Silent Crown

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

Ye Qingxuan opened his eyes and saw the faint light of dawn.

It seemed that he had been dreaming for a long time. That d*mn Hermes had appeared in the dream, as well as the first pope. But for some reason, although he also appeared in the dream, he did not seem like himself.

He still remembered a few episodes from the beginning, but when he got up the broken and chaotic fragments quickly melted in his memory.

"D*mn it…" Ye Qingxuan rubbed his forehead. He was still a little sleepy. Although he had slept the whole night he still felt like he had stayed up late.

The sound of the carriage rocking continued, and a loud clamor from outside.

He opened the curtain and saw refugees in ragged clothes on both sides of the road. Most of the hundreds of refugees had no shoes, and they walked barefooted through the mud that was frozen with morning dew, their meager body temperature turning it into soft soil as they trampled over it.

The morning dew made them shiver.

In just a quarter of an hour, many fights broke out over food.

Some people walked until they could walk no more, then fall beside the road.

A child was crying.

Even so, none of them dared get in front of Ye Qingxuan's carriage. When they saw his white hair they kneeled on the ground and did not dare to look up until he had passed by.

"What's going on?" Ye Qingxuan asked.

The driver he had hired was quite courageous and did not kneel to him. He looked back and said, "My Lord, these people are all victims."

Ye Qingxuan was silent for a while.

He already understood.

For the past couple of days, all he had seen were desolate cities and towns. It had been a thousand miles of empty towns and villages occupied by bandits. Even the bandits looked sickly, and could barely hold their knives.

These people had abandoned their land because they feared the calamity of war and had become refugees fluent in the ways of the wilderness. There were also wealthy households that had fled hardship. They had equipped their strong servants with swords, and they worked together to form a team as they drove along the muddy road.

They were trying to stay far away from the flames of war.

Ye Qingxuan sighed softly and shook his head to dispel the unrealistic myths that were in his dream from his mind. He stared at the tragic scene before him.

This was reality.

He pulled the curtain back.

There was nothing he could do about this.

At a time like this, when money could not buy food, it had been difficult for him and his driver to obtain food for their horse.

What was funny was that Ye Qingxuan had done a good job facing the world's heroes, but now those heroes were busy with their own affairs and had no time for him.

Everywhere they went, musicians trembled with fear and kept their distance, none of them daring to block him. There were even those who had prepared supplies for him so that he could be on his way all the quicker.

This carriage had been given to him by someone else.

Since coming to the East, Ye Qingxuan had felt a sense of alienation entangle him. Although this was his homeland, everyone looked at him like he was an outsider.

Even in war and calamity, they wanted to have nothing to do with him.

They just kept their distance.

They pretended he didn't exist.

Their attitude of not cooperating and ignoring him was extremely irritating.

Ye Qingxuan closed his eyes and tapped his fingers on his seat.

He didn't mind others not treating him with proper respect. Besides slighting and keeping their distance, they didn't dare do anything, not even daring to look straight at him.

All he wanted to do was take Bai Xi away.

He didn't care about anything else.

Soon, a sound came from outside the carriage.

"Sir, we can't go forward anymore."

Ye Qingxuan opened the curtain and saw the refugees surging in front of him. The sound of crying and shouting came from them. Amidst the chaos, the towering city gate before them was shut firmly. Cliffs hung high on both sides, and armored soldiers looked down on them with cold eyes, bows in hand and quivers filled with arrows.

Above the gate, the musician who defended the city yelled angrily, and the sounds of bowstrings tightening merged into one. Under this deadly threat, the refugees surged backward like a tide, no longer daring to go forward.

Finally, everyone saw Ye Qingxuan heading towards the gate.

They felt his gentle and majestic wave of aether, and aether that was difficult for ordinary people to detect spread out. The faces of the musician defending the city changed.

"Halt where you are, or we will kill you under the full authority of the law!"

"Why can't we come through?" Ye Qingxuan's voice rang out before him, still clear over the distance between them.

The musician defending the city's expression changed a bit, but his teeth were still gritted. "These rebels bring bandits with them! If we open the gates even a little there will be chaos! The gate is shut for the security of the nation. Without orders from the higher-ups, no one can pass…"

Ye Qingxuan frowned, lifted his hand, and threw the signet toward the gate. It was proof of his identity that the Emperor of Aurora had bestowed on him all those years ago in the Sacred City.

"If the Emperor's decree has not changed, then I am still a noble of the Empire of Aurora, the head of the Ye family… Even I can't pass?"

All was silent. At that moment darkness flashed before the musician's eyes.

The head of the Ye family?

Wait, hadn't the Ye family been destroyed decades ago?

But the signet before him was unmistakably conferred by His Highness himself. But now weren't the Nine Families of the Dragon Bloodline in rebellion? And the nobles of the Nine Families had clearly been ruined…

Maybe he didn't know yet?

No, the one who was coming had already achieved a Scepter, so it was absolutely impossible that he would be that stupid.

Or was this one of Bai Heng's tricks?

For a moment the musician who was guarding the city's thoughts spun. He could not understand Ye Qingxuan's reason for coming, and his level was absolutely not high enough to spread the message among the many Scepter musicians. He quickly remembered the orders he had received yesterday. He gritted his teeth, hardened his heart and through the signet aside.

"No!" He categorically denied Ye Qingxuan's request. "Without His Majesty's orders, or an official's command, the gates cannot open!"

Ye Qingxuan sighed. "Then where is your official?"

"Inside the city."

"And His Majesty?"

"You fool, he's in the capital, of course." The musician guarding the city looked at him like he was an idiot.

"That is to say, if I don't have His Majesty's decree, and don't have your official's command, I can't enter the city." Ye Qingxuan nodded. "But if I can't enter the city, how can I ask your official for his command? Or ask His Majesty to make a decree?"

