Chapter 302 Four Continents
"Sixty years in the human world is like a dream and an illusion..."

Lin Liu, who has lived on the coast of the East China Sea for generations, looked out at the boundless ocean, stroked his graying beard and sighed.

In the blink of an eye, the young man from the fishing village who used to fish and pick up shells on the beach has become a 60-year-old man. And now as the general of the Dashun Army, he no longer needs to fish to supplement his family income...

The monkey stood aside and said quietly:

"Master, I could understand why you didn't accept Zen last time, but this time..."

What do you mean by "suppressing the barbarians"? How many barbarians are there? To be frank, if the shogun wanted to deal with those barbarians, he should just send a letter to Dongsheng Shenzhou, and I guarantee that the other country will start suppressing them immediately!
But he chose not to use the simplest method, but to personally lead a large army across the sea to expedition to Dongsheng Shenzhou. This could not be just for a few insignificant bandits...

In fact, the monkey knew exactly what was going on:

This is because the master himself does not want to receive Zen, so he deliberately creates trouble to divert everyone's attention!
"Master, do you have such a deep gratitude towards the Emperor of Dashun? And even if the gratitude is great, you should have repaid him long ago just because you helped him maintain the country for a few more decades..."

The monkey's complaints were not without reason. Lin Liu's behavior was really puzzling...

But Lin Liu just smiled:

"You are such a rascal, you only know how to stir up trouble all day long! What difference does it make whether your teacher is an emperor or not?"

"After so many years, I have already sidelined Dashun, and all the incense offerings in the world belong to the eight of us. It is only a matter of time before I become a god..."

Things have come to this, is it still necessary to be an emperor in name only?

Obviously not.

"Besides, after so many years, I don't want to be an emperor anymore. To me, real power is more important than empty title... In this case, it is better to save face for His Majesty and continue to keep his throne."

Lin Liu's remarks made sense, but Monkey felt uneasy and even a little depressed after hearing them:

After so many years of preparation, he only wanted his master to ascend the throne, but unexpectedly, when the final step came, he was unwilling to take the first step.

It's a question of reputation after all. Monkey still cares too much about reputation...

Seeing that it was in a low mood, Lin Liu thought for a moment and said:
"Besides, I don't have the time to be an emperor now... I don't have much time left."

The monkey immediately raised his head in surprise!
[You didn't lie. Your life span is indeed short...]

[The essence of Shinto practice is to cultivate the spirit and the Dharma, not the physical body, so the physical body of the cultivator has always been a weak point, which makes them all fragile. As long as the physical body dies, no matter how powerful the Dharma is, it will be useless.]

[It is precisely because Shinto practice does not cultivate the physical body that the life span of the monks is not much longer than that of ordinary people. ]

[If you want to live forever, you must cultivate to become a true god, so that the Dharma image becomes the real body, and thus exist independently of the weak mortal body! ]

[So, the realm of true god is a hurdle. ]

[It was actually very easy for Taizu of Dashun to overcome this hurdle. It only took him ten or twenty years to gather enough incense.]

[But you are different. You are not alone. You have seven subordinates, which means eight people share one resource... This is certainly not enough! ]

[With your current cultivation efficiency, it will take at least another fifty or sixty years to become a true god, but you are already sixty years old this year...]

[You don't have the confidence to live to be over 120 years old, so if you want to achieve immortality in your lifetime, you have to resort to some tricks that break the rules.]

[There are only two options before you: either cut costs or increase revenue! ]

[If we want to save money, we have to find a way to kill Monkey and the others, and kill them all! ]

[If you want to increase revenue, you have to conquer Nanshanbuzhou, conquer more land and population, and obtain more incense. ]

[Obviously, you can't kill all the heroes, so your only way out is to conquer the other three continents! ]

[This is the fundamental reason why you would rather give up the throne than suddenly seize on the trivial matter of "pirate invasion" and then use it as an excuse to attack Dongsheng Shenzhou, which has nothing to do with you at all...]

【…】

[At the age of sixty, you led Monkey and seven other Shinto monks, and mobilized 30,000 elite Eight Banners troops stationed across the country to start the Eastern Expedition! ]

[Dongsheng Shenzhou is located in the vast ocean east of Nanshanbuzhou. According to the memories of Monkey, a native, Dongsheng Shenzhou is not all land like Nanshanbuzhou, but is composed of many islands. Some islands are very large, comparable to prefectures, and some are very small, with only a few families.]

[Therefore, Dongsheng Shenzhou is not unified. Usually, several islands form a country, with few people and small land, and most of them are noobs. ]

[It is precisely because of poverty that the people of these island countries always like to engage in some illegal side jobs...]

[You launched a punitive war under the pretext of pirate invasion, which is a legitimate reason, but sending tens of thousands of elite troops for this is a bit of an overreaction.]

【So anyone with a discerning eye knows that you are going to destroy the country and grab the land! 】

[But you didn't care about everyone's discussion, and just led Monkey and others and the Eight Banners Army, boarded the long-prepared sea-crossing ship, and set off in a mighty manner...] [After sailing for several months, with smooth sailing, you gradually arrived at Dongsheng Shenzhou.]

[Your first stop is called "Huaguo Mountain"! ]

[Yes, this is the monkeys’ hometown. It is a small island. There are no humans on the island, only various animals… especially monkeys.]

