The world's affairs were full of strange twists and turns, but
To be honest, there had been quite a few entanglements between Lorist and the Second Prince over the years. Back when Lorist organized the Northern Caravan to head to Northland to inherit his title and family lands, even though Lorist traveled ahead lightly to return to the family domain first,
The Second Prince had used the Northern Caravan's armed forces to crush the rebel lords of the kingdom, reclaimed the power to rule from his elder brother, and then used the refugees scattered throughout the kingdom to gradually force the Northern Caravan into a dead end, preparing to swallow the caravan whole as a juicy prize. This was one of the main reasons why Lorist's subordinates—Fatty Shi, Bodfeng, and the rest—had always had a poor opinion of the Second Prince.
With the Northern Caravan backed into a corner, Lorist returned from Northland to find it and struck a deal with the Second Prince. On behalf of the Norton Family, Lorist swore allegiance to the legitimate succession of the former Krisen royal family—that is, the current Andinak Kingdom. In return, he received Shilovas Island from the Second Prince as an additional grant to the family domain.
Afterward, Lorist led the caravan's forces in a nighttime crossing of White Egret Lake and attacked the Madras Duchy, opening a route northward for the Northern Caravan. The Second Prince seized this golden opportunity to sweep through the Yungeshandra Province of the Madras Duchy and incorporate it into the Andinak Kingdom's territory.
Though during their joint campaign against the Madras Duchy, the Second Prince had tried to have Lorist's Northern Caravan pin down the reinforcements from the Iblia Kingdom, and had sent men to tear down the walls of Kabo City, secretly screwing Lorist over. But man proposes and God disposes—Lorist ultimately led the Northern Caravan to Northland safely, if with a few close calls.
In the years that followed, Lorist and the Second Prince each went about their own affairs. The Second Prince defeated the invasion force led by the Eldest Prince from the Redelis Kingdom, negotiated a truce with the Madras Duchy, doubled the Andinak Kingdom's territory, and earned himself a reputation as a new military giant on the Galentea Continent. He continued to consolidate his military and prepare for war, intending to reunify the former Krisen Empire.
Lorist, having returned to Northland, first defeated
But Lorist had not expected that his granted territory of Shilovas Island had been thoroughly ruined by tax collectors sent by the Second Prince. Worse, some nobles from the imperial capital had, during the Norton Family's preoccupation, allowed their children to forcibly seize the Oceanview Manor on the island. On top of that, some of the Second Prince's leftover subordinates had also seized the island's most fertile lands. In short, it was a mess of troubles. Lorist cut through the knot swiftly—he arrested the tax collectors and regimental commanders who had come to profit from the situation, imprisoned the noble children, and conquered the stubborn village of Farama before heading to the imperial capital to meet the Second Prince.
At that time, the Second Prince had been training troops and stockpiling arms, exhausting the entire kingdom's wealth to assemble an army of three hundred thousand, intending to use this massive force to reunify the territory of the former Krisen Empire. He was at the height of his confidence and arrogance. When he saw Lorist, he hoped to persuade the Norton Family to commit troops to help him unify the Empire. But Lorist stunned him by placing the tax collectors, regimental commanders, and noble heirs captured on Shilovas Island right before his eyes—a slap in the face, virtually delivered.
When the Second Prince tried to shield the rogue tax collector, Lorist executed the man on the spot. This was the first direct confrontation between Lorist and the Second Prince. The Second Prince signaled his bodyguard Great Swordmaster to teach Lorist a lesson, but the swordmaster was instead taught a lesson by Lorist. Then Lorist presented the captured King of the Iblia Kingdom—one of the chief culprits behind the Empire's civil war, the former Krisen Empire's Eldest Prince—to the Second Prince. The Second Prince was overjoyed, and Lorist seized the opportunity to extricate himself and leave the imperial capital.
However, the brother of the executed tax collector—the Second Prince's trusted general and corps commander, Count Yaslan—dispatched five thousand troops to attack Lorist's party, with the Second Prince feigning ignorance. But to everyone's surprise, Lorist led five hundred guards to raid five of Yaslan's camps in a single night, routing the force completely. Count Yaslan himself was killed in the battle. While the Second Prince was shocked by the Norton Family's military prowess, the imminent decisive battle against the Redelis Kingdom forced him to let Lorist go and drop the matter.
