Qianqing Palace, main hall.

The night was as dark as ink, swallowing the majestic palace buildings, only a single lamp inside the hall stood bright.

Xu Yuan sat quietly at the desk, his silhouette elongated and lonely by the lamp’s light.

A fragrant breeze swept by, and a graceful figure approached silently, gently draping a cloak over him.

Without turning, Xu Yuan’s voice was somewhat hoarse in the expansive hall:

"You’re awake."

Li Qingyan wore only a thin garment, her delicate curves faintly visible under the dim candlelight. She bypassed the desk and sat sideways on the cold platform, glancing at his profile, flickering in the candlelight:

"Still upset about Hua Hong’s affair?"

Xu Yuan did not answer.

Li Qingyan stretched out her cool fingertips, tucking a loose strand of hair behind his ear, saying:

"Always pretending to be cold-blooded."

Xu Yuan remained silent.

Inside the great hall, it was so quiet one could hear the gentle crackling of the candle burning.

With a soft sigh, Li Qingyan broke the silence, saying:

"I heard you acted against the imperial family?"

Finally, Xu Yuan set down the document in his hand, and the heavy pages thudded against the desk. He slowly turned back, looking at the Empress, who was close at hand, but there was no emotion visible in those deep, unfathomable eyes. He countered:

"Here to demand people?"

Li Qingyan shook her head. A gust of wind blew through, lifting her gauzy skirt like an ephemeral flower swaying in the dark night: "Not really. Just a reminder, this time, you’ve moved against too many people, enough to possibly affect the front-line war situation."

The subsequent development of the incident from the early spring, when the Qingliu advised the abolition of public schools, had completely exceeded Xu Yuan’s expectations. Or rather, he had never thought these people’s courage had grown so bold.

The people behind the scenes had merely dropped a bait, and it stirred the entire lake named Dayan. Countless nobles, sects, and officials swarmed like sharks scenting blood from every dark corner.

The surveillance, originally planned for a month, was naturally extended. After half a year’s fermentation, the decaying undercurrent had coalesced into a clamorous turbid wave, with the calls to abolish public schools rising day by day.

The victory of the war was already certain, and the threat of the Sect Alliance was almost negligible. In that case, there was no need to invest immense manpower and resources into the lower classes as before.

This world doesn’t need so many cultivators rising from the bottom!

They don’t need array pattern weapons capable of killing high-rank cultivators to continue iterating,

and they certainly don’t need a damned Heavenly Road giving those ants a chance to stand above them!

This was not a probe but rather a premeditated and aggressive pressure from the entire top level of Dayan.

However, all these were expected matters,

even if it came much earlier than anticipated.

Therefore,

in the face of this provocation, Xu Yuan chose to take it all on completely.

Twenty years of appeasement had been too long, long enough for many to forget the iron-blooded Xu Xiang, and also for them to forget that the current Han King is his ambition’s successor.

In the past three days, Di’an was under darkness.

Involving every official from the past half-year, every person who voiced the abolition of schools, everyone who privately engaged with related political views gatherings faced the supreme power from the Prime Minister’s Mansion.

The scope was vast and deeply impactful, shaking the entire court, with more than twenty high-ranking officials from the six departments overthrown overnight, and over ten thousand officials imprisoned from top to bottom.

There might be grievances among them, but Xu Yuan didn’t care.

He needed to use a blood-soaked display to tell those people that the world can only move forward, never turning back.

Silence spread between the two,

for a long time,

Xu Yuan spoke to Li Qingyan, his voice indifferent but heavy as a mountain:

"Not enough, these people are not enough, the ones truly holding power have yet to step in, but it should be soon."

Li Qingyan looked at him, her heart involuntarily tightening, but she did not show a trace, only stating cold and calculated pros and cons with her hoarse and cold voice:

"Since the war began, you and I have been based on reforming the autocracy created by our late father, particularly your Prime Minister’s Mansion, with half of the power already decentralized. This case has already affected the operation of the government, it would be best to stop here."

