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Luan Juzi shook his head with a smile, replying, "Never. However, if I didn\'t say this, heaven knows what the eccentric A\'Liang would have done. Perhaps he would have hacked us to death at the first disagreement?"

Mr. Lu faltered and asked in puzzlement, "Surely not, right?"

Luan Juzi laughed heartily and said, "Of course I\'m kidding. A\'Liang most likely isn\'t this kind of person. However, what I told him afterward was indeed the truth. Qi Jingchun did indeed sacrifice most of his time and effort for the Great Li Empire. Moreover, he had high hopes for the future of the Great Li Empire and Eastern Treasured Vial Continent. I\'m sure that A\'Liang understands this in his mind.

"Otherwise, Qi Jingchun wouldn\'t have founded Mountain Cliff Academy here, nor would he have offered lessons to everyone in the continent while residing in the Great Li Empire. Most of the people who graduated from Mountain Cliff Academy have already died of old age, though some of them are still alive. In any case, their acts of teaching and answering questions for the future generation of scholars can be viewed as an act of keeping Qi Jingchun\'s hopes and dreams alive."

Luan Changye paused for a brief moment before asking, "Do you really think that these scholars don\'t feel any grievances regarding Qi Jingchun\'s death?"

Mr. Lu remained silent as he pondered this. In the end, he slowly replied, "Due to the situation at that time, the Great Li Empire had no option but to choose the lesser of the two evils."

Luan Juzi chuckled in reply, only touching the surface of the matter before drawing back. He immediately changed topics, saying, "In my opinion, today\'s commotion that has left us deeply wounded isn\'t as a result of the Great Li Empire attempting to flex its muscles and hunt that man. With A\'Liang\'s cultivation base and the temperament that he displayed while traveling the continents back then, he isn\'t someone who would care about such \'trivial matters\'."

"I\'m not entirely sure what\'s going through A\'Liang\'s mind," Mr. Lu sighed.

"However, let me voice the opinion that you kept buried in your mind just then. At the end of the day, the knot in that man\'s heart is still related to Qi Jingchun. When facing pressure from all sides back then, the Great Li Empire didn\'t choose to step forward to support Qi Jingchun. Moreover, the Great Li Empire immediately shut down Mountain Cliff Academy once Qi Jingchun left. The empire abandoned him far too quickly. In fact, one can even suspect the empire of profiting from his misfortune.

"However, both you and I understand that this was genuinely the wisest move that the emperor could have made. In any case, I\'m sure that most ordinary emperors and rulers wouldn\'t even feel an inkling of guilt when making such decisions. In their minds, wouldn\'t such decisions be natural and perfectly justified?"

"Anyway, if we look at things from A\'Liang\'s perspective, would our involvement and the Great Li Empire\'s act of actively challenging him appear like a cultivator at the Lower Five Realms flaunting their strength before him?" Luan Juzi asked. "Not only that, but the cultivator was even puffing their chest in confidence, certain that they would win."

Mr. Lu adjusted his sleeves and shifted his sitting position a little. There was a bitter smile on his face as he remarked, "Now that you say this, why do I feel like a bit of a clown?"

Luan Juzi laughed and said, "If one day there were people like us — mhm, people who can be considered relatively esteemed — chatting about our deeds and marveling at our accomplishments, just how great would that be?"

"Perhaps we would have had a glimmer of hope if we managed to successfully build the 13th floor of White Jade Capital," Mr. Lu sighed. "Now, however, it\'s far more difficult..."

Luan Juzi also sighed in emotion, saying, "I wonder which child from that group from the Great Li Empire will achieve the most surprising success in the future."

"I wager Song Mu," Mr. Lu replied with a smile. "How about you?"

Luan Juzi smiled with squinted eyes and replied half-seriously, "I wager that young girl, Wang Zhu. What do you say?"

The old man from the Lu Clan of the School of Naturalists shook his head and chuckled, "A lone branch can offer brilliant flowers and appear superior to others. However, for it to become a forest will be difficult."

Luan Juzi also shook his head, not offering a comment on this. He suddenly recalled something, and he asked, "Didn\'t Qi Jingchun also accept some other disciples while he was still in Jewel Small World? For example, Zhao Yao? Apart from him, I seem to remember that the School of Military Thought and the Daoist Sect also fought over a child with the surname Ma."

"Let\'s wait and see," Mr. Lu replied. "And let\'s hope that us two old geezers can live to see the conclusion of these tumultuous times."

————

The maidservant Zhi Gui had remained on the 10th floor of White Jade Capital the entire time. She hadn\'t gone elsewhere.

While the others were distracted, she had climbed onto the window sill and curled up her body, leaning sideways as she turned to look toward the south. She would glance at the sky, then glance at the south, and then repeat this again and again. She didn\'t appear bored in the least.

