Volume 4, Chapter 105 – Interference

With a sharp crack, a porcelain piece from the stand fell to the floor and shattered into fragments amid a crisp burst of sound.

Fang Xiaochun had been sprawled over his desk in deep sleep. At the noise, he jolted awake, hurried over to inspect the disturbance, and only after confirming that the vase had simply been set unsteadily and fallen on its own, with no one else in the room besides himself, did he finally let out a breath.

In barely a month, I, the governor of an entire state, have fallen to the point of worrying that someone might assassinate me in my own residence…

Fang Xiaochun shook his head with a bitter smile. Inwardly, he even felt a trace of relief—relief that he had never had the time to cultivate longevity. Even though those people had already seized control of most of the current situation in the Qi lands, they had no real interest in dealing with him.

Because he was too weak.

Physically weak, in the most literal sense. If they wanted to kill him, they could do it at any moment. But there was no need to go that far and further inflame the situation.

By now, most of the officials and gentry in the upper circles of the Qi lands had already been won over by that Fang Wenyuan, obeying his orders and constantly currying favor with the Void Realm dojos that had invaded.

Yet Fang Xiaochun had governed the Qi lands for years. As long as he still held the office of governor, many officials were still only willing to obey his orders.

For instance, the Demon-Suppression Bureau. That was one of the few forces he still had left in his hands.

“Father?” Fang Wenya pushed open the door in a scholar’s robe and saw at first glance the patterned porcelain vessel smashed on the floor. Her father, on the other hand, was standing beside it, seemingly lost in thought, though unharmed.

Seeing that, she too let out a breath. She had the same fear herself… the odds of Fang Xiaochun being assassinated were low, but they were not zero.

Because in her view, many of the officials in the upper circles of the Qi lands had already gone mad.

And if they were mad, how could anyone still expect them to act according to the logic of normal people?

She truly feared that some of them might lose their minds entirely and decide to trade her family’s lives to those demonic people for something.

“Father, don’t worry.” Even so, Fang Wenya still said this aloud. “Many of the officials are still only willing to follow your command. Even if only for the sake of preserving stability in the Qi lands, Fang Wenyuan would not go that far.”

Father has been sleeping in the study for two days now.

He can’t even sleep properly… if I say anything more frightening, he really will end up with his nerves in shreds.

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Fang Xiaochun glanced at her, said nothing, and quickly returned behind the desk to sit down, already looking as though he meant to grind ink and start writing again.

He himself was fine, but his phone was not.

To sever this governor’s control over the entire Qi lands, those people had already cut off his ability to make long-distance contact with the outside, directly suspending almost every communication line in this residence.

“Father.” Fang Wenya hurried over to help, grinding the ink while looking at his face. “Are you writing to the Crown Prince again?”

The imperial clan of the court usually had a weak sense of presence in outlying regions.

And not only because there had recently been the example of Yao Qingyuan colluding with demonic people and raising the banner of rebellion—historically, there had also been several other uprisings by members of the imperial house, all because exiled princes and nobles were too far from the capital, beyond the reach of central power, and had been allowed to build up military strength in remote areas.

With such precedents in mind, even if the current Son of Heaven knew nothing of such matters, his council of ministers would never allow too many members of the imperial house to be stationed outside. Most of them enjoyed luxury in Yujing, with little contact with local officials.

Yao Qingyuan had been an exception.

One could tell just from his name that he had once been somewhat favored in childhood.

It was precisely because that favor had never solidified into real power that he had later gone mad, convinced that Emperor Yu, Yao Xing, had stolen that favor from him, and thus determined to rise in rebellion.

As for the others, whether Crown Prince Yao Quan, Fourth Prince Yao Feng, Seventh Prince Yao Sheng, or the little princess Yao Ying, all were still shrouded beneath the vast looming shadow of Yujing City, with no real chance to step into the light.

…Under normal circumstances, that would have been so.

But times were different now.

Fang Wenya sighed inwardly.

The Void Realm people had descended less than a month ago, and yet the court had already allowed ambitious men like Fang Wenyuan to throw an entire region into disorder, looking ready to hand over governing power in some of the more remote territories altogether.

With the imperial house so weak, ordinary people might not be able to see it, but how could the princes and princesses themselves fail to develop thoughts of a different kind in secret?

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It was also because the times had changed so abruptly that those people had suddenly begun sending out agents everywhere. Calls and letters crossed the skies, and even within Yujing itself they had begun secretly making contact with wild factions, accumulating strength for their own ambitions.

