The Demon Lords

Chapter 1064: Chapter 257: Curtain Up! (Part 2)

Bowing down immediately, covering his face, he started coughing because a noodle came out of his nostril.

After finally dealing with it, Lord Zheng looked up again and said awkwardly:

"Delicious, delicious, ate too fast, haha."

...

After breakfast,

originally,

Lord Zheng thought this would be another unremarkable day like yesterday.

Everything was just for the arrangements for tomorrow’s grand wedding.

Lord Zheng believed that Siniang and Xue Three, along with Fan Zhengwen, would come up with a better plan based on Plan A.

This made Lord Zheng feel a sense of anticipation,

As the main lead,

he found himself looking forward to the premiere.

However, Lord Zheng was mistaken. After breakfast, the Regent mounted his horse and asked Zheng Fan:

"Young Mr. Su, we intend to go hunting, the poem on the governor going hunting sent by Master Yao earlier, greatly pleases me. Would young Mr. Su be interested in accompanying us today?"

When a king asks if you are willing or not, you actually have no second option.

"How dare I disobey!"

...

It is rumored that when Yao Zizhan had just taken the position of governor of the three borders of Qian State and led a hunting party, all towns, armies, and forts, generals followed, bodyguards went out, making him the unrivaled focus at the time.

This was not purely for play but was a deliberate way to announce the unity of the three borders of Qian State to the outside world, coupled with that governor’s hunting poem, which significantly enhanced the effect.

But this time,

the hunt by the Regent of Chu did not seem like a routine to Lord Zheng, but rather like a trap.

Mr. Chen was also called upon, so four of them rode out of the royal villa.

Lord Zheng deliberately noticed that the royal guards did not follow, it was actually just the four of them going out.

However, not long after leaving the royal villa, everyone dismounted when they saw the old carriage driver and his carriage that they saw before, waiting there.

They dismounted and got in the carriage,

everything was no different from the way they came, even the seating was the same.

But,

who goes hunting by carriage?

The carriage swayed, moving along the road.

Gradually,

the road disappeared,

and it became bumpy,

the carriage also began to jolt along.

The Regent, sitting inside the carriage, said, "Here, a road should be built."

The swordsmith, leaning with closed eyes against the carriage wall, nodded.

Zheng Fan lifted the curtain and looked outside, seeing desolation, and ahead, a frozen river.

Finally,

the carriage came to a stop,

and the bumping ceased.

The old driver said:

"Your Majesty, we have arrived."

The Regent was the first to get out of the carriage, followed by the swordsmith, then Mr. Chen, and lastly, Zheng Fan.

Once down, Lord Zheng instinctively stretched and pinched his own hip.

The Regent looked at Zheng Fan and said, "Thank you, young Mr. Su, the road was indeed hard to travel."

Zheng Fan smiled and shook his head, "Your Majesty need not be so, there was no road originally, as people traveled repeatedly, a road formed."

The swordsmith took a deep breath, clearly resonating with these words.

The Regent pointed ahead, at an old inn by the frozen river, next to it, a small ferry dock.

"These words too can accompany wine, allow me to clear the inn first, then we shall catch a fish and drink with young Mr. Su."

A bewildered Lord Zheng stepped back half a step, cupped his hands, and said, "Thank you, Your Majesty."

Then,

the Regent faced the old inn,

and said;

"I have arrived."

"Creak..."

The inn’s door,

slowly opened.

From inside, walked out a man in a black robe, his face showed traces of age, but his movements had a hint of playfulness.

The man sat on a stone block at the inn’s entrance,

and called out:

"Fourth Brother, the last time I heard the word ’I,’ our father was still alive."

This man was none other than the Fifth Prince of Chu, Xiong Tingshan.

Why is the Regent still a Regent, why he has captured and defeated most of his brothers, recruited and drawn in most of Chu’s nobles, yet hasn’t ascended the throne.

After all, those who can sit on the Regent’s seat usually do not like this position.

The reason lies with the Fifth Prince of Chu before them, as he had not been captured yet.

Since Duke of Chu entered Chu with his followers, the battles between Chu people and the tribes of Shanyue never ceased.

Perhaps, the Shanyue tribes indeed couldn’t compare with the Barbarians, but the resilience of the Shanyue was still a headache, and after the initial victories, when they could no longer withstand the Chu people on the battlefield, they began hiding in the hills and marshes, using the environment to continue their resistance.

This made the cost of eradicating them high, and they easily revived.

But the Chu were indeed wise, to be precise, the dukes who received orders from the Xia emperor to open territories and drive out the Barbarians, they and their descendants indeed managed well.

An era of Chu Emperor, to deal with this situation, dismantled the Shanyue’s communal living and tribal model, first wooing Shanyue tribes by goodwill, then changing the organizational model of those tribes, infiltrating with top-down reforms, essentially a "soil-to-stream" reform in this world.

At the same time, cultural invasion intensified, the romance and aesthetics of the Chu people were not just for romance but to create a sense of cultural identity.

One hand continued military suppression, one hand executed soil-to-stream reforms, and another hand launched cultural invasions on compliant Shanyue tribes by sending their heirs and nobles to study, live, and learn in Chu State’s Ing Capital City. With various combined measures, the Shanyue tribes could no longer resist, and a hundred years later, apart from some unstable regions and remaining hardened groups, the Shanyue within Chu State could no longer create much wave, and many Shanyue now see themselves as Chu people.