Zhang Ji held an exquisite wine cup in his right hand and gently twirled it around. The thick liquid in it sloshed around with his movements but never spilled out; it always stopped when it had reached the edges, then returned to the center of the cup.
To him, wine was the best thing in the world. When he was down, it would give him comfort.
And yet, it was also the worst thing in the world; after a hangover, his depression would only intensify.
He placed the wine cup on the table and stared at it as if facing off with an enemy. Suddenly, he chuckled softly and shook his head. “I’ve really got nothing better to do, to be competing with a cup of wine,” he thought.
Even if his opponent was a cup of wine, he still emerged the victor. He made up his mind to become teetotal from now on.
The time for boredom was over. To counselors like himself, real battles were not fought in taverns or classrooms; they viewed the entire world as a chess game and nations as chess pieces. As for individuals, well, they were but specks of dust on the chess pieces.
“Slave Huan must already have won the title of prince consort by now,” Zhang Ji thought. “This person is not a speck of dust, nor is he a pawn. He’s a disruptor, but he doesn’t know what his objectives are, he’s unaware even when being made use of.”
“He claimed that he wanted revenge, but revenge? ” Zhang Ji could not control himself and laughed coldly as he thought about it. “What a laughable excuse. Revenge is just like concepts such as love, familial bonds and wealth—they are just but checkpoints in a man’s life journey. It would be too foolish to be too caught up in them.”
“The final destination of that journey would be power. Everything was because of power, for without power, what difference would there be between a man and a walking husk?” Zhang Ji thought, as the ambition of his days as a youth welled up in him again.
After he finished thinking about Slave Huan, the image of another youth crept into Zhang Ji’s mind.
This youth was different from the others around him right at a young age. Only he had dared to challenge the Supreme King and question every rule of the Stone Castle. He would seek clear explanations for everything he had to do, and even when the Supreme King flew into a huge rage, he would be unafraid. Instead, he would explain his actions eloquently.
He was a person with his own way of thinking, and such a person would never walk the path paved by others for him; he would rather take a long way round and forge his own path.
As such, he wandered into the jiang hu, made friends, fell in love and even mastered difficult kung fu techniques. The only thing he did not like was killing.
Zhang Ji was biding his time as the youth was treading his own path in life. He knew that the day would come when the youth would mature and see the light. Then, he would join forces with the teacher to continue on with their life journeys together.
The youth was the Third Young Master, Shangguan Yun. In Zhang Ji’s eyes, he was the only one eligible to succeed the mantle of the Supreme King. His other brothers were harmful to the future of the Stone Castle and should have been gotten rid of earlier; especially that good-for-nothing, Shangguan Hong. Zhang Ji was satisfied with the cold manner in which he treated Shangguan Hong. If it were not for the fact that he had sprung the Third Young Master out of prison, Zhang Ji would never have so much as cast an eye on him.
It was an extremely long wait and during which he had slowly trained the useless Master Hong into a person of some capability. He made use of Shangguan Hong to plead for the Third Young Master’s case to Lady Meng and slowly change her image of Shangguan Yun, thereby planting the seed for her to convince the Supreme King as well.
However, the Supreme King, being the Supreme King, saw through the entire plot. Nevertheless, he was not angry and instead, on an afternoon, decided to pay a personal visit to the teacher; he wanted to work together to fulfill both their ambitions.
Zhang Ji’s thoughts were disrupted as a supervisor wearing a yellow-belt came into his room. The supervisor bowed respectfully to the teacher and passed him a letter with both hands.
Zhang Ji opened the letter and glanced through it once. “Invite the lord for a visit,” he said.
The yellow-belt retreated with an expression almost bearing on worship. In the entire Golden Roc Fort, and very possibly the entire Western Region, no one could possibly make the Supreme King move a single step. However, this tall, old man, who was still a stern looking teacher with a ruler in hand yesterday, had suddenly become the most trusted advisor of the Supreme King overnight. Even those who were most familiar with the internal matters of the fort were left dumbfounded.
The Supreme King arrived very quickly.
