Family Management Game In Immortal Continent

Chapter 1222: Chapter 1216: Since When?

Li Yunlin was completely speechless, a cold knot tightening in his stomach.

“I accompanied Lord Ba to the site, but the dust had already settled,” Zhou Chengli continued, lowering his eyes.

“The area where the Spear Saint fought had been completely leveled to the ground.

When we found him… though his breath was gone, he still stood perfectly upright on the scorched earth.

His hands were locked in a death grip around his spear, its tip dripping with the blood of a Body Integration cultivator.” Zhou Chengli lowered his eyes in mourning.

“His remains have already been escorted back to the Imperial Capital. He made the ultimate sacrifice for the empire…”

“I once asked you a question, Mr. Zhou,” Li Yunlin interrupted abruptly, his voice chilling the air. “I asked why you went out of your way to help our Li Clan.”

The skeletal shadow of the crooked tree swayed.

The long white threads of Li Yunlin’s whisk, along with his hair, drifted in the stagnant breeze.

When he spoke, his voice was faint and ethereal, striking a jarring chord in Zhou Chengli’s mind.

Li Yunlin continued slowly,

“You told me that since my Li Clan bled to guard the Southern Frontier and eliminate internal threats, there should always be someone to say ‘thank you’ on behalf of the common people.

Back then, my elders felt that this Dynasty could still be saved. That at the very least, our blood hadn’t been spilled in vain.”

“Because of that belief, I tolerated all of them—Bi Shihu, Yun Manlou, and cowards like Ba Siyu.

When the Spear Saint marched to slaughter the Wu Tribe, I followed him into the fray. And over time, I started to think you had misjudged the people of this empire.”

Li Yunlin let out a harsh, mocking scoff.

“My Li Clan would never claim blind loyalty to this Imperial Dynasty. The ones truly loyal were fools like Feng Tu and the Spear Saint, Gu Fenghua.

You claim it was ‘too late’ by the time you and Ba Siyu moved to rescue him. From Deston Prefecture to the site of his final battle—was it really too late?”

Zhou Chengli remained dead silent.

“When Feng Tu was dragged away to the Imperial Capital, you didn’t say a single word in his defense,” Li Yunlin pressed.

“With just Zishu Ling and Perfected Qiuyue, could they truly have snatched a man right out of your hands if you hadn’t allowed it?”

“The Spear Saint won battle after battle in Deston Prefecture. You have fought the Wu Tribe for centuries without a single fatal mishap.

Yet now, when our Human Race is finally winning more than we are losing, when several mighty Body Integration experts are present right here in the Western Frontier… suddenly, something goes catastrophically wrong?

Your story is riddled with holes, yet you stand there and tell me you just ‘couldn’t make it in time’?”

As Li Yunlin’s ruthless deductions rained down, Zhou Chengli’s face crumbled into despondency.

“Senior, you once told me my Li Clan’s blood wasn’t shed in vain. So why is it that the blood of these loyal men has been drained completely dry?”

“And tell me, Senior… what exactly should I do with you?”

Zhou Chengli’s expression turned intensely bitter. “My young friend… You saw through it?”

“A Dao Seed,” Li Yunlin stated flatly, his tone stripped of all warmth.

In that very instant, the aura of the Scholarly Dao erupted from Zhou Chengli like a dormant volcano.

With a flick of his sleeve, Li Yunlin forcefully dismissed the trembling young general, sending him safely out of range.

A ripple of awe-inspiring, righteous energy blasted outward from the scholar. Behind him, five glowing, brilliantly golden characters floated into the air: Benevolence, Wisdom, Propriety, Righteousness, and Trust.

The oppressive, rule-based Spiritual power of the peak Void Refinement realm washed over Li Yunlin, violently whipping his robes and long hair around him.

Through the maelstrom, Li Yunlin merely frowned.

Feeling the sheer purity of Zhou Chengli’s Scholarly Dao, Li Yunlin couldn’t fathom how a man wrapped in such awe-inspiring righteousness could possibly harbor a parasitic Dao Seed.

He had genuinely hoped his deduction was wrong.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t.

“Since when?” Li Yunlin demanded, his voice entirely devoid of emotion.

Zhou Chengli’s expression remained unsettlingly calm.

As a scholar, he typically relied on brush, ink, paper, and inkstone. But when he truly intended to kill, he wielded a Sword.

The blade he slowly drew hummed with the blinding, righteous aura of the Scholarly Dao.

He leveled his gaze at Li Yunlin. “Earlier than you think. And far earlier than the appearance of this Blood Moon.”

Li Yunlin’s frown deepened into a scowl.

He had assumed Zhou Chengli had been infected by a Dao Seed under the corrupting influence of the Blood Moon.

To learn it had been planted before the red moon even rose meant one terrifying thing: Zhou Chengli had always been a deeply embedded mole at Ba Siyu’s side.

Yet, paradoxically, a man enslaved by a Dao Seed had genuinely lent the Li Clan a helping hand, completely undetected.

His immaculate mastery of the Scholarly Dao had proven to be the absolute perfect camouflage.

“I think you’ve guessed the mechanics wrong, however,” Zhou Chengli smiled faintly.

His scholarly aura pulsed radiantly golden, a stark contrast against the crimson wash of the moon.

“We harbor Dao Seeds, yes, but that does not mean we are mindless puppets manipulated by Min Tiange. The Dao Seed is simply the tether that links us inextricably together, aligning us toward the exact same goal.”

“To destroy the Imperial Dynasty?” Li Yunlin’s expression shifted.

It made sense; every single person he had ever met bearing a Dao Seed harbored a deep, natural resentment toward the ruling empire.

