books44 Chapter 167 Kun Gang Has a Remaining Gold from Yu Pu (6)
Chapter 167 Kun Gang Has a Remaining Gold from Yu Pu (6)
"me……"
The vendor was trembling slightly.
My teeth are chattering, and I'm in a frantic rush: You stupid thing, think already! You stupid thing, speak already!
The more anxious he became, the less he knew what to say or how to say it.
"Do you need me to help you recall?" the drought demon said coldly. "For example, memory replay?"
Memory reversal primarily relies on "mental crushing." Most spells related to mental power are cruel tortures commonly used by underworld officials to interrogate prisoners; for the undead, mental torment is clearly the most brutal.
The vendor's mind went blank for a moment, and it's not hard to accept that someone has used their mental power to look into his past. But what's deadly is that his spirit is broken and his will is shattered. He will lose his mind and even become mentally unstable.
He certainly didn't want to be reborn in his next life as a cross-eyed, pigeon-toed, drooling, finger-sucking village idiot!
"I remember now! I remember everything! I used to be a servant in the Yuan family mansion, one day..."
He only regretted that he had a dead mouth and not three tongues:
"One day, while I was cleaning the courtyard corridor, I overheard the old master, the young master, and that shrewish Taoist priest plotting something big in the study. I couldn't hear clearly, so I got closer and closer and closer still. I swear I really didn't mean to eavesdrop; I just couldn't control my feet!"
"Then I was almost discovered, but luckily I slipped away quickly and ran away in time to avoid being caught. Then I infiltrated the village's conscription team and packed my bags overnight to flee to the capital, thousands of miles away, to seek refuge. I was afraid of being targeted, persecuted, or silenced. I was afraid of being shot in the back by eight hidden arrows, but the government ruled it a suicide!!"
"After all, my master is a big shot in Huangliang City, while I'm just a tiny grasshopper that a big shot could kill with a single shoehorn. I'm scared! I'm really scared!!!"
After giving it all in one breath, I almost fainted.
"Brave warrior! Brave warrior! I'll say whatever you want to hear, just please don't torture me with your mental power!"
The drought demon thought to itself, "I'm just a zombie, I don't even have a soul, where would I get spiritual power from?"
I'll scare you to death.
"You say you personally overheard the sorcerer and the Yuan family father and son plotting in secret?"
"Yes," the vendor said, puzzled. "Back then, the Yuan and Ji families were on good terms, and their young masters were classmates at the academy. I just can't understand why the Yuan family secretly treated that sorcerer as an honored guest."
The drought demon scoffed, "Aren't two-faced people all too common?"
The vendor replied, "You were too young then to know how close the Yuan and Ji families were."
“The Ji family has been established in Huangliang City for a long time. They are a large and wealthy family. Master Yuan, like me, initially lived in Lingxi Village outside the city. However, he was richer than me, so he moved to the city to do business.”
"Master Yuan is exceptionally good at dealing with people. I've never met a businessman more shrewd and worldly-wise in my entire life! His wealth is nothing compared to that of city dwellers, but he quickly made connections with the Ji family, and his status and wealth rose accordingly. In just a few years, he became a celebrity with his own page in our Lingxi Village's genealogy."
"It can be said that the Ji family has done a great favor for the Yuan family. The Yuan family and the Ji family have become old friends, their houses are built next to each other, the owners often visit each other, and the servants of the two families also have contact. Otherwise, how would I have had the opportunity to attend your first birthday celebration when you were a child?"
The drought demon's tone became even more sarcastic: "Ingratitude is all too common; it's nothing to be surprised about."
"But, but there's one more thing that I find particularly... particularly 'magical'."
The vendor didn't know how to describe it, "or rather, it was very coincidental, very strange."
"When I was serving my labor service in the capital, I saw the current 'father-in-law' of the emperor from afar. I heard that he was the empress's adopted son from who-knows-where, and even the emperor respectfully called him 'father-in-law.' No matter how high-ranking an official was, he had to kneel down when he saw him!"
