Chapter 529

Ma tribe’s army slogs through a muddy swamp in high spirits. It is still glowing from annexing Dou tribe’s army and from a decisive victory. Riding at the head of it, Ma Ying Jie takes in the day’s battle reports from an investigative Gu Master. Hei tribe and Liu tribe have fought their first battle to a draw and now sit garrisoned opposite each other in stalemate. Ye Lui Sang, ambushed at night by a seven army alliance, defeats six rank five experts one after another, since he obtained the Immortal Gu and is a one-man army. He still cannot save the battle alone, and what remains of Ye Lui tribe’s army flees toward Qing An region. Rat King Jiang Bao Ya has formally joined Yang tribe’s alliance, and Nu Er Tu has paused his own campaign to rebuild his mauled leopard group instead. ^{ch. 529}

Ma Ying Jie reads the news with satisfaction. He judges Hei Lou Lan and Liu Wen Wu the two favorites to win the Imperial Court contest and is pleased they have clashed this early, since it will cost them both. He guesses Snowy Mountain’s hand behind the seven armies that struck Ye Lui tribe, since it was the Immortal Gu on Ye Lui Sang, entrusted to him by his tribe’s supreme elder as a bet on this contest, that marked him as a target. Immortal Gu are rare. By the rule Giant Sun Immortal Venerable set, once mortals seize an Immortal Gu during the struggle for Imperial Court, the Gu Immortals who lost it cannot take it back, a bet with real risk attached. ^{ch. 529}

Ma tribe has secretly allied with demonic path Gu Immortals coveting the Eighty-Eight True Yang Building, hoping the pact will let it grow into a super tribe. Ma Ying Jie, its young tribe leader, knows of the deal. He knows too that Huang Jin bloodline tribes across northern plains strike the same bargains with demonic path Gu Immortals, entering their blessed lands to escape the blizzard disaster if they lose the struggle for Imperial Court. He reads Rat King’s new alliance with Eagle King Yang Po Ying as no real threat, since Yang tribe’s foundations are thin and Rat King already crippled. He finds it merely strange that Nu Er Tu rebuilds alone rather than asking his own Gu Immortal for help. He judges Ma tribe’s own position the strongest of all, and clenches his fists at the thought of winning by simply continuing to devour weaker tribes. ^{ch. 529}

In a carriage further back, a girl weeps. This is Zhao Lian Yun, whose father, Zhao tribe’s leader, died in the last great battle. Fei Cai comforts her clumsily, telling her death is ordinary in war and that his own father died the same way, and she kicks him and scorns him as too foolish to know how to comfort anyone. Her grief is real. Though she arrived in this world a transmigrator not long ago, her father’s love was sincere, and her attachment to him had grown genuine in turn. That same night her stepmother remarried the new Zhao tribe leader, and Zhao Lian Yun’s standing collapsed with her father’s death. ^{ch. 529}

An old caretaker she once mocked and pranked now drags at her arm with open relish, until Fei Cai punches the woman out of the carriage and stands guarding Zhao Lian Yun. The caretaker, bruised and screaming that a slave has struck a civilian, threatens to have him skinned alive and his corpse hung to dry in the sun. Zhao Lian Yun reveals Fei Cai is in fact Ma Ying Jie’s own slave leader. The threat curdles into terror. ^{ch. 529}

Beaten in the exchange, the caretaker turns cruel a different way: she tells Zhao Lian Yun that not even Ma Ying Jie’s slave leader can shield a daughter of Zhao tribe, that she belongs to it in death as in life. Her stepmother, now the tribe’s lady, has already promised her to Wei tribe’s eldest young master. Zhao Lian Yun collapses at the news. For three days she sits curled and silent in the carriage, letting Fei Cai feed her like a puppet, this second shock finishing what her father’s death began. ^{ch. 529}

She realizes, bitterly, that a transmigrator is nothing special, and that northern plains treats its women as goods for political marriage by a rule Giant Sun Immortal Venerable himself set. She once heard of his deeds like a legend of a hero, but she now lives under his rule herself. The narration credits him with the catchphrase: women as replaceable as clothing, and brothers alone as indispensable as one’s own hands and feet. He has become the most detestable person in her heart. She understands, for the first time from the inside, why the story of Su Xian’s night elopement cuts so deep: better to chase one’s own happiness, unknown risks and all, than to wait passively on a fate decided by others. She recalls, privately, that Wei tribe’s eldest son is a byword for uselessness: fat, pockmarked, stalled at rank one peak stage, lecherous and fickle, and passed over for the succession in favor of his own younger brother, and vows never to marry him. ^{ch. 529}

But she has no cultivation of her own to fall back on, not yet thirteen and unable to awaken an aperture. She also wonders whether she has any cultivation aptitude at all. The rank five Gu Master who killed her father, Dou E, now sits among Ma tribe’s own alliance leadership, leaving her bewildered over who she can even trust. ^{ch. 529}

On the fourth morning she eats again, and tells Fei Cai she means to rely on herself, since the betrothal cannot be enforced until she turns sixteen and she still has time. Fei Cai is startled. In his experience, northern plains accepts an arranged marriage without question, but he agrees to shelter her regardless, and she softens enough to ask if his father, too, died in battle. He says yes, and calls it a glorious death with a smile that leaves her privately certain every triumphant throne rests on a path of bones, and privately furious that her fate was decided before she had even grown into it. ^{ch. 529}

A letter reaches Fang Yuan by way of Sun Shi Han, sent openly by the enemy and written personally by Chang Biao, inviting Wolf King to reminisce before the coming battle and offering to let Chang Ji You meet him there. Fang Yuan reads it and recognizes the calculation behind it at once. Sun Shi Han reports that the requested mutated wolf group and rank five lurking soul coat Gu have both arrived. But the alliance’s higher-ups now hesitate over the letter, hoping Wolf King will fight his own kin to prove his innocence, and hinting the wolves may hang on his answer. ^{ch. 529}