Volume 5, Chapter 108 – Winning Hearts and Minds (2-in-1)

The old man in green robes was naturally Liu Haoran, the famed Master Cijing.

During the rise of the Liu faction, Bai Zhuqing, as the one overseeing the Imperial Court, had also needed their support. For that reason, she had once bestowed upon him the official post of Grand Scholar, only for him to decline it, stating clearly that he wished only to remain at home and devote himself to scholarship. This only further strengthened his reputation for virtue among the common people.

As for the black-robed old man beside him, he too was no stranger to Bai Xiang. He was none other than Dao Lord Kong Tianbao of the Jingzhu Sword Dao, who had once been controlled by the Yao Yu imperial family through a poison pill.

“Your Majesty.”

Liu Haoran immediately moved to kneel before Bai Xiang.

“Xia Emperor!”

Kong Tianbao, on the other hand, put on far more of a show. He stumbled backward two steps, openly displaying his fear of Bai Xiang. One hand braced itself against the sword at his waist while the other trembled in midair. Stammering, he said, “You… no… Your… Your Majesty, why have you…?”

He was terrified of Bai Xiang, because he knew perfectly well that in her eyes, he was a traitor.

Back then, he had been controlled like a puppet by a poison pill, manipulated and toyed with by a little girl from the Suzhen Dao using a small jade token. It had been Bai Xiang who saved him. Later, she had even passed on qi arts to him, allowing him to prolong his life and survive into the Zhengyuan era.

And what had he done in return?

After discovering that his qi-path realm could no longer advance, he had chosen to leave Great Xia, taking the entire Jingzhu Sword Dao and the Kong family with him to defect to the Western Federation.

What was that if not betrayal in Bai Xiang’s eyes?

Even he knew he was in the wrong. To put it bluntly, the one person he had feared meeting most on this trip back to Great Xia was Bai Xiang. If Xue En had not laid out the stakes for him and told him Bai Xiang would certainly not have the time to bother with someone like him, he would never have agreed to come.

“Senior Kong,” Bai Xiang said, glancing sideways at him. “Many years have passed, and yet Senior Kong is still hale and hearty.”

“I…” Kong Tianbao’s lips trembled, as if he had only just come back to his senses. Hurriedly, he copied Liu Haoran’s posture and bowed to her as well, saying, “This sinner, Tianbao, knows his fault. I am willing to repay Your Majesty’s kindness from years ago with my death. I only beg that Your Majesty, for the sake of old ties, forgive this sinner’s offenses of recent years.”

He was not pleading for himself. He was pleading for his son Kong An, and for the Kong family, who had by now settled overseas.

Though there was, in theory, a vast geographical distance between them, and Bai Xiang was hardly going to strike over there immediately, he had likely already seen the direction things were heading. At a time like this, he could not possibly hope that people like Xue En would still protect him. Better to beg forgiveness as thoroughly as possible first.

As for trying to deny it, or even fight?

He could not even refuse Xue En’s orders, much less oppose the Great Xia empress, who had defeated a siege by many Saints after Xue En gathered them together.

That was a Saint!

Forget how much weight that word carried today. In ancient times, thousands or tens of thousands of years ago, such a being would have been a god, a Buddha.

Would an ordinary mortal dare deny things to a Buddha? Dare fight one?

Kong Tianbao was not tired of living!

“I do not have time to deal with you.” Bai Xiang’s brows drew together slightly. “Go outside first.”

“I obey the decree…!” Kong Tianbao bent so low that his backside rose even higher than Xu Ling’s had before. His face was obsequious, and he crawled out like a stray dog.

With that kind of character, there was no way Liu Haoran had been persuaded into holding the Liu faction in check because of Kong Tianbao’s exhortations.

Bai Xiang had seen things through completely now. Looking at Liu Haoran again, she walked up to him and took out a Nourishing Life Pill for him.

“Thank you, Your Majesty.” Liu Haoran accepted the pill with both hands and immediately swallowed it.

He recognized the Nourishing Life Pill. It was the flagship product of Yuming Workshop, green as fresh jade in appearance and fragrant within. Rumor said that merely smelling it could lengthen one’s life by half a month, while taking it could nourish three full years of life. Because it was so precious, it was never sold to the public. Even someone of Liu Haoran’s standing could only receive inferior versions of it when his students came to visit, and those were merely small pills packaged in a completely modern style.

The effects of the inferior product truly could not compare to the genuine article. After swallowing the pill, Liu Haoran’s complexion improved noticeably. He no longer looked so frail and shaky, and could straighten his back to speak with Bai Xiang.

Bai Xiang first told him to rise, then stood with him beside the pond and began to question him.

“We know Master Liu’s plan,” Bai Xiang said directly. “Master Liu intended to use the climate of fearful silence from some days ago to hold down the Liu faction, and then hand Us a pretext to eradicate the Liu faction completely. Am We right?”

