Since Kang Luo had seen through him, Ning Chen dropped the pretense.

"What did you mean by that just now? Why would leaving the capital be the biggest mistake of my life?"

Kang Luo's voice was full of mockery. "The Prince Who Holds the Realm is so clever. Why not take a guess?"

Ning Chen narrowed his eyes. "You're telling me somebody in the Great Xuan capital is planning a revolt?"

Kang Luo laughed out loud. "Clever, as I expected. Right on the first guess!"

Ning Chen gave a cold laugh. "Impossible. The court of the Great Xuan has been swept clean. Who is left with the strength to revolt?"

Kang Luo said, mocking him, "True enough. Every man in the Great Xuan with the strength to rebel has gone down under your hand... Ning Chen, even my Father Emperor envies your Xuan Emperor. One Old General Chen was broken, and another turned up in his place — you."

"The Xuan Emperor is a fortunate man... My Father Emperor said once that with you the fortune of the Great Xuan would not fail for a long age, and that you by yourself were worth centuries of life to the Great Xuan."

"But I don't agree with what my Father Emperor said. The world honors you as the god of war of Great Xuan... I know better. You are a man, not a god... and a man has his weak spots."

"Ning Chen, you are clever, but in the end you have only one head. You can't cover every side at once, and you can't plan a thing with no gap left in it." (TL Note: 算無遺漏 — "to calculate with nothing left out," said of a mind that plans so far ahead that no gap remains.)

Ning Chen fixed his eyes on him. "What are you getting at?"

Kang Luo looked at him and answered a question he had not been asked. "Ning Chen, before you appeared I had never lost a battle... Truly, there are only two men in the world today worth my notice. One is the Great…