comet

Inside the East Palace.

After the illusion array was removed, the prince finally appeared, accompanied by an old man with white hair and beard.

Liu Mingyin stood stiffly in an open space, not far from Qingyang's body. He was about to flee when Pei Yingguan approached him.

Liu Mingyin had to stop running and prepare to fight.

To his surprise, Pei Yingguan threw him a talisman. Liu Mingyin took a look and found it was a teleportation talisman that could teleport him to the outskirts of Chang'an.

"Let's go." Pei Yingguan didn't want to say more to him and just urged him to leave.

Liu Mingyin activated the talisman and really left the East Palace.

The prince and the old man walked over one after another. Pei Ying saw it clearly and saw that the prince's face looked extremely bad.

He ordered Pei Yingguan: "Pei Qing, tell me what happened earlier."

When Liu Mingyin arrived home, Mingshu had already left and Xiao Wan'er was drawing talismans inside. He went straight to Xiao Wan'er's room. Xiao Wan'er put down the talisman brush when she heard the footsteps.

"How did you escape?" she asked Liu Mingyin.

"Pei Yingguan gave me a teleportation talisman," Liu Mingyin said, handing the used talisman to Xiao Wan'er. "I used it to escape to the outskirts of Chang'an, and then walked back."

Xiao Wan'er carefully examined the talisman and found nothing wrong, so she returned it to Liu Mingyin. As she did so, she instructed him, "We failed in our attempt to assassinate the Crown Prince. It's hard to say what will happen next. You should also prepare some talismans and formation plates that can be used for fighting or saving your life, just in case."

"I understand." Liu Mingyin agreed.

In the East Palace, the prince was already furious.

"You mean, out of all the Transcendent Realm cultivators among us, six died in the battle, leaving only one of the other four alive?"

This result was obviously too ugly, but Pei Yingguan still lowered his head and reminded: "Your Highness, the one who died was trying to protect the others from escaping the pursuit of the seniors."

"Waste," the prince became even more angry, "a bunch of waste."

"Your Highness, please calm down. The cultivators who have reached the transcendental realm through forbidden techniques are not strong to begin with. It is not unexpected that they were defeated miserably by cultivators who have reached the transcendental realm through cultivation." The old man with white hair and beard explained, and the prince managed to control his anger.

But he still needed someone to vent his anger, and Qingyang's body bore his wrath.

The crown prince ordered Qingyang's head to be chopped off and hung on the city gate for ten days. The rest of his body was burned and then the ashes were scattered.

For ten days, Xiao Wan'er and Liu Mingyin were on high alert, constantly prepared for any threat from the Crown Prince. However, no one approached them regarding the Crown Prince's assassination attempt. Seeing the incident was over, the two relaxed their vigilance, only to find Ming Shu approaching them again seven days later.

At that time, the two had just finished their shift and as soon as they opened the door, they felt the aura of a powerful person in the extraordinary realm. Unfortunately, this person was hiding his figure, and Liu Mingyin almost drew his sword on the spot.

Fortunately, Xiao Wan'er felt the familiarity of this breath, remembered its owner, and stopped Liu Mingyin from attacking at the last moment.

"Junior brother, please stop now," she said as she closed the door tightly, then looked towards the familiar aura, "Fellow Daoist Mingshu, can you please show yourself now?"

The invisibility spell was removed, and Ming Shu's figure appeared before Xiao Wan'er and the others. Compared to before, her clothes were more torn and dirty, and she was not in good condition.

"Fellow Daoist Xiao, can I stay at your house temporarily? I'm already fasting, so I don't need a separate house. I usually hide my body. I just ask that Fellow Daoist Xiao give me a place to stay."

"Of course you can," Xiao Wan'er said, puzzled when she saw her miserable state, "What happened to you, fellow Daoist?"

Ming Shu smiled bitterly: "The prince put pressure on my master's sect, and I was expelled from the sect."