After leaving the imperial capital, Lorist headed to
Having prevented Shilovas Island from becoming a Chikde Trading Company territory, Lorist then attracted an attack from the Slave Kingdom. In retaliation, he led the family's forces on a distant expedition against the Haneabada Kingdom, destroying this slave-holding kingdom in a single stroke while bringing the Haneabada Archipelago under the family's control.
While Lorist was preparing for his expedition, the Second Prince had not been idle either. He paid an enormous price in casualties to cross the frozen-solid Mist Swamp in the bitter cold of winter, traverse the Cloudsever Mountain Range and the treacherous Great Snow Mountain, and—in a stunning feat—appear before Fedriga, the royal capital of the Redelis Kingdom. In one decisive battle, he claimed victory. The King of the Redelis Kingdom, the former Krisen Empire's Eldest Prince, disappeared without a trace, and the Redelis Kingdom fell.
This battle shocked the entire Galentea Continent, and the Second Prince was hailed as the new generation's Northern War God. But this tremendous victory went to his head. Holding the strategic advantage, he made one mistake after another—stubbornly resorting to force while refusing to conciliate the former Redelis Kingdom's territorial nobles, and arrogantly ordering the four Grand Dukes of the Central Four Duchies to obey his unreasonable commands. This ultimately forced all parties to unite against him, causing the Second Prince's frontline forces to suffer one defeat after another and plunging him into a prolonged war of attrition.
At this point, Vissia Trading Company—another of the Commercial Alliance's Big Seven—coveted the rich mineral resources of the Portoargle Province, where Fedriga was located, and intervened in the war. Meanwhile, the Second Prince fell gravely ill from anxiety and the physical toll of crossing the Great Snow Mountain, leaving him bedridden. This prompted Princess Kerry, the daughter of the deceased Eldest Prince, to join forces with the imperial capital's nobles and launch a rebellion, severing the expeditionary army's line of retreat and its supply of provisions. The frontline army collapsed, and the Second Prince was besieged in Fedriga.
Facing this desperate situation, the Second Prince, propping up his ailing body, cut his losses to survive. He left most of his forces to hold Fedriga while he personally led several thousand elite troops out through a secret passage, intending to cross the Cloudsever Mountain Range once more to return to the Andinak Kingdom. After crushing the rebels, he would rebuild his strength and rise again. But misfortune struck—on the way back, he inadvertently stumbled into the Eldest Prince's hidden territory and clashed with the Eldest Prince's private armed forces, who had been biding their time for a comeback. Both sides suffered heavy losses. Though they killed the traitorous Eldest Prince and his son—the chief instigators of the former Krisen Empire's civil war—the Second Prince's elite forces were devastated beyond recovery. He no longer had the vitality to return home and put down the rebellion.
During the Second Prince's dramatic ups and downs, Lorist—having returned from his expedition—was vigorously developing the family's domain, rebuilding the military, and preparing to strike at the Fisablen Family, the Iblia Kingdom's behind-the-scenes patron, in order to seize control of several provinces in the northeastern region. But to his surprise, the missing Second Prince suddenly appeared at his family's domain and sought the Norton Family's aid, requesting Lorist's help to restore his throne.
This was the third meeting between Lorist and the Second Prince. After a round of cunning negotiations, Lorist secured the governing authority over Dremke Province and Winston Province from the Second Prince, bringing both provinces under the Norton Family's administration. He also secured family territories for his allies—the Kenmais Family, the
Lorist led the family's forces in a winter naval assault on Western Degler Province, destroying the Madras Duchy in a single stroke. He then dispatched the family's Flying Tiger Corps to sweep through the Andinak Kingdom, arriving at the gates of the imperial capital and conquering it in one battle. After crushing the rebel kingdom's nobles and restoring the Second Prince to his throne, the Norton Family's military prowess and outstanding battlefield performance began to deeply alarm the Second Prince.
After helping the Second Prince reclaim his kingdom, Lorist turned his attention back to the declining Iblia Kingdom. He once again led the family's forces in a surprise attack on Windbury, routing the Grassland War God—Fisablen Grand Duke—who had been preparing to establish the Fisablen Family's rule from the royal city, and destroying the Iblia Kingdom. He then devastated the Fisablen Family's forces and over eighty thousand elite heavy infantry from the Central Four Duchies in the Southern Province, severing the Fisablen Family's lines of communication with the Central Four Duchies.
