After you finished raising the army, you moved your headquarters to the spot within your territory closest to the capital, waiting for the imperial forces to arrive.
The court didn't keep you waiting long; barely a month after your relocation, the imperial army was already at your doorstep.
They say when troops pass a hundred thousand they blot out earth and sky—this force of three hundred thousand stood so wide you couldn't see the end.
Seeing the imperial troops had arrived, you ignored how many eyes were watching the battle and paid no heed to your own men, whose courage had already shattered.
Under the stunned gaze of the crowd, you charged straight at the army—yes, you never counted on the few thousand soldiers you'd cobbled together.
What you relied on, from start to finish, was your own strength; you truly could blast apart the whole world.
Plunging into the host, you activated the Divine Skill of the Vajra Body to form a ten-foot golden form around you, then began a wholesale slaughter.
No one could stop you; with one roar you made several thousand nearby men bleed from every orifice, and a single Primordial Chaos Palm strike felled dozens on the spot.
Arrows that flew at you were shattered by your golden body; even the huge machines the court had built specifically to deal with Peak Masters couldn't get close.
The three Peak Masters who had come with the army tried to block you; you killed each of them with a single move.
You rampaged back and forth through the army for a full half-hour; at least thirty or forty thousand died by your hand, until the soldiers no longer dared advance.
Then, with a leap, before anyone could react, you smashed your palm into the imperial banner and the surrounding commanders.
After that you told the rest of the troops, "Lay down your arms; those who surrender will not be killed."
Bolstered by your millennium of Internal Energy, your voice carried for dozens of li in every direction.
The final tally: tens of thousands slain, tens of thousands fled, and well over a hundred thousand taken captive.
News of the battle swept the land; no one had dreamed your martial prowess had reached a level where you could carve through an army of hundreds of thousands.
Everyone knew that although a Peak Master's Internal Energy is inexhaustible, if the fight drags on the body itself can't endure.
And if enemy Masters tie you down on the field, a disciplined ten-thousand-man corps plus a few heavy engines will leave even the strongest Peak Master torn to pieces.
At twenty-nine you folded the hundred-thousand captives into your own ranks, added recruits gathered everywhere, and formed a two-hundred-thousand-man army.
After a few months of drilling, you marched straight on the capital.
At thirty you seized the capital and proclaimed that the Great Yuan Dynasty was no more.
The Dynasty's princes naturally refused to accept it; they banded together and raised an army of a million and a half, storming toward the capital.
Of course, even with those numbers, the outcome was the same—you carved straight through them.
From that moment the Great Yuan Dynasty was utterly extinguished.
Next you visited every School that had a Peak Master in residence; using the Life-and-Death Talismans you had invented, plus threats to their Legacy, you forced those Masters to serve you.
Counting True Martial Mountain and the Formless Temple, you now controlled seventeen Peak Masters.
Meanwhile, part of your army had been training in the Dragon-Elephant Technique, and some had reached the second-rate Realm.
You assigned each Peak Master ten thousand troops to quell the unrest in every province while reassuring the common folk.
With Peak Masters leading them, the uprisings across the land were quickly crushed.
At thirty-one you held the enthronement rites, declared yourself emperor, and changed the dynastic name to Great Xia, founding the Great Xia Dynasty and styling yourself the Celestial Martial Emperor.
After taking the throne you announced a three-year tax exemption; to keep local officials from defying the order, you sent the Jianghu Schools under your control to supervise them.
Next you rooted out every corrupt official inside the capital, executing their entire clans.
To identify them accurately, you created the Mind-Shift Technique based on certain mind-bewitching arts of the Demon Sect, letting you control a person's will and force them to speak the truth.
With the grain and silver confiscated from those households, you opened the granaries in every region and relieved the famine.
Because so many officials had been executed, you issued an open call for talent: anyone with ability and administrative skill could step straight into office.
Although the Great Yuan Dynasty had a similar imperial-examination system, most of the places were monopolized by the great clans, leaving only a tiny share for the poor and the commoners; this news gave countless talented but frustrated men a glimmer of hope.
At thirty-two, with talent pouring in from every province, the machinery of state finally ran smoothly—then you raised the butcher's knife against the great clans.
At thirty-three, you slaughtered every clan that preyed on the people and fattened itself on their blood; under your overwhelming power, nothing could stand in your way.
At thirty-four, you founded Schools across the Realm to enlighten the common folk, spread basic mathematics, physics, biology and more from your previous life, issued a raft of policies that benefited the people, and vigorously encouraged childbirth.
At thirty-five, life for the common people improved day by day under your policies; after repeated petitions from your ministers you finally, though reluctantly, agreed to a nationwide selection to expand the imperial harem.
At thirty-six, you established the Great Xia Academy of Sciences, deposited there the more Advanced scientific knowledge you had summarized from your previous life, and under your guidance the Academy produced Great Xia's first steam engine.
At thirty-seven, you pushed Great Xia into the industrial age and launched an era of grand infrastructure; using the cement formula you provided, roads were paved across the nation.
To finish the nationwide road-building faster, you offered superior martial arts as payment and enlisted Martial Artists in the construction effort.
At thirty-eight, you had subdued every power on your continent, and Great Xia's first internal-combustion engine was built.
At thirty-nine, the appearance of firearms began to drive down crime rates among Martial Artists the world over.
At forty, you created the Basic Body-Forging Technique and disseminated it across the Realm to improve everyone's physique; the method cannot generate Internal Energy, it can only strengthen the body.
At forty-one, with the formation of an ocean-going fleet you set foot on the road to global supremacy, for every sign indicated that this world, too, is round.
At fifty, under your impetus Great Xia's weaponry had reached the level of your previous world's First World War.
At fifty-five, with overwhelmingly superior arms you quickly unified the globe.
At sixty, you enfeoffed your sons and daughters across the world, dispatching aides to assist in their rule.
At seventy, thanks to martial arts you still looked young; after years of continuous exploration of the martial path you invented a method to condense Qi into liquid and liquid into a pellet.
It compresses one's Internal Energy until it liquefies, then coalesces into a pellet.
Regrettably, this is only a compression of energy, not the true Golden Core transformation; it merely makes your attack, defense and speed far stronger, it cannot transmute life itself.
Even though you were now powerful enough to withstand bullets and shells and your speed exceeded the sound barrier, your lifespan had not lengthened—you could live at most a hundred and twenty years.
You had come to terms with that; after all, in your previous life you had been a penniless orphan, and to transmigrate into a Wuxia world and achieve feats no one before you had ever achieved was already a colossal win. At this point you felt no obsession with immortality.
At eighty, you abdicated in favor of your most capable child and retired behind the scenes.
At one hundred, as your empresses and concubines passed away one after another, you began to wander the world. You climbed snowy Peaks and fought avalanches, plunged into the ocean to sport with whales, stopped landslides, dispersed sandstorms…
With a human body you contended against every manner of natural disaster, savoring the endless joy of battling Heaven itself.
At one hundred and ten, you returned to the palace; by then Great Xia's technology had Advanced to the level of the twenty-first century of your previous life. From that point on your condition declined day by day, and you recorded every scrap of your knowledge.
At one hundred and twenty, sensing your life was ending, you sat cross-legged atop the highest palace roof, recalled your life and the passion of those final struggles against Heaven, and your spirit underwent a transformation.
Alas, your oil was spent and your lamp was dry. You threw back your head and laughed, burned everything you had left, and, fused with that transformed will, struck the most pinnacle palm of your life toward the sky.
The palm strike pierced the clouds above the palace; sunlight poured through as you slowly closed your eyes and passed away, your lifespan exhausted.