Seeing the still untouched cup of wine on the table, Shangguan Fa broke into a knowing grin as he said, “No volume of good wine can fulfill a man’s true ambitions.”
“The same goes for women,” replied Zhang Ji indifferently, as he bowed slightly.
The Supreme King had started preparations to realize his ambition much earlier than the teacher. A few years ago, he began getting intimate with women on only a few rare occasions; after ‘conquering’ countless women during his lifetime, he had finally made up his mind that he would do the job of a true king: conquer the lands and people around him.
“Is there news already?”
Zhang Ji nodded and passed the letter to the Supreme King.
It was a short letter, and Shangguan Fa glanced through it once. “Everything’s settled to the north, how about the south?”, he asked, his face expressionless.
“The Dragon King will soon realize that he has no other choice.”
Zhang Ji spread a map open on the table and traced a finger in the north-east direction from Jade City past a sprawling desert and stopped at where the Stone Kingdom was marked. “The Dragon King should’ve already won the title of prince consort. If he’s smart enough, he won’t move against the Ninth Young Master. However, he’s separated thousands of kilometers away from the Great Snowmountain, and once news about the situation from the north reaches him, he’ll bash his way across the obstacles in his path to save his own army. When it comes to that, he cannot afford to be merciful.”
Zhang Ji continued tracing his finger a little to the west of the Stone Kingdom and stopped at its border with the Kang Kingdom. “The army of the Kang Kingdom is already waiting at this location. Once the Dragon King leaves the Stone Kingdom, they can move, and we can expect the destruction of the Stone Kingdom to come sometime soon.”
He then traced his finger northwards across the desert to its other side till where Shuangquan Village was marked. “This will be burial ground of the Dragon King,” he said.
“He’s stumbled around for so long that it’s time for it to end,” Shangguan Fa said coldly. It was extremely humiliating for the Supreme King to have a traitor of the Golden Roc Fort to muster an army so close to the Jade City and to force him into a peace deal, and he needed a much larger ambition to be able to take it.
“The Dragon King has his uses,” said Zhang Ji in the tone of a tutor subconsciously. “If it were not for him vying to become the prince consort in the Stone Kingdom and thereby drawing away the attention of the various powers from us, including that of the Central Plain, would the Third Young Master have been able to succeed in the north?”
“My only regret is that his death will come too swiftly for him.”
Zhang Ji shook his head in disagreement. He felt that the Dragon King was only a disruptor and could not even be considered to be a pawn in their game of chess with the other factions in Western Region; there was no need to accord him too much attention. He traced his finger in a north-east direction on the map and stopped at the mountain pass to the east of Jade City. This was where the combined forces of the Central Plain and Shangguan Nu were stationed at. “I estimate that the Loulan Kingdom will descend into chaos after three days. This would force the army of the Central Plain to retreat, and our army can cross the grassy plains of Norland and occupy this spot at the mountain pass in the name of punishing Shangguan Nu, who has been an unfilial son. We’ll then be able to take the provisions and fodder stocked up by the Central Plain over the years for our own use. This will ensure that the Central Plain will not have the ability to move westwards for the next three to five years.”
The two men swept their gazes across the entire map as if they had each piece of land in their grasp. This was a kind of feeling that even the best wine and the most charming woman in the world could not give them.
Zhang Ji drew a large arc with his finger from the mountain pass on the east side of Jade City until it reached the other one on the west side. To its north stood the Xiaowan Kingdom and Norland, while the camp of the Great Snowmountain stood to its south. In the middle of it all, slightly to the east, was the camp set up by Dugu Xian.
“Since the Third Young Master has already married the Princess of Xiaowan Kingdom, it’s only a matter of time before he takes over the throne. Then, the army that we’ve hidden in that nation can finally be unleashed. 5,000 troops will attack Shangguan Nu, while another 5,000 will merge with Dugu Xian’s forces. I estimate that we can completely wipe out the entire Snowmountain Gang within a month at most.”
The secret army in the Xiaowan Kingdom was the Supreme King’s big secret, which he had kept hidden for many years. Within the Golden Roc Fort, only Zhang Ji had managed to guess it correctly from various scraps of leads he had. From there, he had deduced that the Supreme King was still ambitious.