Xiao Wan'er thought of the powerful aura she had sensed that day in the Eastern Palace. Although already old and dying, that aura truly came from a powerful being only half a step away from reaching the True Return Realm.

"There must be a cultivator around the prince who tried to reach the Return to Truth Realm but failed." She said slowly.

Mingshu nodded immediately.

"Indeed, this person has successively joined my sect and that of Daoist Fellow Qingyang. Now, both of us have been expelled from our sect."

Xiao Wan'er thought of Qingyang, whose body was completely destroyed after his death, and remained silent.

Ming Shu, on the other hand, was quite open-minded. "When we decided to assassinate the Crown Prince, we were already prepared for any outcome. Everything that's happening now is as we expected. However, the ministers on your side will probably be forced to lie low for a while."

Just as Mingshu had said, things remained quiet for the rest of the time. That is until the beginning of a new wave of unrest when Princess Taiping's husband, Duke of Chu Wu Youji, passed away.

The imperial court lavished him with honors after his death, posthumously bestowing him the titles of Grand Marshal, Grand Commander of Bingzhou, and Prince Ding. His death also temporarily halted the conflict between the Crown Prince and Princess Taiping, as both sides at least focused on his funeral.

But not long after his funeral, another major event happened - a comet passed through the night sky of Chang'an City one night with a long glowing tail.

The officials and civilians in Chang'an City were all in an uproar, like boiling water.

Comets were viewed with extreme awe by both the government and the public. Common people viewed them as calamities, linking them to various disasters. In the court, comets were even more widely seen as manifestations of divine will, often associated with the rise and fall of nations, the change of dynasties, and natural and man-made disasters.

In this situation, once the comet appeared, all parties would take action.

That evening, the meeting hall at Princess Taiping's residence was filled with ministers. Xiao Wan'er waited outside, watching them discuss matters until dawn.

After finalizing the rules, it was time to put them into action. However, the first to act was surprisingly the Crown Prince.

At the morning court session, just as the officials from the Imperial Astronomy Bureau finished reporting the comet-related matters to the emperor, a court official stood up and made a suggestion, pointing the finger at Princess Taiping.

As for the rhetoric, it is nothing more than clichés such as "the appearance of a comet means there are evil villains in the court", "Princess Taiping crows at dawn and plays power games, she is really treacherous", etc., which are combined with the auspiciousness or inauspiciousness of astronomical phenomena, and people have long been tired of hearing them.

The ministers who supported Princess Taiping were unwilling to be outdone, and immediately linked the comet to the prince. Their reason was very clear: the prince, as a son and a minister, was seizing power, making the people of the world know the prince better than the emperor. It was because of this ambitious and disrespectful prince that God sent a comet as a warning.

The two sides argued so loudly that neither would give in. The emperor on the throne felt a sharp pain in his head. Finally, he could no longer tolerate it and flew into a rage.

"Shut up, everyone! A comet is soaring in the sky, and you, my trusted ministers, don't think about how to avert disaster, but instead blindly eliminate those who dissidents. With ministers like you around, how can we avoid disaster?"

The emperor spoke in extremely harsh words, and the court officials knelt on the ground and begged the emperor to calm down.

At this point, everything was in order again.

The emperor rubbed his forehead with a look of pain on his face, and felt the headache ease a little, so he asked the Dragon Guards about the comet.

"Pei Qing, He Jing, what do you two think?"

Pei Yingguan already had a clear position, and after quick thinking, he made a decision: "Your Majesty, I specialize in swordsmanship and have no knowledge of astronomy."

The emperor called two people, Pei Yingguan had already given up, and Xiao Wan'er could no longer pretend to be deaf and dumb.

She took a deep breath and said bluntly, "Your Majesty, within my sect, there has never been a method of divination that determines good or bad luck based solely on a single celestial phenomenon."

The implication is that the two ministers who had just quarreled were all talking nonsense.

After hearing this, the emperor announced the end of the court session in frustration.