Lin Estate, study.
“This is a healing pill. It may help.”
Lin An took out a bottle of healing pills and handed it to Shen Xueyin.
“Thank you, Master.”
She accepted the pill gratefully and swallowed one.
Lin An carefully looked her over several times.
The youthful innocence had long since faded from Shen Xueyin’s features. Her bearing and manner naturally exuded the air of someone accustomed to authority.
Shen Xueyin had indeed changed greatly over the past five years.
For a moment, Lin An recalled the first time he had met her. Back then, she had been just a fourteen-year-old girl.
“Tell me. What have you been through all these years?”
Only after Shen Xueyin’s injuries had stabilized did Lin An begin questioning her.
Shen Xueyin held nothing back and recounted everything she had experienced over the years.
After leaving the Lin Estate, she had first sought out Shen Fei’s former subordinates. After investigating, she learned that Shen Fei had never truly rebelled. He had merely stood in the way of certain people and been falsely accused of treason.
The emperor knew that the Shen family had been framed, yet he still issued an imperial decree ordering the extermination of the entire clan.
After learning the truth, Shen Xueyin chose to stand on her own. She wanted to overthrow this corrupt dynasty.
Over the years, she had formed alliances, employed every strategy at her disposal, and gradually conquered a vast territory. Her cultivation had also risen to the seventh level of Qi Refining.
But in the face of absolute power, all her efforts ultimately became a bridal gown for the imperial family.
She had pacified rebellions throughout the realm and was on the verge of overthrowing the dynasty. Then the imperial family sent out a single person and seized all the fruits of her labor.
It was as if all those years of warfare had merely been spent helping the imperial family eliminate its rebels.
The feeling was unbearable.
“You’re unwilling to accept this, aren’t you?”
Lin An could see the resentment and fury in her eyes.
“Of course I’m unwilling to accept it.”
“Framing meritorious officials, exploiting the common people, and ignoring their suffering—a rotten dynasty like this should have been overthrown long ago.”
Shen Xueyin clenched her fists tightly, but in the end, she helplessly loosened them.
What could she do, no matter how unwilling she was? In the face of absolute power, she had no way to resist.
Lin An lightly tapped his fingers against the desk, his mind racing as he weighed his options.
After a long while, he finally made up his mind. He picked up a brush and paper and wrote a letter.
“Take this letter to the Azure Mystic Sect and find Li Yao or Zhang Fan. They’ll help you deal with the dynasty’s Foundation Establishment cultivators.”
“The rest will depend on your own abilities.”
Lin An had decided to invest in Shen Xueyin once more.
Zhang Fan and Li Yao were not his subordinates. Moreover, they now held positions of great status and authority. They might be willing to help him three or four times—or even five or six—out of their past friendship, but favors would eventually run out. If he asked again after that, he would only become a nuisance.
That was why, over the years, aside from introducing Li Yao to them and dealing with the demonic cultivator who had massacred the city, he had never taken the initiative to ask Zhang Fan or Li Yao for anything.
Shen Xueyin stared at the letter in her hands. Even after weathering countless storms and hardening her heart like stone, she could not stop a few tears from falling.
“Thank you, Master.”
She did not know how to repay him. The debt she owed Lin An had long since become impossible to repay in this lifetime.
So she kowtowed three times, each one striking the floor with a heavy thud, then quietly vanished from the study.
...
With Shen Xueyin gone, the Shen army was left leaderless and fell into chaos.
At that moment, the imperial family sent a massive army into battle, with a Foundation Establishment expert overseeing the campaign. They intended to reclaim all the lost territory in one decisive assault.
The Shen army was beaten back at every turn.
A month later, Shen Xueyin reappeared, bringing two Foundation Establishment experts with her. They killed the imperial family’s early-stage Foundation Establishment retainer on the spot.
After that battle, the Shen army rallied once more. With overwhelming momentum, it rapidly swept into the heartland of the dynasty.
In just six months, the Shen army marched at the head of a million soldiers to the imperial capital and surrounded the city so completely that not even water could pass through.
The capital, once filled with singing and dancing, became tense and desolate.
