When Yu Mi returned to the Envoy Manor, she saw Bao Gu in a plain white robe standing alone on the gate tower. The wind tugged at her sleeves as if it meant to carry her away with it.
Yu Mi stepped onto the wind and flew up to the tower. As she got close, she felt a bitter chill gathering around Bao Gu, her aura compressed and oppressive.
She lowered her voice.
“What happened?”
Bao Gu answered slowly.
“I went to the Kan Gang treasury. It’s empty.”
Yu Mi understood at once.
Bao Gu went on.
“I’ve already sent people to investigate. But I was gone for over five hundred years. There’s no one reliable left inside the Kan Gang.”
“Let’s talk in the room,” Yu Mi said.
Back in the room, Yu Mi flicked her sleeve, sending out a wave of power that activated the formation inside.
She took out a jade slip and handed it to Bao Gu.
“These are the people I’ve planted in the Kan Gang over the years. They’re polite enough to disciples from Xuantian Sect, but they’re guarded to the extreme. Xuantian Sect isn’t exactly poor, but it still lacks deep foundations. Overall, the disciples’ cultivation levels are not high. The rare few exceptional ones are treated like pearls by the Grandmaster and kept inside the sect to serve. The Nascent Soul disciples they send to the Kan Gang don’t amount to much either, so the people I use are mostly rogue cultivators or members of other forces.”
She’d been wandering all over for centuries, and with the title of Executive Envoy on her head, planting hidden pieces inside the Kan Gang and growing her own influence had gone fairly smoothly.
Yu Mi took out three more jade slips and passed them to Bao Gu.
“These are the personnel rosters under Wang Ding, Kuang Mo, and Sun Dilong respectively. Their infighting is fierce, so the forces under them shift constantly. These lists get updated all the time.”
Then she produced one last jade slip.
“This list is the Kan Gang’s true roster.”
Bao Gu took the final slip and swept through it.
The number stunned her. Just the names alone numbered close to a million. Each name represented a person. If she placed her divine sense on a name, it would unfold that person’s detailed information—origin, cultivation methods, relationships, the territory and power they controlled, whom they actually served… everything was laid out in meticulous detail.
She read name after name, and the more she read, the more shocked she became.
The mighty Kan Gang was riddled with holes like a sieve. If not for Yu Mi still sitting there镇压—holding the banner down—Bao Gu was sure it would have splintered long ago and been carved up by others. The “Left, Right, and Wealth” three envoys were the largest infiltrators, and the rest of the powers had wormed in everywhere. The moment the Kan Gang’s main banner fell, every piece of Kan Gang power they controlled would be swept clean into their own pockets.
For Yu Mi to investigate these people so thoroughly and produce this roster meant she had poured enormous effort into Kan Gang affairs. Yet even so, the Kan Gang had ended up like this.
It wasn’t that Yu Mi was incapable. She simply had no troops and no authority. From the day she became Executive Envoy until now, she hadn’t been given a single army of her own. The Executive Envoy had been hollowed out by the Left, Right, and Wealth Envoys. There were many things Yu Mi saw clearly, but she could do nothing about them.
Even if Yu Mi had the power to wipe out the three envoys in one strike, their subordinates wouldn’t obey her commands. The Kan Gang would crumble to dust in an instant.
From the roster Yu Mi had given her, Bao Gu could tell Yu Mi saw the Kan Gang’s situation with perfect clarity. She’d been quietly weaving a net, preparing to clean house. But Yu Mi lacked the two most crucial things:
Money. And soldiers.
Without those, Yu Mi was nothing but a bare-pole marshal stuck high up on an offering stand.
Bao Gu thought for a moment, then said,
“Senior Sister, take my military command token and go to the main camp to draw troops. Whoever needs to be cleaned out, clean them out. Whoever needs to be erased, erase them.”
Yu Mi’s heart gave a violent jolt. She stared at Bao Gu in shock.
“So soon? You want to start already? ‘Clean out’? ‘Erase’?”
Bao Gu nodded.
“Military movements must be kept secret. Deploy the Da Luo Redgold Fleet through the void. Quietly place the Left, Right, and Wealth Envoys under watch. If they so much as twitch, execute them.”
She returned the roster to Yu Mi, indicating Yu Mi should make arrests based on her investigation list. Then she asked for the Kan Gang’s account books for the past few centuries.
Yu Mi told her the Kan Gang only kept ledgers for twenty years. Once twenty years were up, the records were destroyed. With the ledgers gone, much could never be traced.
Yu Mi got a headache just looking at account books to begin with, much less cherishing them.
When she’d still been around, there had never been any rule about burning old ledgers. That was outright destruction of evidence.
Not long after Yu Mi left, Sun Dilong rushed to the Envoy Manor to request an audience with Bao Gu.
Bao Gu granted him entry.
Sun Dilong respectfully offered up the treasury inventory for Dilong Fort, along with the military command token for the fort and the keys to its vault. He bowed.