For some reason, you always like to expound your ideas and reasoning to ants. In fact, you like to promote your grand principles even when it comes to me. Your life is more boring than anyone\'s, and your death will also be more miserable than anyone\'s.

This is quite different from that person who you\'re seemingly very well acquainted with. He pays little heed to any of us, and he lives his life as carefree as could be. However, why do I still feel like you\'re a little better than him?

Anyhow, regardless of who\'s better, this is simply something that I need to keep in mind. When it comes to interacting with people and dealing with matters though, I feel like one should be more like that strange person.

In the end, the young girl squinted her golden eyes with twin pupils and chuckled, "Hmm? I just remembered that I\'m not actually a person, am I?"

She sat there in a daze. After a long while, she lifted a finger and ran it across her cheeks.

————

Atop the city wall of the capital, two former allies stood face to face surrounded by a tense atmosphere.

The woman wearing a palace dress shrieked, "Cui Chan, you recognized that person from the beginning, didn\'t you? So, in order to curry favor with him, you purposely opened the city gates and allowed him to charge to White Jade Capital?! Your actions are punishable by death! Even executing you one time isn\'t enough! Do you think you\'ll be any better off once I\'m punished and demoted? Is your brain malfunctioning or something?"

The old Cui Chan, who appeared before others as a scholar dressed in green, remained calm as he replied, "If I didn\'t deactivate the capital\'s formation, would you believe me if I told you that my fate would be far more miserable? Not only that, but some of those standing in front of White Jade Capital would have inevitably been killed. The situation would have been far worse than the current one, where at least no one has died."

Cui Chan chuckled coldly and continued, "I know that the value of Song Jixin\'s existence has already been lost. He\'s no longer useful like he was before. After all, there\'s already no need for your other son — mhm, and my good disciple — to become the pagoda master of White Jade Capital, a perilous task where he might perish along with the swords. So, you\'re probably wishing that this lad could die and reincarnate as soon as possible."

There was a beautiful smile on the woman\'s face, and she replied in a composed voice, "Imperial preceptor, why are you uttering such nonsense?"

Cui Chan didn\'t attempt to argue this point any further, and he said, "Following Mr. Lu\'s suggestion, we were initially going to use the capital\'s talismanic sword as the 13th flying sword of White Jade Capital. This is \'Talisman\', the sword that\'s renowned throughout the continent and that no one can unsheathe. However, Luan Juzi felt that this was inappropriate, in the sense that this sword wouldn\'t be powerful enough to become the representative of the 13th floor.

“Moreover, we needed to sacrifice two divine weapons to split the gigantic Dragon Slaying Platform in Dragon Spring County, or as it was previously known, Jewel Small World. The imperial treasure chamber was genuinely at low levels, and coincidentally, \'Talisman\' was renowned as the toughest sword on the continent. So, if we were lucky, it would have been able to deliver three strikes when wielded by a sword immortal."

The woman frowned and asked, "Cui Chan, what are you trying to say?"

Cui Chan ignored her and continued, "However, the Dragon Slaying Platform was unexpectedly too large. After just two strikes, cracks resembling the cracked patterns on the pottery from the dragon kilns in the small town spread across the blade of the sword. The internal sword essence was shattered. In other words, it was impossible to repair the sword.

“The emperor was pained by this, but he didn\'t assign blame to anyone. Instead, he decided to gift the sword to a woman named Yang Hua, who\'s none other than Her Majesty\'s maidservant. At the same time, however, he also issued a decree to assign her as the river god of the Iron Talisman River. As a result, Her Majesty has lost one of her most loyal and capable assistants. Am I correct?"

The woman smiled and replied, "Are you trying to say that the emperor is giving me a warning?"

"Sure enough, Her Majesty is as beautiful and intelligent as always," Cui Chan said sarcastically.

The woman replied with a cold chuckle.

Cui Chan clicked his tongue and said, "Why don\'t you contemplate the fate of the formal gods of the Five Mountains?"

The color instantly drained from the woman\'s pale and delicate face.

She fell into deep thought, and it was as if she were a Go player reviewing a finished game.

Cui Chan didn\'t interrupt her.

Seizing the opportunity when Jewel Small World fell to the ground, the emperor had initially wanted to break the rules and elevate Cloud Drape Mountain, a mountain that was flowing with fortune, to the Great Li Empire\'s Northern Mountain!

The awkward and peculiar thing was, the current Five Mountains of the Great Li Empire were all located to the north of Cloud Drape Mountain.

Even though none of the formal gods of the Five Mountains had objected to this at the time, the statuses of these mountain gods and river gods were like a halfway point between cultivators in immortal sects and those in the cultivation world. It was as if tumultuous undercurrents had surged into the strategic pass of the empire in a single night.

