Outside the royal capital of Shuangxue Country, snowflakes were flying everywhere. The tall and firm city wall did not look magnificent, at least in the eyes of the Zhenbei Army stationed outside the city.
It was just a small country.
The siege was underway with thousands of soldiers, the shine from swords and armor and the imposing manner all made people fearful.
The defenders on the city wall had struggled bitterly for two months, and this was on the premise that the elite troops of the Zhenbei Army did not participate in the siege. The morale of the defenders had already collapsed.
The city had run out of food and the people's hearts were in chaos.
This was also Wang Jue's goal.
As the number one general of Dawu Country after Bai ShiXuan, even though this was the capital city that Shuangxue Country had built up over a thousand years, he had long seen the flaws in its defenses. The northern land was frigid, the city walls were high but also covered in frost, and the weather was extremely harsh.
A frontal assault would indeed be difficult, but why did he have to attack head-on?
In this kind of environment, the key was logistics and supplies.
By besieging the city and attacking slowly, he could gradually wear down their morale and deplete their food reserves.
Disturb their hearts and take their city, extermination of their country!
This was Wang Jue’s ultimate goal.
Half a year ago, although he had won the battle against the allied forces of five countries, Song Yan had not left any handles. Other than to avoid the crime of looting food, if he did not use the cruelest means to take revenge on Shuangxue Country, which took the lead, then in the future, would it not be that anyone could come to this northern land and try to plot against him, Wang Jue?
Therefore, two months ago, after making preparations for military supplies, he led his troops out again. Like splitting bamboo, they went straight to lay siege under the capital city of Shuangxue Country.
...
...
"Wang Jue will definitely massacre the city," Baijun Marquis stated emotionlessly, telling the fact that would soon happen.
The other people in the palace had already retreated, some fleeing for their lives, some resigned to their fate. Now there were only Baijun Marquis and Yan Xiaodao left in the hall.
A middle-aged man and a teenager.
Under the throne, Yan Xiaodao was lying on the ground. No matter how hard he tried to get up, his body simply would not obey.
So he could only desperately raise his head and stare fixedly at Baijun Marquis.
Before leaving to arrange the escape of the royal family of Shuangxue Country, Bai Left Envoy had injected internal energy into Yan Xiaodao's body that would deprive him of independent mobility for several days.
Baijun Marquis looked at the pair of tender but anger-filled eyes and said, "I see in your eyes hatred and anger towards me."
"So what!" Yan Xiaodao gritted his teeth and said.
But Baijun Marquis asked, "But I don't understand why you hate me? Are the tens of thousands of troops besieging the city commanded by me now? Is the one who is about to massacre your hometown and destroy your country me, Baijun Marquis? Or do you think it was me who made your king abandon you?"
"Did you ever think that the kind of king who has 'I fear death' written on his face, when the city breaks, do you think he will do anything like defending the country with his life as a righteous monarch should?"
Yan Xiaodao fell silent for a moment.
The hatred in his eyes lessened slightly.
"Or maybe you hate me because I can't save your country?"
"But you should understand, the fate of this city has already been doomed. If it is because I cannot save your country that you hate me, don't you feel your hatred is unjustified?"
Because right now, no one in the whole world can save this city.
Blaming for not being able to save, isn't that tantamount to saying that you should hate everyone in the world?
Listening to the man's words, Yan Xiaodao found himself unable to refute what he said.
Because what Baijun Marquis said was the truth.
As Baijun Marquis said:
"Clearly, there is no hatred between you and me. Your enemy is not me either, but Wang Jue, or even Dawu Country, that central kingdom which has occupied your country's territory for years."
For a moment, the hatred in Yan Xiaodao's eyes gradually turned into confusion.
Did he hate the wrong person?
Baijun Marquis changed the subject and said, "Just now you said your father died for the country. Can I take it that you have great respect for your father?"
When he thought of his father, Yan Xiaodao said without hesitation: "My dad was the general of Shuangxue Country! He took his men to raid the grain routes of Dawu Country in order to win this war! He died, but he was a hero! A big hero!! Bigger hero than all of you!"
From Yan Xiaodao's excited tone and words, Baijun Marquis had already gotten the answer.
Baijun Marquis said, "In this point, you and I are alike."
What?
Yan Xiaodao looked puzzled.
