Kunpengfang, Xiuyuan, just as night falls.

In the backyard, beside the withered lotus pond, in the fish-watching pavilion, Li Zi held a teacup and stared blankly at the raindrops falling from the sky.

"When the seasons are disrupted, there will be evil spirits."

In Haojing's climate, the first spring rain usually arrives in March.

Today is only February 15th. At this time of year in previous years, there might have been one or two snowflakes falling, but this year it actually started raining.

"The Imperial City is haunted, and the spring rain comes early... Tsk, luckily there was no thunder, otherwise it would really be..."

As soon as Li Zi finished speaking, a faint thunder was heard from behind the thin clouds in the sky.

Li Zi's hand swayed slightly and his pupils shrank in horror.

"Hey, is there any big trouble here?"

With a flip of his hand, Li Zi placed the teacup on the railing of the pavilion. He looked around and saw that there was no one around the pavilion. He smiled slightly, swayed his body left and right, and turned into two afterimages, floating forward one on the left and one on the right.

"Huh? That's not right?" Li Zi suddenly exclaimed.

Afterwards, the number of his afterimages suddenly increased from two to nine, and six of them had just appeared when they quickly merged into the shadows cast by the flickering candlelight.

"Snap!"

A residual shadow froze in mid-air.

Then, the afterimage waved back, and a dim stream of light flew out, vaguely showing that it was the shadow of a palm.

The light was as fast as lightning. It flew dozens of feet away in an instant, and then suddenly flew back.

The nine afterimages of Li Zi suddenly folded inwards. He raised his right hand and stared blankly at a black lotus seed in his palm, which he had picked from an old lotus pod in the lotus pond and had kept since last summer.

"Shadowless Step, Moon Hand."

Li Zi's body trembled involuntarily: "This is, this is the 'divine power' that has never been cultivated by any of the ancestors in the sect's scriptures."

"This, this, is correct, this is a magical power, not a martial art."

Li Zi's body was shaking violently. He grasped the lotus seeds tightly in disbelief. A wisp of smoke swirled in his palm and the lotus seeds were crushed into pieces.

Li Zi took a deep breath, and his figure disappeared out of thin air. The next moment, he appeared from the core of the lotus pond thirty feet away. He stepped on a withered lotus stem, like a light dragonfly, standing quietly above.

There was another thunder and raindrops fell, soaking his loose Taoist robe made of white satin.

"Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey."

Li Zi smiled strangely and took a deep breath. With his long breaths, in the twelve main meridians, eight extraordinary meridians and 134 major acupoints in his body, a wisp of Yuan Gang that was as erratic as thick fog and flowing clouds slowly turned into a piece of Yuan force that was compressed a hundred times in volume and carried a hint of rosy clouds.

"Begging for clever spiritual energy!"

Li Zi's two rows of teeth collided with each other, making a constant "clacking" sound.

His voice got a little louder: "Begging for spiritual energy!"

As soon as he thought of it, the trace of Qiqiao spiritual energy that he had just condensed suddenly disappeared, and his body suddenly turned into more than twenty residual images that flew out in all directions.

Those afterimages flew dozens of feet and slowly disappeared into the air, while Li Zi's real body quietly emerged from a shadow in the water pavilion.

Silently, like a ghost, it shuttled through the void and arrived in an instant.

The Qiqiao Pavilion of the Four Saints Alliance, the remnants of the previous dynasty, secretly teaches the magical power of the Shadowless Step.

"The Grandmaster did not deceive us, the younger generation. The inheritance of my Qiqiao Pavilion is indeed very profound. Is it really passed down by the legendary immortal sect?"

"This is definitely not something that can be explained by martial arts cultivation. I am Li Zi from Qiqiao Pavilion..."

His body trembling slightly, Li Zi grinned, and two thin handleless crescent-shaped scimitars, only half a foot long, slipped quietly from his sleeves.

His body flickered in the pavilion unsteadily, and the two scimitars silently emitted a cold light, lightly passing through the tables, chairs, curtains and other furnishings in the pavilion.

Wherever it passed, everything was shattered.

This lasted for half a cup of tea, and everything in the waterside pavilion was chopped into pieces. Li Zi then put away the two crescent-shaped scimitars, his eyes narrowed into a line with a smile: "Although I don't know what happened."
"But this is a magical power, not a martial art."

"According to the words left by the ancestors, there is something wrong with this world, so the supernatural powers are not obvious, and martial arts dominate."

"Over the years, even the martial arts have been in decline, but this magical power has inexplicably recovered?"

With his hands behind his back, Li Zi slowly walked two steps in the water pavilion and suddenly smiled with ease.

"Tomorrow, go to the Yushunfang Investigation Office and ask Lord Tianyang to release Erya in advance... Hehe, Bai Changkong, you are going too far... After Erya is freed, if you cannot hand Bailu over to Erya... Hehe, I will take your head with my own hands!"

In the distance, light footsteps were heard and soon arrived at the door of the pavilion.

Li Zi turned around and looked at his eldest son, Li Guofeng: "Why are you in such a hurry?"

Li Guofeng raised a thin paper roll in his hand and looked at Li Zi with a puzzled look on his face: "Dad, the news sent back by our disciples in Anping Prefecture is that Anping Prefecture has rebelled."

"Anping Prefecture's capital, Anping City, has 23 counties, 433 prefectures, and more than 3,700 counties under its jurisdiction... The governor of the prefecture, Zhu Yu, was seriously injured in an assassination attempt, and more than 8,000 of his personal guards died in the battle. In addition, three prefectural governors, 73 prefects, and more than 800 county magistrates were killed by the mob."