Xu Yuan did not retreat, he stared into her eyes, flickering in the candlelight, with a barely perceptible sigh in his tone:

"After the late Emperor fell ill, all state affairs were overseen by my father alone, from state military affairs to village skirmishes."

"Over these years, in order to pave the way for later generations, you and I indeed let go of too much, without them, the entire world would be affected...."

Here, his tone suddenly shifted, each word like it’s forged from cold iron, with a decisiveness that left no room for maneuvering:

"...But I don’t mind overturning and redoing twenty years of power reform. What my father once did, I can also do now."

Li Qingyan gazed at the man before her; in the depths of his unwavering eyes flashed a faint hint of imperceptible reluctance.

Yet she suppressed her emotions, whispering:

"Reclaiming power is a thousand times harder than relinquishing it; today’s political situation is no longer the era of the late Emperor and Xu Xiang, Changtian, if handled carelessly, it will lead to a second war....."

She stopped, calmly looking at him, trusting he understood the unspoken words.

It would be a war between the loyal and the disloyal,

a war between ideals and reality.

This war would be more brutal than the one between the Imperial Court and the Sect Alliance.

For your enemy might be comrade-in-arms, someone with whom you shared life and death just yesterday.

Xu Yuan was silent for a moment, the air seemingly frozen, then he unexpectedly whispered:

"The war is about to end."

"What?"

"The war with the Sect Alliance."

"....."

Li Qingyan frowned slightly, the candlelight casting a small shadow on her brow:

"Given the current situation, it won’t be until this time next year at the earliest that the term ’Sect Alliance’ will become history."

Xu Yuan shook his head without speaking, handing her the document he had been holding tightly.

Li Qingyan was a bit puzzled, but upon a brief glance, her narrow phoenix eyes couldn’t help but contract, her cool and hoarse voice unconsciously carrying a touch of imperial majesty:

"Is this... true?"

"Mhm."

Xu Yuan nodded, his dark eyes seeming to contemplate something: "A personal letter from Little Four to me; two decades of effort has finally borne fruit, the power at least meets her promises back then."

Li Qingyan’s thoughts were complex and tumultuous, her red lips parted with countless words she wished to speak, but ultimately only became a single inquiry:

"What do you plan to call this... thing?"

Xu Yuan lowered his eyes and said softly:

"Little Four calls it the ’Fallen Sun’."

Fallen Sun.

Li Qingyan’s fullness beneath the thin veil slightly rose and fell. She exhaled a long, turbid breath, her eyes complex, and asked:

"Once this thing appears on the battlefield, the Sect Alliance will undoubtedly surrender at the mere sight of it. Are you planning to use it to intimidate those people?"

Xu Yuan smiled slightly, but there was not a trace of warmth in that smile; instead, it exuded a chilling coldness to the bone:

"You should know, the birth of this weapon is a disaster of total destruction for the Sect Alliance, yet it gives them a fearless audacity.

"It is, in fact, the ’Heavenly Punishment’ hanging over both our heads."

Li Qingyan’s delicate hands clenched tight, her knuckles turning white from the force, she squinted her eyes, her voice cold as ice:

"In that case, why do you mention this at all?"

Xu Yuan continued to smile, answering in a roundabout way:

"I never used to agree with the saying that ’man proposes, God disposes’, seeing it as the humility of the successful and the ravings of the failed. I believed that man’s capacity could be greater than the heavens, that the plots of those who achieve it are proof of their stepping to the pulse of the times."

With that, Xu Yuan leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes:

"But now, I want to let these people know, even if they step to the pulse of the times, as long as I disagree, as long as I am alive, there is no way they can drag this world back to the past."

Li Qingyan’s heart trembled slightly, then inexplicable anger surged forth:

"Xu Yuan, I don’t oppose the world you want, but that doesn’t mean others won’t. This ten-plus-year war, you should know how many new Cultivators and Formation Masters the whole world has gained, and you should also know how fast the iteration speed of current Array Techniques is....."