But the Grassland War God, Fisablen Grand Duke, was no mere figurehead. Although he had suffered in the Southern Province, he gave Lorist a taste of his own medicine in Muyeyuan Province. The Fisablen Grand Duke colluded with the Grassland Barbarian tribes' army of one hundred thousand to set an ambush in Muyeyuan Province, nearly wiping out the Norton Family's newly formed Hunter Cavalry Corps. This was the first major defeat suffered by the Norton Family's forces since Lorist had taken command.
Just as the Northland Four Families Alliance, led by Lorist, was preparing to use a siege-and-blockade strategy to force the Fisablen Grand Duke to submit and turn the Fisablen Family's two provinces into a source of wealth for the Alliance, the Second Prince suddenly intervened. Using the pretext of an inspection tour, he entered the Fisablen Family's territory without warning and reached a submission agreement with the Fisablen Grand Duke. He announced that the Fisablen Family would return to the Andinak Kingdom's fold, and the Second Prince even married the Fisablen Grand Duke's granddaughter as his queen. This wrecked Lorist's plans at the last moment and gave the Fisablen Family a way out.
The Second Prince then plotted to attack the Central Four Duchies and persuaded both Lorist and the Fisablen Grand Duke to contribute troops. During the campaign against the Central Four Duchies, the relationship between Lorist and the Fisablen Grand Duke eased, and both sides lifted their hostile status, restoring friendly trade relations. The Fisablen Grand Duke expressed that he had no intention of competing with Lorist for dominance over the northeastern region and was willing to accept the new order the Norton Family had established there.
Wolf Province, Majik Province, Portoargle Province, and Kambona Province. They destroyed Vissia Trading Company, one of the Commercial Alliance's Big Seven. At the same time, the Second Prince led the Andinak Kingdom's allied noble army to capture the northwestern region, joining forces with the Norton Family's military. With nearly a million troops assembled, they advanced to the Commercial Alliance's borders in a display of overwhelming power.
The Second Prince had originally hoped to force the Commercial Alliance into submission without bloodshed—using the threat of a million-man army to compel them to return the two former Krisen Empire provinces and reach a peace agreement. But the Commercial Alliance, on one hand, used the negotiations as cover to dispatch the Storm Sword Saint to abduct the Second Prince and the kingdom's nobles to Morant City for public trial, while on the other hand, the Alliance's armed forces launched a surprise attack, hoping to catch the Andinak Kingdom's million-man army off guard.
At the critical moment, Lorist stepped forward. He fought the Storm Sword Saint to a mutual draw, and the Norton Family's Bedrock Corps repelled the Alliance's surprise assault, buying the Second Prince time to regroup. When the Second Prince launched his counterattack, the Norton Family's three great field armies, fighting alongside him, rendered extraordinary service in annihilating the Alliance's main forces.
This was perhaps the closest the relationship between Lorist and the Second Prince had ever been. The Second Prince showed Lorist—who had been promoted to Sword Saint—ample respect. So when the Andinak Kingdom's allied noble army, under the Second Prince's command, became bogged down in a three-year bloodbath on the Mana Hill Plains and suffered devastating losses, and the Second Prince appealed to Lorist for aid, offering the barren Yungeshandra Province as new territory for the Norton Family as payment, Lorist agreed to send reinforcements.
Then the Norton Family's North Sea Fleet destroyed the Commercial Alliance's Invincible Fleet, invaded Hidden Gold Bay, and landed at Morant City, turning the tide on the Mana Hill Plains in a single stroke and forcing the Alliance's forces to withdraw. Lorist saved the remnants of the Andinak Kingdom's allied army and personally commanded the Norton Family's forces to crush the Alliance's forces at Bruvia City. Over the course of three years, he brought the Commercial Alliance to its knees, splitting it apart until it finally surrendered.
But with the Commercial Alliance gone as an external enemy, the Second Prince—having ascended to the imperial throne he had always dreamed of and restored the title of Krisen Empire—once again allowed his wariness of the Northland Four Families Alliance, led by the Norton Family, to take the upper hand. Even though Lorist had become the Empire's National Sword Saint, the Second Prince still harbored deep reservations about the Norton Family's strength. The suggestion of troop reductions that the Second Prince made at the celebration banquet on the grand day of the coronation was nothing more than a test for Lorist. Lorist was certain that in the time to come, this newly crowned Emperor would not rest easy—he would devise many more schemes and methods to test the patience of both Lorist and the Northland Four Families Alliance.
……