Both start in hell: but their talents are multiplied a hundredfold.

The Gathering of Heroes from All Over the World has come to an end.

Shen Jue put the piece of land back on the ground.

He brought with him warriors who were willing to follow him immediately and settled in Lin'an.

Then, Shen Jue finally witnessed the Southern Song court's last counterattack, its final, futile struggle.

The peace in Lin'an did not last long.

On the first night after Shen Jue entered the city, the first batch of assassins arrived.

The one who arrived was the "shadow" of the Imperial City Guard.

Those were twelve assassins trained from childhood.

They sneaked in through a hidden channel under the Qinhuai River, each with a wax-sealed poison pill hidden behind their teeth and viper saliva, a deadly poison, smeared between their fingers.

These assassins' mission was simply to poison the water source that Shen Jue might use.

The master under Shen Jue, who was in charge of inspecting Lin'an, easily captured these assassins.

The interrogation results were delivered to Shen Jue before dawn.

These assassins didn't last long against the grinning Liu Da and Liu Er.

The confession filled a whole stack of pages, but the core of it was just one sentence: The four leaders of the Imperial City Guard, the Embroidered Uniform Guard, the Eastern Depot, and the Western Depot held a secret meeting in the Imperial City Guard dungeon and devised a "four-department joint operation" plan to assassinate Shen Jue.

Shen Jue laughed heartily. He had taken over the government office in Lin'an and personally changed the plaque above the entrance to read "Hall of Righteousness".

He, Shen Jue, is now not only the leader of the martial arts world and the self-proclaimed emperor of the Southern Song Dynasty, but also the head of the Chivalrous Hall in Lin'an.

Zhao Tieshan, who kowtowed at the Heroes' Gathering, has now been taught the "Breathing Technique 2.0" and has become a top-notch master with both internal and external cultivation in just one day.

Shen Jue felt that the leaders of these four institutions had gone mad.

The four departments joined forces not out of confidence, but out of fear.

Shen Jue had only been in Lin'an for a dozen days, yet the masters of the Xia Yi Hall had already infiltrated every capillary of Lin'an.

New masters are born every day.

What's even more deadly is that these masters are not ordinary martial artists. Their white internal energy can be stacked to create a chivalrous power that leaves ordinary martial artists completely bewildered.

The foundation of the Southern Song Dynasty's rule was crumbling, and under the instruction of the Zhao family imperial family, these henchmen of the Southern Song court were already prepared for mutual destruction.

In their minds, if they didn't kill Shen Jue now, they would truly have no other chance.

But they couldn't kill them.

These fanatical feudal lackeys transported tens of thousands of kilograms of gunpowder from outside the city, attempting to burn Shen Jue and a large part of Lin'an to ashes.

Lin'an City, 3:45 AM.

Beneath the abandoned granary in the west of the city, the last group of men from the four government offices were moving gunpowder.

The wooden crates piled up to half the warehouse, weighing tens of thousands of kilograms, enough to blow the entire Imperial Street to smithereens.

The leading commander of the Imperial Guards wiped his sweat and urged in a low voice, "Move quickly, we must do it before dawn..." The words trailed off in his throat.

He looked down and saw a sword hilt on his chest.

A slender, jade-like hand was gripping the hilt of the sword. The owner of the hand was Huang Rong, who stood behind him with a cold expression, and it was unclear how long she had been standing there.

"Enemy attack!" The second commander drew his sword halfway, and a bloody hole exploded between his eyebrows.

Liu Da withdrew his finger, and the blood-red color condensed into a line that pierced through it.

Footsteps sounded behind them, and twenty masters from the Righteous Hall filed in, their white internal energy flowing together.

A few short screams rang out from inside the granary, followed by deathly silence.

Liu stepped over the gunpowder box and tore open the tarpaulin in the corner.

Under the tarpaulin was a cast iron fuse box, connected to a matchlock and a flint and steel; everything was ready.

All that's missing is someone to light the fire.

"I really want to blow it up." Liu Da kicked the fuse box and turned around to say, "Report this to Brother Shen Jue."

"Just as Brother Shen Jue predicted."

As dawn breaks, the former Lin'an government office is now the main hall of the Xiayi Hall.

Shen Jue sat cross-legged on the armchair, with a map of Lin'an's markets spread out in front of him.

