Published at 15th of September 2026 6:15 am

Chapter 2268: Unwilling To Fall Off (2)

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Su Yu sank into deep thought. After a long while, he said, "I don't see a need to care about anything after dying..."

"What if you don't die?" Xia Huyou argued, "What if you end up trapped somewhere like Human Emperor? What if even Principal Wan and the others are trapped as well? Who will actually try to save you? Who has the actual ability to do so?"

Su Yu looked at Xia Huyou and asked, "Are you offering yourself to be the one to do the saving?"

"Of course."

Xia Huyou said sternly, "Your Majesty! You need a secret force! All your trump cards have been exposed. You're out of secrets."

Su Yu gave Xia Huyou a long stare before asking, "Is this your idea?"

Xia Huyou was a smart man. Su Yu knew that very well.

In fact, Xia Huyou was one of the few powerful second-generation who was also capable. He was willing to respect the wise, but he was also willing to throw his face away when necessary. He was someone capable of taking on a big responsibility when it mattered.

A lot of people in their camp were much higher in seniority, but many of them had lived all these years for nothing. Age was not everything. Any era could produce its own elites. And Xia Huyou was an elite of this era.

Back then, Su Yu was nothing but the son of a common footsoldier, yet Xia Huyou had the foresight to invest in him. Not everyone would have the courage to invest so much into someone so common.

Nevertheless, Su Yu did not think that this was an idea Xia Huyou could come up with alone. Were they worrying about his potential defeat after going upstream?

Xia Huyou grinned and said, "In a way, but my second granduncle and Fatty Zhu share the same opinion."

"Zhu Tiandao?"

"Yes!"

"Why are you calling him Fatty Zhu?"

"Cough. Uhm, we're close enough to do that to each other."

Xia Huyou looked embarrassed. He had been calling Zhu Tiandao that to avoid a beating from his second granduncle. And as time passed, he got used to it. Su Yu nodded. So those two were involved as well. No wonder.

After a short thought, Su Yu said, "So they want me to leave some contingencies behind, and these deathsworn soldiers will be a part of these contingencies?"

"Yes." Xia Huyou nodded, "You have exposed all your trump cards for the sake of humanity. You are out of trump cards. When will your world grow strong enough to contend against the various enemy factions?

"Quantity is also a form of strength. Number alone won't decide the victory at the highest tiers, but it is helpful for minor skirmishes solving minor troubles for you."

Su Yu thought about it. Yang acupoint...

He said, "These people might exhaust their potential going down this path..."

Xia Huyou said helplessly, "Your Majesty, allow me to be blunt. Do you really think that those ancient physical body human kings are people with a lot of future potential as well? What manner of potential can they have without switching their dao? Do you really think that the physical body dao was the sole dao they could pick back then? Perhaps many of them were also former deathsworn soldiers. You're not in the position to worry about the future of your deathsworn soldiers.

"You might have the impression that Human Emperor is kind and benevolent. But he was also a capable emperor. He was able to secure the continuation of humanity for a hundred thousand years in his absence. Despite the various defeats, humanity endured. What about you, Your Majesty?

"You only need to disappear for a hundred years and everything will fall apart even without an external invasion."

Was Su Yu better at scheming than Human Emperor? How laughable.

The secret Torchbearers had been supporting one human lord after another. Each epoch, humanity would rise from the ashes under their guidance. If it weren't for a variable like Hundred Battle King, this scheme of Human Emperor would have produced dozens of Masters of Laws for humanity.

And even with the massive sabotage of Hundred Battle King, humanity had still survived until Su Yu's rise. But Su Yu was the only thing humanity had. With him gone, humanity would have no contingency left.

Xia Huyou added, "It's not that we lack trust in you, but we still need to prepare for all eventualities."

Su Yu's eyes flickered slightly as he asked, "Who will you be selecting as members of this secret guard?"

"You don't necessarily need to be a brute to be a secret guard. We also need people with brains and people with other abilities in it. Numerous skills are required to ensure the continuation of humanity."

Xia Huyou said, "We have progressed to an era where Masters of Laws reign supreme. Nobody cares about the weaklings anymore. I intend to pick some among Daofuses, some among Eternals, and some among Sunmoons. I also plan to pick some talented individuals to train in secret.

"At the moment, you have all the advantages you can ask for. You alone dominate the Myriad Realms. No other human lord has ever enjoyed such an advantage."

Xia Huyou sank into a short silence before continuing, "If possible, we can even send a group of people into the Hell Gate to scout things for you. They can also take that chance to temper themselves and gain more combat strength.

"We need to pick enough people and allow the capable to rise through the process of elimination. If we can produce one capable individual out of every ten thousand people, we will be able to produce a hundred of them out of a million people."

Su Yu raised his brow, "Is this the selection all of you have decided upon?"

"Yes." Xia Huyou nodded, "There is no need for you to waste your time on them. You only need to give them some words of encouragement. We will do the rest and ensure their loyalty."

Su Yu rubbed his chin and said, "But I still feel like this is pointless. If I can win, victory will come in a few years. If I lose, they won't have enough time to grow enough."

"You never know." Xia Huyou said, "Your Majesty, we have a lot of people who have grown easily without experiencing much. We now live in a different era. If we can really produce some Masters of Laws through this method, even if they are only tier five, they will only be less helpful if there are only a few of them. What if we have ten or even a hundred of them? With enough numbers, they can probably defeat even you, Your Majesty."