The powerful nobles and influential clans who had received advance warning had already fled with their people.
Those who remained could only live in fear, praying that the war would not affect them.
With a million soldiers at its gates and two Foundation Establishment experts joining the assault, the capital’s defenders barely held out before collapsing completely.
Even when the emperor donned his armor and personally led the army into battle, he could not halt the dynasty’s inevitable downfall.
“Rebels and traitors! Do you truly think the imperial family has no one left?”
Just as the Shen army was about to storm the capital, an enraged roar came from the direction of the imperial palace.
A moment later, an elderly figure dressed in imperial robes shot into the sky from the palace and flew toward the battlefield beyond the city.
Lin An stood at a high point within the city with his steward, looking toward the gates.
The distance was too great for him to see clearly, but he could vaguely make out three figures facing one another in the sky.
Before long, the elderly figure in the imperial robes struck first, summoning several illusory golden dragons.
But in the next instant, that stretch of sky froze solid before shattering piece by piece.
The old figure in the dragon robes shattered into countless fragments along with the ice.
The battle that followed was entirely one-sided.
The imperial family deployed every trump card it possessed, but in the end, it still failed to stop the Shen army’s advance.
After entering the capital, the Shen army neither looted nor slaughtered indiscriminately. Instead, it went straight to the imperial palace and purged it from top to bottom.
Only after confirming that not a single survivor had escaped was the war finally declared over.
That very evening, Shen Xueyin, Li Yao, and Zhang Fan arrived at the Lin Estate together.
“Master, the dynasty has been overthrown. We won.”
Shen Xueyin spoke with solemn formality, as though reporting to a superior.
“Congratulations. From today onward, you’re the empress of the new dynasty.”
Lin An smiled faintly.
It seemed that his additional investment had paid off quite well. He just did not know how much he would receive when the final returns were calculated.
“All of this is thanks to you, Master. Without you, I could never have succeeded.”
“So please, Master, take the throne.”
Shen Xueyin made the request with complete sincerity.
Lin An hurriedly waved his hands. “No, thank you. I have no interest in becoming emperor. What’s so great about being one? You have to get up early and go to bed late every day, busy as a dog. There’s nothing enjoyable about it.”
“I prefer my life as it is—drinking tea, entertaining my birds, and listening to music at the pleasure houses.”
A trace of disappointment flashed through Shen Xueyin’s eyes.
She had originally intended to offer Lin An the throne, but he clearly did not care about the position at all.
“Haha, Brother Lin An, you’re living an even more comfortable life than I am,” Zhang Fan said with a laugh.
He was unshaven and disheveled, looking every inch the melancholy middle-aged man.
“For a mortal, isn’t the pursuit of pleasure the whole point of life?”
Lin An laughed and patted him on the shoulder. “But look at you. We haven’t seen each other in years, and life has already worn you down to this state. You’ve even got gray hairs.”
Zhang Fan was speechless. Ever since he had reached the Foundation Establishment Realm, no one had spoken to him in such a pitying tone.
Yet when he looked at Lin An’s still youthful and handsome face, he had no idea how to argue back.
So many years had passed, but Lin An’s appearance and physical condition had never changed. He looked more like an enlightened immortal than Zhang Fan did.
“You don’t understand. This is my style.”
He brushed Lin An’s hand away, his tone completely free of awkwardness.
Even after all these years, the bond between the two of them had never faded.
Lin An looked at Li Yao, who had been standing silently to one side. “As the Qingxuan Sect Master’s personally chosen disciple, you personally took action to destroy an entire dynasty. Won’t that have a negative impact on you?”
Li Yao shook her head. “Master, you’re worrying too much. There have long been voices of discontent within the Qingxuan Sect. I merely acted with the tide.”
Zhang Fan nodded and smiled. “Most of the Qingxuan Sect’s disciples are selected from within the territory of the Wang Clan Dynasty.”
“The dynasty has been plagued by turmoil for years, and the sharp decline in the number of newborns has led to a drop in the quality of the younger generation entering the Qingxuan Sect.”
“That’s why the sect had long been considering overthrowing the Wang Clan Dynasty and establishing a stable new one in its place.”