AEOGA CH77

Everyone looked up at the colorful fireworks bursting across the night sky, their expressions filled with awe. Wang Yiming and Lin Chanzhi were identically dumbfounded, stunned into silence by the novel and magnificent spectacle.

Helian Xi marveled, “Are the firecrackers in your Changli always this beautiful?”

Xifeng had firecrackers as well, but they were simply bamboo set on fire to make noise—it was impossible for them to fly into the sky or burst into such vibrant colors.

Qin Yulong: “…” Truth be told, it was his first time seeing this too.

Hua Yan jumped excitedly, grabbing Fu Xinian’s hand: “Look, look! It’s blue this time!”

“Now it turned red!”

Shen Hezhou couldn’t help clapping, whispering to Liu Yansheng beside him, “So His Majesty has been going out of the palace lately just to tinker with this and give His Highness a surprise?”

To test the effects of the fireworks, Xie Chongjin had specifically left the palace to find an open field. It was only because Lu Xuechao had been too busy lately to notice Xie Chongjin’s whereabouts that he managed to quietly invent such a marvel.

Ever since childhood, Xie Chongjin possessed immense curiosity, a strong urge to explore, and extraordinary practical skills. For example, when others viewed luminous pearls as rare, priceless treasures from heaven meant for display and collection, he insisted on figuring out why they glowed. He studied their physical composition day and night until he understood the principles, then created glowing fluorescent stones himself and polished them into beads that looked no different from natural luminous pearls. In his youth, he had presented his handmade luminous pearl to Lu Xuechao as a gift.

Xie Chongjin had gifted many similar inventions. Wonderful chemical reactions could form many breathtakingly beautiful sights, which Lu Xuechao had grown accustomed to seeing since childhood.

So gifting fireworks now… was not too much of a surprise.

Xie Chongjin’s mind had always been full of whimsical ideas. Had he not been controlled for those years until he nearly rusted, he could well have been called a “master inventor”.

Reflecting the brilliant fireworks in his eyes, Lu Xuechao heard that Xie Chongjin had nearly been injured while making them and asked with slight tension, “Were you hurt?”

“No,” Xie Chongjin hastily replied. “My martial arts are strong, so the moment anything seemed off, I immediately leaped far away and wasn’t caught in the blast.”

He wanted the palace to have the lively atmosphere of firecrackers, but merely hearing noise would feel clamorous and might not please Qingshu. It would be far better if there were a beautiful visual display to go with it.

Through a stroke of serendipity, he had crafted fireworks.

When the first explosion occurred, he hadn’t known it possessed such immense power. Fortunately, his reactions were swift, and he ducked out of the way immediately, escaping unscathed.

Far from being frightened off, he became even more excited and threw himself wholeheartedly into researching it.

Only then did tonight’s grand, dazzling display of fireworks come to be.

–

Amidst the continuous sound of fireworks, New Year’s Eve came to an end, and the New Year arrived.

Returning to their bedchamber, Xie Chongjin was still pressing for an answer: “Qingshu, you haven’t told me yet—do you like this gift?”

If Qingshu could say he liked it, then all his days of getting covered in soot wouldn’t have been in vain.

Though uninjured, he had looked far from presentable back then.

Lu Xuechao let out a soft laugh: “I like it. You were very thoughtful.”

Xie Chongjin sought credit like a proud child: “Since it’s a gift meant for you alone, I naturally had to pour my heart into it.”

Lu Xuechao said gently: “Yet I wish to pass this gift along to Yelang.”

He had been researching weapons of immense lethality all along, but thinking about it now, even the strongest cold weapon couldn’t compare to hurling gunpowder directly over.

Almost the moment he saw the fireworks and heard Xie Chongjin mention their massive power, a cold thought arose in Lu Xuechao’s mind right after the initial touch of emotion.

Whether a nation rises or falls, the common people suffer, and the flames of war harm civilians. Lu Xuechao was gentle by nature, loved peace, and detested war. With a healer’s benevolent heart, how could the person who invented the Anesthetic Powder wish for gunpowder to appear on the battlefield?

Yet as the leader of an empire, if one abandoned military development out of a naive love for peace, that would be foolish to the extreme.