Su Yu laughed, "All will die in my world."

Of course, he would have a hard time defeating them outside his world. This was indeed enough to kill even Su Yu without the backing of his world. Su Yu was already tempted.

Xia Huyou continued, "If we can transform them all into pseudo death spirits, we can even temper them in the Death Realm. The myriad races have all left. We're running out of suitable opponents to train them. But there are still plenty of death spirits in the Celestial River of Death."

Su Yu nodded, "Perhaps...this will really work as a contingency."

Xia Huyou grinned, "Don't look down on the might of deathsworn soldiers, Your Majesty. If they are able to grow fast enough, they will become a powerful force before you know it. They can play a big role when it matters.

"Also, it might seem like they're all abandoning their future to join the secret guard, but you are a Creator. You only need to keep the hope burning for everyone. Grant us the chance to fuse with your world if we manage to survive until the very end. We can restart our cultivation from scratch after the final victory.

"You are holding an advantage not even Human Emperor enjoyed back then. His world is too incomplete. But your world is already a complete world, albeit weak."

Thus, Su Yu was definitely capable of granting everyone confidence in their future. He could make the secret guard believe that their severed future would only be temporary. Things would get better.

Su Yu nodded, "Do you need help with this?"

"Stable Army."

That was the first name Xia Huyou mentioned. Su Yu's expression changed slightly, but Xia Huyou ignored it and continued, "Empyrean Cloud, Grandstar, Liu Hong, my great grandpa...and Lan Tian as well, if possible."

After a short thought, he added, "Also, I need my second granduncle, Fatty Zhu, Heavenly Forge King..."

"Who?"

"Heavenly Forge King. We need his weaponsmithing skills. We will require a lot of Books of Time to carry out this plan. If possible, we want these books to help our people gain the combat strength of Masters of Laws as long as they have enough blood essence."

Su Yu gasped. How...ambitious!

Weaponsmithing, fighting, scheming, scouting, strategizing, logistics...Everything had been taken into consideration.

Xia Huyou said, "We will sever our future. We only ask that you reward us based on our contributions upon the final victory. We are willing to sacrifice everything before the final victory. Our potential, our lifespan, everything. Strength will be our sole pursuit.

"After your departure, we will supervise the Myriad Realms and watch over the Hell Gate for you. We will also keep an eye on any other gates that might appear.

"Also, did you use a special method to help Dragonblood Marquis grow rapidly before this?"

Su Yu nodded, "Yes, a page from my book..."

"I knew it." Xia Huyou beamed, "Give us some of these pages..."

Su Yu frowned, "With this, you will be cultivating a complete fake dao. It is even more worthless than the fake daos from the Upper Realm. Everything you cultivate will be a lie."

"But we will still have the corresponding combat strength." Xia Huyou said, "These pages are very useful. I heard that Dragonblood Marquis reached the level of a Master of Law in a very short time."

"He was a fake. It wasn't real."

"That much is enough for our purposes." Xia Huyou said, "Your Majesty, a lot of options are available for you. There is no need to keep worrying about our future so much. We don't even know if we'll live long enough to witness this so-called future. Why bother? For now, nothing is more important than gaining more strength.

"Your Majesty, a lot of the myriad race daos are currently masterless. You only need to insert some pages into these daos. I understand that you're not willing to kill the weak, but we don't care about that.

"We will do the killing, grow the dao, and grow ourselves at the same time.

"We can even try to occupy part of the Celestial River of Death. It doesn't matter if we have to become pseudo death spirits or even full death spirits to accomplish that."

He was making such a crazy proposal with complete nonchalance. Listening to him, Su Yu sighed and said, "You are even more ruthless than I when you do decide to be ruthless."

"That's not exactly accurate. We merely have a different belief system than you. For us, we are willing to sacrifice anything to achieve our goal."

Su Yu laughed, "You lot are getting restless because you don't want to fall behind, is that so?"

"Yes!" Xia Huyou beamed, "Your Majesty, this era belongs to us. But what's happening? We have a bunch of antiques as our main combatants. Are you not tired of fighting alone? We can't accept this! We are the main characters of this era, not those antiques. You are planning to lead those antiques to wage war upstream. People like us have to stay behind helplessly. How can we accept this?"

"We belong to the tenth epoch. We grew up fighting. We only had ourselves to rely on. Great Xia used to be known as the land of warmongers. Do you really think death is something we fear?"

He shook his head, "We don't fear death. Rather, we fear peace."

Su Yu's eyes flickered.

"We might be saying that we want peace, but we can't accept laying down our weapons and entering retirement. We're not old! Those antiques are the ones that are old!"

He smiled and asked, "Your Majesty, are you willing to take a trip with me?"

Su Yu nodded.

Xia Huyou mentioned the place, and the two vanished with a flicker.

***

Great Xia Cultural Research Academy.

When Su Yu arrived, he noted that a large number of people had gathered in the academy. There were a lot of former bigwigs among them.

Even Zhu Tiandao was there.

How could they remain bigwigs when they weren't even Daofuses?

Noticing Su Yu's arrival, Marquis Xia smiled and said, "See, this grandnephew of mine can be quite convincing when he speaks. His Majesty is here."

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