The musician paused and looked embarrassed.

"Haha, it was a joke, please pay no mind." Ye Qingxuan sighed and rolled up his sleeves. "At first I didn't expect you to be able to make me go get my things back so smoothly. But since you're in my way, I can't be blamed for getting involved personally, can I?" Before he had finished speaking, the New Testament Sword appeared in his hands, and the World Tree's arrays condensed in the sky.

His calm wave of aether grew violent and rushed into the air.

The whole city shook with a loud crash.

It was as if the sun had descended. Dust flew up frightfully and danced in the air.

Ear piercing alarms sounded from within the gate. In a flash, hundreds of musicians who had been awaiting orders took off into the air, and a terrible pressure locked onto Ye Qingxuan.

"Yes, this is more fun." Ye Qingxuan laughed.

This was right. This was right.

If there was no one to block his way, he wouldn't have to play the villain.

…

Heaven's Gate was built to guard against danger. It was situated between two mountains. The mountains were high, and there was nowhere to climb them. The three gates were nearly unassailable, inside and outside. The walls were filled with arrow slits and other mechanisms, and every 20 paces, there was a pot of oil that was kept boiling day and night.

For common people, a height of several hundred meters could be considered as reaching into the clouds, but for a musician, even a common one, with a little preparation they could fly over it.

However, compared to the impregnable city gate, the sky above the gate was the real death trap. Between the three gates, Redbud Gate was the biggest, but Heaven's Gate was the most dangerous.

This was because this place was blessed by the Great Wall.

The gate on the ground was as strong as metal, and the air above the gate was filled with torrents of aether, forming an invisible wall. Once you had carelessly entered it, you would be locked down by the Great Wall within an instant. Next, all the terrible power of the Empire of Aurora would be added to it, and a pressure powerful enough to crush coal into diamonds would kill any living thing.

The ground had an impregnable pass to defend it, and the sky was covered by the Great Wall.

This truly was Heaven's Gate.

Compared to the sky that was seemingly empty, but really hid mortal danger, it would be much easier to break through on the ground. In the histories of past dynasties, Heaven's Gate had only been broken through twice, and one of those times it had been opened from the inside by traitors.

The only time that counted as a true breakthrough, they had used the most brutal method—they had forcibly attacked Heaven's Gate for six months. Corpses had filled the field, and they had captured the city by means of piling them up to a great height.

Thus, all along, people had unparalleled confidence in Heaven's Gate.

But now that unshakable confidence had dissipated.

And there was only one enemy.

But that guy… Was he really human?

At that moment, a torrent of aether erupted from Ye Qingxuan's body, intertwining into a burning cloud of light in the sky. Under the cover of the World Tree's arrays, the lightning formed by the Music Theory of Reform emerged from the cloud of light. The startling electricity gathered together into a bunch and fell into Ye Qingxuan's hand, blending with the New Testament Sword.

Facing the slowly rising sword of electricity, the wall that was made of bluestone, reinforced with enchantments, and nearly unbreakable under the cover of the Dragon's Bloodline trembled.

The gate roared madly like a beast of prey.

Dust flew up chaotically and scattered in all directions.

In the blazing light and heat, the King of Yellow's crown emerged from the void, and bestowed its blessing upon Ye Qingxuan, causing its majestic divinity to run through his body, flowing between him and the World Tree.

The incarnation of the deity had arrived.

The power of a god in the hands of a man radiated out a majestic movement.

Gungnir, which had nearly pierced Avalon's defenses in a single attack, reappeared. One, two, three, four, and finally, with the power of the New World, dozens of Gungnirs overlapped, reproducing the martial power of the catastrophe Odin.

At that moment, the spear of destruction cleaved through the air!

The roar of the heavens and earth shaking spread hundreds of miles. The earth that had been solidified into a monolithic block trembled, and beyond the coverage of the enchantment, a ringlike crack that covered all of Heaven's Gate faintly appeared.

Originally Heaven's Gate had seemed like a nail that had been hammered into a strategically located position, but now how could this nail be prevented from falling apart under Ye Qingxuan's attack?

In a flash, he had broken through the outer enchantments, and as he collided with the projection of the Great Wall, numerous cracks emerged from the void. Amid the roar, the burning Gungnir inched forward.

The musician who was defending the city's face went pale. He wanted to retreat, but he was fixed in place by the immense pressure. It was difficult to hide, and he could only watch as Gungnir inched closer to his head.

Even if the Great Wall consumed 90 percent of its power, the remaining ten percent still could not be resisted by humans! Just the aftermath would be enough to burn everyone in the city to ash.

At that moment, a hand pulled the musician away from there, threw him to the side, and then faced the oncoming Gungnir.

In the blazing light, powerful turbulence spread out, like a giant's wild heartbeat, like iron drums, like thunder, shaking people to the core and making everyone's vision go dark.

After the lightning disappeared, the slightly older middle-aged man could not help but take a step back. His hand was scorched black, and his wounds had difficulty closing as electricity still ran through them.

He sighed, closed his hand, and looked at the musician who had gone limp beside him. His eyes went cold. "You should have notified me earlier about this sort of thing. Why did you take matters into your own hands?"

The musician's face twitched. He said nothing.

He sighed and waved impatiently. "I don't know who told you to do this. You can go explain it to the commandants yourself." Two commandants quickly came forward and dragged the musician away, just like pulling a dead dog away by its collar, and pulled him off into the city.

Now the middle-aged man shook his head helplessly and hid his injured hand behind him. He looked at the young man below the city.

"Long time no see, little Yezi."

"Mr. Hu?"

Ye Qingxuan was stunned, and could not help but laugh softly. "I trust you've been well?"