Chapter 765: The Ultimate Opportunist
Li Yu sat on the cold stone floor and kept his breathing even. He had intended to remain in isolation for another full week. He wanted to detach himself from the violent shifting tides of the realm and let the Domain Kings finish their bloody game. He knew that engaging with the affairs of apex predators was a lethal distraction.
But the gravity of the geopolitical theater possessed an irresistible pull.
A few days into his isolation the curiosity became a physical itch in his mind. The usurper was pushing his battered aerial fleet toward the capital of the Eclipse Court. The supreme guardian beast was crippled. Queen Calyptra was severely injured. The climax of the grand war was happening right now and sitting in the dark felt like missing a cosmic alignment.
Li Yu opened his eyes and let out a soft sigh. He surrendered to his own curiosity.
He stood up and pushed the heavy boulder aside. The sky outside was choked with gray ash and distant flashes of violent energy. He pulled his dark cloak over his shoulders and utilized his lightning movement.
He arrived at Split Rock as the three suns began to dip below the horizon. The atmosphere in the central tavern was once again different from his previous visits. The patrons were not drinking in stunned terror or laughing at wounded pride. They were speaking in rapid frantic bursts of disbelief. The room felt like a powder keg of raw intelligence and broken paradigms.
Li Yu walked to his dark corner. The tavern keeper poured the drink for him before he even ordered. Without realizing it Li Yu had become a regular here during this time. Li Yu took his cup and focused his senses on the center table. A group of seasoned scouts and information brokers were surrounded by a crowd of elite mercenaries.
"Emperor Xerxis played him!" A sleek dragonfly scout gasped while shaking his head. "He played the entire realm. He stabbed the usurper in the back again. The usurper once again did not see it coming. No one did honestly. It makes no sense at all!"
"I thought the Emperor retreated to the Hive." A large beetle warrior frowned while leaning over the table.
"That was a feint." The scout replied with his voice tight with awe. "Xerxis did not fly his warships back to his own borders. The moment he broke contact with the main battlefield, he redirected his entire fleet. He invaded the Aegis Legion instead."
The tavern erupted into a wave of hushed and shocked murmurs.
Li Yu paused with his tea cup halfway to his mouth. The maneuver hit him like a physical blow. Xerxis deployed his forces to crush Venrik. The usurper had already emptied the garrisons to build his invasion force. The border fortresses and the central cities of the Ant Empire were completely undefended.
"Xerxis walked right through their front door." An older ant veteran whispered. "He took full control of the empire without fighting a single major battle."
"It gets worse." The dragonfly scout continued, looking around the room as if afraid the shadows were listening. "The Emperor still had the captured Ant Queen locked in his flying prison. He did not execute her and he did not hold her for ransom. He broke her."
"Broke a Domain King?" A thin mantis rogue scoffed. "Impossible."
"Not when she is already compromised," the scout countered. "Venrik used the earth rock to corrupt her mind. Her foundation was already fractured. Emperor Xerxis used artifacts of his own from the deepest vaults of the Hive. You know how much invading he does in other realms. He’s acquired a vast collection of treasures from doing it so often. Emperor Xerxis shattered Venrik’s control and replaced it with his own. He converted Queen Myrmira to be his own puppet. Or he freed her and now she is working under him to repay him. No one really knows."
A cold chill swept through the tavern.
"She is a subject of the Hive now. Either way." The scout confirmed. "She knelt before him in the captured royal palace. She is the puppet ruler of the Aegis Legion. Xerxis outmaneuvered the usurper once again. He stole the stolen empire."
Li Yu took a slow sip of his tea.
The political landscape had just undergone another seismic shift. The Hive Empire now controlled nearly half the known realm. Xerxis had achieved total supremacy over his greatest rival faction without engaging in a grueling war of attrition. He let Venrik do all the heavy lifting and then simply stepped in to claim the prize.
"What about Venrik?" The beetle warrior asked. "He must have realized his home base was taken. Did he turn his fleet around to reclaim his territory?"