“With the Lord absent, aside from the usual portion sent to the main treasury in Youying City and the share offered to the Executive Envoy, all of Dilong Fort’s yearly income has been kept here. The Left Envoy has been spending more and more lavishly. I didn’t dare send all surplus funds to the main treasury.”
As he spoke, he presented a storage pouch.
“In this pouch are the ledgers from the past few centuries—both the general accounts and the detailed ones.”
Bao Gu accepted the treasury list and swept it with her divine sense, quickly adding up the total.
Her expression stayed calm, but inwardly she was dumbfounded at just how rich Dilong Fort was.
Sun Dilong really was a genius at squeezing wealth.
If she didn’t already know Wang Ding had a share in these industries and that they genuinely produced income, Bao Gu would have suspected Sun Dilong of emptying the Kan Gang’s main treasury and stashing it all at Dilong Fort.
Sun Dilong watched her lower her head and flip through the jade slip, her face an unreadable mask, but her aura terrifying. Fear soaked him until he kept wiping sweat from his brow.
When he heard the Lord had gone to the main treasury, he had bolted over with the ledgers in hand, terrified that when the Lord saw it was empty, she’d fly into a rage and take him and Wang Ding down together.
After all, he was the Finance Envoy.
His only option was to hand over everything from Dilong Fort to show that the fort’s wealth was entirely the Lord’s, that he’d been faithfully safeguarding it and hadn’t dared touch a thing. As for the empty main treasury—well, that was because he didn’t trust Wang Ding. He’d been afraid Wang Ding would squander the foundation the Lord had left behind.
When the Lord was gone, Dilong Fort was his.
Now that the Lord had returned, even his life was the Lord’s.
His mind was made up. But that didn’t lessen his fear of the Lord one bit. Not only because she didn’t act by common logic, but because the aura around her was too terrifying.
He’d spent these years soaking in luxury, focused on amassing wealth and scheming against the Left and Right Envoys. Even with rare treasures to aid him, his cultivation had improved only slowly. Meanwhile, the Lord’s progress had been meteoric, her strength unfathomable.
Standing before such an inscrutable Lord, his heart felt hollow and his calves were shaking.
After she finished reading the treasury list, Bao Gu finally lifted her head.
“You must have heard that I intend to build a Boundary-Breaking Gate.”
Sun Dilong nodded at once.
“I just received the news.”
“The cost of building a Boundary-Breaking Gate is enormous,” Bao Gu said. “I need money.”
Sun Dilong quietly let out a sigh of relief. He wiped the sweat that had run all the way down to his chin.
“Your subordinate will give his utmost to see this done for the Lord.”
Bao Gu’s voice dropped, turning faint.
“These years while I was gone, the things you three have been doing…”
As she spoke, she gave him a long, cool look.
Sun Dilong’s heart lurched. He dropped to his knees.
Bao Gu looked down at him.
“Power is tempting. Wealth blinds the eyes. You’ve piled up all this fortune—are you planning to carry it all with you to the Upper Realm? Or do you want to clutch it until you die buried under a heap of treasures?”
Sun Dilong kowtowed.
“I’ll spare your life—for now,” Bao Gu said. “You’re staying inside the Envoy Manor these next few days. Step outside that gate, and you might not live to step back in.”
Sun Dilong answered in a rush.
“Yes, yes, this subordinate thanks the Lord.”
He poured out another torrent of loyalty vows.
Bao Gu couldn’t be bothered to respond. She just said,
“Get up,”
then lowered her head and opened the ledgers he had brought.
The way he treated her and the way he treated Yu Mi were two entirely different things. She found him very useful and didn’t want to crush him outright. But he’d thought Yu Mi was weak and easy to bully.
So she’d let Sun Dilong see clearly whether Yu Mi was truly someone he could push around.
She was an expert in business. Whether there were problems in the accounts or not, she could see at a glance. Real ledgers and fake ones, clean accounts and shadow accounts—they each had their own smell.
Bao Gu bent over the books. Since she hadn’t told Sun Dilong to withdraw, he didn’t dare leave. He stood beside her, honestly and miserably, like a fat wooden post dripping sweat, feeling as if he was being roasted over a hot stove. He didn’t even dare move.
Wang Ding wasn’t standing in front of Bao Gu, but he was even more tormented inside than Sun Dilong.
The Kan Gang’s main treasury was empty, and he’d been shouting about poverty for hundreds of years. Now, suddenly, he was expected to fill it back up.
With what?
The Kan Gang had income, but its expenses were massive. Worse, Sun Dilong had always clutched the money with a death grip, leaving the main treasury short on its largest revenue stream. It couldn’t even break even.
Feeding soldiers, maintaining people, contending with Sun Dilong and Kuang Mo—none of that came free. Now Bao Gu wanted him to replenish the treasury, and he had no money. It had all been turned into troops and armaments.
Could he haul his hundreds of thousands of troops before the Lord and say,
“Lord, I have no money, but I have an army of hundreds of thousands”?
The Lord could snuff him out with a single slap.