The map was marked with four red circles: the Imperial City Guard dungeon, the Embroidered Uniform Guard headquarters, the Eastern Depot, and the Western Depot. He pulled up the four small flags one by one and held them in his palm.

"Liu Er".

"exist."

"Imperial City Guard, one stick of incense."

Liu Er turned and left.

After an incense stick had burned, the gate of the Imperial City Guard Office, along with the plaque that had hung there for a hundred years, shattered on the ground.

Liu Er stepped into the main hall on the broken wood, and the Imperial City Guard commander drew his sword and thrust it forward with a burst of sword energy.

The sword energy was caught between two fingers three inches from his throat and shattered inch by inch.

Fragments of the sword flew out and embedded themselves in thirteen major acupoints on Tiju's body.

Liu Er removed his official hat, placed it on the table, and turned to the master behind him, saying, "Next."

In the Eastern Depot, the chief eunuch sat upright in the main hall, holding a whisk, with several chief eunuchs standing on either side.

The gate was blasted open with a single palm strike, and eighteen golden dragon shadows roared in.

The guards flew backwards, embedding themselves in the walls, pillars, and ceilings, their whisks breaking in two.

The chief eunuch looked at Qiao Feng as he walked in and opened his mouth.

Qiao Feng didn't give him a chance to speak, pressing his palm to his chest and releasing his inner force.

The eunuch in charge of the seal collapsed limply, and Qiao Feng picked up the official seal from his desk and crushed it into iron mud.

The Western Depot was easily swept away by Guo Jing and Huang Rong; the few grandmasters there could not last more than a few rounds against them.

The Embroidered Uniform Guard was the last one.

Dozens of masters under Shen Jue joined forces to break in and crushed the Jinyiwei yamen into ruins.

Thus, the Imperial City Guard, the Embroidered Uniform Guard, the Eastern Depot, and the Western Depot—the four major government agencies—were destroyed.

It had been less than an hour since Liu Er left home.

When the news reached the Zhao family ancestral hall, Zhao Gou, once again disheartened, smashed his teacup.

Porcelain shards were scattered all over the ground. The young eunuch who followed Zhao Gou knelt down to pick them up, his hands trembling.

Now, the area outside the gate of the Hall of Righteousness is filled with kneeling people.

They are not commoners, but members of a prominent family.

The heads of the local gentry families in Lin'an were "invited" out of their mansions by the masters from early morning and knelt in turn on both sides of the Imperial Street.

Before them lay piles of evidence of their crimes: account books, land deeds, indentures, and letters.

Some people were trembling, some were kowtowing, and some were ashen-faced.

Shen Jue walked over, her pace neither fast nor slow. She stopped in front of the first house.

That was the Zhou family, the Vice Minister of the Ministry of Personnel. Last year, they forcibly seized 3,000 mu of farmland and drove thousands of tenants to their deaths.

Shen Jue looked at the pile of account books and uttered only one word: "Burn."

The master stepped forward, and white flames surged forth, turning the ledger to ashes.

We continued on our way, burning as we went.

When the fire reached the last house, Shen Jue stopped and looked back at the long street filled with ashes.

"From today onwards," he said, and the nobles remained kneeling, while the common people of Lin'an watched from a distance.

"There are no aristocratic families, no powerful clans, and none of the social standing you speak of in Lin'an."

"The land will be distributed to those who cultivate it, the debt will be wiped clean, and the indenture will be void."

"If anyone disagrees, they can come to the Hall of Righteousness and reason with me."

"As your nominal emperor, I'm just waiting for you to rebel!"

After Shen Jue finished speaking, the long street was quiet for the time it takes to breathe three times.

Then someone made a move.

The person involved was Zhou Xian, the second son of the former Minister of Personnel.

He knelt beside the pile of ashes, his hands on the ground, his fingernails digging into the cracks of the bluestone slabs, his shoulders shaking violently.

Those around him thought he was crying, until he looked up and saw that there wasn't a single tear on his face.

His eyes were red, but his mouth was stretched open in a wide grin—the last smile of someone driven to the brink of despair.

"Rebellion?" Zhou Xian got up from the ground, his official robe covered in paper dust.

He looked around at the gentry heads kneeling on the ground, trembling, and suddenly burst into laughter.

"Uncles, did you hear that? He said he's waiting for us to cause trouble!" His laughter stopped abruptly, and he suddenly ripped open his clothes, revealing a bamboo tube wrapped around his waist.

The bamboo tube was filled with the powder of the thunderbolt, and the fuse was held in his hand.