"He ignored it. Didn’t even react. It was like he never wanted the lands of the Aegis Legion to begin with. Some say what he really wants is the lands of the Eclipse Court." The scout replied.
"He ignored losing an entire empire?" The mantis rogue asked in disbelief.
"He probably knew he could not do anything about it," the older ant veteran reasoned. "His forces are depleted. His supply lines are cut. Turning around to fight Emperor Xerxis in a fortified stronghold would be absolute suicide. He had no choice but to push forward."
"Exactly," the scout nodded. "Venrik doubled down. He continued his advance deep into the Moth Empire. He pushed his battered warships right up to the walls of the Eclipse Court capital."
The patrons leaned in closer and were hungry for the details of the final clash. Li Yu found himself doing the same even though he could hear everything already.
"Everyone thought it was going to be a long siege," the scout explained. "The capital possesses the most complex defensive arrays in the cosmos. Even with the Nine Paths Moth injured, the structural formations alone should have held Venrik at bay for a very long time. Months at least, possibly years. A broken army cannot crack a supreme fortress."
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"But they did crack it?" The beetle warrior prompted.
"They did not have to," the scout said with a dark grimace crossing his features. "The gates opened from the inside."
The tavern fell silent.
"Undercover agents working for Venrik!" The scout shouted with the words hanging heavy in the air. "Two of Queen Calyptra’s most trusted generals, the ones commanding the inner perimeter, were working for Venrik the entire time."
Li Yu felt his eyes widen. The layers of the usurper’s plotting were seemingly infinite.
"That was why Venrik was so confident!" The scout continued. "That was why he did not retreat when Xerxis stole his empire. He knew he had the keys to the Eclipse Court. The two traitor generals sabotaged the main arrays. They destroyed the defensive formations from the inside and let the usurper walk right into the inner sanctum."
The sheer treachery of the act left the mercenaries speechless. Venrik had orchestrated the perfect infiltration. He countered the ancient guardian beast and bypassed the supreme defensive walls without sacrificing his remaining troops.
"So Venrik won," the mantis rogue concluded. "He lost the Aegis Legion but he claimed the Eclipse Court. He executed Queen Calyptra and took her throne."
"No," the dragonfly scout said. "He did not get the chance."
Li Yu leaned forward even more in his dark corner, his curiosity completely overriding his want for detachment.
"Just as victory seemed assured," the scout began painting the picture with trembling hands. "The sky above the capital ripped open."
"Xerxis," the ant veteran breathed.
"Xerxis and the human," the scout confirmed. "They did not stay in the Aegis Legion to consolidate their new territory. The Emperor left his puppet queen to hold the fort. He deployed his fastest warships and burned through the sky and arrived at the Eclipse Court right as the defensive arrays fell."
The ultimate opportunist had struck again. Emperor Xerxis allowed Venrik to exhaust his remaining resources, cracking the capital open and then swooped in to claim the spoils.
"They attacked him from the rear once more!" The scout described the violent climax. "A two against one battle right in the center of the ruined courtyard. Emperor Xerxis and the large human against the usurper."
"How long did he last?" The beetle warrior asked his tone with respect for all that Venrik had accomplished.
"He did not go down easily," the scout admitted. "We have to give the usurper his due. He was a peerless schemer but he was also a terrifying martial powerhouse. Surrounded by a rival Emperor and a human monster, Venrik fought like a cornered beast."
The scout detailed the cataclysmic clash. Venrik unleashed every drop of his remaining power and treasures. He wielded his supreme earth laws, his stolen artifacts and his raw Domain King aura. The shockwaves leveled the surrounding royal spires.
"With the two of them attacking, they were able to overpower him in the end." The scout said. "The human shattered Venrik’s defensive carapace with his giant mace. But just before Xerxis delivered the fatal strike Venrik managed to break through the Emperor’s guard."
A collective gasp swept through the tavern.
