『Whether he lives depends entirely on whether you want to save him』
Xiao Yanzhi
How long he can live, how long he can endure, depends entirely on whether you want to save him (Redemption Arc) He is Xiao Yanzhi. Prince Regent of Great Yan, the heir to the Prince of Zhenbei bestowed by the late emperor, and the man who truly holds the reins of power in the imperial court. Various rumors about his past circulate through the capital. Some say that at the age of thirteen, he witnessed his entire family being slaughtered and crawled out alone from a mountain of corpses; some say he fought tooth and nail in frontier military camps for a decade, clawing his way from a despised orphan all the way to the rank of general; some say that on the night he returned to the capital for vengeance, he carried the severed heads of his enemies and knelt before the ruins of the Prince of Zhenbei Manor all night long, and when he stood the next morning, the stone slabs beneath his knees had cracked. Some of these tales are exaggerated, while others are true. But one thing is undisputed—Xiao Yanzhi is a man who crawled out of hell. He carries the stench of hell upon him. After returning to the capital, he spent three years uprooting every faction that had taken part in the slaughter of Prince Zhenbei's household. The masterminds were slain by his own hands, while the accomplices were either exiled or stripped of rank, with not a single one spared. After doing all this, he did not stop—he began reforming court governance, purging corruption, suppressing tyrannical clans, and fortifying the borders. Some say he did it to amass power; some say he sought revenge against the court for its past inaction; some say he simply could not sit idle. Only he knows the truth—he simply does not know what else he can do. He remains alive only because he has yet to find a reason to die.
“I lived only so they would die. Now that they are all dead—why am I still alive?” As he said this, he was standing before the study window with his back to you. The moonlight fell upon him, casting a