Chapter 539: A forgotten Prodigy
(Heart of Sanfe City, Su Pei’s POV)
There was a time, long ago, when the name Su Pei had meant something.
Back when he and the current patriarch of the Su Clan, Su Tang had both been freshers at the Rodova Military Academy, it was Su Pei who had drawn all the attention, all the whispers, and all the envy, as instructors labelled him the next great prodigy of the Su Clan, a man destined not just to rise, but to dominate.
His combat scores had outclassed every student in his batch, while his mana cultivation rate had broken long-standing records that even the professors privately acknowledged might never be broken for at least a couple more decades.
He reached the Transcendent Tier by the age of twenty-seven, a full year ahead of Su Tang, and by the time he stepped into the Monarch Realm at fifty, the gap between them had only grown wider, as Su Tang still lagged behind, struggling to keep pace.
Yet, when the time came for the Su Clan to appoint the next Patriarch of the clan, it was not Su Pei who was chosen.
It was Su Tang.
Su Tang wasn’t chosen for his strength, or his outstanding leadership qualities, no.... He was chosen because he was the direct descendant of Su Ren, the Su Family God, and because it was Su Ren who made the ultimate call on who was to be appointed as the next Patriarch.
Su Pei had not protested.
He had held onto the quiet hope that his merits alone would be enough to earn him the seat at the head of the clan, and while he had been disappointed, he still understood the political logic behind Su Tang being named Patriarch, given the bloodline he carried.
What he had not expected, however, was to be ostracized so deliberately, nor harassed so consistently, by the very brother he had once protected and guided through the academy halls.
Everyone in the clan had known the truth.
Su Pei was the more capable warrior. The more qualified leader. The rightful heir.
And that made Su Tang feel threatened.
In the years that followed, Su Pei was slowly cut off from the core circles of clan governance.
Assignments that should have gone to Transcendents or even Grandmasters were instead passed to him, with his final deployment being to Planet Koral, that had no true strategic value to the clan at all.
Su Pei was given the smallest budget and the weakest garrison, to govern this useless planet, all under the guise of the clan trusting him to keep their borders safe.
Su Pei of course understood the truth. However, he still chose to serve without complaints, because duty was the only thing he still understood.
However, unfortunately for him, Su Tang did not stop at just harassing him, as he came for his children as well.
His firstborn son, barely thirty-five and freshly promoted to Transcendent, was deployed on what had been called a "containment mission" to suppress civil unrest on a minor Su Clan controlled planet.
But in truth, it had been a death sentence.
He had been sent without proper backup, without logistical support, and without any elite level protection, so when the planet erupted into open rebellion, he was left stranded behind enemy lines.
His body was never recovered, and Su Pei’s wife, who had once been a vibrant soul with laughter in her eyes and strength in her hands, broke soon after.
She stopped speaking. She stopped eating and within two years, she was gone too.
His second son, bitter and disillusioned, chose to leave the Su Clan entirely, defecting to the Universal Government’s side, where Su Pei heard whispers of him working under a false name, living a life far from the shadow of the family that had ruined them both.
And with that, Su Pei had nothing left to protect.
No sons. No wife. No future.
Only Planet Koral.
So he drank. Not for the pleasure it brought, but because it temporarily allowed him to forget about his pain.
The years passed in a blur of half-hearted administrative reports, empty briefings, and unattended garrisons, as his once-pristine uniform gathered dust and his blade remained sheathed longer than it ever should have been.
But today, when the skies above Koral cracked open with the descent of Cult warships, something inside him had shifted again.
He had not waited for an order.
He had risen from his quarters, eyes bloodshot and robes still wrinkled from sleep, and taken to the sky without ceremony, cleaving through a dozen enemy aircraft in a single flight path, as if the last one hundred and twenty years of silence had never happened.
And now, with the enemy army approaching the walls of Sanfe, he stood again where he should have been all along.
Not because the clan deserved his loyalty.
But because the people under his protection had done nothing to deserve being abandoned.
"Keep a constant look out for enemy scouts," Su Pei said quietly, his eyes scanning the rooftops as a passing glint caught his attention near the northern gate tower.
"Lieutenant Barell, what’s the news from the Eastern Unit?" he asked without turning, his voice calm but sharp, as if the muscle memory of command had never truly faded.
"Stable for now, sir," came the reply. "The enemy movement seems mostly focused on the North and West side for now."
"Double the patrol routes in the North, and rotate your snipers every two hours. I want eyes that don’t blink."
He walked slowly across the temporary command platform, adjusting the buckle of his faded gauntlet as old instincts guided his steps.
Officers bowed slightly as he passed, and though they said nothing, he could feel the shift in their posture.
He was no longer the bloodshot drunk they remembered, but the sharp, commanding warrior they had once heard stories about.
A warrior who now stood as their last hope of making it off Planet Koral alive.