Before the rebels reached Changjin, the last barrier before Gaoyang City, the entire Gaoyang City became deserted. The streets and alleys were empty, and a large number of palace servants fled outside. Everyone knew that it was impossible for the Great Zhou to defend Changjin, or it was pointless to defend it. How could they face an enemy army of 200,000 with only a few cities and more than 10,000 soldiers
When people's hearts are in chaos, ghosts will appear. There is even a strange phenomenon of hundreds of ghosts wandering at night in Gaoyang City. Gaoyang at night does not look like a prosperous ancient capital, but more like a city of demons.
Looking at the chaos and the palace maids and eunuchs who kept escaping from the palace, Emperor Kong Qi of the Great Zhou had no intention of stopping them, or he no longer took it to heart.
Even at yesterday's morning court session, Emperor Kong Qi did not attend the court. He asked a eunuch to announce that all ministers should return home and not come again.
Although the number of people attending the morning court was less than half of the previous number, most of the ministers' families had already fled and disappeared. Those who were still left at this time were basically those who were truly loyal to the Great Zhou and Emperor Kong Qi.
"Your Majesty! Your Majesty!"
"Heaven's will, is it true that Heaven no longer favors the Great Zhou?"
All the ministers in the court wailed in pain, and old men knelt down in front of the hall and refused to leave. The Great Zhou Dynasty had been established for nearly a thousand years, and in terms of strength, no one in history could match it. But then it collapsed in an instant, and not even the thousand-year foundation could save it.
The ministers bid farewell one by one in front of the palace gate and left.
Afterwards, the emperor dismissed the guards and palace maids inside and outside the palace, although many of them had already fled.
The concubines and descendants of Emperor Kong Qi also gathered together, and under the leadership of the director of the Imperial Observatory and a prince of the Great Zhou, they boarded a magic ship and crossed the sea from the east with the last heritage of the Great Zhou. They might never have the chance to return in this lifetime.
Although everyone repeatedly persuaded Emperor Kong Qi to leave with them, Emperor Kong Qi had no intention of leaving. Everyone else had more or less reasons to leave, but he, Kong Qi, absolutely could not leave.
The palace was empty. At midnight, Emperor Kong Qi quietly came into the hall again.
At this moment, there was no one to serve him, and there were no millions of people cheering for him.
“It’s so quiet!”
He remembered how when he was born, everyone called him the true dragon emperor appointed by heaven, the reincarnation of an ancient immortal god into the mortal world. Whether it was his father, the emperor, the civil and military officials in the court, or even the gods from all directions in the world, they all had high hopes for him, believing that he would be the leader of the revival of the Great Zhou and would bring the Great Zhou to its true peak.
Even he himself thought so.
At this moment, a young man ascended the throne. The emperor, who was at the age of high spirits, could not help but burst into laughter. The laughter seemed to be laughing at others and at himself. In the end, he laughed and cried at the same time.
"From prosperity to decline! From prosperity to decline! I am not the ruler of revival, I am the ruler of ruin!"
He walked down from the imperial throne, from the high place to the low place, and then walked out of the palace, looking at the numerous buildings in the distance, the huge Gaoyang City, and the world further away.
There was not a single person to be seen in such a huge palace. The Gaoyang City, which was brightly lit in the past, was now pitch black. Gaoyang at night was like a dead city, swallowing up everything.
At this time, in the distant sky, a star suddenly dimmed, and then suddenly became bright, illuminating all directions.
At the same time, the battle of Changjin in the distance also ended. The young general who led tens of thousands of soldiers to block the army of Dingjun Hou Wuheng was surrounded and killed, and finally died in front of the battlefield. At this point, the rebels and the barbarian army were less than a hundred miles away from Gaoyang, and would arrive tomorrow evening.
At this time, a figure passed through the numerous palace gates and entered. He did not encounter any obstruction or blockage along the way. He was allowed to walk into the empty palace and in front of the Golden Palace.
It was Li Qian, one of the Nine Ministers, who walked forward respectfully and saluted the emperor who was sitting on the threshold of the Golden Palace.
"Your Majesty! News just came that Changjin was not defended. Wu Quxing Zhong Yuanlang was surrounded and killed in front of the battle line. He died at the hands of Dingjun Hou Wu Heng, and Wu Quxing's life was also taken away by Dingjun Hou Wu Heng."
Kong Qici looked at this close official who had been with him since he was the Crown Prince of the Eastern Palace. He did not mention the matter of Wu Quxing Zhong Yuanlang at all, but asked, "Why don't you leave?"
Li Qian stood up and said, "I have said that no matter what happens, I will stand by your majesty's side."
