"So, you've all been lying to me?!" the rat demon roared in fury.

At this moment, Zhao Yunqi and several senior officials helped each other to stand together, staring coldly at it.

Zhao Yunqi caught his breath and nodded happily, "I've been acting with you for over twenty years, how's my acting? Pretty good, right?"

Xiao Yuanshan sneered, "I'm so frustrated, I wish I could kill you sooner."

Huo Jindao coldly said, "Such a fool actually dares to try to control the world, how laughable."

Duke Li retorted, "You think a rat from the gutter can be that clever?"

Zhao Kun nodded, "A brain the size of a sesame seed dares to compare its brainpower with that of humans like us? It's overestimating itself."

Bai Fengmei sneered, "Thinking you can do whatever you want just because you have some supernatural powers, ha."

Liu Yuguan shook his head and said, "Don't say that. At least he has some brains, just not many."

Li Xiao smiled and said, "Sigh, if it weren't for His Highness the Crown Prince, it really could continue to act arrogantly and domineeringly."

Enraged by their attack, the rat demon immediately retorted, "That's right! Without Xiao Zhixing, you wouldn't have been able to catch me!"

Wu Xu wiped away the blood and sneered, "This is just the first move. I was prepared to sacrifice myself to draw down heavenly lightning to destroy you."

Zhao Yunqi coughed and added, "If I use the dragon energy on my body as a sacrifice, alarming the heavens, do you think you can escape?"

The rat demon stood there, its body ice-cold.

Xiao Zhixing waited until they had vented their anger before asking, "Are you finished?"

The crowd quieted down, nodded, and looked wistful.

Xiao Zhixing directly destroyed the rat demon's soul, leaving only its unwilling screams echoing in the air.

Wu Xu looked bewildered. "Really destroyed?"

After more than 20 years of planning, they finally succeeded in one day, and they still couldn't quite believe it, as if they were in a dream.

Xiao Zhixing stood up. "Can you now answer my questions?"

It's mainly what the viewers in the live stream want to hear.

They had just helped her out, so she decided to spoil her fans and do as they wished.

Zhao Yunqi snapped out of his reverie and laughed, "Yuan Sheng is so clever, he must have guessed the general idea, right?"

The group moved to the outer hall and sat down to discuss the matter in detail.

Xiao Zhixing said, "Let me first share my guess."

"At the end of the Yin Dynasty, the late emperor discovered the existence of the monster and began a plan. All of you are part of that plan."

"For example, His Majesty sacrificed himself to lure the demon away from my mother, stabilized the demon, and became the main villain, thus beginning to cooperate with it."

Zhao Yunqi nodded and sighed, "It's difficult for me to make all my thoughts and ideas vanish, so that it can't sense my thoughts and ideas."

He kept brainwashing himself, believing that he was an ungrateful person, a hypocrite, and an ambitious schemer.

Only in this way could they successfully deceive the demon.

"In order to prevent it from coveting the descendants of the Zhao family and harming my descendants, I used your mother's hand to sterilize her, and also agreed to its Gentleman's Courtyard plan. It is only natural that I will give you an opportunity later. This world should belong to the Xiao family."

It would be a lie to say he didn't want to be emperor; it's only after actually sitting on the throne that one realizes how difficult it is to be an emperor.

With the fate of the world resting on his shoulders, he was afraid of failing and being scorned, of disappointing the late emperor, and of being despised by Xiao Yan.

Unless he wants to be a tyrant, he won't find it hard.

Xiao Zhixing continued, "And to get the entire court to cooperate and follow the late emperor's plan, we need a person in charge, isn't that the Grand Tutor?"

That is, the head of the Ministry of Education.

Li Xiao sighed and laughed, "Alas, there's nothing I can do. This old minister has accepted the late emperor's dying wish, and I must carry it out even if it incurs criticism, otherwise I will have no face to meet him after death."