“The Imperial Dynasty is rotting from the inside out. It is a cesspit of deception and treachery—Bi Shihu, Yun Manlou, the Dusheng Nunnery, Ba Siyu…”

Zhou Chengli’s face radiated a terrifying magnanimity.

“I stood by Ba Siyu’s side for tens of thousands of years. I served as his military advisor, analyzing his every move.

A true scholar strives to benefit all under heaven, but Ba Siyu? A so-called mighty figure of merit? He does nothing but slumber.

No matter how the world burns, he turns a blind eye. He claims to be a saint, so why should he trouble his elevated mind over the suffering of mere ants?”

“This great war in the Western Frontier has raged for a century, and only when the nation was pushed to the absolute brink of annihilation did this ‘saint of merit’ finally deign to move.

I thought there was still hope for this world.”

“But here in the Western Frontier, all I witnessed was the endless weighing of pros and cons. Ba Siyu cares only for his Dao of Merit.

Everyone else does nothing but salivate over Min Tiange’s karmic opportunities.

The elites who flocked to Deston Prefecture didn’t come to save lives; they came to pillage fortune. They have no concept of a nation, no love for the world in their hearts.

Even our esteemed Crown Prince and the mighty figures of the Capital care only for their own skins.

This desperate war for the survival of the Human Race? To them, it is nothing more than a political chessboard—a bloody game played to further their ascension on the Dao path.”

“That is our grand Imperial Dynasty.”

Zhou Chengli exhaled a long, heavy breath, as if releasing centuries of exhaustion.

“I realized that this decaying corpse of an empire will only drag us all down into depravity.

The high and mighty play safely with their chess pieces, while those beneath them run themselves ragged, bleeding out in the mud for their masters’ amusement.

They are deaf to the wailing of the common people; they are blind to the rivers of soldiers’ blood.

The people of this world are powerless, forced to resign themselves to the meat grinder.”

“There must be something capable of tearing it all down and changing everything.”

Li Yunlin’s brow furrowed so deeply it ached.

He couldn’t align his logic with the madness Zhou Chengli was spouting, but the sheer conviction behind the words profoundly shook him.

He had spent his entire life cultivating the Dao. He had been physically locked in cages more than once.

Yet now, staring at the scholar, he realized that the people wandering freely outside were the ones truly trapped in invisible prisons.

“And have you found this ‘something’?”

“I will.”

Zhou Chengli stretched out his free hand, palm open to the crimson sky.

His voice remained eerily serene, yet it trembled with a suppressed, apocalyptic madness.

“Join us, Li Yunlin. We will search for it together. The Spear Saint used to say a bitch sits on the dragon throne, and that bitch is merely using our Peerless Hall.

But one day soon, we will cleanse this filthy world and forge an infinitely more glorious Imperial Dynasty.”

“And what about the Spear Saint?” The Skyveil Hall artifact in Li Yunlin’s hand began spinning wildly, humming with volatile energy.

“He stood in our way.”

Under the red moon of the Western Frontier, the air suddenly felt suffocating. It didn’t just reek of blood anymore; Li Yunlin felt a bone-deep, creeping cold.

In that split second, he understood absolutely everything.

Min Tiange was indeed a capable mastermind.

But his power alone was never enough to force so many mighty figures to swallow Dao Seeds willingly.

The horrifying truth was that over the Imperial Dynasty’s hundreds of thousands of years of rule, countless people like Zhou Chengli had been hollowed out by utter disappointment.

The Dao Seed was not a shackle; it was a blood oath—a ‘military pledge’ of rebellion.

Everyone who swallowed a Dao Seed did so for their own desperate, radical objective.

Nurtured by Min Tiange’s behind-the-scenes orchestration over sixty thousand years, these disillusioned souls had coalesced into a massive, shadowy faction.

Changsheng had once warned that Dao Seeds preyed on a person’s deepest obsessions, and when that obsession was pushed past its absolute limit, the host would become irreparably extreme.

With a sharp crack, Li Yunlin’s whisk shattered into dust.

In its place, spiritual light solidified into a long, gleaming blue spear. This was the Blue Moon Long Spear, a weapon bestowed upon him by the Old Ancestor.

He swept his gaze across the desolate landscape.

Chaotic spiritual energy fluctuations were beginning to ripple from all directions. At some point, entirely unnoticed, Zhou Chengli had orchestrated a massive ambush, surrounding him completely.

Li Yunlin’s eyes turned as icy as absolute zero. “Mr. Zhou, I believe you are right.”

“Then quickly, join us! Swallow a Dao Seed!” Zhou Chengli rejoiced, extending his hand.

But his joyful expression instantly froze.

With a single, imperceptible step, Li Yunlin shattered the space between them, appearing directly in his face.

An ultimate, suffocating coercive pressure slammed into the scholar, replacing his fanaticism with sheer terror. “You… Half-Step Body Integration?!”

“But Mr. Zhou,” Li Yunlin whispered softly, ignoring the scholar’s panic. “Can you truly be certain that when you finally control this world, you won’t become the exact same monsters you despise in the royal court?

Your obsession has made you too extreme. At the very least, the Spear Saint did not deserve to be murdered by the likes of you.

And my Li Clan will absolutely never walk the same damned path.”

Zhou Chengli’s eyes went completely blank as Li Yunlin’s voice, laced with terrifying pity, echoed in his mind.

“Flee. This is the absolute last chance I will give you to pursue your maddeningly stubborn wish. Take it, and pray to whatever gods remain that you never cross my path again.”

“Because moving forward… I will slaughter every dog of the Peerless Hall I see.”

Without looking back, Li Yunlin swept his long blue spear in a brutal, backward arc.

An apocalyptic wave of Half-Step Body Integration Spiritual power, saturated with crushing spatial rules, swept outward, obliterating the unseen ambushers and leaving not a single soul alive in the bloody dust.

—

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