Chapter 157
Chapter 157: Confucian Dojo
At 5:30 AM, the sky had yet to brighten, and a heavy overcast smothered the earth.
The motorhome rolled to a slow stop at the edge of a steep cliff.
Less than 100 meters of vertical drop remained between them and the Scholar's Dojo below.
Jiang Nan stood with his arms crossed, gazing down at the sinkhole beneath him.
What met his eyes was a sight that made one's scalp prickle—scorched black in every direction.
The entire sinkhole looked as though it had been blanketed by volcanic ash.
And at the center of those ashes, an eerie ancient sect compound stood in grim defiance.
4 large characters were inscribed on the gate plaque.
【Scholar's Dojo】
Wang Meng pushed the car door open and stepped out.
He pulled off his glasses, which had been coated in drifting ash, wiped them hard, and glanced downward.
"Boss, this is as far as the car can go."
"The road down there is nothing but rubble and ash."
"If we force our way down, this motorhome's tyres will probably blow out on the spot."
Jiang Nan's expression remained blank. He casually pulled out a sticky note and slapped it onto Wang Meng's forehead.
Wang Meng peeled it off and read it.
【No worries. This spot works perfectly.】
"Perfectly? Does that mean…"
Wang Meng froze.
The next moment, an overwhelming pressure erupted from within Jiang Nan!
The Dragon God Imperial Armor attached itself to him in an instant.
7 ancient Word Spirits reverberated one after another through the void,
and Jiang Nan recited the final line.
"Tremble… all ye lamenting souls."
The moment the words fell, Jiang Nan leapt from the 100-meter cliff!
And at his waist, the Sovereign Lantern—chained in place by iron links—
was at this moment madly bleeding threads of black sacred light outward!
The wick pulsed violently, brimming with wild excitement!
"Holy sh*t…"
"Boss has dropped the act this time!"
At the cliff's edge, Wang Meng stood in a daze, watching that figure plummet in a straight line downward.
Then he turned a gaze of sympathy toward…
the dead-silent Scholar's Dojo below.
"I hope that when you lot get pulverized into bone ash in a moment,"
"you can still manage to keep that refined and elegant smile on your faces. Amen."
Wang Meng muttered to himself, pressing his palms together.
Praying for those poor wretches below.
……
Meanwhile, inside the Scholar's Dojo at that very moment.
Within a dim and spacious lecture hall, ghostly green flames swayed in the darkness.
On the podium stood a "Master Wang"—topped with a skull, draped in tattered ancient Confucian robes.
His fleshless bony claws cradled a bamboo scroll charred pitch-black, and he swayed his skull-head back and forth as he chanted in a whistling, gap-toothed voice:
"When bamboo and silk burn, the imperial glory fades to naught~"
"The mountain passes and rivers lie empty, locked where the Ancestral Dragon once dwelt~"
"The pit's ashes had not yet cooled when the eastern lands erupted into chaos~"
"Liu and Xiang—it turns out neither of them had ever read a book!"
"Magnificent! A magnificent poem! Hahahaha!"
Master Wang finished reciting, and a burst of wild laughter erupted from him.
"We ought to use the scholar's brush to fiercely denounce that ignorant and discourteous tyrant king!"
And down below the podium, countless charred-dry corpses of scholars sat cross-legged.
Some wore tattered white robes. Others had modern undergarments layered beneath their white robes.
Some wore nothing at all, their flesh reduced to scorched black carbon by roaring fire.
Lecture
Hearing the Master's words, the dried-corpse scholars below reacted as though they'd been struck in their most sensitive spot, erupting into righteous indignation.
"The Master is absolutely right! Every single wrong falls on the Ancestral Dragon!"
"Exactly!"
"Scholar Chun back then only stood before the full court of civil and military officials to offer honest remonstrance—pointing out that he shouldn't be eating the same cut of meat as his chancellor!"
"He was merely telling him he was an uncultured boor who knew nothing of ritual and music! Was that not the truth?"
"Scholar Chun was teaching him proper conduct!"
"And how did he respond? Not only did he show no gratitude, he flew into a shamefaced rage and threatened to burn every book in the realm!"
"Burning books was one thing—but we only went to the palace steps to stop him from committing a grave error!"
"And his response was to savagely throw us all into a pit and burn us alive!"
"Tyrant! A tyrant in every sense of the word! It serves him right that his dynasty crumbled by the second generation!"
The dried-corpse scholars fawned and flattered one another.
As though by trampling the Ancestral Dragon into the mud with words alone, they could reclaim the lofty sense of superiority they once held.
