Chapter 373: The Sixteenth Day in the Struggle for Supremacy World

Chapter 373: Day Sixteen of Getting Thrown Into a Warring States Novel

And in their simple way of seeing things, all these changes pointed straight at the young Prefect An.

The same kind of talk was quietly spreading through the fields, markets, and teahouses of Yangqi Commandery and even throughout Tongzhou.

An Yi did not merely sit in the prefectural office issuing orders. He often traveled with a small retinue, venturing deep into the countryside to personally inspect agriculture, sericulture, and water conservancy, listening to what minor officials and ordinary folks had to say. He came down hard on a few cruel officials who paid lip service and bullied the common folk.

Many farmers, who'd spent their whole lives bent over the soil, got their first real look at the official who governed them and tied him directly to the good times they were finally having.

Little by little, people's hearts were won over.

The steady stream of refugees pouring in from elsewhere only confirmed how bad things were out there and made Tongzhou's rare peace stand out even more.

Dealing with the refugees was handed over to Bai Ji, and once An Yi had looked over his plan, it was put into action.

They were strictly screened. Able-bodied young men were picked out, some to fill out the garrison or logistics units, and only those with solid records and clean backgrounds got a shot at the regular retainers.

The old, the frail, women, and kids were settled into planned villages, given land and handwork assignments so they could support themselves instead of just being dead weight.

From among the women and kids, the physically strongest were picked out and sent to logistics—and to An Shu's unit.

That girl who'd still been full of energy after more than a month in a carriage—An Yi, overruling everyone's objections, sent his sister—who loved martial arts and devoured military strategy books—to the front lines of the bandit-suppression campaign.

And she didn't let him down.

Back then, the only ones who hadn't questioned his call were An Shu herself and Bai Ji.

Troops, labor, and popular support all grew steadily through all of this.

But An Yi kept the pace measured, avoiding any big, flashy recruitment drives that might draw suspicion.

He was waiting—waiting for a chance to shatter the current balance and show his strength out in the open.

The state of the realm couldn't be called "rotten" anymore—it had tipped fully into irreversible collapse.

In Yuncheng, the emperor had sunk even deeper into folly, obsessed with Daoist immortality and the beauties the eunuchs kept feeding him, and barely lifting a finger for state affairs.

The fight between the consort clan and the eunuch faction hit a fever pitch. Both sides went at each other in court, using assassination, frame-ups, and every dirty trick imaginable.

Finally, one night, all that pent-up tension blew.

The consort clan, teaming up with generals who were sick of eunuch dominance, launched a palace coup, planning to kill the top eunuchs and take the emperor hostage.

But the eunuchs were ready, and the two sides tore into each other inside the imperial city. Flames lit up the sky, and the killing went on all night.

The Old Emperor, scared half to death in the chaos, came down with a serious illness and died after lingering for over a month.

The young crown prince was rushed onto the throne, with the empress dowager ruling from behind the curtain.

The winning consort clan went on a purge frenzy, slapping the label "eunuch remnants" on their political enemies—firing them, throwing them in jail, seizing their property, and sending them into exile. The court was left gutted.

The ones who rose to power were all relatives of the consort clan or their bootlickers. They handed out lavish rewards to themselves, bleeding the people dry for their own gain. Governing turned into a joke, laws were dead letters, and the central court's grip on the regions hit rock bottom.

Meanwhile, natural disasters didn't let up just because the capital was in chaos—they got worse.

The Chang River burst its banks again, flooding everything. Guanzhong was hit by drought, Yanzhou by plague... Countless people were left homeless, and corpses littered the fields.

Desperate refugees stopped waiting for relief that was never coming. Small rebellions spread like wildfire.

Many local officials either couldn't put them down or just joined forces with the rebels, raising their own armies and carving out their own turf.

The fragile balance finally shattered.

One autumn day, three years and three months after An Yi had arrived in Sique, Xi Xu, the fierce garrison commander of Yanzhou, smack in the middle of the Central Plains with tens of thousands of troops under him, killed the court-appointed military supervisor and the provincial governor who wouldn't play ball, citing "treacherous courtiers in power, fooling the throne, harming the loyal, and plunging the realm into chaos and the people into misery." He raised the banner of "Cleanse the ruler's side, execute the traitors, pacify the realm" and formally rebelled.

Within months, border generals with armies, rich local bigwigs, and even some big-name imperial clansmen all followed suit.

Some backed Xi Xu, others raised their own banners, with a dizzying array of excuses.

Whether it was ambition, self-preservation, or some faint hope of setting things right, they all chose to raise armies and carve up the realm.

The vast empire, after all its suffocating rot, finally hit its bloody breaking point.

The glorious three-hundred-year Da Qi dynasty plunged into an abyss of chaos—heroes rising up everywhere, war fires spreading across the land.

The news soon reached Tongzhou—and Sique.

That day, the autumn wind had a real bite to it.

An Yi was sitting in the Guanshan Pavilion on the hill behind the family estate.

The pavilion sat halfway up the mountain with a wide view—down over the sprawling rooftops of the family estate, the distant outline of Sique town, and the vast mountains of Tongzhou beyond.

On the stone table in the pavilion, a game of Go was in full swing.

An Yi was playing white, Bai Ji black.

Both wore heavy dark cloaks to ward off the mountain wind.

Over the past two years, An Yi's face had lost more of its youthful softness—his features were sharper, his bearing steadier.

He was staring at the board, his whole mind sunk into the battle playing out in those few square inches.

Bai Ji sat across from him, one hand wrapped around a hand warmer tucked in his sleeve, the other holding a black stone.

The mountain wind whistled through the pavilion's pillars, carrying the rustle of pines and a biting chill.

Footsteps sounded on the stone steps behind them. The newcomer didn't come up to the pavilion—he stopped a few paces off, dropped to one knee, and reported with clasped fists: "My lord, urgent dispatch from Yanzhou."

It was Cha Jiang.

The young retainer who'd followed An Yi from Yuncheng was now one of his most trusted guard commanders, having taken over Mao Hua's old role.

An Yi had sent Mao Hua to the army, where he fit in better.

An Yi's hand, mid-move with a stone, paused for a beat, then came down as usual with a crisp click.

Without turning around, he said flatly, "Bring it here."

"Yes." Cha Jiang got up, stepped forward, and offered up a sealed letter with both hands, then quickly backed off and stood at attention with his hands at his sides.

An Yi took it, unfolded it, and ran his eyes over the writing.

The message was a detailed intelligence report on Xi Xu's rebellion in Yanzhou.

An Yi's face showed neither joy nor sorrow—not even a flicker of his brow.

When he was done, he casually handed the letter to Bai Ji across the table.

Bai Ji put down the chess piece in his hand, took the letter, and scanned it.

After a moment, a faint smile of anticipated satisfaction spread across his pale face, like a hunter who had been waiting long and finally heard the sound of prey stepping into a trap.

He gently placed the letter on a corner of the stone table, picked up the black piece again, and let his gaze fall back to the board. He said with unhurried ease, "Xi Xu of Yanzhou has made his move. Chaos is sure to engulf the Central Plains, and the whole realm will rise up like wildfire. My lord..."

He looked up, his deep brown eyes reflecting the vast sky beyond the pavilion: "The time... has come."

An Yi did not answer immediately. His gaze returned to the chessboard.

He reached out, took a white piece from the bowl. A soft *tap.*

The white piece fell—one move to seal the outcome.