Chapter 239

"Fake is fake!"

"The attendants you raised like obedient dogs dare not hurt you, and you would never allow yourself the possibility of dying in a fight, so you only dare to place the battlefield within an illusion!"

"In your whole life, you have never had a real life-and-death battle with anyone!"

Li Miao's smile became increasingly ferocious.

"Martial arts are a technique for killing!"

"You have a shell that merges four paths, but it is worn by the heart of a coward!"

"You have never even considered the possibility that you might die here!"

The Emperor's face became increasingly ugly.

Li Miao's words struck the thing he least wanted to think about.

"Death."

Nothing is greater than life and death.

Everyone's actions have their own underlying logic. Some value fame and fortune most, some value morality most, some value family and friends most; it is the collision of these vastly different human hearts that creates the myriad states of the world.

And the Emperor, possessing the world and acting as he pleases. Fame and fortune are the rewards he bestows on others, morality is the reins he uses to restrain his subjects, and family and friends might be rivals for power or tools to stabilize his rule, but they are never his weakness.

Since ancient times, the one thing an Emperor cannot escape—

Is only life and death.

Ji Tianrui laughed lightly, and taking advantage of the gap while Li Miao fought the Emperor, her soft sword suddenly stabbed out from under Li Miao's armpit, killing toward the Emperor's face.

The Jianwen Emperor on the side also raised an illusion.

In an instant, the soft sword in front of the Emperor turned into dozens of venomous snakes lunging at him, baring their ferocious fangs and biting toward his vital points.

The Emperor's mind was shaken by Li Miao's words, and the Jianwen Emperor gained the upper hand in the mental battle for the first time. He immediately turned this fleeting opportunity into a lethal strike threatening the Emperor's life!

Li Miao's fist had already reached his face, and Ji Tianrui's ethereal and unpredictable insidious sword technique was hidden within the Jianwen Emperor's illusion, real and fake, making it impossible to distinguish which strike was true and which was false!

The Emperor's pupils shrank!

Boom!!!!

Unrivaled, majestic true energy erupted instantly!

"Plagiarism, huh."

In an instant, Li Miao tapped his toes on the ground and flew backward.

Ji Tianrui and the Jianwen Emperor followed closely behind, rushing out of the dust together.

Clatter—

Sharp true energy like raindrops shot out from the dust, landing on the bluestone slabs of the square, as if piercing through the air, shooting straight into the ground.

In just a moment, a thirty-zhang radius centered on the Emperor revealed a honeycomb-like void.

This was a martial art similar to the "Black Extreme Pagoda" that Li Miao had created, but it was much more advanced. Not only did it have pushing force, but it also had sharp true energy shooting from all the acupuncture points on his body, similar to the "Six Meridian Divine Sword," forcing the three to abandon their attack and retreat to dodge.

Whoosh—

The Emperor raised his hand and waved, and the dust dissipated, revealing his figure.

He looked at Li Miao and was silent for a moment.

Suddenly, he revealed a hint of a smile.

"Li Miao."

"You are a Battalion Commander under Zhu Zai, right?"

"I am the Commander of the Northern Imperial Guard, didn't you just promote me, Your Majesty?"

Li Miao laughed.

The Emperor was caught off guard by Li Miao's retort, his emotions stalling for a moment. A moment later, he calmed his mind and once again revealed the "enlightened monarch" smile he used to fool his subjects.

"What do you want?"

The Jianwen Emperor suddenly turned his head to look at Li Miao, secretly on guard.

In reality, he was a stutterer who spoke one word at a time; he could only speak normally within the illusion, and Li Miao would never allow him to pull him into the illusion.

Therefore, he had never communicated directly with Li Miao. Although Ji Tianrui vouched for him, there was no basis for trust between him and Ji Tianrui, let alone Li Miao, who was separated by a layer.

He did not trust Li Miao. The alliance of the three was just a flimsy shell, extremely fragile.

Sure enough, the Emperor continued.

"With your martial arts, you are willing to be a Battalion Commander for more than ten years, so it is clearly not for fame or fortune. Then, what you want is martial arts? Immortality? Or is it for Zhu Zai?"

"I want world peace."

Li Miao laughed.

"Pfft."

Ji Tianrui smiled beautifully.

The Emperor was choked by Li Miao again, and a hint of anger could not help but appear on his face.

"If you want martial arts, the secret manuals collected by the Grand Ancestor—I can allow you to read them at will! Not just those currently in the Ordinary Jianghu with the Heaven-Man cultivation parts cut out, but countless lost Heaven-Man inheritances; you can take them all!"

"I am naturally gifted, I don't need to look at others'."

"If you want immortality, kill the Jianwen Emperor, and you can take the cultivation methods at will. You don't have the surname Zhu, so the imperial clan is useless to you. In the future, you can also use some of the Heaven-Men collected, like Yin Ruihua!"

"I don't eat human flesh."

"If you care about Zhu Zai, if you care about the lives of certain people in the imperial clan, I can leave them be! There are many in the imperial clan, a few people won't make a difference!"

Li Miao smiled without a word.

"Sigh—Your Majesty."

It was Ji Tianrui who laughed lightly and took over the conversation.

"You still don't understand Commander Li's thoughts, and you don't understand my thoughts at all, yet you don't know that your offer of amnesty sounds like a joke to us."

"The three natures of mind, spirit, and intent—'Jizhao' is the 'mind.' Your 'mind,' however, is a fake heart piled up with the lives of Heaven-Men."

"If you were not the Emperor, without the cultivation methods created by the Grand Ancestor, without a vast court to collect Heaven-Men for you, you would have no possibility of attaining Jizhao."

"Commander Li is right; you just have a shell that merges four paths, but it is worn by the heart of a coward."

Li Miao and Ji Tianrui slowly walked toward the Emperor, forming a pincer movement, trapping the Emperor in the middle.

The Jianwen Emperor scanned the two, and seeing that they truly had no intention of turning against him, he secretly breathed a sigh of relief and followed behind them toward the Emperor.

The Emperor stopped speaking, his face becoming increasingly gloomy.

"Even now, you still want to use your tongue to solve problems."

Li Miao said.

"Not to mention that just looking at what you did before, I wouldn't believe you at all. Even if you were a gentleman who kept his word, today I would not have the slightest possibility of stopping."

"If I don't believe in my fists, but instead believe in your mouth, then my twenty-seven years of martial arts would have been practiced in vain."

"Saying such bullshit will only make me look down on you even more."

Li Miao revealed a ferocious smile on his face.

"Once you enter the Ordinary Jianghu, life and death are the boundaries."

"Those who practice martial arts naturally have to speak with blood."

"If you win, I die; if I win, you die."

"Anything else is just a joke!"

The Emperor finally understood.

These two were completely different from the attendants who had been recruited by the court.

They had their own demands, and perhaps they were willing to make compromises for these demands, but they would never hand over the power of choice to anyone else.

Jizhao is the "mind."

This is the true heart of martial arts that is qualified to attain "Jizhao."

(End of chapter)