He was supposed to be the “Prime Minister,” a civil official, and he’d emptied the “national treasury” to raise private soldiers. In the mortal world, the emperor would have ordered his entire clan executed nine times over.
If he couldn’t plug this enormous hole and give the Lord a satisfactory answer, he was dead.
Rebel?
His base was in Qingzhou. Once he left Qingzhou, he had nowhere to stand. And the true masters of Qingzhou were the Lord and the Executive Envoy. They wouldn’t even need to act in person—once the great array of Qingzhou was activated, millions of cultivators could be turned to ash in an instant. His few hundred thousand were nothing.
If he didn’t rebel, there was still a sliver of life. If he did, there’d be none.
He had no choice but to scrape together money however he could. He emptied his private vaults in the Left Envoy Residence and across various regions and moved everything into the main treasury. Then he mortgaged or sold off part of his personally owned industries, scrambling to convert them into spirit stones or materials. Any city, state, or county that still owed taxes or tributes to the Kan Gang were ordered to pay immediately. Anyone under him who had profited off the Kan Gang was forced to spit it back out.
Otherwise, would they wait for the Lord to act?
With that temperament of hers—if she didn’t move, fine. Once she did, she was vicious and absolute, never leaving anyone a way out. Forget destroying a few subordinates who had skimmed off her industries—she wouldn’t even blink at annihilating an entire city and the millions of troops in it.
Wang Ding’s life was hanging by a thread as he scrambled for money, frantically driving his subordinates.
If the Lord killed even him, how could those under him who had taken their cuts hope to survive?
For a time, the entire Left Envoy faction was in utter chaos.
This commotion naturally couldn’t escape the watching eyes of all the various spies. Everyone knew Bao Gu had chosen Wang Ding as the first target, and something big was about to happen.
Sun Dilong had entered the Envoy Manor to see the Lord—and never come back out.
The Left Envoy Wang Ding was going mad pawning and selling everything to raise money and save his life.
All kinds of news poured toward Kuang Mo like floodwater.
One of the spies he’d planted among the Envoy Manor servants brought him another bit of news—
Yu Mi had quietly left the manor.
The Executive Envoy slipping out in secret at such a time made Kuang Mo’s heart hammer. He thought of the order Wang Ding had just passed on from the Lord:
In three days, everyone of branch-master rank and above in the main helm was to come to the Envoy Manor to meet the Lord.
He couldn’t help thinking the worst.
If the Lord had already moved against Sun Dilong and Wang Ding, how could he possibly stay unscathed?
Since the Lord’s departure, how much of the loot and resources from captured cities had he underreported? How much had he swallowed for himself? How many private troops had he raised in secret? How many hidden factories had he established to forge weapons and magic tools?
He knew Yu Mi was aware of everything he’d done.
In the past, he hadn’t cared about Yu Mi. So what if she knew? She had no soldiers and no authority, just a command token. On the surface he left her no handle to grab, and he held eight hundred thousand troops in his hands. Simply by “respectfully supporting” Yu Mi, he was already giving her plenty of face—for the Lord’s sake.
But now the Lord had returned, bringing back three hundred thousand well-equipped elite troops. With the Lord standing behind the Executive Envoy, who was to say the Lord hadn’t sent Yu Mi out right now to call in troops and prepare to deal with him?
A general who openly held troops was far more threatening than a “prime minister” who secretly raised private soldiers.
Everything he had was fought out with his own fists. The Lord had saved his life, nurtured him, poured enormous resources into his hands, letting him recruit, conquer cities, and expand their territory. He was grateful.
But no favor, no matter how great, was worth trading his hard-won foundation and his life for.
Without his power, without nearly a million troops and the wealth he’d accumulated over centuries, he couldn’t even retreat to the mountains and cultivate in peace. How many forces had he destroyed? How many cities had he razed? How many clans had he wiped out or stolen their foundations?
If the Lord stripped him of power, his enemies would crush him to pieces.
He had once been a rogue cultivator, with only himself to worry about.
Now, if he became just a wandering cultivator again, he would have no way to live.
Would the Lord really keep such a general with heavy troops in his hands, continuing to entrust him with great power? Whether she killed him or not was still uncertain—but pretending nothing had happened and using him as before?
That was a fool’s dream.
When the Lord had first returned, she’d said she wouldn’t pursue the past. Then a chain of events had exploded one after another, leaving her no time to bother with him. He’d thought he could slowly move his shady dealings into the light, hand over some of his ill-gotten gains, show good attitude, and with the Lord’s earlier promise of “no accounting of past deeds” plus his continuing usefulness, maybe the matter would be written off.
Who could have guessed that idiot Wang Ding had gone and provoked the Lord into striking first?
Kuang Mo refused to sit and wait for death.
He knew he was no match for the Lord. He wouldn’t and didn’t dare raise his blade against her. But he had to fight for a path of survival—for himself, and for the brothers who had followed him through blood and fire.
He thought until his teeth ached. In the end, he grit them, summoned all his most trusted men, laid out the stakes before them, and decided to make one desperate gamble.
