Volume 1, Chapter 58 – The Human Race Annals

“Three-Year Autumn…”

Shi Lan murmured the name once, raised her cup, and drained it in one go.

The crisp, clean wine slid down her throat, and her heart loosened with it.

She lifted her hand to take the wine jar Jiang Li passed over and refilled her cup.

Jiang Li opened another jar, set his cup aside, and simply hugged the jar to his chest, taking two big swigs. Shi Lan drank at an unhurried pace.

“This stuff in the cup—say it’s good and it isn’t, say it’s not and, once you’ve finished it, you always feel a bit better.” After those two mouthfuls, Jiang Li’s expression turned a little desolate.

Shi Lan shook her head with a faint smile. “There’s an old saying: ‘Three cups and you glimpse the Dao, one drunken night dissolves a thousand sorrows.’ I don’t agree with it.”

Jiang Li paused. “ ‘One drunken night dissolves a thousand sorrows’—that’s wrong?”

Looking at the wine gently rippling in her cup, Shi Lan shook her head. “You get drunk to dissolve your sorrows, but when you wake up, they’re still there. Getting drunk doesn’t solve anything. Once you’re sober, nothing has changed. You still have to deal with it yourself. The only thing wine does is give you a way to run away for a while.”

In her previous life, Shi Lan had enjoyed tasting wine, but she hadn’t liked getting drunk. Wine had a way of amplifying emotions, making it easy for people to lose part of their self-control.

You could drink, but you couldn’t overdo it.

Jiang Li hugged the jar and took another swallow, staring up at the starry sky overhead. “Being able to run away for a while is already pretty good.”

Then he shook his head and sighed. “Who knows how long any of us can live. If you can be carefree for a day, that’s a day earned.”

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Jiang Li clearly had something weighing on his mind, but he just kept drinking in silence. In the blink of an eye, two jars of Autumn Dew were already in his belly.

Shi Lan was only halfway through her own jar when light snores started coming from Jiang Li’s direction.

She gave a small shake of her head and stood, about to send Jiang Li back to his room, when a figure landed silently beside him and sat down.

“Centurion?”

Seeing it was Huangfu Yun, Shi Lan was a little surprised.

Huangfu Yun smiled and pointed at the unopened jar of Autumn Dew that was left. “Mind sharing one with me?”

“Help yourself.”

Huangfu Yun grabbed the jar, tore off the clay seal, and tipped his head back, downing nearly half in one go.

Shi Lan sat back down again and refilled her empty cup.

“Centurion, can I ask you a question?” She tightened her grip on the cup and looked over at Huangfu Yun.

“Ask.” Huangfu Yun set down the jar and wiped the wine from the corner of his mouth.

“The Demon-Suppressing Army might not be able to evacuate the common folk, but getting yourselves out shouldn’t be a problem, right? Why not retreat?”

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She asked the question a little cautiously. She was simply curious about what motivated the Demon-Suppressing Army. People didn’t want to die by nature. If they knew they were staying to die, there had to be a reason.

To resist the demonic beasts?

That reason had always felt a little unreal to her. When you knew there was a chance to escape, staying behind to die for people you might not even know—she honestly didn’t know if she could do that.

“Shi Lan, I’ll be straight with you. There’s a lot of hidden stuff behind this demonic invasion. Even I don’t really understand it. On the day Cloud Mountain Gorge fell, all officers at or above the rank of centurion in the Demon-Suppressing Army received a single message.”

Huangfu Yun’s eyes dimmed. He took a drink of Autumn Dew and said in a low voice, “There will be no reinforcements.”

Shi Lan froze for a moment. No reinforcements?

“Border strongholds like Cloud Mountain Gorge all have domain gates directly linked to the Imperial Palace in the Central Heaven Domain. From the moment the demonic invasion began, after a batch of martial summons and an imperial decree came through the gate, it was sealed completely. There’s been no word since.”