"Then let him see it randomly!"

Zhou Xian drew the short sword hidden in his sleeve.

It was a precious sword that could cut through iron like mud, with the words "loyalty and filial piety" engraved on its blade. It was a family heirloom passed down through three generations of the Zhou family.

He lunged at Shen Jue with his sword, his movements unpredictable and erratic.

At the same time, dozens of figures leaped out from among the gentry kneeling on both sides of the Imperial Street.

These powerful families have been entrenched in Lin'an for centuries, and their mansions have never ceased to house martial arts retainers.

Some were martial arts masters hired at great expense, some were family members who had practiced martial arts since childhood, and there were even a few white-haired old men whose internal strength cultivation had reached the threshold of grandmaster.

However, his physique was weak and his spirit was feeble, so he couldn't even be considered a half-master.

"Haha, let's go!" Shen Jue laughed wildly!

Zhou Xian's sword stopped three feet in front of Shen Jue.

It wasn't that he wanted to stop.

A sword pierced his abdomen first.

The sword hilt was in Liu's hand.

Liu Er drew his sword, wiped the blood on Zhou Xian's official robe, and said without turning his head, "I've been waiting for this."

Zhou Xian looked down at the bloody hole in his abdomen, then looked up at Shen Jue.

Shen Jue didn't even lift his eyelids.

When he fell, he was still clutching the fuse in his hand, but he hadn't had time to take out the tinderbox.

The battle erupted in an instant.

But it was less of a battle and more of a meticulously planned hunt.

The retainers of the aristocratic families flocked to Shen Jue in the center of the Imperial Street from all directions.

Their numbers were not small, roughly over a hundred, including two or three grandmasters.

The accumulated heritage of these families over a century was fully revealed at this moment.

The long street was almost shattered, but Shen Jue casually raised his hand and, through the illusionary breath technique and gravity manipulation, maintained its original state.

However, they were not facing Shen Jue.

Shen Jue remained standing with his hands behind his back, without changing his posture.

The first group of retainers rushed to a distance of ten zhang from Shen Jue when the bluestone slab beneath their feet suddenly exploded.

Zhao Tieshan leaped out from underground, sweeping his carrying pole horizontally, his white internal energy condensing into an arc of light.

Three top-tier martial arts masters, along with their weapons, were swept away by the carrying pole and crashed into a stone lion on the side of the street. The stone lion shattered into three pieces, and the masters lay motionless.

Zhao Tieshan slammed his carrying pole on the ground, his towering figure blocking the center of the Imperial Street.

"I've thought about this route," he said in a muffled voice. "Ask my carrying pole."

The second group of retainers swooped down from the rooftops on both sides. They thought that by avoiding Zhao Tieshan on the ground, they could launch a surprise attack from the air.

Before their toes even touched the ground, ten golden dragon shadows roared in from the side.

Qiao Feng stood on the roof of the Hall of Righteousness, pushing forward with both palms. The palm winds transformed into dragon shapes, and each dragon shadow accurately struck a disciple.

Amidst screams, the retainers plummeted from the roof like kites with broken strings, crashing onto the bluestone slabs, unable to rise again.

Qiao Feng withdrew his palm, stood with his hands behind his back, and his eyes were filled with murderous intent.

"The roof won't work either," he said.

The aristocratic families' offensive paused briefly at this moment.

No one is blindly rushing forward anymore.

Those retainers who were lucky enough to survive stood on both sides of the Imperial Street, their hands trembling as they gripped their weapons.

Their martial arts skills may not be weak, but when faced with such a group of people, they finally realized a problem.

This is not a battle, this is a crushing defeat.

The battle lasted less than half an hour.

Dozens of corpses lay scattered haphazardly on the Imperial Street.

Some had their heart meridians shattered by Qiao Feng's palm strike, some had their spines broken by Zhao Tieshan's carrying pole, and some were shattered by Guo Jing's raised palm.

Blood flowed through the cracks in the bluestone slabs, forming dark red streams that meandered towards the roadside drainage ditch.

There are not many retainers left alive, about thirty or forty in total.

They were forced back to the end of the Imperial Street by the Grandmasters, with the walls of the Imperial City behind them.

There was nowhere to retreat. Someone looked back at the imperial guards on the city wall, but they had long since huddled behind the arrow slits, not daring to even peek out.