Only by holding the sharpest blade could one negotiate peace gently with others. To be empty-handed, even if one put up a fierce, desperate struggle, was nothing more than thrashing helplessly on a butcher’s block.

The tragic fate of Changli’s weakness in their past life served as the most brutal lesson.

In past battles on the field, only cold weapons were used. Yelang using Gu poison was already the height of insidious cruelty, resorting to any means necessary.

Gunpowder had never appeared on a battlefield before. One could easily imagine that this move would mark a monumental milestone in military history.

Changli had no intention of starting a war, but Yelang was watching like a tiger eyeing its prey.

Yelang prided itself as the supreme power, constantly plotting to invade the other three nations and unite the realm, making itself a mortal enemy to Changli, Xifeng, and Leyang. Had Yelang’s strength been sufficient to take on the combined forces of all three nations single-handedly—or if attacking one nation wouldn’t cause the other two to feel threatened and join forces in a three-on-one fight—Yelang would have dispatched its army long ago.

In their past life, once Yelang created an army of the living dead and possessed powerful weapons like heavy crossbows, it no longer feared the three nations joining hands. That was why in every lifetime, Yelang launched its invasion from that point onward without exception.

Lu Xuechao would not pin his hopes on Yelang having a change of heart and suddenly deciding not to wage war this lifetime; he was constantly preparing for this conflict. Changli trained elite troops and developed weapons not to conquer lands, but solely to possess enough power to protect itself and repel the enemy when an invasion came.

They might choose not to use a powerful weapon, but they could not afford not to have one.

The humiliation of Changli’s cities being slaughtered, its soil trampled, and its nation destroyed in their past life must never be repeated.

What Lu Xuechao could realize, Xie Chongjin, as Emperor, naturally realized as well.

The moment he discovered the explosive power was so vast, Xie Chongjin instantly envisioned what kind of force it would unleash on a battlefield.

Naturally, what would be delivered to Yelang would not be beautiful fireworks, but ruthless artillery fire.

He had experienced war even more deeply than Lu Xuechao. Lu Xuechao had always passed away early in the deep palace, whereas Xie Chongjin lived until his dethronement every single time—ending in only a few ways: dying of old age, dying in despair, being assassinated, or dying for the country.

He had witnessed countless times as Yelang troops breached the gates, slaughtering Changli’s populace at will and humiliating Changli’s soldiers. Meanwhile, as the ruler of Changli, he had been helpless and unable to act of his own free will.

He hated the player manipulating him behind the scenes, but his hatred for Yelang was by no means lesser.

Had he not been controlled, Xie Chongjin might have invented gunpowder in his past life and blasted those ghouls of Yelang back to the underworld, rather than waiting until today.

It was just that in front of Lu Xuechao, Xie Chongjin hadn’t shown it.

This was his gift to Qingshu; at least in this moment, he wanted to set off a grand, beautiful display of fireworks purely for Qingshu, without letting dark thoughts and filthy struggles contaminate this untainted affection.

He hadn’t expected Lu Xuechao to bring it up first.

—They always thought alike.

Xie Chongjin nodded: “I have the exact same intention.”

While Lu Xuechao modified the crossbows, Xie Chongjin would improve the gunpowder.

Yelang would surely have a “bright” future.

The two exchanged a tacit smile.

–

The development of gunpowder was, naturally, Changli’s highest military secret. As a trump card and secret weapon, how could it easily leak out? Even Qin Yulong and Helian Xi were kept in the dark.

Although everyone had witnessed that grand fireworks display that night, none of them understood chemistry or its underlying principles, so they remained unaware of its true destructive power.

Aside from Xie Chongjin and Lu Xuechao, the only ones who knew this secret were the shadow guards who collected materials and served as Xie Chongjin’s assistants.

Watching His Majesty’s explosive experiments time after time, Shadow Leader’s forehead dripped with cold sweat.

He wondered if His Majesty truly still needed the shadow guard unit’s protection.

Was His Majesty’s ambition perhaps to unify all four nations?

This was truly misjudging Xie Chongjin. He had no interest in unifying the realm; conquering a country was easy, but governing it was hard, not to mention that the four nations were vastly different.

He was not an ambitious emperor bent on expanding territory; his ambition lay in becoming the greatest among the four nations, rather than the sole ruler of one.