They had to carefully avoid the omnipresent surveillance and detection of the demons, and for the first few years they dared not make any moves. Later, they came up with a plan.

They played a game of deception, communicating directly in the imperial court using coded language and eye contact.

The very first word of every sentence they uttered was the true meaning.

Countless brains have died and countless hairs have been lost as a result.

Xiao Zhixing clasped his hands together. "That's a great idea. No wonder she couldn't find any specific clues about the Ministry of Literature."

"So, the last crucial question is, when will we begin exterminating the demons? Is this signal of a counterattack from me?"

Xiao Yuanshan nodded, "Yes, it was precisely when you awakened your innate spirit."

A spirit from a past life? Could it be that they mistook her transmigration for an awakening?

No wonder they weren't surprised at all by their own changes.

Xiao Zhixing raised an eyebrow and asked again, "How can you be so sure I'm the key?"

Wu Xu said, "Hasn't Your Highness already guessed the formation of the Princess's residence?"

Xiao Zhixing's heart skipped a beat. Could it be that the formation had summoned him here?

Unexpectedly, Wu Xu said, "The old Taoist, along with several True Men and Masters, worked together to connect with Heaven and received some kind of premonition. You are the key person and our hope."

Xiao Zhixing breathed a sigh of relief. "This kind of thing always comes at a price. What is it?"

The array must be transmitting the sacrificial offerings.

Everyone fell silent, their eyes filled with sorrow.

Xiao Zhixing suddenly realized, "It's...it's my mother?!"

Xiao Yuanshan choked up, "Yes, it was a princess. She had dragon energy on her. She was a sacrifice that moved the heavens."

Xiao Zhixing remained silent.

Suddenly, I understood Xiao Yan's helplessness, heartache, pain, and determination.

She brought the system to her, which not only harmed so many people but also her own mother.

So she willingly became a sacrifice, in order to obtain that one possibility.

She must have indeed been drawn here by the formation, and only with the intervention of this Heavenly Dao could she land so precisely on Xiao Qingluan, becoming this hope.

Wu Xu sighed, "It wasn't just the princess, but also the spirits of the late emperor and Empress Zhang, and the dragon energy. It was the combined efforts of the three of them that finally moved the heavens."

Shortly after the formation was activated, Xiao Zhixing, who had been sent to Shengjing, successfully awakened, and they knew that things had succeeded.

"In other words, my mother..."

Wu Xu shook his head, his eyes red, "The princess's disappearance must be..."

Vanished without a trace.

The group fell silent again. Zhao Yunqi blinked and said in a hoarse voice, "When Ayan left, she must have still hated me."

They hadn't told her about the plans beforehand, for fear that she wouldn't cooperate.

It is a fact that he betrayed her and used those people to drive her away; there is no denying it.

Looking at these people who were so loyal to Emperor Yin, Xiao Zhixing asked his final question, "Then, who exactly is my father?"

She looked at Xiao Yuanshan and Zhao Yunqi.

The two looked at each other and smiled wryly. "We don't know either."

Wu Xu coughed lightly and said softly, "It seems the princess used some method that demon once provided, uh, to conceive on her own..."

Xiao Zhixing: What do you mean? ...Artificial insemination? Oh my god, so only Xiao Yan knows whose seed it is?

She rubbed her forehead, her face slightly dark.

Li Xiao asked, "When did Your Highness first learn of our secret?"

Xiao Zhixing snapped out of his daze. "At first, I just thought you guys were strange and didn't think much of it. But later, I realized that the late emperor and my mother were not confused people, and that's when I started to have doubts."

"Then I discovered the traces of the demon. Most importantly, His Majesty secretly entrusted the Imperial Seal and Tiger Tally to me. I then knew that there were many secrets hidden within them."

Zhao Yunqi asked in surprise, "You can open that box?"

Xiao Yuanshan was also puzzled, "Only I know the key and the method to open the box, how did you know how to open it?"