Day and night alternate in two cycles.
On a winter night in Yanhai City, the sea breeze merges with the river breeze, and frost covers the entire city.
The crescent moon's light shone on the thin frost, outlining the city walls and streets, creating a dreamlike scene.
At the corner of the west city wall, the skinny steward hurried over, blowing on his hands to warm them as he walked. He stopped when he saw a figure in the shadows at the corner, turned around and looked around. Seeing no one else, he turned and walked into the shadows: "What brings you to see me?"
"Are you afraid that the current fake Prince of Donglin will silence you..." Sheng Xiang sat cross-legged on the head of the gold-eating beast, glancing at him with an unchanged expression and only a flicker of panic in his eyes, mocking him that his days were numbered.
The steward trembled slightly upon hearing this, then regained his composure and angrily retorted, "You scoundrel, slandering the Prince of Donglin, are you courting death?"
"Ge Quan, if you have nothing to hide, just shout it out loud!" Sheng Xiang sneered disdainfully. "I have all the leverage over you, what are you pretending for?"
Sheng Xiang, a key figure around the Prince of Donglin, once tried to use him for his own purposes, but either his attempts failed or he was discovered and eliminated by the Prince of Donglin.
Although Ge Quan was a steward under the Prince of Donglin, he was only responsible for affairs inside and outside Yanhai City and rarely had contact with the Prince of Donglin.
If this long-planned trap hadn't been set in Yanhai City, Ge Quan probably wouldn't have had many opportunities to meet with the Prince of Donglin. Sheng Xiang's decision to preemptively eliminate Ge Quan and leave him a way out allowed him to navigate this defeat with ease.
Fearing that he would be betrayed, Ge Quan's tone turned reproachful: "Sir, our deal is done, you can't go back on your word..."
"Do you know the difference between the first and fifteenth of the lunar month?" Seeing that he was being unreasonable, Sheng Xiang became murderous. Ge Quan felt a chill creeping into him and shivered all over. "Uh, no, we agreed on this beforehand!"
How can you settle scores after the fact?
Even if you want to hold me accountable, it's not my fault. I sent the signal exactly as you instructed. You can't blame me for your failure, can you?
"No, no, no, you misunderstood me. I am a man of the moon, and if there is no moon on the first day, I will fall into the abyss..." Sheng Xiang's words grew colder and colder, startling the gold-eating beast beneath him, which opened its eyes, opened its mouth, drooled, and revealed its white fangs, as if it was about to eat people.
Ge Quan shuddered in fright: "Sir, what can I do for you?"
I chickened out, I knelt down, I was so scared I almost peed my pants, I didn't dare to run at all.
In the past, the people who came to deliver messages were strangers and outsiders, but it would be difficult for Ge Quan not to know him!
A hidden tycoon who orchestrated the entire world and nearly overthrew the Great Li Dynasty—he's not someone to mess with!
Sheng Xiang snorted repeatedly: "Ge Quan, listen to me carefully. Do my job obediently, and you'll get your share of the benefits afterward."
Fame and fortune are earned entirely through merit.
Conversely, I'd love to witness all sorts of cruel tortures used to punish ungrateful wretches. Do you understand?
"Master, this servant understands. Give me your orders!" Ge Quan was so frightened that he wet his pants. Sheng Xiang waved his hand dismissively, creating a gust of wind that dispersed the smell of urine. "I'm too lazy to waste my breath on you. Tell me about the Dai family's imprisonment."
"Uh, sir, the Dai family went to prison normally, everything is normal, is there a problem?" Ge Quan answered politely, but inwardly he was in turmoil, something bad was about to happen.
Most people are unaware of the true role that magical treasures and secret realms play for cultivators.
As the external steward of the Prince of Donglin, his top priority was to search for magical treasures, secret realms, and crystals, and to investigate their functions to some extent.
Clearly, the Dai Clan's Secret Realm has already been targeted.
This is a matter of life and death! How could we dare to break into the prison and seize the Dai Clan's secret realm?
Sheng Xiang felt uneasy as he listened to his seemingly ordinary words, and his right eyelid twitched: "No, whether it's a magic weapon or a secret realm, once it's taken over by someone else, it will inevitably cause strange phenomena."