Li Zi's hand shook slightly and he looked at his son in horror.

After a long silence, he looked up at the sky where raindrops kept falling, and murmured, "This is really a demon... But I see that the records of the Dayin Dynasty are quite different from those of the previous dynasty. This Dayin has not yet reached the point where the mountains and rivers are shattered."

Li Guofeng laughed, "Dad, the previous dynasty was messed up by our Four Saints Alliance... In the current Dayin, although our Four Saints Alliance hid away to make money and didn't do much to mess things up, the current Dayin has culture and education!"

Li Zi was stunned, and suddenly clapped his hands: "Ha, you're right, there are evildoers in Dayin, and the evildoers are those gentlemen! Tsk tsk, Anping Prefecture, hehe, Anping Prefecture. More than ten years ago, your father was just a nobody in the court... but he vaguely felt that there was something fishy about the disaster relief in Anping Prefecture. Hehe!"

"But this matter has nothing to do with us."

"Guofeng, come, try the Shadowless Step that you have never been able to practice. Daddy seems to have some insights today, and I don't know if you can master it. If you can, in the future..."

At the same time, in Baimafang, south of King Kong Creek, among the mountains.

At the foot of a small hill, in a large bamboo forest, in a very elegant villa, Lu Yi, Lu Yu, and Pan Man were drinking opposite each other.

Raindrops hit the small bamboo house sparsely, and all I could hear was the sound of rain.

On a small charcoal stove, a pot of dog meat was stewed with a rich aroma. A large amount of rare medicinal herbs that Pan Man brought from the Southern Barbarian Province were added to it. It was a great tonic for blood and qi, and its effect was extremely strong. If an ordinary martial artist in the Tuomai realm took a bite of it, his mouth and nose would bleed.

The wine is the famous 'Nine Insects and Nine Flowers Wine' from Nanmanzhou. In the transparent crystal wine jar, one can clearly see strange poisonous insects such as golden snakes, silver snakes, copper scorpions, fire centipedes, and ghost-faced salamanders. There are also nine strange flowers ranging in size from thumbs to fists floating in the light green wine.

Lu Yu held up the wine glass and took a sip, a hint of blood flashing across his face.

He took the chopsticks, knocked on the small stove where the dog meat was stewing, and said to Lu Yi in a gentle voice: "Yi'er, this wine is too nutritious, you should drink less. This wine is very good for grown men like us, but for a young man like you who doesn't even have a concubine, drinking too much will harm your health. It's not good, not good!"

Pan Man, who was already half drunk, laughed wildly "Hahahaha".

"Brother, I got a piece of news. It is said that the emperor conferred the title of 'Duke Tianyang' on you. The word 'Yang' here..."

Lu Yu's face suddenly darkened, and he glanced at Pan Man with a sidelong glance, and said faintly: "It seems that the healing elixir of the Vajra Temple is really good. I just broke a bone a few days ago, and you are in the mood to laugh and joke today?"

Pan Man's laughter paused, he raised his glass and laughed dryly: "Hey, hey, I just want to say, brother, you are already sixteen years old. With your current status and position, if you don't have a hundred or eighty girls in your room, it would really be... a waste of your wealth and glory."

Patting his chest vigorously, Pan Man shouted loudly: "How is it? There is a Peach Blossom River in Nanmanzhou, and there are three caves, nine valleys, seventy-two docks and three thousand nine hundred and eighty-two villages on the riverside. Wow, the water of the Peach Blossom River is good for beauties, especially the young lady from Huanv Cave. Wow, that skin, those long legs, that chest, that pair of peach blossom eyes... can be so charming!"

"Brother, I will send a message right away and ask them to bring you three hundred girls from Hua Nv Dong."

Lu Yi was a little embarrassed. He raised the wine glass in his hand and drank it in big gulps. He felt the alcohol was so strong that it burned his whole body red.

Lu Yu smiled and pointed at Pan Man: "Your senior brother is different from other princes' hostages. He was not thrown into the city of Haojing to suffer because he was not valued by Lord Chiyang. On the contrary, he was already chosen by Lord Chiyang to succeed him as the crown prince."

"The girls from the Southern Barbarian State are a little wild, but as long as you treat them sincerely, their loyalty is a hundred times stronger than the coquettish and slutty girls from other states. They really only recognize one person for their entire life."

"I know the reputation of Huanudong. The girls there are beautiful and nice." Lu Yu was a little drunk. He said leisurely, "If you keep a few girls from Huanudong around you, at least you won't be afraid of poisoning from drinking and eating in the future... They are the masters of poison. They pass down their skills from mother to daughter, not son to son, from generation to generation."

Lu Yu continued, "You are now the Duke of Tianyang, a dignified duke, and it is inappropriate for you not to have a few women around you. Just wait, if you don't make any moves within three months, the Queen Mother, the Emperor, the generals, the kings and dukes in the royal family, and even the princesses and county ladies who are married and have daughters will all be eyeing you."

Lu Yi gave an awkward laugh and kept humming while holding up his wine glass.

As he was laughing, one of Lu Yu's personal guards ran over and handed a small brass tube to Lu Yu.

Lu Yu opened the copper tube, pulled out the paper inside and glanced at it, then laughed: "Good, well done, Zhu? is seriously injured, officials of all levels in the county, prefecture and county of Anping Prefecture have suffered heavy casualties, and the total number of rioters has exceeded 10 million."

"Hehe, guess how the Prime Minister and his men will explain to His Majesty?"

"Who will they send to pacify Anping Prefecture?"