Shocked
Once again, a carrier pigeon flew from Chang'an to Shuzhong. This time, the owner of the villa, upon opening the letter, immediately dispatched all available personnel within the villa to spread the message throughout the cultivation world.
All the leaders of the sects were furious when they heard the news.
"This is too much!" In the Taoist temple with the largest number of cultivators, the old abbot with white hair and beard angrily smashed the table in the main hall. He ordered his disciples to replace the table, wrote a letter, and had them tie it to the legs of carrier pigeons.
"Let it fly to Chang'an. You must get your junior brother back!"
That night, similar scenes unfolded across many sects within the Tang Dynasty. While their words might differ, the underlying message remained the same: quickly call back the disciples on duty at the Divine Dragon Guard! The sects must not fall into the hands of the imperial court!
When the letter reached the hands of the various cultivators of the Divine Dragon Guard, their reactions varied. Some took it lightly, throwing it away after reading it. Others immediately submitted their retirement petitions to the Emperor, as instructed by their master. However, many remained uneasy, yet reluctant to give up their current positions, and decided to wait and see.
All the resignation letters submitted to the emperor fell on deaf ears, with no response. The emperor seemed to have ignored them and continued to assign them tasks as usual. The team members gradually became impatient in the silence.
The turning point came when Team Gui returned to Chang'an without any imperial edict.
The captain of the Gui Tenth Team was also the abbot of a Taoist temple. Like the Biyun Temple, all the monks of the Taoist temple were members of the Shenlong Guard, and after several team reorganizations, they all joined the Gui Tenth Team.
As soon as he learned that the abbot of Biyun Temple had been forcibly replaced by the prince, the captain of Team Gui 10 put down his task, wrote a letter of resignation, and took the entire team back to Chang'an.
The emperor met them in the Xuanzheng Hall.
"My dear, are you going to take all your disciples away from the Dragon Guard?"
Everyone present could tell that the emperor was unhappy.
The captain of the Gui Tenth Team took a deep breath, lowered his head and said, "Yes."
A moment of profound silence fell within Xuanzheng Hall. The emperor's fingers tapped the table before him, again and again, a tap that sent a chill down everyone's spine. After a moment, he summoned a trusted eunuch and had him summon all the cultivators of the Divine Dragon Guard to the palace for an audience.
Then the emperor closed his eyes and said nothing more.
Xiao Wan'er had few assignments that day and was resting at her station when she was suddenly summoned by a eunuch to the palace for an audience. She and Pei Yingguan, along with all the Shenlong Guards in Chang'an, hurried into the Xuanzheng Hall. They found the emperor resting with his eyes closed, and a team of Shenlong Guards already stood inside.
Hearing the sound of dense footsteps, the emperor opened his eyes and all the Dragon Guard monks saluted together.
"I greet your majesty."
"Well, no need to be so polite." The emperor's voice didn't sound very energetic.
But what he said could completely cheer up everyone present.
"Recently, I've been receiving a lot of retirement petitions from people who aren't old enough to retire, and they all work for the same government office," the emperor said. He paused and glanced at everyone standing in the hall. "So I've summoned everyone from your government office. Pei Qing, tell me, has anything been wrong with the Shenlong Guards lately?"
Pei Yingguan was called by name and immediately stepped out of the queue and replied respectfully, "Your Majesty, there is nothing wrong."
"Oh," the emperor said noncommittally, "Hejing, you can also tell me something."
"Your Majesty," Xiao Wan'er stepped forward, "Just as Commander Pei said, there is nothing wrong with the Divine Dragon Guard."
"There's nothing wrong with that," the emperor repeated slowly. "Then why do so many immortals want to leave?"
Xiao Wan'er complained in her heart, it's because you saw that your good son even dared to replace the leader of the monastic sect, and you were afraid that such a disaster would fall on your own family.
Even so, no one present dared to speak out. They simply remained silent and determined to leave.
The emperor was silent for a long while before he slowly said, "Well, since you, my dear ministers, wish to leave, I will not force you to stay. All the immortals present who wish to leave please step forward. I will ask Pei Qing to write down your names."
The monks present looked at each other, all somewhat bewildered. Finally, one monk mustered up the courage to step forward. Seeing that this monk hadn't been punished, the other monks followed suit.
When the team returned to calm, half of the monks had walked forward.
"Mr. Pei, please record it." The emperor really did not pursue any matter with them. He just asked Pei Yingguan to write down their names one by one as he said, without even asking about their sects.
After Pei Yingguan finished recording, the emperor took the list and said without even looking at it, "Finish your tasks for today and leave Chang'an together tomorrow morning."
Seeing how easily they had escaped the Divine Dragon Guards, the monks were overjoyed and thanked the emperor one after another. The emperor had been kind until they left Xuanzheng Hall, when his expression changed.