In their past life, Yelang had likely unified the four nations in the end, but what happened after that? With Yelang’s deeply rooted patriarchal view where men were superior to women, could the women of Xifeng and Leyang ever agree to it? As for the concept of yin-yang balance, the people of Changli and Leyang could never accept it either. Yelang could eradicate foreign royal military forces, but it could not slaughter every civilian; otherwise, even Yelang’s own populace would fear the royal family treating human life like grass. How could a royal family that held no regard for its own soldiers’ lives ever learn to cherish its people as its own children?

Under suppression, rebellion was bound to rise. If one only knew how to fight wars but not how to govern a nation, he’d lose the bet if Yelang lasted even a hundred years without falling.

Back then, when women revolted, they managed to split off into a female-dominant nation and a female-citizen nation; could there not be a second uprising?

Refraining from interfering with one another was the path to the longest, most stable peace, but unfortunately, Yelang was shortsighted.

Of course, Yelang’s military strength was indeed not to be underestimated.

After all, it was once the world’s sole hegemon. Generation after generation of Changli’s ancestors had strived tirelessly just to catch up to Yelang’s footsteps. By Xie Chongjin’s generation, it should have been the generation with the greatest hope of standing equal to or even surpassing Yelang.

Who could have known they would run into a game?

Now, he was the one setting the rules of the game.

–

Helian Xi still did not know what terrifying secret weapon the Emperor of Changli had been developing recently; merely watching the Empress gradually refine the crossbow blueprints was enough to leave him in awe.

Right now, what he anticipated most was another matter.

The envoy roster for Xifeng’s delegation had already been finalized. On the Shangyuan Lantern Festival on the fifteenth of the first lunar month, his elder sister would arrive in Yujing, and the siblings would finally meet.

Helian Xi knew full well that this was not just a reunion, but an opportunity for them to discuss cooperation between the two nations and help his sister reclaim her power in Xifeng.

Xie Chongjin wasn’t worried that Helian Yu would refuse.

The future Helian Yu would undoubtedly be a formidable opponent, so it was best to turn her into a powerful friend as early as possible.

Adding flowers to a tapestry could never compare to delivering charcoal in snowy weather. If they waited until Helian Yu cleared all obstacles on her own before ascending the throne and then established diplomatic ties, it would be nothing more than a superficial friendship, completely unreliable. Extending a helping hand while she was at her lowest was the true way to forge an ironclad bond.

—Colluding with a foreign power to seize the throne sounded treasonous indeed. As a general, Helian Yu did possess a sense of patriotism, and unless forced into a corner, she would not make a deal with the devil.

However, looking at her actions in their past life—where she killed her sister and imprisoned her mother—she was by no means an indecisive woman.

The Wen family had been pushed to a desperate dead end by the Empress Regnant, leaving them with no way out, while three other factions watched like tigers to take her life and the life of Noble Consort. Helian Yu was isolated and without aid, struggling with every step; if Changli offered an olive branch at this moment, only a fool would refuse.

Helian Yu was a clever person.

She would defend this nation, but there was no need to keep this family.

While Helian Xi was excited about this, Qin Yulong was feeling nervous.

That was Helian Xi’s elder sister, meaning by relation, he ought to call her sister as well.

He asked nervously: “When we meet our sister then, what should I say?”

He, too, had heard of Helian Yu’s name. Although Yelang hadn’t launched major military campaigns in recent years, it engaged in minor skirmishes constantly, harassing the borders to test the bottom lines of the three nations.

Xifeng’s military strength fell far short of Yelang’s. While other imperial princesses were still heatedly debating tactics, Helian Yu volunteered, declaring that to shoot the rider, one must shoot the horse first, and to catch thieves, one must catch the king first.

At seventeen, she rode alone into the enemy camp late at night, severed the head of the enemy commander, hung it on Yelang’s banner pole, and set fire to their granary, causing the enemy’s morale to collapse instantly.

Yelang never expected a mere woman to be so brave and fierce, so it immediately pulled back its probing forces.

With such a heroine who was also his brother-in-law’s sister, Qin Yulong couldn’t help but feel nervous.

A dark night with high winds—a prime time for murder and arson.

Helian Xi’s sister had actually done that exact thing.

Helian Xi: “What do you mean ‘our sister’? That’s my sister.”

“My sister is the gentlest sister in the world.”