The Lord's Empire

Chapter 989: Hundred School of Thought Contending

Translator: Exodus Tales Editor: Exodus Tales

The Night Dynasty had 850 City Lords, 600 million people, and 60 million soldiers, controlling 280 regions. The Demon Path Sect had 540 Cities and controlled 200 regions, and it had around 300 million people.

Now that the two of them had fused, the Night Dynasty now had 1,390 Cities, 900 million people, around 500 regions, and 90 million soldiers.

With this kind of strength, Zhao Fu turned his attention to the other factions. Compared to some of the factions in other Continents, the Night Dynasty was still too weak and needed to continue to develop.

If Zhao Fu could unify the human world, he could turn to the Fish Scale world or Dark Demon world. The faction in the Fish Scale world was developing quite well, but the Night Dynasty was still too weak in the Dark Demon world. As such, Zhao Fu had to put more effort in developing it. More importantly, Zhao Fu planned to attack the Spirit Light world after conquering the Dark Demon world. After all, Great Qin had a weapon that could suppress the Spirit Light race, which was the Primogenitor Statue.

Currently, there were two factions next to the Night Dynasty, and they were Zhao Fu’s next targets. One of them was a player faction made up of a few Dynasties and a few small factions, and the other was a system faction.

The player faction had a total of 900 City Lords and 80 million soldiers, while the system faction had 700 City Lords and 70 million soldiers. All of them were essentially Stage 1 soldiers.

If the two factions were combined, they would be stronger than the Night Dynasty in terms of both City Lords and soldiers. it was no problem to face a few hundred City Lords by himself, but if he had to face tens of millions of soldiers, that would be quite difficult. With enough people, he could be exhausted until he was killed or forced to run.

It would be quite difficult for the Night Dynasty to challenge these two factions by itself, so Zhao Fu thought of a plan, which was to ally with another faction to attack these factions.

There had always been conflict between players and system main cities, and if they allied with the player faction, it would be easier to deal with the system faction.

However, the key thing was whether or not they would be willing to work together with the Night Dynasty. Moreover, such a big matter of taking over the Demon Path Sect was not something that could be hidden. This was a great threat to them, and they might choose to ally together to attack the Night Dynasty.

This was not a simple matter, so Zhao Fu returned to Great Qin first to talk with his various subordinates.

During this time, the Hundred Schools of Thought continued to receive the official acknowledgement of Great Qin. Great Qin gave them all sorts of benefits, allowing them to establish their schools or sects and take in students in order to disseminate their ways of thinking and culture.

The ‘Hundred Schools of Thought’ were a reference to the various ideological groups during the Spring and Autumn Period, Warring States Period, and Qin and Han Dynasties. According to the ‘Han – Yi Wen Zhi,’ there had been 189 Schools in total.

Later records indicated that the ‘Hundred Schools of Thought’ actually contained over 1,000 Schools. However, there were only around 100 that had great impact and had become quite famous. Summed up, there were only twelve major Schools.

With Zhao Fu’s personal ideologies, he would never dismiss all other Schools of Thought in favour of Confucianism; he would not allow the weakly Confucianist ideologies to pervade Great Qin.

Zhao Fu acknowledged that studying was good, but he did not want Great Qin to become a nation that focused on studying. If that were the case, Great Qin would gradually decay and lose its vigor. Great Qin’s martial spirit would disappear and become like the Song Dynasty, being bullied by all sorts of other powerful factions.

Zhao Fu had intended to restore the ‘Hundred Schools of Thought Contending’ state from the Spring and Autumn Periods, with all sorts of ideologies clashing. This would promote new ways of thinking and cause old ways of thinking to perish, causing Great Qin to continue moving forwards.

This was the most important thing to Great Qin because ideologies were the soul of a nation and determined the path of a nation.

Of course, these Schools and Sects had to submit to Great Qin and be loyal to Great Qin. They could not proclaim any rebellious ways of thinking; any Schools or Sects that had ill intentions would not be allowed to remain within Great Qin.

The Schools and Sects that submitted to Great Qin would be encouraged and promoted. Zhao Fu wanted to restore the scene of the ‘Hundred Schools of Thoughts Contending,’ but he also listed a few as forbidden Schools and Sects.

They were the Buddhist Sect, School of Confucianism, and School of Mohism. Currently, Great Qin was hunting down anyone from those three Schools or Sects. Zhao Fu would never show mercy to any of his enemies.

Apart from these three Sects and Schools, there was another incredibly important School, which was the School of Vertical and Horizontal. Su Yan and Zhang Heng had already been added to Great Qin’s hitlist, but now that they had escaped to other Continents along with the rest of China, Zhao Fu could not do much to them.

In actuality, within the Hundred Schools of Thought, the School of Confucianism was the largest School. This was because after the ‘Hundreds Schools of Thought Contending,’ the Han Dynasty had dismissed the other Schools and revered only the Confucians, resulting in Confucian thinking dominating throughout China. The Buddhist Sect was also a large Sect that had thousands of years of history with countless followers.

Great Qin’s Sect and School destroying operation had caused the other Sects and Schools to feel quite afraid. Luckily, they had chosen the right side, or else they would have been hunted down like this as well.

There were many players within Great Qin who hoped that Great Qin would stop hunting down people from the School of Confucianism and Buddhist Sect. Great Qin had become hell for such people; anyone who was a part of those Schools or Sects would either be heavily punished or directly killed.

The Schools and Sects that had escaped to other Continents had been incredibly furious, criticizing Zhao Fu and saying that Zhao Fu’s actions were even more tyrannical than the First Emperor of Qin’s back then. They were capable of enraging the heavens and offending all humanity.

Zhao Fu did not say anything in response. Zhao Fu did not want any such thinking to pervade Great Qin, even if they were good.

Most students in the Rising Qin Academy could be said to belong to the Confucian line of thinking. However, it was a modified Qin-Confucian branch.

Zhao Fu wanted the Qin Confucianist ideology to replace the mainstream Confucianist ideology. As for the Buddhist Sect, Great Qin would only receive it after unifying the world; for now, they would suppress the Buddhist Sect. The School of Mohism did not actually have many people; it only merely flourished a bit during the late Qing Dynasty.

However, Great Qin absolutely could not allow the School of Vertical and Horizontal to continue to exist; there was no room for discussion. The School of Vertical and Horizontal had to die, as they were simply too dangerous.

There was another Sect that Zhao Fu listed as a forbidden Sect, which was the White Lotus Sect. Even though it had partnered with Great Qin before, the core of its ideologies were too dangerous.

Zhao Fu did not want them to cause the people to stage uprisings every time there was a disaster. With the White Lotus Sect’s ability to stir up public sentiment with falsehoods, it was easy to rile up a large group of people.

No one would accept a Sect like this, so almost every Dynasty had listed them as a forbidden Sect, and Great Qin was no exception.

There were still many people from the White Lotus Sect, but given the help they had provided each other, Zhao Fu did not kill them. Instead, he planned to change them into a new intelligence organization.