Dao Equaling the Heavens
Chapter 296 - 193: Overwhelming the Lord Emperor_3

Chapter 296: Chapter 193: Overwhelming the Lord Emperor_3

"I should kill all the noble clans."

Mr. Wen stared, dumbfounded, and said, "Aren’t you afraid that will cause chaos everywhere? Who will take care of the common people then?"

"By then, I will have become an Immortal, naturally pursuing what delights my senses and satisfies my intellect. Why should I accommodate others?"

Gu Wen slightly tilted his head with a smile, reached out toward the distant mansion ablaze with lights, and in an instant, streaks of light soared into the sky.

When people died, the fire died; it did not burn objects afar, nor did it harm the innocent.

"Jucai, now that I’ve killed them, do they still have any objections?"

Jiang Jucai stood frozen, once again too scared to move.

Gu Wen saw his long silence, looked back, and realized he had gone too far. He reached out as before, gently stroked the top of his head, and spoke softly, "Alright, now it’s your turn to clean up the mess."

The fear that had just welled up in Jiang Jucai was replaced by a sense of speechlessness, and with a bittersweet laugh, he said, "Mr. Wen, are you saying you’ll do the killing but not handle the burial?"

"This is exactly why I don’t want to become the Emperor," Gu Wen stated indisputably. "Power never lacks masters; if you don’t put your own people in place, bandits will inevitably spring up, and in the end, it is the common people who suffer."

Jiang Jucai then asked, "Being an Immortal, do you have a way to relieve the suffering of all people?"

Yet Gu Wen countered with a question, "Can you think of a solution to hidden land?"

He didn’t mention the myriad problems of feudal society; all matters must be grounded in reality. The Emperor and his ilk were many, but compared with slavery and feudalism, they were a much more progressive existence.

At least they would provide disaster relief for their own power’s sake.

"The private school teacher once said that as long as the Saint Emperor is enlightened and diligent, governing with love for the people, he may win over the hearts of the world, thus eliminating hidden lands and hidden families."

Jiang Jucai squeezed out some knowledge from within his armored self, though it sounded somewhat bitter.

Gu Wen didn’t mock him but asked again, "What if I want to abolish the scholars and officials?"

Jiang Jucai turned pale with fright, "Absolutely not... Without scholars, how can we manage the world?"

Being a scholar himself, he certainly wouldn’t agree.

"So, we’re discussing something impossible," Gu Wen said, additional seriousness in his voice. "Tomorrow, when you have some free time, go take a walk on the streets. Go incognito, without ceremonial guard."

The next day, Jiang Jucai dressed plainly and, accompanied by several members of the Jiang family, walked the streets. The stench from the destitute made him pinch his nose.

Upon returning, Jiang Jucai reported truthfully and Gu Wen did not blame him.

Instead, he smiled and asked, "Do you still aspire to become a Saint?"

It was enough that he could witness firsthand the suffering of the people; some Emperors didn’t even know the price of an egg.

-----------------

On the twentieth of November, the Nanchun Army took three more cities.

From beginning to end, neither Gu Wen and his party nor the Lord Emperor took action; it was an unspoken agreement of soldier against soldier, general against general.

But this situation couldn’t last long, because the Daqian was more decayed than imagined.

Nearly half of the main forces within the Nanchun Army were former auxiliary troops. They were like a lump of mud in Daqian, but in the Nanchun Army, with its system of military exploits and nobility, they were fierce as tigers and wolves.

The Nanchun Army could offer tangible rewards of money and land, while the Daqian court, after decades of excessive levies, had lost control over the lower classes. War, in essence, is a redistribution of societal resources. The victory of the Nanchun Army lay not in being stronger than Daqian, but rather in being able to kill those who had amassed large tracts of land.

The true advantage of the Lord Emperor lay at the Transcendent level, and his intervention was inevitable.

At Lin Chuan County’s entry to the Nanshui River, a small boat came upstream, with two Daoists on board, looking like Heavenly People in their Taiji and Eight Trigrams Daoist robes.

Beyond the Nanshui, at the border of the Devil Clan domain, a fox raced through the mountains; suddenly, a beam of radiant light descended, and in an instant spread out in all directions, a beautiful woman appearing out of thin air.

At the edge of Nanshui, the two Daoists met with the fox woman.

"A Fox Fairy?"

"Disciples of The Three Pure Ones."

The three looked at each other, and after a moment, divine light soared thousands of feet into the sky, with the after-effects of their magical battle causing mountains to crumble and rivers to flow backward.

Ultimately both sides were injured and scattered, but eventually, they turned from different locations and fled toward the Luo River.