Shen Jue was fishing, wanting to see how many martial artists in Lin'an City were still trying to fight him.

An elderly master with white hair stepped out from the crowd.

He is the former patriarch of the Chen family in Lin'an, seventy-eight years old this year, and his internal strength cultivation has reached the Grandmaster level for thirty years.

In his youth, he was a renowned figure in the martial arts world, wielding an iron sword that made him invincible throughout Jiangnan.

He held in his hand the iron sword that had been with him for sixty years.

The sword was covered in rust, yet it remained incredibly sharp.

He walked to the front of the crowd, facing Qiao Feng, Guo Jing, Zhao Tieshan, and dozens of grandmasters, and slowly raised the sword in his hand.

"I am Chen Taiyue, and I entered the Grandmaster realm thirty years ago." His voice was old but full of energy.

"To die at your hands today would not be a disgrace to this sword."

Qiao Feng glanced at him but did not strike.

Guo Jing did not move.

Zhao Tieshan gripped the carrying pole, hesitated for a moment, and then looked back at Shen Jue.

"What are you looking at me for? Kill him."

Chen Taiyue's face twitched. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but in the end he just raised his sword and lunged at Shen Jue.

This sword strike contained the lifelong internal energy cultivation of a grandmaster; the sword energy pierced the air, emitting a sharp whistling sound.

Liu Er's figure was already in front of Shen Jue before the sword energy touched him.

He extended two fingers and pinched the tip of the sword.

Chen Taiyue's sword energy shattered against those two fingers as if it had hit an iron wall, and the backlash of internal energy flowed back into his body along the sword.

Chen Taiyue groaned, and a trickle of blood spilled from the corner of his mouth.

Liu Er snatched the iron sword, casually tossed it to the grandmaster behind him, and then pressed his palm against Chen Taiyue's chest.

With a slight release of internal energy, Chen Taiyue exploded into a bloody mist.

The remaining retainers completely lost the will to resist.

Some threw down their weapons and knelt down to beg for mercy, some turned around and climbed the city wall to try to escape, and some collapsed on the ground and cried uncontrollably.

Liu Er raised his hand, about to order the mopping up of the remaining enemies, but Shen Jue waved his hand away.

"stop."

The masters all stopped at the same time.

The Imperial Street fell silent instantly, with only the heavy breathing and intermittent sobs of the retainers remaining.

Shen Jue slowly walked up to the retainers who were kneeling and begging for mercy.

"Want to live?" he asked, looking down.

The retainers kowtowed desperately, their foreheads slamming against the bluestone slabs with a loud thud.

"Then we'll wait," Shen Jue said, turning and leaving.

The corpses on the Imperial Street were dragged away. The bloodstains on the bluestone slabs were washed away with water.

In less than an hour, the street was back to its previous cleanliness, with only the dark red marks remaining in the cracks of the stones reminding people of what had happened here.

That night, the mansions of prominent families in Lin'an City were simultaneously ablaze with fire.

The masters under Shen Jue's command were counting the evidence of their crimes, each holding a torch.

The firelight illuminated half the sky, and could be seen throughout the entire city of Lin'an.

The people stood at their doorsteps, watching the burning mansions, and no one spoke.

Some people silently shed tears, some clenched their fists, and some knelt down and kowtowed in the direction of the Hall of Righteousness.

By daybreak, the mansions lining the street had been reduced to ruins.

Along with the ruins, the powerful clans that had dominated the area for centuries also vanished.

Their names were erased from the map of Lin'an, their mansions were razed to the ground, their land was distributed to tenant farmers, and the grain stored in the granaries was moved out to set up soup kitchens.

Long queues formed in front of the porridge stall, where tenant farmers who had toiled in the fields of their ancestral homes for their entire lives squatted by the roadside, drinking their hot porridge.

An old man finished his porridge, put the bowl on the ground, looked in the direction of the ruins, and said, "God has finally opened his eyes."

His voice was very soft, but everyone around him heard it.

No one refuted or agreed; the only difference was the slurping sound added to the porridge-eating noise.

Shen Jue stood in the sky above Lin'an City, his hands behind his back, recalling the fires that had risen and fallen throughout the city the previous night.

Zhang Sanfeng and the eel stood beside him, and the two remained silent for a long time.

"With your help, things will be much more convenient."

Shen Jue smiled and said, "Then let's start with Lin'an, then proceed with the cleansing, and take over all the cities."

"I've grown bored with this place."