Huangfu Yun’s fingers trembled slightly. “That imperial decree contained only one order: fight the demonic race to the bitter end.”

“Just because of that one decree?” Shi Lan felt a wave of absurdity. She’d thought there would be some far more complicated reason that made the Demon-Suppressing Army care so much about gaining or losing a single city.

Huangfu Yun shook his head and looked at Shi Lan. “If you don’t stand in the way, and I don’t stand in the way, and no one stands in the way, then who protects the territory of the human race? In the Chengtian Domain alone, there are countless ordinary Mortals who couldn’t hurt a chicken if they tried—far more than hundreds of millions. How are they supposed to escape the demonic beasts’ jaws?”

“The more demonic beasts that die here, the fewer people will die later.”

As he spoke, a trace of bitterness flashed in his eyes. “Aside from those grand-sounding reasons, we all still have families. As long as your family is still here, you can’t run like some desperado—turn tail in the face of battle and then spend the rest of your life on the run.”

Shi Lan fell silent.

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Huangfu Yun took two more swigs of wine, then, once he’d calmed himself a little, said, “Take out your Demon-Suppressing Token.”

Shi Lan pulled the token from her clothes and held it in her hand.

“Focus your mind and sense it. See what’s changed from before.”

Shi Lan sank her awareness into the Demon-Suppressing Token. Below her name, the number after the “battle merit” line had already changed from zero to one thousand three hundred and twenty.

“So this is battle merit? What’s it for?” she asked, puzzled.

“In the Imperial Court, you can trade battle merit for anything you want. That’s the reason the Demon-Suppressing Army has fought the demonic race to the bitter end all these years. And battle merit can be inherited.”

“Inherited?”

“If you die in battle, your battle merit is passed directly to your direct bloodline—your parents, or your children. You understand now?”

“Can that kind of inheritance really be trusted?”

Shi Lan was skeptical. There were so many people in the Demon-Suppressing Army, and even more direct relatives. How could you guarantee the merit went to the right person? And if the direct relatives weren’t in the Demon-Suppressing Army, even if the merit ended up with them, how would they ever know?

Huangfu Yun grinned. “Do you remember what I said when you joined the Demon-Suppressing Army?”

Shi Lan blinked, not sure which line he meant.

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“ ‘The Human Race Annals will forever remember your great righteousness.’ ” Huangfu Yun reminded her.

Shi Lan was confused. “Isn’t that just something you say to stir people up?”

“Every fallen comrade’s name will be recorded in the Human Race Annals. And the Human Race Annals is the foremost treasure of our race, the first treasure that anchors our fate.”

Hearing that, Shi Lan couldn’t help widening her eyes. The Human Race Annals was a treasure?!

“The Human Race Annals has existed since the moment our race gained a foothold in the Lingyang Realm. It’s been blessed and worshiped by countless Human Emperors and Sovereigns throughout the ages, nourished by endless vows and the fortune of the entire race. By now, it’s already a world-shocking treasure.”

Seeing the amazement on her face, Huangfu Yun’s smile grew.

“With the power of the Human Race Annals, forget tracing your direct bloodline to pass on your battle merit—if you die in battle and your merit is high enough to make the Human Emperor willing to sacrifice blood for you, it can even reverse life and death and bring you back from the grave.”

Shi Lan listened, stunned, her heart surging.

“At the end of the day, people still have their selfish sides…” Huangfu Yun let his smile fade, sighed once, and grabbed the snoring Jiang Li beside him before speaking:

“Get some rest early. Demonic beasts are appearing around Twin Moon City more and more often. Starting tomorrow, I’ll be leading troops out of the city every day to hunt them down. It won’t be like the past few days. I might not be able to keep everyone alive. There will be casualties.”

With that, Huangfu Yun emptied the last of the wine in the jar in a single swallow. His figure blurred, and with Jiang Li in hand, he vanished from the rooftop.