Chapter 169: The Rise of Heroes

The next day, a piece of news directly shocked the world: the Imperial Guard was soundly defeated, and the capital had fallen.

This was something the common people of the Great Xia never imagined; they believed that no matter the final outcome, the Sages would intervene.

After all, no matter how little those Sages cared for the rise and fall of the mortal world, they surely had some lingering sentiment for the safety of the Great Xia imperial clan?

Yet now, until the capital was breached and the imperial clan members were either killed or captured by the barbarian army, those three Sages showed not the slightest sign of intervening.

"The Great Xia is about to perish!"

This time, it was not just those in the know who understood that the situation was beyond saving; even the common folk realized it.

"The Great Mansion is about to collapse; King Li has raised his banner to recover the mountains and rivers and expel the barbarian tribes!"

"The Great Mansion is about to collapse; King Li has raised his banner to recover the mountains and rivers and expel the barbarian tribes!"

"..."

Along with the fall of the capital, another explosive piece of news began to spread: King Li had officially raised his banner in Ming Prefecture, using the slogan of recovering the mountains and rivers and expelling the barbarian tribes.

As a member of the Great Xia imperial clan, with the imperial clan in the capital now fallen, he naturally possessed a legitimate claim to the throne.

As soon as this slogan spread, several prefectures controlled by the Incense Temple immediately began to pledge allegiance to King Li, and a small, nascent imperial court began to form with Ming Prefecture as its center.

However, besides King Li, another vassal king of the imperial clan in the southwest, King Mu, also raised his banner and declared himself the orthodox successor of the Great Xia.

King Li and King Mu controlled the south of the Great Xia from left and right, leaving only a few prefectures in the middle, such as Jiang Prefecture and Lin Prefecture, still nominally belonging to the original Great Xia court.

As for the various northern prefectures, they were about to face the barbarian onslaught and could only huddle together for survival; no one had yet directly raised a banner to claim kingship.

But among them, many great aristocratic families or long-standing, powerful sects began to gradually emerge.

These forces seemed to have sprung up overnight; they possessed elite soldiers and fierce generals, Grandmasters, True Ones, and even Supreme Ones, as well as provisions, armor, and weapons.

Undoubtedly, before this, all the great aristocratic families and powerful sects had been watching and waiting—waiting to see if the Great Xia Sages would act, and waiting to see the final fate of the capital.

Now that they had seen the result, since the Sages would not act, the world was entering an era of competing heroes and rising flames of war!

"It's chaotic; the world has fallen into complete chaos!"

In the City Lord's Mansion of Luohe City, Li Yanbing felt a headache as she looked at the stack of secret reports in her hands.

"The great trend of the world is that long division leads to unity, and long unity leads to division; this has been the case from the past to the present!"

Opposite her, the former Director of the Ghost Suppression Division, Li Changge, said in a hollow tone.

"That may be so, but we are currently in the midst of this chaotic era, and at any moment, our families could be destroyed and our lives lost..."

Li Yanbing now felt a deep sense of helplessness; their troubles were not limited to just these things.

Last night, at the same time the capital was breached, the Ghost Prison of the Ghost Suppression Division also underwent a strange transformation.

The ghosts originally imprisoned in the Ghost Prison for some reason all began to awaken and started attacking the gates of the Ghost Prison.

If she hadn't traded the ghosts in the Jiang Prefecture and Lin Prefecture Ghost Prisons to that Senior Great Sage Equaling Heaven in exchange for heavy-armored paper dolls in advance, they would likely have been caught off guard by the rioting ghosts now.

And her uncle before her, as the Director who controlled the capital's Ghost Prison, was naturally affected the most; the cold, eerie aura that refused to dissipate from his body and the corpse spots spreading across him were proof of this.

"So the future of the family will depend on you. I fear I will not live past two months. During this time, I can act for you at most three more times; after those three times, it will be the moment of my death."

Li Changge looked at Li Yanbing with a faint smile on his face, as if his impending death meant nothing to him.

"Uncle, you... forget it, I will go to seek an audience with Senior Great Sage Equaling Heaven tonight and request that he act to suppress the ghostly power within you!"

Seeing Li Changge's indifferent demeanor, Li Yanbing felt distressed. There were not many people in the family who were good to her, and the uncle before her had contributed much effort to her journey thus far.

"Nonsense!"

"Do you think I don't know my own body?"

"Hmph, although I didn't stop the ghosts from escaping the Ghost Prison, I have already died without regrets, having been able to lead them toward the barbarian army!"

This was also an important factor in why Li Changge could be so carefree; at the final moment, he had established brief contact with the Three Sages of the Great Xia through the capital's Ghost Prison.

And he had successfully led several Disaster-level ghosts from within the Ghost Prison to cause heavy losses to the barbarian army outside the capital.

"..."

Li Yanbing sighed in her heart; she understood that her uncle had already resolved himself to die. The only reason he had come to Jiang Prefecture was because he could not let go of the family.

——————

"What a shifting of winds and clouds!"

In the Gravedigger's courtyard, Lin Feng slowly opened his eyes. In just a single day, the entire Great Xia had fallen apart.

The fall of the capital seemed to have become the final straw that broke the camel's back.

Those who had been lurking, those who had the desire but lacked the courage, or those who had long been plotting, were now all stepping onto the stage.

"King Mu of the southwest, with Gan Prefecture as his base, now controls territory extending east to Liu Prefecture, west to Zang Prefecture, and north to Yu Prefecture—a total of six prefectures."

"King Li of the east is even more formidable; nearly ten prefectures, including Ming Prefecture, Liu Prefecture, and Yu Prefecture, have pledged allegiance to him. Even with the influence of the Incense Temple behind this, it is enough to show how deeply this man has hidden his strength!"

"Then there are the great aristocratic families and powerful sects of the northern prefectures, though their scale is far smaller than those two."

Although Lin Feng was not interested in claiming kingship or hegemony, he could not help but sigh at being able to experience this firsthand.

"It is just that this world is, after all, a world of ghostly power; even if one obtains imperial power, what does it matter?"

However, sighing was just sighing; he truly had no interest in actually stepping down to fight to the death with others.

In the eyes of the chess players who dominated this world, so-called mortal power and status were merely higher-level chess pieces.

Shaking his head, Lin Feng stopped concerning himself with this matter and instead focused his energy on the mechanical equipment in front of him.

This was a drill press he had spent some effort making last night; the entire drill press was composed of simple mechanical devices such as gears, a crank, and a drill bit slide rail.

Turning the crank could accelerate the drill bit through the gear structure, and by lowering the drill bit through the positioning hole, he could carve the black jade.

Due to the constraints of the positioning hole, the drill bit could only carve the black jade within the designed range, so the talisman bases produced would not turn into other shapes.

As long as he made several more sets of drill presses, with the positioning holes corresponding to different areas of the talisman, he could eventually produce qualified and standard black jade talisman bases through a precise processing flow!

"Buzz, buzz~"

As one paper doll turned the crank, another paper doll slowly lowered the drill bit. As the drill rod moved within the positioning hole, the black jade fixed below was gradually carved with the recessed marks of a talisman.

The entire process could be described as both fast and good; after many adjustments by Lin Feng, this equipment specifically for carving black jade talisman bases was already quite mature.

"Next, the entire process of cutting, polishing, and carving can be handed over to specialized paper dolls to complete, turning it into a fixed workflow just like a paper-making workshop..."

Picking up a piece of polished black jade talisman base, Lin Feng nodded in satisfaction; as the saying goes, there are always more solutions than difficulties, and as long as he is lazy enough, he can find better ways to slack off.