"The Emperor's father-in-law was in a very prestigious position, wearing a bright red and purple official robe. He was inspecting the still unfinished Chaotian Palace on behalf of the Empress Dowager. He stood on the white marble steps and read out the imperial edict in a string of words... I didn't understand a word of it. I only heard from the foreman that the Empress Dowager thought the construction period was too long and wanted to transfer a large number of people to the mountain to quarry stone."
"The supervisor also said that this is called 'large-scale construction,' which is a waste of manpower and money, causing batches of able-bodied men to die from exhaustion, leaving no one to grow crops, and people going hungry. The people will be cursing us."
"But the emperor didn't care about any of that. He only cared about pleasing the beauties. The empress was favored and said she wanted to live in the most magnificent and splendid palace in the world. Even if it meant exhausting all his subjects, the emperor would still fulfill her wish."
"Oh, what a foolish ruler! He used to be a good emperor praised by everyone."
"When I was a child, there was a big market in Huangliang City, and one coin could buy three cakes. When I grew up, I went to the capital and saw that there were many people who had starved to death right under the emperor's nose. Even if you had gold ingots, you couldn't buy a single cake, let alone have no money..."
"You've gone off-topic," the drought demon reminded him. "You're really good at rambling."
"Hehe, I've really gone off on a tangent. That's the downside of getting old. Once I start talking about the past, I just can't stop. People who used to chat with me loved listening to my stories, but after a while, they felt that I was just repeating the same old things over and over again, so nobody listened to me anymore."
So, what exactly is the 'magic' about it?
"The strange thing is that the Emperor's father-in-law's face looks exactly like that sorcerer from Huangliang City! Oh my, it's terrifying! I've been thinking about it for three days and three nights and still can't figure out how that sorcerer could suddenly become a member of the royal family? It's even more bizarre than what's in the plays!"
Indeed, the Drought Demon's thoughts are both outrageous and miraculous.
The sorcerer and the emperor's father-in-law—the same face, the same person.
He frantically searched his mind for all memories related to the demonic path:
In his memory, the Ji family repeatedly fell into decline, his father failed the imperial examinations repeatedly, and the family had no choice but to move out of Huangliang City and settle in Lingxi Village; while the Yuan family prospered. The eldest son of the Yuan family, who was his father's former classmate and later became his enemy, passed the imperial examinations and returned home in glory to sit in the top seat of the Huangliang City government. The sorcerer naturally became his advisor and strategist.
Although Li Tingyun had seen this sorcerer more than once when he was a child, he couldn't remember what he looked like at this moment.
Because he looks too much like a "person".
Most people look just like him!
Being so ordinary that it has no distinguishing features is itself extraordinary: the "face" he reveals is most likely a carefully crafted fake.
Such things as changing one's appearance and appearance are commonplace; anyone who goes out to cause trouble needs to wear a disguise.
Having such an ordinary face makes it easier to move freely between the government and the common people.
Awesome.
Li Tingyun: Things are starting to get interesting.
In fact, he had guessed long ago that the fall of the Li Liang Dynasty and the decline of the Ji family in Huangliang City were not two unrelated, parallel lines, but rather an inseparable thread.
The reason why the Ji family ended up like that was probably not only because the Yuan family father and son repaid kindness with enmity, but more importantly, because they were surnamed Li, were descendants of the royal family, and had royal blood flowing in their veins. Therefore, no matter where they hid, they could not possibly have a good end.
The schemes and plans of the masterminds behind the scenes permeated the entire Li imperial family.
Even though the Ji family had taken refuge thousands of miles away and changed their names, they were still being watched.
The Yuan family is just a pawn, a pawn used to destroy the royal bloodline in Huangliang City. Even if there is no Yuan family, there will be a Fang family. It doesn't matter if it's round, square, pointed, or flat. It's just a pawn, as long as it's useful.
When out of power, the "advisor" served the Yuan family; when in court, the "father-in-law" proclaimed imperial edicts for the empress dowager.