Baijun Marquis had no expression on his face and spoke plainly, but with some sincerity:
"You didn't hear wrong. You and I are alike. I too have great respect for my father. He taught me that the so-called monarch does not necessarily have to sit on the throne, does not necessarily have to be fawned over by others, and does not necessarily wield much power."
"The so-called monarch is the one who builds momentum and controls momentum. Where there is momentum, there is the monarch!"
After speaking, Baijun Marquis looked at Yan Xiaodao again and asked, "The fate of this city, the fate of your hometown is doomed. Young man, if you can survive today, do you want to take revenge?"
In fact, given Wang Jue's cruel methods towards the cities he had attacked and plundered in the North over the years, not to mention that Wang Jue was also motivated by revenge and deterrence this time, anyone knew what would be the fate of the tens of thousands of citizens of Shuangxue Country in the city after it fell.
Yan Xiaodao wanted to clench his fists, or even hold a long knife to go out and fight with the Zhenbei Army about to rush into the city, but in the end he still could not control his body.
He could only let every word that came out of his throat in the next moment spread throughout the palace, so that everyone could hear...
"I...will...definitely...take...revenge!!"
Baijun Marquis said lightly, "It sounds like your determination is very firm."
"Of course!"
"But I don't think so."
"What do you mean?"
"Tell me, how old are you this year?"
"Fourteen."
Baijun Marquis nodded and said, "Only fourteen? Then let me tell you, even if you survive today, most likely in the future, you won't take revenge."
"You're insulting me!"
"I'm just stating facts."
Baijun Marquis said, "Corruption and tyranny by officials have plagued Dawu Country's jianghu for over twenty years. Perhaps those people are not in as dire straits as you who have had their country destroyed, but don't you know among them, how many have had their families searched and exterminated? In terms of tragedy, they are no less than you, but...did they all take revenge in the end?"
Baijun Marquis did not recognize the idea of abandoning hatred, but after observing the world for twenty years, he knew that there were countless people who had abandoned hatred under heaven.
Did they all take revenge in the end? Or rather, did they take revenge with their own hands?
Baijun Marquis said, "When a person truly escapes death and survives, perhaps in the days that follow, his heart is filled with hatred, so he thirsts for revenge. He will strive and struggle to make himself stronger. However, as time goes by..."
"Ten years, twenty years, in the sea of people, you will make new friends, or find new lovers, or experience all kinds of things and become a new person. Your hatred will be slowly erased by the magnificent passage of time. By then, regardless of whether you have the ability to take revenge, you may no longer want to take revenge..."
What Baijun Marquis said sounded very strange.
But the best example of this argument was...Zhang San.
Baijun Marquis did not know Zhang San, but like abandoning hatred, Zhang San was not an isolated case.
Baijun Marquis knew that in this world, some people, because of reasons like state of mind and family, regardless of whether their personal abilities reached the level needed for revenge in the end, they would give up that path.
If time could easily wipe out your life, could it not erase your feelings?
Be it love or hatred, it was the same.
Twenty years is not enough, then thirty years, fifty years...
If there is no undying love in this world, then there probably does not exist unforgettable hatred that has lasted a thousand years either.
The determined avenger today may not necessarily not say something foolish like "when will this cycles of revenge end" tomorrow, and when an avenger says such foolish words, I wonder...
Has he really become enlightened?
Or has he merely, in the erosion of time, forgotten the gnashing teeth and heart-wrenching pain from back then?
"A person's feelings of love, hatred, jealousy, admiration and so on are not as unchanging as you imagine, just like..."
Baijun Marquis gave an analogy: "Just like you, who not half an hour ago still believed that 'King' was noble and supreme."
he colors of other people’s emotions. Light red meant anxiety. Gray meant exhaustion. Orange meant excitement. Yellow... meant repression. At the same time, he could gain unlimited control over one of those colors. Pale cyan: relaxation. Using this ability, he started offering “two-yuan hugs,” spending an afternoon exchanging emotional-color experiences with others. Then came his final female customer of the day— a girl whose emotional color was pure black... —— A week later, Xu Chuan had become skilled at using pale cyan—Relaxation—treating it like a bottle of menthol balm whenever he needed it. That was when he discovered he had unlocked another unlimited emotional color: Purple, the color of fear. So these emotional colors refresh every week? Fine, I take it back—I’ll never call you useless again... —— Much later, after Xu Chuan had accumulated countless emotional abilities, one night, he suddenly found himself inside someone else’s dream. There, he could use the emotional colors he possessed to paint. And in her dream, he painted her a shower of pink shooting stars, spreading across the depths of the night sky...