“Your Majesty sees clearly.” Liu Haoran inclined himself slightly. “Your Majesty’s eyes are bright as torches and clear as fire. This old minister congratulates Your Majesty, and congratulates Great Xia.”

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“Enough with that nonsense.” Bai Xiang waved a hand. “We are not so petty as to discard a capable minister out of mere suspicion. So long as you have not truly done certain things, We still possess that much tolerance.”

“Your Majesty…” Liu Haoran was first stunned, then so moved that his expression could almost be described as tearful.

His character had already been proven over more than half a century. Had he truly been the sort of treacherous minister or usurping minister that others claimed, then in the previous dynasty he would never have remained tucked away in a private school all those years as a mere teacher.

He did not come from humble origins. Unlike Fang Xiaochun, who had risen from obscurity, Liu Haoran had come from a distinguished scholarly family and in his early years had studied under the great court scholar Zheng Xianwen.

And Zheng Xianwen himself had come from a Jiangnan merchant family, with the entire Southern faction standing behind him.

With that layer of convenience alone, if Liu Haoran had wished it, he could have entered the capital and taken office long ago. It would have taken only a single word from Zheng Xianwen.

But he had not. When he was young, he too had once harbored the ideal of following Zheng Xianwen into court, debating policy and serving the nation with all his learning. But as time passed, the early Southern faction grew ever more rotten. It gradually changed from being master craftsmen patching the leaks of the Great Yu court into a swarm of maggots and flies that embezzled together and wreaked havoc together.

From that point on, he gave up that ambition, severed ties with the entire Southern faction, and shut his doors to devote himself to scholarship.

At the time, there had naturally been jealous people who said sourly that this was merely political wisdom on his part, because later, after Yao Xing ascended the throne, the court finally smashed the piggy bank. It launched a sweeping purge of Southern faction officials. More than eighty households alone had their property confiscated, and Zheng Xianwen, the chief minister of that court, was even executed along with his clan by the newly enthroned Yao Xing. It was only because Liu Haoran had cut ties so cleanly back then that the reckoning had barely failed to reach him.

From all this, it was plain to see that Liu Haoran possessed a certain lofty integrity. He had recognized the decay of Great Yu, yet had been unwilling to use his own learning directly to prop it up. Instead, he had merely shut himself away and taught, producing disciples one after another, men like Xu Ling and Zhang Xianzhi, and letting them indirectly change the face of the nation.

Only, unfortunately, history had proven itself cyclical and repetitive. Even Liu Haoran himself had never imagined that the idle move he had once made from the sidelines would eventually unleash such enormous power.

After the rise of the Liu faction, he had naturally been honored as the faction leader. In truth, he had intended to refuse the title. But when disciples like Xu Lin and Zhang Xianzhi looked at him with hopeful eyes, calling him “teacher,” he found himself unable to harden his heart and sever ties once more.

That period had in fact been the bleakest and most painful time of Liu Haoran’s life, because only then did he truly understand his teacher Zheng Xianwen. Only then did he understand why Zheng Xianwen, long famed for his virtue, had appeared so muddle-headed in old age, even to the point of seeming insatiably greedy as he sought land and wealth for the Southern faction through every possible channel.

The reason was actually quite simple: once an internal clan-faction had formed, and children and grandchildren multiplied and developed down the generations, there would be more and more mouths to feed and more and more bodies to clothe.

If they were the children of common folk, then a bowl of rice gruel and a rough hemp shirt would suffice. But these were the children of high officials of the court. Without polished white rice, fine flour, silk, satin, gauze, and brocade, how could their status and position be displayed?

So of course land had to be seized and wealth hoarded.

And still more had to be done for the blessing of one’s descendants: bribery, favoritism, every kind of loophole exploited, every gap in the system stolen through, all to secure some idle but elegant office for one’s children and grandchildren.

Thus those many mouths, those many hands, and those many hopes of children rising high all converged into a smoking locomotive, accelerating endlessly along the rails of greed, faster and faster, faster and faster.

Unless the train crashed and everyone died, it could never stop again.

Once one saw through this, one also saw through the process of Zheng Xianwen’s corruption.

Liu Haoran remembered the last time he had gone to see Zheng Xianwen before the man’s death. He had righteously questioned him, demanding to know why he had betrayed the learning he had once taught and committed such grave wrongs.

And how had Zheng Xianwen responded?

First with wooden silence, then by covering his face and refusing him.

At first he had stood there like a block of wood, unable to speak, and then he had hidden his face behind his sleeve and politely dismissed him.

At the time, Liu Haoran had not understood. From that response, it was clear Zheng Xianwen was not unaware that he was doing something wrong and against his conscience. Liu Haoran had not understood why he had done it anyway, knowing all this full well.