"I know."

Xu Yuan interrupted her, the unyielding resolve in his dark eyes was undeniable:

"As the last straw that will break the Sect Alliance, the ’Fallen Sun’ will be deployed at the front line in ten days. I will go as the ruler of the Imperial Court to witness."

Li Qingyan’s breathing became rapid, the graceful curve traced by the thin veil heaved violently:

"The ’Fallen Sun’ has just been born, those people are everywhere, we haven’t made sufficient safeguards to ensure it can act according to your and my will.....

At last, her tone bore a trace of incredulity:

"No, you... you’re deliberately giving them a chance to assassinate you?"

Xu Yuan took a deep breath, suddenly smiled, his tone gentle:

"This war should have ended seven or eight years ago, but I meddled, deliberately delaying its progress.

"Because only in wartime can the act of preaching to the world be rationalized, can it be implemented with the least resistance.

"But this burden of advancing the world has ultimately fallen on the shoulders of those hundreds of millions of ordinary people..."

Before he finished speaking, Li Qingyan directly grabbed Xu Yuan by the collar, pulling him to face her, enunciating every word:

"What is this related to your planned matters, twenty years have passed, what’s another year or half?"

Xu Yuan quietly watched her, his tone still calm:

"Of course it’s not much, but as you just said, once this matter gets out of control, it will be another war."

"The twenty years of chaos have already devastated Dayan’s livelihood, countless fertile lands destroyed, ordinary prices skyrocketed to a hundred times pre-war levels, the Dragon Emperor of Ancient Abyss has completed internal integration during Dayan’s civil war, and the news from Li Junqing in Japan also confirms the profound war heritage that overseas Empire possesses.

"Qingyan, Dayan cannot afford a second civil war,

"At this moment, those people indeed stand on the pulse of the times.

"In the Academic Case, I crushed their joint pressure with dictatorship; this resolve will certainly cause panic because they know my lifespan is limitless, there’s no such reality as outliving me, so if they want to hold onto their power, there’s only one path left.....

"To kill me."

At this point, Xu Yuan raised his hand to clasp her slightly cool hand, his words carrying a hint of amusement:

"It’s unrealistic to fully uncover their identities; to act, one can only lure the snake out of its hole, and in our world, power and cultivation are almost equivalent; to kill me, it will require the highest-level cultivation to strike together."

"So, I must go.

"I use my life as bait to set the next open scheme, waiting for them to come."

The candlelight flickered, casting obscure shadows.

Listening to it all, Li Qingyan’s gaze fell upon Xu Yuan’s sharply defined profile, half of that face sank in light, half submerged in darkness.

Amidst the silence, her hand holding his collar tightened, but she lowered her eyes, after a long while, she spoke softly:

"I’ll go too."

"No."

"...."

Li Qingyan’s lips curled into a bitter arc:

"Are you... worried about me?"

"Partially."

"Heh....."

"If you come with me, should anything go wrong, the world will truly descend into chaos, and... there’s no one to continue down this path."

"You want me to help you?"

"I can only request you."

"Ha...."

Li Qingyan released her hand, looking down at him, her narrow phoenix eyes slightly squinting, her red lips curling up:

"Xu Changtian, I’m not a woman of good temper. If you die, everything you’ve done over these years, the system you’ve established pushing against all odds, I’ll abolish them all, which aligns with the best interests of everyone."

Xu Yuan’s figure paused, remaining silent for a long time before finally saying:

"As you wish."

"?"

Li Qingyan suddenly felt somewhat annoyed.

Xu Yuan’s words followed one after another:

"If I fail, if you choose to return everything to its starting point, that can only mean this world is not yet ready to welcome the new era, so whatever you wish to do.... is acceptable."

With these words,

the candle flames inside the hall continued to flicker in the wind.

His tone also turned somewhat eerie and dark:

"But I will not fail, nor will I admit my failure....."