Lin Zhentian propped half his face up from the mud, his right eye swollen shut with blood and his left eye streaked with crimson veins.
Lin Yuan held a cigar between two fingers, circling it in front of the man's face.
"How many secret outposts does the Lin family have in the Imperial Capital?"
"...Five."
"Where is the secret path to the treasury?"
Lin Zhentian fell silent for two seconds.
Lin Yuan pressed his boot down onto the man's face with three degrees more force.
"Twelve meters beneath the southern ancestral hall," Lin Zhentian rasped. "Walk twenty steps north; there is a mechanism under the third bluestone slab."
"Good."
Lin Yuan stood up abruptly and turned to the grenadiers beside him.
"Open the treasury for me."
A squad of grenadiers, clutching shotguns, sprinted toward the ancestral hall. Their boots crunched against the rubble and debris of the ruins.
There were still survivors in the back half of the manor.
Several Lin family elders were hiding in the ruins of the side hall. Leaning against a half-collapsed stone wall, they managed to piece together a Silver-tier combined magic circle, firing a beam of elemental light toward the tank positions.
The beam struck the side armor of the nearest tank, leaving nothing but a charred black scorch mark.
the grenadier squad leader glanced down at the mark, turned, and tossed two high-explosive grenades into the ruins.
Boom. Boom.
The Silver-tier array shattered under the shockwave of the first explosion.
The ruins returned to a deathly silence.
Lin Yuan didn't look back; he was staring at his interface panel.
On the system radar, the red dots within the Lin family manor were flickering out one by one. The progress was steady, advancing from the east side of the estate to the west.
Lin Zhentian remained on the ground.
Propping himself up with both hands, he managed to lift his upper body slightly.
"Yuan'er..."
Lin Yuan did not turn around.
"Yuan'er, listen to me."
Lin Zhentian's voice was torn and slurred, but it grew louder.
"I am your biological father. Half the blood in your veins belongs to the Lin family. I was wrong back then... I sent you to the Northern Border to give you a chance to live! Those assassins were sent by your eldest brother without—"
"The leader of those assassins," Lin Yuan interrupted, still not looking back, "before he died in that drafty wooden shack, spat out the original employment contract."
Lin Yuan closed his panel and turned around.
Lin Zhentian's words cut off instantly.
"The wax seal on it was your private one. Three thousand gold coins to buy my head."
Lin Yuan walked back to him, looking down at the face covered in blood and mud.
"A chance to live?"
Lin Yuan drew a modified revolver from the inner pocket of his overcoat, the barrel pointing down.
"Yuan'er, I beg you—I'll listen to you from now on—you are the Archduke, I'll be your dog—"
"A tiger does not eat its cubs?"
Lin Yuan leveled the gun.
"Then why didn't you mention that phrase when you were hiring the assassins?"
Lin Zhentian lunged forward with both hands, grabbing the cuff of Lin Yuan's boot.
"Please—"
"The law of the Great Abyss has only one rule."
Bang.
An armor-piercing round erupted from the barrel.
Lin Zhentian's body lurched backward, collapsing sideways onto the rubble. No further sound came from him.
Lin Yuan tucked the revolver back into his inner pocket. As he passed a tank, he tapped the tip of his boot against the hull to scrape off the blood.
"Squad leader."
"Present!"
"Any survivors left in the manor?"
"Sector 3 sweep complete. No survivors."
"Recover all corpses. Same for weapons and magical artifacts. Leave nothing behind."
"Acknowledged."
Lin Yuan turned and walked toward the ancestral hall.
The treasury had already been breached.
The entrance to the secret passage was beneath the third bluestone slab. Stone steps led downward, flanked by grenadiers holding mana-crystal lamps.
Lin Yuan walked down.
The basement was the size of five ordinary rooms. The four walls were lined with shelves stacked with various containers—leather pouches, mana-crystal bottles, black iron chests piled in corners, and several storage rings slotted into specialized racks.
Lin Yuan opened the nearest iron chest; inside were two layers of neatly stacked gold bricks.