Only many years later, in the Zhengyuan era of the new dynasty, when the Liu faction had grown powerful and he himself faced those many pairs of hopeful eyes, did he feel in a daze as though his own figure had overlapped with Zheng Xianwen’s.

The bullet that his younger self had once refined out of sharp words and fired at his teacher had, many years later, struck him squarely in the brow.

He had committed the same error as his teacher.

A man like that had also betrayed the learning he had once insisted on, and if a great scholar, if a learned man, could not even make the principles in his own heart logically cohere, then how could he possibly interpret scholarship well?

That was why Liu Haoran had shut himself away to study far earlier than Fang Xiaochun, and yet after so many years had still failed to produce anything of note.

He simply could not bring himself to do it, to profit the Liu faction on the one hand while using scholarship on the other to deceive the Imperial Court.

And yet such a man, in Bai Xiang’s mouth, seemed not to have committed any truly grave offense.

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At that moment, he decisively cast off the branding iron of ideology, abandoned the restraints of ritual and law, and stared fixedly at the emperor, wanting to see whether she truly meant what she said, whether she really thought this way.

What he saw were only a pair of deep golden eyes.

He could not see clearly.

And he could not see through them.

Ah!

Then he suddenly reacted, and hurried to kneel again.

“Your Majesty… I… I dare not accept this… I truly deserve death ten thousand times…”

“We told you to stop this.” Bai Xiang frowned, and Liu Haoran could no longer kneel.

“If you had not acted as you did today, if you had not used yourself as bait to set this trap, then yes, you would indeed deserve death ten thousand times, and We would not protect you.”

“But you have proven yourself through your actions, so We cannot be bothered to pursue the small errors you committed.”

“And now the world faces a transformation unseen in a thousand years, while We are wholly devoted to cultivation and cannot divide Ourselves.”

“You, are you willing to take up the office of Chancellor before the throne, and rebuild the Central Court for Us?”

By the time she had said this much, Bai Xiang felt it was about enough.

Liu Haoran was an intelligent man in whom emotion and reason coexisted. When such people acted emotionally, they could be rather foolish, but the rational part of them also allowed them, once they had acted foolishly, to understand in time what choice was truly the most appropriate.

“Since this is a charge entrusted by Your Majesty, this subject will naturally obey.”

As expected, Liu Haoran agreed.

“This subject does in fact have a list in mind… I shall go make the arrangements at once. I should be able to reconstruct the framework of the Central Court by tomorrow at dusk…”

“There is no need for such urgency.” Bai Xiang shook her head and continued, “We trust you, but that does not mean We trust your students.”

Liu Haoran froze, then shuddered violently.

He understood.

This matter was not over yet.

The train still had to be stopped, and the accounts still had to be settled. Liu Haoran had escaped punishment because he had placed his dignity, reputation, and life on one side of the scales. But the rest of the Liu faction had no such chance to prove themselves.

“You are the head of the faction. You know your own people best.”

Bai Xiang tilted her head slightly toward the old minister.

“Which ones deserve to die, and which ones may live.”

“We leave that matter to you.”

“What do you think, Chancellor?”

Now that Your Majesty has put it that way, was there any chance at all of refusing…

Liu Haoran bowed again.

“This subject will see it done…”

Good.

Bai Xiang felt lighter inside.

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Matters here were more or less settled.

At present, Great Xia’s political institutions were rather shabby, and that was because all Huaxia-style dynasties had a habit after founding themselves: they would summarize how the previous dynasty had died, then rack their brains to make changes so they themselves would not die the same way.

In practical terms, that meant many political institutions from Yao Yu had not been fully carried over.

Take the Central Court, for example, this “meeting center of chief ministers.” Back then, Bai Zhuqing had already been overwhelmed dealing with people like that Tao fellow and the others. There was no way she could also add more posts above their heads and further empower them.

Naturally, that had its disadvantages. Chief among them was the shortage of truly reliable personnel, so many major military and political affairs had required her personal decisions.

But fortunately, Great Xia’s base-city model was closed enough.

To put it plainly: fortify the walls and clear the fields.

Each super base city formed a self-contained cycle, a foundation left behind by the previous dynasty’s design.

With that foundation in place, together with the popularization of qi arts and the implementation and support of Yuming Workshop and the grand academy system, her task had not been unbearably difficult.

But that political structure was only enough to preserve what already existed. It was not enough for outward expansion.

So some institutions needed to be rebuilt, and some people needed to be put back to use. In that respect, Bai Xiang could for the moment find no candidate more suitable than Liu Haoran.

Besides, things like factional followers could never truly be eradicated.

Human beings were social creatures. Even if qi arts were popularized, she did not believe society would become the sort of cultivation world found in novels.

There would still be entanglements. All kinds of relationships would still knot themselves together.

