Chapter 118: Never Offend Someone with Luck Powers

“Impossible! Absolutely impossible!”

Facing Ye Qingshi’s gaze, Fang Can understood its implication.

He shook his head instinctively in denial: “Someone like the Great Expansion Emperor—a master of martial arts—how could he possibly drown? What nonsense, there must be some hidden truth behind this!”

As he spoke, Fang Can grew more confident.

He had some understanding of his own luck—killing an ordinary person was easy, but cursing a martial arts master was far from simple.

There must be deep conspiracies at play; the truth certainly wasn’t as absurd as what had been revealed, and it might involve palace power struggles.

‘Besides, what does the Great Expansion Emperor have to do with me? Whether he lives or dies is none of my business.’ Fang Can muttered to himself.

“Lord, there’s one thing you don’t know,” Ye Yonglie said. “Since the great chaos a century ago triggered by horseback raids across the martial world, though the Great Expansion imperial bloodline hasn’t been extinguished, the royal family has made a [Limit Martial Arts Edict] with the martial world.”

“Limit Martial Arts Edict?” Fang Can said instinctively. “The martial world won and still had to sign a Limit Martial Arts Edict? What kind of Japanese emperor thing is this?”

“No, this edict restricts the imperial bloodline.”

“If a member of the Great Expansion imperial family wishes to ascend the throne, they must be someone with no martial arts whatsoever.”

Ye Yonglie nodded in deep agreement: “No one understands themselves better than martial artists. To reach the pinnacle, each one becomes obsessive, prone to extremism.”

“If a martial artist ascends the throne, to satisfy his inner cravings and achieve divine martial mastery, who knows what extreme acts he might commit?”

“So now, the Great Expansion no longer permits a martial emperor—only civil contests, no martial duels.”

Listening to Ye Yonglie, Fang Can couldn’t help but whistle inwardly.

In the stories he’d read, it was always the emperor imposing a Limit Martial Arts Edict on the martial world—never imagined now it was reversed, with martial artists putting a leash on the emperor.

“Precisely because of this, the current emperor may have died by drowning, but drowning alone is unlikely.”

Ye Yonglie agreed with the conspiracy theory—after all, being killed by accident while surrounded by martial artists was too ridiculous; no dynasty in history had ever seen such an absurd method.

After this explanation, Fang Can suddenly felt a twinge of guilt.

Because while his luck made killing a martial artist difficult, killing an ordinary person offered countless methods.

Common cold, accidental fall, drowning, stroke, cerebral hemorrhage…

Even if others tried to save him, if disaster followed him step by step and misfortune plagued every affair, it was nearly as bad as wishing for death.

More importantly, bad luck can extinguish a bloodline.

In plain terms, having children is a matter of probability.

Some people are just so unlucky that even with full fertility, they spend their entire lives unable to produce offspring.

The Wan family dared to snatch from under my nose and escalate matters—fine.

From today on, their entire clan may never bear another child, and slowly fade into extinction—perfectly normal.

Of course, that’s not the worst. The worst is actually giving birth to children.

Because your child might be born a fool, a cripple, a natural-born wastrel…

The kind of child who’s a waste of medicine even if raised.

Or perhaps your wife cheats on you.

Normally you miss a hundred times, but that yellow-haired bastard hits every shot, giving you a set of twins—and only when you’re dying do you realize you’ve spent your whole life raising another man’s children.

As I said before: never offend a luck-capable person.

Otherwise, you might not be able to have children at all; if you do, they might be born without an anus; if they have one, it might not even be yours; if it is yours, they might not survive; if they do, they’ll likely ruin the family…

So compared to slow, torturous death, merely being unlucky until death might be the luckiest outcome.

Fang Can scratched his head, slightly uneasy, and prayed the imperial line hadn’t threatened him.

His luck was a passive ability—he could only accept his fate if cursed to death.

‘But…’ Fang Can looked up at Ye Yonglie and asked: ‘If both the emperor and crown prince are dead, who will inherit the throne?’

Rubbing his head, Ye Yonglie replied: “I don’t know, but candidates are few—most imperial bloodline members can’t resist cultivating.”

“The eldest prince, the only non-martial heir, is dead. Among the remaining princes, there’s likely no suitable candidate—only a few princesses remain with a chance to ascend.”

“As long as they’re not martial artists, the Great Expansion doesn’t oppose a female emperor—so this reign will likely be ruled by a woman.”

‘A female emperor…’ Fang Can felt Ye Qingshi’s piercing gaze beside him and involuntarily twitched his lips: ‘So… this next chapter has nothing to do with me, right?’

…

At this moment, in the Golden Throne Hall of the imperial capital, countless court ministers gathered, their expressions grim.

Since the founding of the dynasty, no emperor and crown prince had ever died on the same day—this alone was enough to be recorded in history. If the killer wasn’t found, the dynasty would be disgraced for ten thousand years.

“Minister of Justice, still no sign of the killer?”

A tall, imposing man in a python robe fixed his gaze on the Chief Justice of the Dali Temple.

At his words, all eyes in the court turned to the Chief Justice, who inwardly sighed—why did it always fall to him?

As the highest judge of the ancient court and one of the Nine Ministers, a third-transformation powerhouse in the capital, one of his inherited abilities was retrocognition.

One branch allowed him, through contact with a medium, to witness events within a limited timeframe.

So immediately after the emperor’s death, he touched the bloated corpse and saw everything the emperor experienced before dying.

But no matter how many times he rewound—ten, a hundred—he could only conclude the emperor died by accident.

Yet everyone knew it couldn’t be mere coincidence; this conclusion wouldn’t satisfy anyone. The emperor, no matter how ordinary, couldn’t die so carelessly.

“Your Majesty,” the Minister of Justice bowed, “the Son of Heaven truly perished by accident, but the matter is certainly not that simple.”

“Those villains dared to murder the emperor and crown prince—they must have anticipated our investigation, or it would be suicide.”

“Of course we know that,” snapped a general clad in armor. “There’s clearly some inherited technique obscuring fate.”

“But the question now is: who is the killer?”

“Whether you use retrocognition, summon the emperor’s spirit via soul lamp, or have Daoists divine the truth—all point to the emperor’s luck being exhausted.”

“Everyone here is powerful and wealthy—who doesn’t have a few second- or first-transformation practitioners of fringe arts in their household? The killer must be among us.”

The general spoke bluntly, yet none in the room could refute him.

Because they all thought the same.

They knew the killer wasn’t from their own family—but everyone else looked suspicious.

Even if not the killer, someone might be exploiting this chaos to manipulate events and gain advantage.

(End of Chapter)