelled, and all excuses are gone! The Eastern Ocean people are dead set on causing trouble this time!

"Your Highness……" Xu Shichang wailed, "Lin Yu is arrogant, the envoy is missing, the Eastern Ocean people are forcing the palace……how……how are we to deal with this?!

The hall was filled with a desperate, deathly silence.

After a long while, Yelü Hua seemed drained of all strength, collapsing weakly into his seat. His hollow gaze swept over the faces of terror and despair in the hall, finally hardening into a thread of mad resolve.

"Issue the edict!" his voice hoarse and weary, "At once send by 800‑li urgent courier to Fengtian the full details of today's Shen City upheaval—Lin Yu's shooting of the Eastern Ocean reporter, the killing of a court official, his declaration of independence, and the Eastern Ocean people's final ultimatum."

"Your Highness……"

"Send it to the Northern Frontier Army Commander, Murong Qing!" Yelü Hua cut off the minister who was about to remonstrate, his tone carrying the air of "spilt milk, might as well spill the rest," "Tell Commander Murong: Lin Yu has grown powerful, wreaking havoc in the southeast, the court's envoy may have died for the state! The Eastern Ocean people are exploiting the situation to stir trouble, aiming to seize Shen City! The nation is in peril, hanging by a thread! I implore the commander……for the sake of the state and the altars, raise troops to quell the rebellion and rescue the crisis!"

This edict, every word dripping with blood, also laid bare the court's incompetence and buck‑passing.

The edict was dispatched swiftly, like a stone cast into an unknown abyss. In the Hall of Nourishing the Heart, only a few walking corpses remained. They did not know whether this letter could summon aid from the heroic warlords beyond the passes; they only knew that the storms of the Great Dry Dynasty had never been so fierce.

And the young man who had stirred this storm was now, in Shen City beyond their reach, coldly observing all of this.

Great Dry Dynasty, Yan Capital Railway Station.

The lingering glow of the sunset draped this ancient capital in a veil of gold, yet it could not dispel the bleak, oppressive heaviness in the air.

Unlike the noisy, chaotic, exotic‑flavored, bustling Shen City railway station, Yan Capital's station appeared orderly, yet also more aged and quiet.

The crowd on the platform was far less congested than Shen City's, mostly figures in long gowns and horse‑hair caps with melon‑skin hats; occasionally a few in Western suits appeared, seeming somewhat out of place.

The air was thick with coal smoke and dust, mixed with a distinct northern dry chill, utterly different from Shen City's damp, sea‑and‑industry‑tinged atmosphere. There were no clanging trams; only a few old‑style horse carriages and rickshaws waited quietly outside the station.

The train slowly came to a stop and its doors opened. After several days of jolting, the Minister of Rites, Chen Jingwen, stepped down from the carriage like a puppet whose soul had been pulled out, his steps unsteady.

He was no longer the envoy who, though worried on his southern journey, had still tried to uphold the dignity of a court official. Now he wore a slightly wrinkled casual outfit, his hair disheveled, his eyes vacant, his face etched with indescribable fatigue and dread.

On that weather‑beaten face, it seemed a few more wrinkles had appeared overnight, and his whole person had stooped considerably.

He had brought no attendants, traveling alone. The two hundred 'guards'—the Gan Zhou garrison—who had escorted him had already been dismissed when he left Shen City.

As for his original few personal attendants, Lin Yu had kept them in Shen City under the pretense of 'attending to the minister's daily needs'; whether they were alive or dead, he could no longer know.

Stepping out of the station hall and gazing at the familiar streets of Yan Capital, Chen Jingwen felt a strong surge of estrangement and desolation.

The gray city walls, ancient archways, stores with flying eaves and upturned corners, and the pedestrians in traditional dress moving slowly… everything was exactly as it had been when he departed—simple, orderly, bearing the weight of centuries of accumulation.

Yet for some unknown reason, after experiencing Shen City's upheaval, this very scene filled him with an indescribable sense of oppression and twilight.

Here there was none of Shen City's blaring car horns, no towering Western‑style buildings, no women in trendy cheongsams boldly displaying their figures, and certainly none of that wild, untamed energy that seemed ready to break every bond.

Yan Capital resembled an elderly man with a faltering gait—though it still retained its former dignity and composure, it could not hide the waning‑sun aura of decline.

Shen City, by contrast, was like a vigorous, lawless teenager brimming with limitless potential.

Chen Jingwen stood dazedly at the roadside, watching the slow‑moving rickshaws pass by, his heart filled with bitterness and confusion.

His southern mission had utterly failed. Not only had he accomplished none of the tasks assigned by the court, but even his own dignity had been trampled underfoot by that young man. His obsequious bowing and scraping before Lin Yu, the utter collapse of his psychological defenses, was likely to become a laughingstock.

"An imperial envoy?" Thinking of that title, Chen Jingwen felt his face burn. In the face of Lin Yu's absolute power and unfathomable methods, this status was worth less than a scrap of paper.

He didn't even dare utter a word of reproach before the invisible pressure from Lin Yu nearly drove him to collapse.

What should he do now? How could he report to the Prince Regent upon his return? Should he truthfully confess the humiliation of being toyed with by Lin Yu in the palm of his hand?

Or should he fabricate lies to conceal his incompetence?

Whatever choice he makes, he is unlikely to escape punishment. That ruthless Prince Regent will never tolerate such a disgraceful failure.

He could not even imagine how thunderously furious Prince Regent Yelü Hua would be upon learning the truth.

A cold wind swept by, lifting a few withered yellow leaves. Chen Jingwen shivered, pulling his thin clothing tighter. He felt a bone‑deep chill, not only from the late‑autumn weather but also from the fear and despair welling up from within.

Chen Jingwen was like a person cast aside by the times—unable to merge into Shen City's emergent, powerful yet chaotic world, and equally unable to return with peace of mind to the old system that seemed stable but was actually slowly rotting.

Where lay the road ahead? He did not know. He only knew that this old official, who had drifted through the bureaucracy for most of his life, seemed unable to keep pace with this rapidly changing era.

What awaited him, perhaps, was only the court's wrath and the mockery of his peers.

Chen Jingwen blankly lifted his head, gazing toward the distant outline of the palace city dyed gold‑red by the setting sun. There, once the arena where he had striven all his life and taken pride, now that familiar silhouette seemed to him distant and icy.