nd fell into a coma while saving his younger sister from an out-of-control car. He became a vegetable. No one knew that his consciousness had crossed into a world of cultivation. Over the course of sixty years, he began as the lowest kind of mine slave, struggling to survive amid mountains of corpses and seas of blood. By sheer chance, he eventually obtained the complete memories of a fallen Immortal King. Alchemy, medicine, formations, feng shui, physiognomy, artifact forging… Every great inheritance of the cultivation world was now his. But when he opened his eyes again, he discovered that ten full years had passed in the modern world. To pay for his treatment, his father had sold the family’s shop and house, leaving himself covered in lasting injuries and illness. His mother had cared for him day and night, and more than half of her hair had already turned white. His younger sister, who had been only fifteen back then, was now twenty-five. To help repay the family’s debts, she had been forced to lower her head and put on a smiling face in places of glittering lights and endless revelry. Only then did Chen Xuan understand that what he had lost was not merely ten years. He had lost the life his entire family was meant to have. The good news was that he had brought back the memories of an Immortal King’s entire lifetime. The bad news was that his soul had returned alone—his cultivation had not come with him. Spiritual energy was scarce, resources were depleted, and the modern world still had firearms, surveillance, capital, and laws. If he wanted to protect his family, break free from everyone’s control, and become truly invincible beneath the heavens, he would have to start all over again.
s the Eldest Princess, renowned for her cold and aloof detachment, became the most docile of lambs, obeying his every command without question. But when the final move was played on the chessboard, as Gu Chenghan seized everything and ascended on the verge of apotheosis, that very Princess suddenly embraced him from behind, her tone carrying a dependence never heard before: "Wait... you haven't yet... commanded me to love you forever." Gu Chenghan froze abruptly. She... hadn't been hypnotized?! ... [The Eldest Princess's Diary] [When my soul was extracted, becoming the sole spectator outside my own shell] [At first, there was overwhelming fury, until I saw] [How he used my sword to effortlessly shatter my inescapable doom] [How he wielded my authority to eradicate fatal conspiracies I had never even detected] [Like a deity, he rescued me from the deep mire I was trapped in] [If not for those annoying vixens, he and I would be a match made in heaven] [I think I am ill, gravely ill] [My deity should belong to me alone] ... "Hypnosis? Oh, it succeeded, my dear Master." "Only this time, it's my turn to hypnotize you."
young master of the Shen family—a figure of immense power and wealth beyond measure—and awakened the "Destined Ultimate Villain System"! His starting scenario? Running into his icy fiancée who shows up with a mountain-descending divine doctor to break off their engagement. The divine doctor arrogantly taunts: "What does your Shen family have besides a bit of stinking money? You're not even worthy of tying Qingxue's shoelaces!" Shen Fei just smiled. He completely defied the usual script: "Fine, I agree to break off the engagement. Also, notify the finance department to withdraw all investments from the Su family." Minutes later, with its capital chain severed, the Su Group teetered on the brink of bankruptcy! The once aloof and proud ice queen CEO was thrown into utter panic. That very night, she went to Shen Fei's villa, casting aside all dignity to beg and plead desperately... From then on, in this world teeming with Sons of Destiny, Shen Fei embarked on a path of extreme dimensional suppression! A mountain-descending divine doctor? Peerless medical skills? Shen Fei: "Reporting you for practicing medicine without a license! I'll gladly take your ancient medicinal cauldron and twin sister assassins." The Crooked-Smiling Dragon King? Commanding a hundred thousand soldiers with a single order? Shen Fei: "Illegal assembly and suspected treason! Let a fleet of attack helicopters sanitize the area and teach you what the state apparatus really means!" A reborn tycoon? Knows all the golden opportunities of the next decade? Shen Fei: "A trillion in capital to reverse and pump the stock market, making you blow your margin and jump on the very first day of your rebirth!" What Chosen Ones? What bearers of Heavenly Fortune? In Shen Fei's eyes, they're all just chives (i.e., suckers/marks) waiting to be harvested! Shen Fei: "Sorry, but as the Destined Ultimate Villain, I don't play by the rules of honor. I only play the game of dimensional suppression."