Just like the explosion of the Azure Dragon Society's secret realm, it was merely because Zheng Ya refined the core of the secret realm, causing the subspace of the secret realm to collide with the space of this world, resulting in a spatial cracking reaction.
The Dai Clan's Secret Realm never displayed any unusual phenomena from beginning to end, indicating that the Dai Clan still controls the Secret Realm. Do you understand?
"Master, do you mean that Zheng Ya deliberately used the Dai Clan's secret realm as bait to lure you into the dungeon to break you out, and then Zheng Ya would trap you like a turtle in a jar, no, ambush you?" Ge Quan instantly understood his worries.
After more than three years of planning, it all fell apart in one fell swoop. I'm so unwilling to accept it!
It should be noted that in the past two days, Zheng Ya, disguised as the Prince of Donglin, has been summoning his soldiers in rotation, creating an invincible army in batches.
Then, the invincible army was dispatched to various towns and cities in Jiangnan to quell rebellions and eliminate dissidents.
He also recruited talented people and acquired assets. Whenever powerful families tried to interfere, the prince's soldiers would retreat without taking a single thing. However, what followed was a massacre by bandits.
The surviving members of the noble families all requested that the Prince of Donglin send troops to suppress the bandits.
Zheng Ya's soldiers gave perfunctory answers. In any case, the Jiangnan region was in chaos, and there were plenty of places that needed to be quelled. All of his troops had been sent out to kill the enemy and quell the rebellion, so there were no soldiers left to send.
The entire Jiangnan region, centered on Yanhai City, expanded outwards into Zheng Ya's absolute domain.
Any unusual noises inside the hall would inevitably attract bandits and robbers who would kill and rob.
Ge Quan had considered absconding with the money to avoid being silenced by Zheng Ya, the fake prince, but the thought of Zheng Ya creating tens of thousands of invincible soldiers with a wave of his hand terrified him, and he dared not run away!
Sheng Xiang was too lazy to argue with him: "Zheng Ya will be transferred away at midnight tonight. I don't want to see Zheng Ya staying in Yanhai City. Get out!"
"Ah, my lord, this servant cannot complete this task..."
"You're so stupid! Immediately lead the princess, concubines, and maids to make a scene and get him out of here..."
The two were plotting something sinister.
The father and daughter sat on straw in the corner of the dungeon, smelling the pungent musty odor, occasionally gagging and whispering: "Father, after this battle, shouldn't you give up now?"
That would be extremely unfilial.
But instead of being angry, Earl Dai murmured sadly, "Yu'er, I've dragged you down with me!"
Words cannot express my regret.
The day before yesterday, not wanting to bear the infamy, be coerced, or accept favors from others, thus becoming a sinner of the Dai clan, he resolutely led his people to fight against the Sky Hunter Legion, not wanting to betray the glorious name of the Dai clan or the trust of the people, even at the cost of the entire clan's lives.
Because he knew that by sacrificing his clansmen to help Daiyu and her brother, and with the help of his wife, he could rely on the wisdom of Dai's death on the battlefield to revive the Dai clan in the future, and everything would go smoothly. Therefore, he was willing to sacrifice himself.
What was expected to be a bloody battle turned into Zheng Ya's decapitation strike, which quickly shattered the Sky Hunter Legion's fighting spirit and created a counter-pursuit situation, leaving the Dai family with nothing to do.
Betrayed by members of various powerful families, the Dai family became the scapegoat.
Earl Dai felt wronged and had no way to express his suffering. Daiyu shook her head with a bitter smile: "Father, don't you understand now?"
The Great Li Dynasty is about to change. Shouldn't our Dai clan prepare our bait before anything else?
"Does the Dai family still have a future?" Earl Dai lost control of his emotions and could not restrain himself.
On a small hill in the eastern suburbs, Wu Wei gazed at the moon in the wind and sighed softly, "Alas, the chess player has become a chess piece. What a lamentable state of affairs!"
"Princess, even if Xie Ming assists the Emperor in pacifying the northern border, the core team in the north will gradually travel south to join you."
"What the princess needs to consider now is whether the real reason she's being used as a pawn by Zheng Ya to conquer the Dark Yuan Dynasty?" Liu Qingyun advised angrily, her mind full of hidden agendas...
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