"Alright, let all colleagues settle down."
Master Wang savored the atmosphere, then pressed a hand down to quiet the room and sneered coldly.
"Today's poetry appreciation ends here."
"Now, let us continue with the true subject of this lesson—the origins of Dragon-Summer Imperial City."
"This matter, one must trace back 5,000 years."
"At that time, the Savage Realm was still a barren wasteland where no living beings existed."
"While our ancestors had, within the Blazing Flame Realm, established Dragon-Summer Imperial City."
"Later, when the great Lord Evil God descended, the imperial city was forced to relocate to this Savage Realm."
Master Wang clapped a ruler against his palm.
"The core members of Dragon-Summer Imperial City numbered 3."
"The world refers to them as: one Sovereign, one Emperor, one God."
"First—the Sovereign."
"The world honors her as the Phoenix Sovereign, also known as the Sage of Painting."
"She is the First Princess of Dragon-Summer Imperial City, and in her hands she commands the 2 mightiest supreme spirit instruments in the Blazing Flame Realm of that era."
"The Painting of Mortal Hearth-Fire and the River-and-Mountain Brush!"
"Of course, regarding this existence, you new students should be quite familiar with her as well."
"She is none other than the current master of Soul-Return Town!"
"Most importantly—she has, like us, fully seen through the state of affairs, and has embraced the great Lord Evil God!"
"She has become one of our kin!"
"And as of tomorrow, she will personally come—to select her new bridegroom!"
The moment those words landed, the dried-corpse scholars in the hall instantly erupted into an uproar.
"A bridegroom selection?! Who will be the lucky one?!"
"The Phoenix Sovereign is a peerless beauty—if one could become her bridegroom, wouldn't that be a meteoric rise?!"
"How does one get chosen?"
"Master, do you think within this charred and blackened husk of mine, there might still linger a trace of the handsomeness I once had?"
"All of you, silence! Enough nonsense!"
Master Wang slammed his ruler against the desk, silencing the entire room, and snorted coldly.
"You lot of new students who haven't even been dead that long—stop daydreaming!"
"The Phoenix Sovereign's status is of the highest distinction—is she someone a pack of wretches like you, who can't even keep a physical body, are worthy of coveting?"
"Pay attention to the lesson. Anyone who disrupts my lecture again—don't blame me for lashing their soul!"
Seeing that the hall had quieted down, Master Wang's face once again surfaced with an expression of utter contempt.
"Next—the Emperor!"
"This is the very culprit who cruelly put us to death in this sinkhole, turning us into earth-bound spirits!"
"The world calls him—the Ancestral Dragon Emperor!"
"He is the true master of Dragon-Summer Imperial City, and the primordial ancestor of all Dragon kin and even all humankind."
"He once led great armies and swept across the Blazing Flame Realm. In terms of martial achievement, one could, at a stretch, call him an emperor without peer throughout the ages."
"However…"
Master Wang's tone shifted, turning venomous.
"In his later years, this man became absolutely muddleheaded!"
"Not long after relocating the imperial city to the Savage Realm, the Scholar Chun remonstrance incident I spoke of earlier occurred!"
"Our Confucians taught him propriety, righteousness, integrity, and shame with good intentions—and he flew into a shamefaced rage, burned our books and buried us alive, and slaughtered every last one of us!"
"Beyond that, in his old age his mind completely addled—he became obsessed with the illusory and baseless arts of cultivating immortality!"
"Exhausting the people and squandering resources! Cruel and lawless!"
"A tyrant through and through!"
The hall erupted once more in indignation.
"Tyrant!"
"He deserves to be spat upon with our brushes for ten thousand years!"
"He offended us scholars—even in death, he shouldn't expect to leave behind a good name in history!"
Listening to the torrent of abuse below, Master Wang gave a satisfied nod of his skull.
‘Correct. Whoever dares offend us scholars must pay the price of being denounced and leaving an eternal stench through history.’
Gradually, Master Wang's expression grew grave.
The temperature inside the lecture hall seemed to plunge to freezing in response to his next words.
"Lastly, let us speak of this final one…"
Master Wang's voice turned extremely solemn: "The God."
"The world honors him as the Dragon God!"
"He is the most powerful divine being in the entire history of the Blazing Flame Realm."
"Regarding this existence—the world dares not pass even half a judgment, and can only invoke a single couplet from ancient records to convey the terror of his being…"
Master Wang enunciated each word deliberately.
"Silent as an abyss for 18 years—yet once he speaks, ten thousand gods tremble in awe!"