To achieve immortality, I cultivate using Qi Luck

Chapter 821: 353: Ambitious Purgatory_2

Chapter 821: Chapter 353: Ambitious Purgatory_2

At this moment, after the arrival of the grand army, Shen Qiu was preparing to lead his troops out of the camp to attack Jiangxia City, to test the depth of the Chu army. Bai Yian, as the de facto commander of the grand army, naturally came along to observe.

However, now that the grand army hadn’t launched its attack yet, Shen Qiu seemed to have been stirred up emotionally, which greatly alarmed Bai Yian.

He knew that His Majesty harbored dread in his heart towards Jiangxia City and thus directed his anger towards the Xiao Family. But now was not the time for internal strife and purges, nor for such actions.

The dissatisfaction with the Xiao Family was almost universal among the six surnames and seven aristocratic families of Linhai.

Even within the Xiao Family itself, there were many grievances against Emperor Hongdao and Emperor Longqing, blaming the father and son for the decline and fall of the Xiao Shi Dynasty and for bringing the family to its current dire state.

However numerous these resentments might be, all the sins and responsibilities of the Xiao Family had dissipated along with their abdication and relinquishment of power, ceasing to exist.

The rules of the game for the coastal aristocratic families were that the royal family of the former dynasty would abdicate and then be succeeded by a new representative of the aristocratic families, who would then reform the government, restore the land, and inaugurate a new Glorious Dynasty.

The abdicated royal family of the former dynasty would then become a new aristocratic family, and all past grievances were not to be settled by the succeeding royal family.

Otherwise, if you settle scores with me and I with you, and the six surnames and seven families fight each other, they would have been exterminated long ago under such bloody games.

How could they possibly enjoy the thousands of years of wealth and prosperity as they do now, intermarrying with each other, advancing and retreating together?

Therefore, no matter the dissatisfaction with the Xiao Family, the opponent had abided by the rules of the game and chosen to abdicate.

As successors to the throne, they should not, under any circumstances, settle scores with the opponent.

Because that would break the balance and destroy the rules.

And once balance and rules are broken, even if it starts small, it will eventually lead to destruction as the cracks widen.

Therefore, seeing that the Emperor seemed to have the thought of settling scores with the Xiao Family, the Brave General hurriedly said, “Your Majesty, the grand army has already completed its formation, and the weapons and crossbows are ready. We can launch a probing attack now.”

These words indeed shifted Shen Qiu’s attention away from the Xiao Family’s wrongdoing and back to the present.

He looked downward.

From the watch car, to its left and right, front and back, he saw rows of soldiers neatly arrayed on the white wasteland, distributed orderly in the nearby areas according to their positions, types of troops, and banner flags several miles around.

The fifty thousand troops gathered to launch a probing attack on Jiangxia City were all assembled.

Tens of thousands of troops stood on the plains, shining in their armor, flags fluttering, swords and spears gleaming, emitting a chilling sharpness.

The crowded gathering turned the originally white earth into a sea of yellow.

Yes, just like Chu State, Ning Country’s military uniforms were also yellow.

When Lu Yuan established the kingdom in Changsha, he used the Taiping Dao Book related to his cultivation and his personal birthdate to assume the name of the Yellow Sky Daoist and established the system of the Earth Virtue for the Dynasty.

Once the system was set up, the various robes, rituals, and military uniforms of Chu henceforth would mostly favor yellow.

Therefore, the military robes of the Chu army were naturally yellow.

The Ningguo Dynasty, located in Jiangdong and having accepted the peaceful succession from Yue Country, also followed the established order of the former dynasty and naturally inherited the former precedent, not like the dynasties that came to power through violent revolutions which would adopt the theory of mutual conquest of the Five Elements.

Therefore, the normal Wood conquers Earth would not appear in Ning Country, as the new Dynasty took Water as its Virtue.

Ning Country adhered to the rotational tradition of the coastal aristocratic family dynasties and the theory of mutual generation of the Five Elements, adopting the principle of fire generating earth to establish the Dynasty system and create the new dynasty.

For this reason, Ning Country and Chu State were actually the same in adopting Earth Virtue and using yellow garments.

In this respect, Ning and Chu, the two hegemonies of Jiangnan at this time, were fighting each other fiercely, each wanting to defeat the other and unify Yangzhou.

In a certain sense, while the surface battle between the two was for control of Yangzhou, it was also essentially a struggle over the legitimacy of Earth Virtue.

In this fight, the one who emerged victorious would naturally unify Yangzhou and affirm Earth Virtue, proving their own legitimacy.

The world experienced a strange convergence at this moment.

But all of these thoughts were far from Shen Qiu’s mind at this time.

He looked at the powerful and majestic army he’d trained and, his previous dread towards Jiangxia diminishing, was filled with a surge of pride and ambition.

Pre-Yue was incompetent, losing half of the ancestral territories and thus was culpable.

Now, leading his troops east, he was about to defeat the great enemy, the Chu State, re-establish the old borders, and regain the ancestral properties.

Even after the destruction of Chu State, he could take advantage of the situation to incorporate Xiangyang, Hanzhong, Qianzhong, and other territories never developed by his forebears, pushing Ning’s hegemonic achievements to a new peak.

Perhaps in the end, the great accomplishment of conquering Lingnan, the Southwest, and unifying Yangzhou would also be completed by his own hands.

With these accomplishments, he would become the most distinguished among all the emperors of the ten and more dynasties of Jinling since crossing the river.

Even if he might not have enough time to continue leading Ning Country because of his lifespan and survival in the upcoming Nine Provinces calamity,

he would still have enough to face the late emperors under the Nine Springs.

‘To achieve all this, I must first defeat the great enemy, Chu State, and completely unify the fragmented power in Yangzhou under one banner,’ Shen Qiu thought to himself, igniting intense fighting spirit.

Then he looked towards the distant Jiangxia City, which now seemingly was not as impregnable as he had previously thought.