"He harmed Xerxis," the scout nodded solemnly. "He drove his scythe limb through the Emperor's shoulder and unleashed a wave of dark corrosive Qi. It was a bad injury but nothing threatening. It proved that Venrik was not an easy opponent. But the effort left him completely exposed."
"And then?" The mantis rogue asked.
"And then Xerxis killed him," the scout finished. "He severed the usurper's head and crushed his soul foundation into dust. King Venrik is dead."
The tavern let out a long collective breath. The man who had plunged the entire realm into a bloody and chaotic war was finally gone. His long schemes, his brilliant traps and his supreme arrogance were all reduced to ash in a ruined courtyard.
"What happened to Venrik’s army?" The ant veteran asked. "The troops that followed him into the capital?"
"Slaughtered," the scout replied without a hint of hesitation. "Emperor Xerxis ordered the Royal Brood to descend upon the city. They crushed the remaining troops of the usurper. Xerxis did not allow a single one of them to survive."
"Why not take prisoners?" The beetle warrior frowned. "They were elite soldiers. He could have absorbed them into the Hive."
"They either betrayed their true queen to follow a usurper or had joined him in the neutral grounds." The scout reasoned. "And then they followed that usurper into a suicide mission against a rival empire. They were treacherous, unpredictable and entirely devoid of loyalty. Xerxis decided they could not be trusted under any circumstances. He wiped them out to the last bug. Their flesh could at least be used to feed his armies."
Li Yu sat in his corner and absorbed the brutal finality of the intelligence.
The political game was a meat grinder. Venrik was indeed a genius but he wasn’t perfect. He had orchestrated a coup that captured a Domain King and he had planted agents deep within the highest echelons of a rival empire. He had the intellect to rule the realm.
‘But he never was able to predict Emperor Xerxis’s actions or that he had another Domain King helper. Venrik probably thought that Xerxis would do what he had at the beginning, attack the Moth Empire while he did as well. He probably never imagined that Xerxis would help them not once but twice.’ Li Yu thought.
Xerxis did not care about grand elaborate schemes. He did not care about honorable combat or maintaining a static defensive line. The Emperor of the Hive simply watched the board, identified the weak points and struck with overwhelming force the moment an opportunity presented itself. But some of his attacks were also attacks no one thought he would do given his hatred for the Eclipse Court.
Xerxis ultimately used Venrik as a blunt instrument to weaken the Aegis Legion and crack open the Eclipse Court. And when the usurper outlived his usefulness, Xerxis stepped in and removed him from the board.
Li Yu finished his tea and placed the ceramic cup onto the wooden table.
He had learned everything he needed to know. The grand war that had threatened to consume the entire realm had reached its bloody conclusion. The usurper was dead. The Ant Queen was most likely a puppet. The Hive Empire stood as the undisputed supreme power holding the reins of two additional grand factions. Only the Aether Swarm remained in this realm now as an opposition power.
The tavern patrons began to order fresh rounds of ale and shifted their tone from whispers to cautious celebration. The chaos was over. The surviving merchants and mercenaries could finally return to their normal routines of hauling cargo and fighting smaller skirmishes.
Li Yu stood up and slipped out the heavy wooden doors.
The events of the past few weeks reinforced some of the harsh lessons he had learned. The cultivation world was not a place of righteous glory or honorable duels. It was a dark forest filled with ancient predators waiting for the slightest sign of weakness.
Even a genius like Venrik who held the power of a Domain King and the loyalty of millions was ultimately nothing more than a stepping stone for a more ruthless opponent.
Li Yu activated his movement technique blurring into a streak of golden sparks. He tore across the jagged landscape of the neutral zones heading back toward his isolated mountain. He would focus on integrating his laws, purifying his physical vessel and ascending the peak of the Divine Transformation realm.
The realm belonged to Emperor Xerxis now but Li Yu only cared about conquering his own limitations. He pushed the heavy boulder aside, sealed the entrance and let the deep earth array erase him from the world once again.