It seems that the Yuan family specially hired a Taoist priest as their advisor to harm the Ji family, and that the empress had overstepped her bounds by appointing the old man as the emperor's father-in-law, thus disrupting the court. In fact, the Yuan family and the empress were nothing more than two dogs that bit the most viciously, while the advisor, or the emperor's father-in-law, who acted as an "accomplice," was the mastermind who was perfectly hidden behind the scenes.
He used others to do his dirty work, making the most of the Yuan family and the Empress Dowager; he had a clear goal: to use a woman to ruin a nation's fortune and to use one family to destroy another; he was incredibly patient, playing a game of chess for at least thirty years, with the emperor from youth to old age and three generations of the prince's family all within his calculations.
Everything started because of him, yet he never shed a single drop of blood on his hands.
In the end, he perfectly avoided all cause and effect.
How can it not be considered "awesome"?
So, the question is, what exactly does this scoundrel want to achieve by going to such lengths?
The answer to this question is actually quite simple.
Because he had already gotten what he wanted, he had won big, and what he got was exactly what he desired. Therefore, all that was needed was to see how it ended; whatever the ending was, that was exactly what he wanted.
He wanted the Great Liang Dynasty to be destroyed and its imperial lineage to be extinguished.
He wanted the imperial destiny to be lost.
He wanted there to be no more "Human Emperor" on earth.
"Damn it, they really dare to ask for that much!" The drought demon flung his robes, sat down on the ground on the bank of the River of Oblivion, and gazed at the surging river, lost in thought: "Confucius said by the river, 'Time flows on like this, never ceasing!' Why are there so many people who deserve to die!"
Who exactly is this bastard? Is he a human, a ghost, or a demon?
Is it possible that it's a ghost king, or even a ghost emperor?
Is there another possibility? That he might be someone from the cultivation world?!
This problem cannot be solved by guessing; exhaustive searching would take forever.
We need to find a breakthrough.
The drought demon pondered for a long time, then suddenly realized that in the very end, he still had one thing to take—
Chaos spiritual roots!
The evil cultivator even stole his Chaos Spiritual Root!
Damn it, how could he have forgotten about this?
This is the one thing he should never forget! Yet it's also the one thing he least wants to recall.
When he was young, he suffered a lot, both physically and mentally. It can be said that he experienced the most devastating downfall, the most tragic and inhumane moments, the most embarrassing moments of being "transcendent and saintly," and the most humiliating moments of being "divine and masterful."
He had mostly forgotten those torments, but the pain of having his spiritual root stripped from his body was extraordinary. Even now, when he thinks about it, he still feels uncomfortable all over, with a faint, lingering pain everywhere.
A complete spiritual root is like the root system of a plant, spreading throughout the twelve meridians of the human body, extending from the eight extraordinary meridians to the extremities. A change in one part affects the whole body. To extract a complete spiritual root is much more difficult than dismembering or removing bones. It is a very delicate task, and one can imagine how brutal the process is.
Adding to the fact that he was young when the incident happened, things got even worse.
The age when people love sweets the most is when even the slightest "bitterness" is magnified infinitely. This incident directly caused him psychological trauma. The only "good thing" left for him is that later, no matter what kind of torture or soul-tearing he encountered, he felt that he could endure it and it would pass.
Besides, another reason that prevented him from remembering was that his spiritual root was dug out on the very night he killed his father. Once he recalled it, it was not just one or two things, but a tangled mess that he couldn't unravel.
In his memory, that night was exceptionally long, and so much happened that he couldn't even tell which was the most important, which was secondary, or which was of utmost importance to him. Was it the death of his parents, the loss of his spiritual root forever, or... Mei Shiyu saving his life for the first time?
His mind was a bit confused.
Zombies are inherently a species without brains.
The drought demon was overthinking and was almost losing its intelligence. At the same time, it heard its own inner voice.
That was another voice, "himself": You're not thinking straight, get out of the way, I'll do it!