Chapter One: Five Years of War—The Return of the Exiled King

Northern Frontier, at the nation’s border.

Hundreds of helicopters stood in perfect formation.

A man clad in a war-time python-patterned robe stood tall upon a desolate stretch of land.

Above him, the twilight sun bled across the sky like spilled blood.

Before him, rows of gravestones, each marked by a mound of ceremonial attire.

On every tombstone, without exception, was engraved the same surname:

Xiao.

“Father. Mother.”

“And all my kin of the Xiao clan!”

“Your unfilial son, Xiao Ye, has returned!”

Xiao Ye’s face was ashen, his expression bleak. He suddenly knelt before the dozen gravestones, bowing his head nearly a hundred times with resounding force.

For over five years in the army, he had slain countless enemies, reclaimed borderlands, unified vast territories—accomplishing in five years what no war god before him had achieved.

Yet, few knew that his enlistment had been born not of choice, but of desperation.

His clan was destroyed, his family framed and slaughtered—fourteen souls, not one left whole.

He had only the option to run.

To flee, endlessly, day and night.

All for a single hope: to survive, so that one day he might avenge his bloodline.

In the end, he had sought refuge in a border military camp, and by a twist of fate, become a soldier.

In this moment, Xiao Ye’s body trembled.

These dozen gravestones were the obsession that kept him crawling from piles of corpses time and again.

They were his sole reason to go on living.

“Lord Xiao, we have tracked down your wife’s whereabouts!”

A figure with a straight back and the aura of a dragon leapt from a helicopter, landing heavily and kneeling behind Xiao Ye, presenting a tablet to him.

On the screen was surveillance footage.

Xiao Ye’s expression changed at once as he took the tablet, and murderous intent flared in his eyes.

On the screen, a woman of delicate form was locked inside a pigsty—sleeping among pigs, eating with pigs.

A centipede-like scar marred her face.

Her beauty destroyed.

She was filthy from head to toe, her eyes void and lifeless, her frail body radiating only the dull, dead dimness of someone who had lost all sense of self.

“Xue’er…”

“All these years, Xiao Ye has failed you.”

Xiao Ye’s eyes turned bloodshot, murderous rage erupting so fiercely that the ground beneath him caved in, leaving a deep pit.

This sight did not escape the man behind him, Red Dragon, who growled with fury, “Lord Xiao, allow me to send our men to wipe out the four great clans of old—let blood pay for blood!”

Above, thousands of soldiers roared in unison.

The mountain itself seemed to tremble with their fury.

“It’s only a matter of time.”

“No rush.”

Xiao Ye’s face remained emotionless, but the killing intent within him was barely contained.

This was the first time since becoming a war god that he had unleashed such murderous wrath.

Long ago, his wife, Qin Xue’er, was his childhood sweetheart.

They were fated for a happy union.

Yet now, though she still lived, she had been reduced to sharing a pigsty with livestock.

A fate more cruel than death.

He looked back at the tablet.

Within the pigsty, an old woman, stooped with age and white-haired, carried a bucket of swill, entering the pen.

She poured the swill into the trough.

Then, glancing around to be sure she was unobserved, she approached Qin Xue’er, trembling as she drew a steamed bun from her pocket, her face kindly as she placed it before Qin Xue’er. “Xue’er, here, eat something…”

Suddenly, the pigs in the pen shrieked, startled.

Outside, a man with a pockmarked, scarred face barged in, kicking the old woman to the ground.

He seized the bucket of swill and dumped it over both women’s heads.

“You old wretch, still sneaking food to this filthy whore?”

“How many times have I told you, if you try to sneak her food again, you’ll live in the pigsty with her!”

“Damn it! This ugly, scarred slut—if she weren’t so hideous, I could rent her out for a hundred bucks a time and make thousands a night!”

“You old hag, always pleading before Brother Wang—screw you!”

With that, the scarred man kicked the elderly woman several more times.

Then, turning, he leered at Qin Xue’er’s once-lovely figure.

He reached out, then thought better of it.

“Disgusting—so filthy, so ugly. Give it a few more days and you’ll be no different from these pigs. The Qin family’s precious daughter, once the pride of the city? Hahaha…”

The scarred man roared with laughter.

Qin Xue’er’s eyes, however, remained empty.

Her face was expressionless, a walking corpse in all but name.

“Huang Long, please—give Xue’er something to eat! I beg you! Don’t make her eat pig slop anymore!”

The old woman clung desperately to the scarred man’s leg. “For old times’ sake—she was your classmate, after all. Let me live in the pigsty if you must, but at least give her real food!”

“Screw you!”

Huang Long kicked her again, spat thickly in her face, and laughed with perverse pleasure. “You want food? Sure, no problem!”

“Go lick the pig shit clean by the wall! If you eat it all, I’ll feed her meat and rice right away!”

Once, this woman had presided over the mighty Qin family. Now, without a moment’s hesitation, she crawled toward the pile of filth, ready to put it in her mouth.

“Hahahaha! Look at you, mother and daughter both—a waste of air just being alive!”

The scarred man mocked without restraint. “Look at your daughter! Once the most beautiful woman in the city—now look at her! Isn’t all this your fault?”

“A few mouthfuls of pig filth to ease your guilt—a fair trade, isn’t it?”

He laughed, wild and cruel.

Xiao Ye, watching the tablet, clenched his fists so tightly that blood dripped from his palms, staining the screen crimson.

That elderly woman was Qin Xue’er’s mother.

The very woman Xiao Ye once despised most.

She had done everything to prevent Qin Xue’er from marrying him, slandering him as a mongrel, forcing her daughter into an alliance for profit with another family.

And now, she had fallen so low.

“Why so slow? Can’t swallow?”

“Let me help you!”

Huang Long seized the old woman by the hair, smashing her face into the pile of filth again and again.

“Eat!”

“Eat it all, you old hag!”

Li the matriarch uttered not a sound, enduring it in silence.

“The time has come.”

Xiao Ye shut his eyes, and with a crack, shattered the tablet in his hand.

“Yes, sir!”

Behind him, Red Dragon bowed with utmost respect.

Five minutes later.

Above the pigsty.

The thunder of helicopter rotors filled the air.

In the next instant—

Boom!

A figure plummeted from a hundred meters above, crashing into the earth and carving out a massive crater.

“Huang Long, the King of Hell has come for you!”

A cold, murderous laugh rained down from the sky, accompanied by an overwhelming, violent aura.

In a flash, a head rolled to the ground.

Blood sprayed, painting the earth red.

Not even a scream escaped before death claimed its due.