[When you come here, you must take a good look around. Under the monkey's active guidance, you visit the "Water Curtain Cave" and other places it has mentioned, and also visit the fragments of the stone fetus where it was born...]

[A monkey popping out of a stone is already a strange thing, not to mention that this monkey is immortal, understands human nature, and has the innate ability to explore people's hearts... This naturally makes you curious, so you try to find some valuable information from its birthplace. ]

[But you failed. Stones are just stones. You did not find any obvious difference between these stones and other stones, nor did you find any useful information. This made you disappointed: it seems that the secret of the monkey cannot be solved for the time being...]

[Then you saw the so-called descendants of monkeys: they were not descendants of monkeys, but wild monkeys on the Flower-Fruit Mountain, and they were not intelligent and were very ordinary.]

[It’s just that the monkey can read minds, so they can communicate with them to a certain extent. And because of the monkey’s wisdom and strength, they spontaneously recognize it as the monkey king. ]

[It is precisely because they are just ordinary wild monkeys that they will experience birth, aging, sickness and death. As the monkey king, he has seen too many of their lives and deaths, so he came up with the idea of ​​finding a way to achieve immortality and bring immortality to all wild monkeys... Unfortunately, until now, the monkey king has not found a way to achieve immortality for them...]

[After a tour, you are very disappointed. After all, you have been hoping to learn hidden information from this place, but you didn't expect to gain anything. ]

[The monkey was also very depressed because the younger monkeys on the island no longer recognized him. This was not because the younger monkeys had bad memories, but because the older monkeys who remembered him had all died of old age...]

[Amidst all the disappointment and sadness, you bid farewell to Huaguo Mountain. After traveling for a while, you finally arrived at the first country in Dongsheng Shenzhou: Aolai Country! ]

[Aolai is just a small country, occupying at most a few dozen islands. Facing your 30,000 elite soldiers of the Eight Banners, Aolai was horrified and didn't even dare to resist. The king slid down on his knees and surrendered...]

[You admired his ability to know the times and act accordingly, so you accepted his surrender without making things too difficult for him. You casually slapped him with a Blood God Son, causing him to shout "loyalty" on the spot!]

[You have been in Aolai country for less than a month, and you have expanded the Xiwang Divine Cult. Every person has a crazy fan. 】

[Amid the cheers of "loyalty" and "gratitude", you headed to the next island country with satisfaction...]

[In this way, you crushed small countries one by one, and most of the island countries did not dare to resist at all, and fell to their knees as soon as the heavenly soldiers arrived.]

[A few countries that claim to have some strength will fight with you, and then be crushed by you...]

[If the king kneels down, you gently pat the Blood God Son. If the king resists, you pat the Blood God Son unhappily... Anyway, you can't avoid the Blood God Son's brainwashing. This is not because you are cruel, but because you don't want to waste time... You have limited time, so of course you have to make a quick decision, and efficiency comes first! ]

[I can only say that Blood Godson is really useful. Wherever you go, there will be songs of loyalty...]

[Three years later, you finally conquered the last island nation, and Dongsheng Shenzhou has been under your command since then! ]

[But you did not return home satisfied, but continued to sail forward after replenishing your supplies: your next stop is Uttarakuru. ]

[Beijing Juluzhou is different from Dongsheng Shenzhou. There is only one continent here, but there are basically no people on the land because it is too cold and harsh. The locals are poor and few, even worse than Dongsheng Shenzhou.]

[When your fleet arrived, you simply revealed your status as the Shogun of Southern Continent, and the local indigenous leaders came to surrender in a hurry: they had no other requests, they just wanted the rich man from the south to come and help them! ]

[You were greatly surprised, but you did not refuse. After accepting the surrender, you distributed some of the grain and iron tools you brought with you. Before long, everyone was singing praises to you...]

[After leaving the sparsely populated Northern Continent, you gradually came to an understanding: Why did the previous dynasties only occupy the Southern Continent and not the other continents? ]

[The answer is very simple: it’s not that we can’t defeat them, but that there’s no need to fight. Each one is poorer than the other, and if we defeat them, we still have to help the poor…]

[The essence of the world is all in the Southern Continent, this is not just an empty statement. 】

【…】

[After successively occupying Dongsheng Shenzhou and Beijuluzhou, you set sail for the last continent.]

[Not long after, you all arrived at Xiniu Hezhou smoothly! ]

[Coming to this place where you lost your life in your previous life, you were filled with emotion... But you didn't waste any time, and directly led tens of thousands of elite soldiers to the coast as usual, and the army marched all the way over! ]

[Xiniuhezhou is different from other continents. It has a large area and dense population, similar to Nanshanbuzhou, but it is not unified, but divided into many large and small countries.]

[Faced with your elite army, all the countries were horrified. After seeing you easily wipe out several powerful nations, the remaining countries immediately announced an alliance! ]

[Eight major countries formed a coalition of eight countries, and seventeen small and medium-sized countries formed a coalition, and they attacked you one after another! 】

[The coalition forces of eight western countries plus the coalition forces of seventeen countries vs. the elite Eight Banners composed of the Dragon and Tiger Generals and the Shogun! 】

[Abstract war is about to break out! ]

……

(End of this chapter)