Qian Duoduo followed him in, holding an oil lamp to scan the room. His eyes went wide.
"This... how many years did the Lin family spend hoarding all this..."
"Long enough for them to save it, and long enough for me to take it."
Lin Yuan opened his system panel, setting the recovery range to cover the entire manor.
[Resource Recovery Activated. Scanning...]
[Detected Recoverable Targets: Noble-tier Remains ×1823, Silver-tier Elite Remains ×5682, Gold-tier Powerhouse Remains ×7, Dark Gold-tier Cultivator Remains ×1, Magical Weapons ×12,600 units, Top-grade Mana Crystals ×9340 units, High-purity Gold Coins ×82.7 million...]
[Confirm total recovery?]
He pressed the confirmation button.
The system notification sound chimed over forty times in rapid succession, each one adding to his total as wealth flooded into his account.
Lin Yuan watched the balance climb from 30 million, past 50 million, over 80 million, past the 100 million mark, finally stopping at 123 million.
The top-grade mana crystal count climbed to over 27,000 units before settling.
The progress bar in the lower right corner slowly reached the top, flashing a prompt:
[Lv 4 [Interstellar Dimensional Phase] Prerequisites: Met. Upgrade available at any time.]
Qian Duoduo leaned over from the side. When he saw the balance on the screen, he had to grab a shelf to keep from collapsing.
"One... one hundred and twenty million?"
"The foundation of the Lin family over hundreds of years amounts to this much," Lin Yuan said.
He closed the panel and walked out.
The surface clearing was finished. The entire Lin family manor had fallen into a profound silence.
The ruins remained ruins, now dotted with evenly distributed craters and deep ruts carved by tank treads.
The engines of a hundred tanks were idling, white exhaust drifting slowly from the tailpipes.
Three thousand grenadiers had regrouped, standing in two rows awaiting orders.
Just as Lin Yuan was about to speak, the sound of horns echoed over the Imperial Capital.
The Dragon-Bone Horns—thick as a man's arm. The sound waves pressed down, making the very streets hum and vibrate.
The sound came from three directions simultaneously—a row from the north, a row from the east, and a row from the west. The layers of sound were deafening.
Qian Duoduo poked his head out from behind a tank, his face turning pale.
"Emperor Charlie... he's deployed the Imperial Guard."
At the end of the northern street, the first banner appeared.
Polished silver armor, five men to a row, marching into the main thoroughfare with perfectly synchronized steps.
The second row, the third row... the column stretched so far that the end was nowhere in sight.
To the east and west, the same silver armor flooded from the intersections, surrounding the Lin family manor.
In the sky, hundreds of magic circle nodes lit up, hovering at high altitude. The blue locking rings of the Royal Mages descended, centering on the interior of the manor.
Qian Duoduo gripped the tank's antenna, his whole body trembling.
"Fifty thousand. Emperor Charlie has pulled out the entire Imperial Guard. Yuan-ge, this is a regular army. They have Gold-tier generals—"
Lin Yuan looked up, scanning the three directions.
Fifty thousand guards. A hundred mages. The aura of Gold-tier combat energy radiated from the northern column, creating a suffocating pressure.
Lin Yuan lowered his head, feeling the weight of the revolver in his inner pocket. He pulled another cigar from his pocket, bit the end, and lit it.
"Old Qian."
"Yeah?"
"How many seconds did it take for Lin Zhentian to cough up the location of the treasury?"
Qian Duoduo froze for a moment.
"About... five seconds?"
"Mm."
Lin Yuan exhaled a cloud of smoke and glanced at the magical locking rings in the sky, casually tapping his ash against the tank's armor.
"A man like Emperor Charlie," Lin Yuan said, "should be worth quite a bit more than Lin Zhentian."
At the front of the northern guard, a general mounted on a golden Pegasus hovered in mid-air. He unfurled a golden scroll, and an amplification spell roared his voice across the battlefield:
"By Imperial Decree of His Majesty—the Lin family rebel, Lin Yuan, is to lay down his arms and surrender on his knees immediately!"