If all this chaos had not been unfolding at once, how could morality and social order have rotted this badly in just over a month?

“Taking powders” was only the refined name for it. In truth, it meant ingesting drugs that drove the mind into hallucination.

This allusion came from the year Tianding 938, when the notorious Luo and Huang clan usurpation erupted in Dingbei Circuit, setting the Nine Provinces aflame and splitting the realm into three.

And before Sacred Emperor Yao had rallied the collapsing order with the Divine Sword Chixiao, that “realm split in three” had killed no one knew how many of the court’s armies. Back then the rebels were so arrogant they truly believed Heaven’s Mandate was already theirs, and from that there sprang a decadent atmosphere. In the “state” the rebels established, those powerful ministers and scholars began lying atop mountains of treasure and fighting among themselves, destroying the rites and laws the human race had inherited since antiquity.

Once rites and laws collapsed, morality vanished along with them.

And so “taking powders” became an elegant pastime.

So did “wanton love,” “clever arts,” and “pleasure houses.”

The Three Excellencies and Nine Ministers, unrestrained by morality, dared to flaunt their wealth before the newly enthroned emperor in open court.

Regional officials, shielded by their clans and backed by allies in the capital, brazenly oppressed the common people and embezzled all manner of court funds.

If the new emperor allocated one hundred in funds for a given policy, by the time the money reached the actual work on the ground, less than ten might remain.

If one had not specifically studied that dark period of history, a modern person might find it hard to imagine that such a permissive atmosphere had once arisen in conservative antiquity.

And in Fang Wenya’s eyes, the present situation bore nine-tenths resemblance to that period.

The only difference was that the current court had inherited orthodoxy.

But with orthodoxy behaving thus and rebels behaving thus, which of the two was actually the “better thing,” Fang Wenya truly could no longer tell.

Fang Xiaochun had no idea his daughter’s thoughts had wandered so far while grinding ink, all the way into outright treason. He only said, “His Highness the Crown Prince has the heart to draw men together. I naturally must discuss matters with him more.”

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“Father!” Fang Wenya cried. “Then why not discuss them with Dao Master Bai?”

She could not understand it. The solution was so close at hand—why go searching far away for one?

Just secretly send word to Dao Master Bai and have her come over and split all those vermin apart with a single sword. Wouldn’t that settle the matter?

“Hm?”

Fang Xiaochun’s head snapped up, and a streak of purple-gold light flashed through his eyes unnoticed.

His expression darkened, the muscles in his face trembling of their own accord, and he said harshly to his daughter, “…That is not the same thing.”

“Matters of grown men are not for you to interfere in!”

It again.

Fang Wenya sighed inwardly.

This was not the first time they had had a conversation like this. She truly could not understand why it was that every time she raised the matter of “asking Maozhou for help,” her father became so fierce and strange, always speaking in odd phrases like “the nature of it is different.”

Too unfamiliar.

The Fang Xiaochun now before her was so unfamiliar it frightened her.

But she still wanted to make one last effort, if only to keep matters from spiraling completely out of control.

“But Father… I heard that a plane from Liangzhou stopped in Qiyun and had some kind of conflict with those people there. It seems that… some of the people on board were forcibly taken away.”

“You know that Bai Daozhu’s family was on that plane, don’t you?”

“I once heard you discussing that matter over the phone.”

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“If something like that happened under your jurisdiction, and you do not send any word at all to Maozhou, then if there is any involvement, wouldn’t that invite Dao Master Bai’s hostility and suspicion and damage the relationship between Qiyun and Zhennan?”

“This matter—”

Fang Xiaochun frowned, and some trace of clarity flashed through his eyes, only to be swallowed almost immediately once more by murk.

“Then I leave this matter to you.”

He waved his hand impatiently.

“Go out.”

“How many times have I told you not to trouble me at a time like this?”

He truly has changed…

Closing the door behind her, Fang Wenya lowered her head and looked at the tips of her shoes, sorrow nearly spilling over in her heart.

What in the world happened to Father, that he has become like this?

He used to be able to feel dissatisfaction with the court.

When the Son of Heaven did something wrong, he would point it out, and in as gentle a tone as possible urge the throne to correct it.

But now, every time Maozhou is mentioned, he reacts like this, in such an extreme way.

It is almost as if…

Almost as if he had been afflicted by a demon pool.