The Supreme King’s gaze shot westwards to Shu-lik even before Zhang Ji’s finger had moved there. It was a huge piece of land, and the Jade City looked like a prison compared to its landmass. The Golden Roc Fort had been caged in this prison for all this while.
“Shu-lik can amass an army of at least 50,000,” said Shangguan Fa a little worriedly. It was an issue that was still troubling him even though he had discussed many times with Zhang Ji. It was also the hardest part of their plan.
“Their troops are scattered all over the country, and the largest force it can muster in a single location will only be about seven to eight thousand troops. If the 10,000 cavalry troops supplied by Norland advance quickly enough, Shu-lik won’t have any chance of countering. After Dugu Xian has exterminated the Snowmountain Gang, he’ll be able to supply more than 10,000 troops. His cavalry will advance through Shu-lik while his infantry holds down the territory he has won. I guess that within six months to a year’s time Shu-lik will become a part of the Golden Roc Nation.”
“I cannot allow the killers to remain idle in the castle,” added Shangguan Fa. “They shall create chaos in Shu-lik; even if they cannot withstand the might of an army, they can make sure it becomes leaderless.”
‘Leaderless’ led both of them to think about the traitor from the Golden Roc Fort who now called himself ‘Chief of the Dragons and Leader of the Five Peaks’ and they both laughed.
Hence, they decided that this would be their plan. There will still some kinks to be straightened out, and even if they managed to conquer Shu-lik, it would just be the first step to their plan of hegemony. The Central Plain could come with their huge army or Norland could suddenly turn ambitious and think of turning the tables against the Golden Roc Fort; these were things that they had thought about and come up with some preliminary plans against, but they were no cause for too much concern at the moment.
“The Ninth and Tenth Young Masters do not really have to die,” said Zhang Ji after a period of silence. He did not mention Shangguan Hong, as he knew that the Supreme King did not even consider this unfamiliar youth as his own son.
A cold light shone from the deep-set eyes of Shangguan Fa. He had kept his ruthlessness and cruelty hidden for far too long, so much so that the people around him had already forgotten about these two characteristics of him. He felt that it was time to let them wake up. “They secretly learned the Wayless Qigong without my permission and deserve to die,” he said.
It was what Zhang Ji wanted to hear. He did not care about whether the twins lived or died, but he wanted to be sure that the Supreme King would not come to regret his decision and ask the tutor to pay in the future. “Lady Meng would be extremely sad,” he said.
“That lecherous woman,” Shangguan Fa replied, spitting the words out vehemently. “I’ll let her live before I squeeze all the money from the Meng family. Once news of the death of the twins reaches the fort, let her know immediately.”
Zhang Ji was satisfied. Although Lady Meng had been foolish at one time, she was not to be taken lightly, and the grand plan for the Golden Roc Fort had only just begun. It could not fail because of her.
His gaze still remained fixed on the map, seemingly pondering something.
“Is there something wrong?”, asked Shangguan Fa.
Zhang Ji pointed to the westernmost part of the Xiaoyao Lake. It was the tiny Hui Kingdom. He traced a meandering path northwards, past the vast, sprawling desert until it reached the western border of Jade City, where it was not far from the camp of the Great Snowmountain. It was a treacherous route and would require nearly a month to traverse. “I’m wondering whether the Dragon King will take the risk to return to his camp by this path, instead of by how he came to the Stone Kingdom,” he said.
Shangguan Fa was pleased to have the opportunity to make his own plans known to Zhang Ji. “Slave Huan thinks that his kung fu is peerless, but he doesn’t know that there are other masters in this world with skills that are beyond his wildest imagination. Rest assured, Mister Zhang. There are eyes on him. If he returns from the south by where he came, Shangquan Village will be his burial ground. If he advances westwards, he’ll meet his end even sooner.”
There was nothing left for Zhang Ji to worry about.
More than a thousand kilometers away, Gu Shenwei was opening the kit brought by Shangguan Hong to him. There was only a note in it, and on it was written these few words: The Third Young Master has already become King of the Xiaowan Kingdom.