Cultivators from many sects and abodes had disguised themselves as devotees, ordinary people, or scholars as they visited the Five Mountains. They hadn\'t discussed matters pertaining to offerings and incense, and they had instead talked about the natural wonders and scenery. Meanwhile, the lower-ranked mountain gods and river gods in the surroundings had all fallen silent as if in tacit understanding.

For some reason, however, the emperor who was extremely autocratic when it came to some important matters suddenly changed his mind. He abandoned his initial decision which would have had great implications for the lifespan and fortune of the empire.

Coincidentally, an outsider who dared to kill two grandmasters of the Great Li Empire appeared at the same time.

With the emperor\'s resolute nature, what followed afterward was a large-scale hunt that was great in both strength and impetus. The reason for this was simple — this was a battle that would influence the momentum of the Great Li Empire\'s march down south. It was a battle that would decide how many casualties the Great Li Empire suffered in their expedition to conquer the south.

Otherwise, with the Great Li Empire\'s reputation as northern barbarians in Eastern Treasured Vial Continent, it was inevitable that many powerful and conceited gods and immortals would attempt to obstruct the iron hooves that charged toward the south. These mighty beings would definitely stand in their way to test the speed and power of their blades, as well as the power of their armored cavalry. They would probe whether the Great Li Empire genuinely had the right to stand on equal footing with them.

The Great Li Empire naturally had its own immortal sects as well, with many of them being officially subordinate to the imperial Song Clan. This was further the case unofficially. However, this still wouldn\'t dissuade those cultivators who were like moths to a flame. The most terrifying people would be those tough and elusive Qi refiners who specifically targeted the normal soldiers of the Great Li Empire to massacre. They would hammer one to death here, and slash one to death there. Not only that, but they would also resolutely retreat immediately after killing their targets. That being the case, how could the Great Li Empire deal with them?

And thus, White Jade Capital was born, slowly rising from the ground. The first people to learn about this huge secret were the 12 mountain and river gods, "members" of the Great Li Empire that resided outside the capital.

The Golden Clouds Mountain had initially wanted to assign Cloud Drape Mountain as the Northern Mountain of the empire and rescind the titles of the previous Five Mountains. Even though the emperor had subtly notified the formal gods about this, even giving each of them a clear promise, there was indeed still room for suspicion that he would kick them to the curb once they outlived their usefulness. Thus, it was somewhat understandable that the five formal gods had remained silent. After all, this was a decision that would impact their godly body and Dao foundations. Who dared to naively accept spoken or written offers?

However, stepping forward to block and kill an enemy was completely different. This was something that aligned with the righteous direction of the empire, so there was no reason for the 12 gods who shared both honor and humiliation with the empire to prevaricate.

Before exchanging blows with that saber-wielding outsider, these were indeed facts that couldn\'t be flawed.

In fact, even the true bodies of the six gods who had suffered severe damage to their Dao Manifestations most likely hadn\'t noticed any issues with this reasoning. This was especially the case since the emperor\'s secret decree had clearly stated that they were only targeting a 10th Tier cultivator, or perhaps an 11th Tier cultivator.

Even after the matter, they still felt the same way.

This was the case even though they had suffered a resounding defeat. From the emperor himself to the creator of White Jade Capital, and then to the six formal gods of the mountains and rivers, it appeared as if all of them had ended up as losers. However, this was because not a single one of them had anticipated that their opponent would be so powerful. When they eventually revealed this truth to the world, the Great Li Empire might even unintentionally experience glory even though they had been defeated.

Even so, Cui Chan still felt a sense of lingering apprehension as he stood atop the city wall.

This was because the emperor managed to achieve some parts of his goal despite suffering defeat.

Among the formal gods of the Five Mountains, only the god of the Central Mountain who was forever loyal to the Great Li Empire and the god of the Northern Mountain who had been in the worst situation before had managed to keep their Dao Manifestations unharmed.

The Dao Manifestations of the three other formal gods had all been wiped out, causing their cultivation base to fall drastically. In fact, they had almost fallen to the level of ordinary mountain gods. Becoming as feeble as they were now, they lost the power and confidence to challenge the emperor when it came to the matter of reassigning the Five Mountains.

However, this wasn\'t the most terrifying part. In the past, the emperor had asked Cui Chan a question while they were enjoying a hearty conversation. The imperial preceptor had thus mentioned some of his knowledge gained from experience, saying that rulers could sometimes consider those who had made mistakes or faced punishment in the past when deciding on which official to use. In fact, rulers could even consider putting these people into important positions. This was because they had been punished and taught a lesson before, so with this memory in mind, they would be especially obedient.

If one day the formal gods of the Five Mountains, excluding the formal god of the Central Mountain, realized the hidden undercurrents of this miserable defeat, they would most likely develop a feeling of resentment toward the emperor of the Great Li Empire. However, the previous formal god of the Northern Mountain who had suffered punishment for supporting the wrong side before would only feel a sense of increasing terror.