Immortality: Starting with a grave, I'm invincible when burying corpses.

On the first day of the eleventh year of Qiming, after a century, under the fleeting shower of stars, Mu Ling'er made a new wish.

That night, under the same starry sky, people from all over the country, in their own homes, entrusted their heartfelt wishes to the stars in their own ways.

A beautiful wish, a warm blessing, can always bring great comfort and give people the courage to live again.

Shooting stars may not grant wishes, but they can make people feel a moment of happiness and beauty, igniting the hope to continue.

……

In the thirteenth year of the Qiming era, the Daqi Navy clashed with the Yinjiyu Navy in the South Seas.

The 50,000-strong Qi navy clashed fiercely with an elite navy from the Yin-Yang region at sea.

Unfamiliar with naval warfare and the marine environment, the Daqi Navy was led into stormy waters by the elite forces of the Yin-Yang Domain and was completely wiped out in a sudden storm.

The first large-scale collision with the cathode region ended in Daqi's defeat.

Emperor Jun Huayang was furious and ordered the mobilization of 180,000 naval troops from the southern states, forming a behemoth with 1,500 warships of various sizes.

The navy of Daqi spent a full year crossing the South Seas to reach the South Suspended Sea, located in the northern part of the Yin-Yang region.

The two armies fought fiercely in the South China Sea for several months. Due to insufficient supplies, unfamiliarity with the sea environment, and inadequate firepower, they also inadvertently provoked the sea creature forces in the South China Sea.

Of the 180,000 troops of the Great Qi navy, more than half were lost, with only twelve damaged warships escaping back to Great Qi.

For the Great Qi, whose navy was not particularly advanced, long-range operations were ultimately too much of a stretch.

The Tianqi Domain is vast, spanning over 200,000 li (approximately 100,000 kilometers) in all directions, and is entirely composed of land.

On this landmass, which is predominantly land, land warfare has been the enduring theme for tens of thousands of years; whoever wins the land wars is the ultimate victor.

Every nation vying for dominance on this land focuses its development on its army, and the Great Qi is no exception.

Compared to its powerful army and air force, the navy of the Great Qi Dynasty was much weaker.

On the contrary, the navy of feudal lords like Donghai Dongtian and Haining Hou, who relied on the sea for their livelihood, was the truly elite force.

……

The fourteenth year of Qiming.

After suffering two major naval defeats, Emperor Huayang of the Great Qi Dynasty finally realized the shortcomings of the Great Qi in terms of its navy.

As an emperor who was determined to govern the country well and lead the Great Qi back to its peak, Jun Huayang could not allow his Great Qi to have such a huge flaw.

Jun Huayang paid a visit to Jun Cheng'an, intending to emulate the Cloud Sky Legion and create an invincible fleet that combines talismans, formations, mechanisms, and other technologies.

In the initial plan, the fleet will imitate the Cloud Battleship and use mechanical technology to create a large number of unmanned combat legions to solve the problem of insufficient maritime mobility.

A fleet is a complete combat force capable of launching combined sea, land, and air strikes.

The fleet's flagship, the "Fu Hai," was built to the standards of a mobile fortress, and its sheer size was truly exceptional.

In Jun Huayang's vision, the Fuhai would be thirty miles long and wide, and its armed forces would be enough to destroy any enemy in an instant.

Once completed, it will create a truly mobile island in the sea.

Preliminary estimates suggest that the entire fleet, at full strength, comprises 300,000 personnel and more than 500 warships of various sizes.

If the Great Qi's finances do not encounter any major problems, the fleet will be completed within forty years.

……

In the fifteenth year of Qiming, 200,000 Yin Yin Domain vanguard troops arrived in the South Seas and forcibly occupied Biyi Island, a large island located at the southernmost tip of the Tianqi Domain.

More than 800,000 mountain people who had lived on Biyi Island for generations were slaughtered, and their blood was spilled all over the mountains that their ancestors had worshipped for generations.

Even the corpses of the mountain people were not spared. The Yin Yin Domain vanguard collected the corpses of the mountain people and used their flesh and blood to build a protective array for the island.

When the news reached back, Emperor Huayang was furious and launched a saturation bombardment of Biyi Island with the Cloud Sky Legion as the main fighting force.

Flames, torrential rain, lightning, icicles, hurricanes, traps, artillery fire...

The Cloud Legion, which embodies the wisdom of many sects in the Great Qi Dynasty, fully demonstrated its powerful firepower.

In just ten days, almost all of the 200,000-strong Yin-Yang Domain vanguard troops were wiped out by the barrage of fire.

Only a few people who hid in the mountains survived by sheer luck.

These Yin-Yang Domain soldiers who managed to survive were all wiped out in the subsequent encirclement and suppression by Daqi.

The outstanding performance of the Cloud Sky Legion further strengthened Jun Huayang's belief.

The Great Qi must possess its own invincible fleet.

In October of the same year, in the imperial court, Jun Huayang declared war on the eighteen demon kingdoms of the Yin-Yang Domain by name.

At this point, a quarter of the seventy-two kingdoms in the Yin-Yang Domain were at war with the Great Qi.

……

In the sixteenth year of Qiming, strange phenomena appeared in the sky: the northern border was frozen for thousands of miles, and blizzards raged.

On the ninth day of the ninth lunar month, Shen Yunwei, the Northern Lord of Zhenbei, stepped into the realm of terrestrial immortals using the Dao of Ice and Snow, and called himself the Ice Phoenix Fairy.

In the same year, Shen Yunwei, who had no children, approached her younger sister Shen Chenwei and adopted her fifteen-year-old third daughter, Shen Zhixin, as her adopted daughter, and made her the first heir of the Duke of Zhenbei.

Thus, with Frost Immortal and Ice Phoenix Fairy in charge, the Northern Territory, like the Southern Frontier, entered an era of dual land immortals.

The two powerful lords, one in the south and one in the north, echoed each other from afar, causing unease among the officials in the court.

……

June of the seventeenth year of Qiming.

The Duke of Zhenbei, Shen Yunwei, has officially abdicated.

On the day of his abdication, without informing the Emperor of Daqi, Shen Yunwei, in the name of the Northern Lord, appointed his daughter Shen Zhixin as the new Duke of Zhenbei.

Throughout the long years, the hereditary succession of the Duke of Zhenbei was something the imperial court could not directly intervene in, but at least had to go through a process to symbolize the authority of the Daqi imperial family.

The request was made from the northern border to the emperor, who then agreed and issued an imperial edict to confer titles.

This time, however, the situation is completely different.

Shen Yunwei disregarded all past rules and, as the ruler of the Northern Territory, officially conferred titles upon his daughter.

No memorials were submitted to the court throughout the entire process; only after the investiture was completed and everything was over did a notification be sent to the court.

The last person to do this was Mu An decades ago.

At that time, Mu An, in his own name, conferred the title of King of Qishan upon Mu Ling'er.

The imperial court did not react at all, but instead sent congratulatory gifts afterward.

Now a similar thing is happening again. Although the Northern Border has not broken ties with the court, the emperor has sent people to deliver congratulatory gifts and made up for it with an imperial edict that is not very meaningful.

Those with even a modicum of knowledge in the world have all come to realize the shift in the relative strength of the various factions.

The once domineering Qi Dynasty has become increasingly weak, and its influence has been declining year by year.

After this incident, the Daqi court's control over the feudal lords will plummet to rock bottom, and there is probably no possibility of re-centralizing power.

The power struggle between the imperial court and the three major warlords was thus established.

If the vast snowfields above the snowfields and the island paradises in the East China Sea hadn't remained closed off and shown no intention of expanding outwards, the situation might have been even worse.