Rather than kill off every new group that emerged, it was better from the start to support a sufficiently prestigious representative.

And this time, by carrying out a “righteous purge of his own people” under her orders, Liu Haoran would possess both moral authority and prestige.

For a very long time to come, this was one area she would no longer need to worry about.

Once the Central Court was rebuilt, and the number of chancellors and court ministers increased, the machinery of the state would naturally begin to accelerate on its own, and her younger sister would no longer have to work so hard.

After speaking with Liu Haoran, Bai Xiang summoned Kong Tianbao back in for questioning.

“Were you sent here by Xue En?”

She did not skirt around it, instead asking directly what troubled her most.

“Yes…” Kong Tianbao said with a bitter face. “We had no wish to come and invade again. It was all the Blood Lord, coercing and enticing us…”

“That is enough.” Bai Xiang sounded impatient. “Report your exact numbers, your operational directives, and where the others are now. Stop talking so much nonsense.”

Her imposing aura was lighter now than it had been before. Her imperial self-address had also changed back, and her whole manner had become lazy and casual.

But Kong Tianbao still did not dare be negligent. Obediently, he reported every last detail about himself and the others, betraying his master so thoroughly it was almost impressive.

There was simply no such word as loyalty in a man like him.

Back then, he had been willing to serve Bai Xiang for the sake of longevity, so naturally he had also been willing to betray Bai Xiang for the sake of longevity.

And now that he faced a mortal crisis, there was of course nothing he would not sell.

While Kong Tianbao spoke, Liu Haoran remained standing to one side, but in secret he memorized the names and locations the man mentioned, intending to begin settling accounts the very same day.

You old bastard. That day you barged in here and kept prattling at me as if I had to put up with you.

“So this ‘Celestial Change and Earthly Upheaval’ really was the Federation’s doing?”

Bai Xiang continued questioning Kong Tianbao.

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Since she had the opportunity, she intended to wring more intelligence from him.

“I do not know the full details, but there really was such a plan.”

Kong Tianbao nodded.

“It was only that I left in a hurry. I only managed to overhear fragments at the edges, so I fear I cannot fully resolve Your Majesty’s doubts.”

“Just speak plainly.”

“Very well.” Kong Tianbao brightened at once.

“Your Majesty should know that the Sacred Weapon Clan controls quite a number of orbital space stations.”

Bai Xiang nodded. “That much is true.”

Strictly speaking, those were already special giant lifeforms… calling them space stations was not entirely appropriate.

But they could indeed still perform their original functions, and that was one of the Sacred Weapon Clan’s advantages. That had to be acknowledged.

“As far as I know, Xue En’s plan is to select fragments of the star ring and drop them down in batches,” Kong Tianbao said. “He seems utterly unconcerned with how much damage this will cause. Before we set out, he was still preparing another matter as well: assembling a starsea fleet.”

A starsea fleet?

Now that the Void Realm had already shattered, rolled back, and fused with the main world, what was he planning to do with a fleet?

Bai Xiang froze.

Whether it was Taishang Response and the Jade Spirit Mingxin Method at work, or whether her life level had already risen to a sufficiently lofty realm, at that moment sudden inspiration came to her. She recalled a set of coordinates she had once sold to the Silver Sea Merchant Guild.

Those coordinates pointed to the ruins of Golden Light Temple. At the time, she had been too busy facing Pang Tiandao and a host of other formidable enemies to have any thought of hunting treasure there, so she had simply sold them to the Silver Sea Merchant Guild in exchange for benefits. After returning, so much time had passed that she had forgotten about it altogether.

But now she remembered it, and in such a bizarre way.

And with the Silver Sea Merchant Guild also in turmoil at the moment, with even Meng Qiaosheng having vanished, Bai Xiang could not help suspecting that these people were secretly plotting something around those coordinates.

For example… perhaps they intended to release the Saint-level powerhouse imprisoned there, form an alliance with it, and return together to deal with her?

The more she thought about it, the more plausible it seemed. Bai Xiang silently committed the matter to memory.

“You have done well.”

She tipped her chin at Kong Tianbao.

“Take this.”

“After swallowing it, go to the Voidfiend Research Institute and have them adjust your condition.”

As she spoke, she took out a blood-red pill from her jade token and tossed it through the air to Kong Tianbao.

“Many thanks, Your Majesty!”

Kong Tianbao caught it, instantly overjoyed, and swallowed the pill on the spot.

He failed to notice that Bai Xiang’s gaze upon him held a trace of pity.

Kong Tianbao did not possess Liu Haoran’s talents. A man who had switched sides so many times had no value in being kept around.

But killing him outright would be letting him off too easily, and it would only dirty Bai Xiang’s own hands for nothing.

So it was better to send him to the institute and see what effect the modified Sacred Weapon Clan would have after ingesting the Demon God Blood Pill.