Kong Qi didn't say much: "It is hard to defy fate. I, Kong Qi, can't stop this overwhelming trend after all."
After a long silence, all he could say finally turned into one sentence: "It's better to go home!"
At this moment, Jingzhao Yin Zhou Wenlong was sitting in the government hall, wearing his official uniform in a meticulous manner and sitting in the main seat.
Zhou Wenlong looked at the place where he had been in charge, as well as the plaque hanging high behind him, and sighed. He leaned back on the wooden chair and looked outside the hall: "It's time."
Afterwards, this important official of the Great Zhou Dynasty, a loyal follower of the Emperor Kong Qi, closed his eyes and died in an instant.
The Zhoutian Star Array was in operation, and rays of star power descended from the sky, falling for nine days and illuminating the entire Gaoyang City.
At night, the rebels who had captured Changjin did not rest at all, but headed straight for Gaoyang. Before they reached halfway, they saw a dragon roar suddenly erupting from Gaoyang, the new capital of the Great Zhou Dynasty in the distance.
The galloping vanguard cavalry stopped one after another and saw in the distance Gaoyang City, rays of light rising into the sky, connecting the sky and the earth.
In the chaos, Wu Heng, the Marquis of Dingjun who finally succeeded in killing Zhong Yuanlang and seizing the fate of Wu Quxing, and General Jiu Tian Sha Tong were the first to sense something. Especially General Jiu Tian Sha Tong, he blurted out in an instant: "The Star Lord has returned!"
First, a dazzling golden dragon rushed out from the light, broke through the nine-day clouds, parted the clouds to reveal the bright moon, and rushed towards the sky.
Then he saw two rays of light and stars following it. The stars in the sky shook, the twenty-eight constellations roared one by one, and the Big Dipper slowly rotated like a spoon, as if welcoming its return.
Amid the shocking visions of heaven and earth, several immortal gods from the lower world returned to their positions one by one and ascended to heaven.
At the same time, in the thirty-six layers of Gangtian, a Taoist holding a map of the Zhoutian stars used his immortal hair to light up a few stars in the map. Several names fell into the map and returned to the Nine Heavens, and were included in the immortal records.
At the same time, the immortal's voice faintly came down from the nine heavens and fell into the ears of every cultivator in Dongzhou.
"Kang Jinlong returns!"
"Wenchang Star returns!"
"The Star of Literature has returned!"
When Kang Jinlong and the three stars Wenchang and Wenqu returned to their positions, all parties in the Great Zhou Dynasty, including King Wei of Panzhou, King Donghai, King Zheng who occupied Zhengzhou, Minzhou and the capital of Huandi, and the remaining six kings of Huandi, were alarmed at the same time.
No matter who it is, everyone knows the meaning of this. It represents the true demise of the Great Zhou Dynasty. The world has completely lost its nominal master, and everyone is qualified to become the next common leader of the human race.
"Kang Jinlong has returned!" In the Zheng Palace, a prince wearing a dragon robe looked up into the sky with a complex expression on his face, showing surprise, worry, and disappointment.
"The Emperor of the Great Zhou has passed away!" In a certain county of Yuandong County, in the marching camp where a large army was leading towards Panzhou, among the tents and bonfires stretching for dozens of miles, a military general clad in black armor showed no awe for the emperor.
A Taoist priest wearing a Tianxing Sect robe beside him said, "This is the will of heaven, no one can disobey it!"
Sure enough, a few days later, the news that Gaoyang, the new capital of the Great Zhou Dynasty, had been captured spread throughout the world.
Marquis Dingjun, Marquis Changping and the barbarians divided up the entire Yangjing and the rich heritage that the Great Zhou had left behind or had no time to take away. Countless gods, both big and small, who had followed the Great Zhou were slaughtered along the way, especially the current City God of Gaoyang City. The spiritual realm of the original City God of Yangjing had accumulated spiritual treasures, immortal materials, and incense money as vast as mountains and seas left over from the thousand-year-old Great Zhou.
Marquis Changping occupied Gaozhou and proclaimed himself King of Gao, while Marquis Dingjun occupied Shaozhou and Yongzhou and proclaimed himself King of Shao.
After destroying the Dragon Court of the Great Zhou, the Yi people hastily withdrew their troops for unknown reasons, taking with them the spiritual objects and incense money that had been accumulated for thousands of years by the Great Zhou and its major sects and gods, and left the territory of the Great Zhou.
The Marquis of Changping and the Marquis of Dingjun, who had originally formed an alliance, began to quarrel again over Fengyang, Changjun and Tengjun.