"This is too much!" He overturned the table and called his trusted eunuch, "Call the prince to me!"
Xiao Wan'er and Liu Mingyin were walking side by side on the palace road when a young cultivator suddenly called out to them. This young cultivator had joined the Divine Dragon Guard during the reign of the previous emperor and had only recently reached the age of marriage.
In the statistics just now, she was also among those who applied to leave.
"County Lady, Captain Liu, my master has summoned me, and I'll be leaving tomorrow," she said, especially bidding farewell to Xiao Wan'er and Liu Mingyin. "I don't know when we'll see each other again, so I wanted to say goodbye to you. Thank you both for taking care of me over the years. I wish you all the best in your future endeavors!"
"Thank you, and I wish you good luck in your future cultivation." Xiao Wan'er responded with a smile.
Most of the monks who were leaving packed their luggage after finishing their shift that night, and left one after another after the city gates opened the next morning.
When Xiao Wan'er arrived at the government office, it was already half empty, looking rather deserted. The usual workload suddenly fell on the Dragon Guard, who were now only half as many as before, and everyone was incredibly busy.
Xiao Wan'er was busy thinking that she should speed up the recruitment of new members for the Dragon Guard. As she was busy, her heart suddenly skipped a beat.
She put down her work, closed her eyes, and tried to calm her breathing, but her heart was beating faster and faster, as if it was about to burst out of her mouth. She hurriedly took out the tortoise shell and tried to tell fortunes, but after a while, a new crack appeared on the shell.
Just as Xiao Wan'er was about to send out her spirit to check the situation in Chang'an City and its surroundings, a voice transmission flew into her ears.
"A hundred miles south and west of Chang'an City, come quickly."
The person who transmitted the message was none other than Captain Wei's senior sister, who had fought against Xiao Wan'er in Dongdu that day.
Xiao Wan'er stood up.
Everyone inside the government office felt only a gust of wind as Xiao Wan'er rushed out. She moved incredibly quickly, reaching the city gate in a matter of seconds. Just as she was about to leave, she was stopped by the guards.
"Get out of the way." Xiao Wan'er ordered coldly, but the guards at the gate remained unmoved.
Xiao Wan'er drew her sword: "Get out of the way! Don't make me say it a third time."
The guards at the gate refused to budge: "Commander Pei has ordered me not to let the Dragon Guard monks leave Chang'an City. Please don't make things difficult for me, my lady."
Xiao Wan'er no longer argued with him. She simply slipped behind him and knocked him unconscious with the back of her knife.
Then Xiao Wan'er looked at the other guard and asked, "Are you going to stop me too?"
"No, no, no," the guard shook his head and stepped back, "Please come in, my lady."
Some of the onlookers immediately moved away, and Xiao Wan'er rushed to the city gate like a flash.
The further south they went, the more uneasy she felt. Xiao Wan'er increased her speed to the fastest and was finally about to reach the place that the senior sister mentioned.
Xiao Wan'er almost fell to the ground when she saw a shadow from a distance.
The place she was heading to was littered with corpses. Blood had seeped into the ground, and the stench in the air was chilling.
Xiao Wan'er forced herself to remain calm as she walked forward, getting a closer look at the bodies. The dead bodies lying on the ground were none other than the monks who had requested to leave yesterday.
She squatted beside the pile of bodies, pushing them aside one by one. Some had fatal wounds in their backs, clearly dead before they could react. Others died in shock, perhaps unprepared for such a fate. Still others were covered in wounds, likely from a battle lost to the enemy.
The young monk who had said goodbye to her the night before also collapsed to the ground, his face still filled with astonishment and anger. She had once been extremely excited about the future, but she collapsed at the first step towards it.
Xiao Wan'er closed her eyes for all the corpses that died with their eyes open. The scars on the corpses were all tinged with sword energy, a sword energy Xiao Wan'er was all too familiar with, having accompanied her from the time she entered the sect until her ascension to the transcendental realm.
"Pei Yingguan, how could you--" She felt a flame of anger burning through her head, and immediately gathered all the spiritual energy in her body, ready to return to Chang'an to settle the score with Pei Yingguan.
"Senior Sister!" A familiar voice sounded, and a pair of arms embraced her from behind, "Senior Sister, you have to calm down!"
Xiao Wan'er couldn't calm down.
"Let me go, I'm going to kill Pei Yingguan!"
"Senior Sister!" Liu Mingyin was so shocked by Xiao Wan'er's spiritual energy that every part of her body was in pain, but she still refused to let go. "I really want to kill Pei Yingguan, but we have no evidence. If we kill him like this, what will we do in the future? How can we help Princess Taiping and stop the Crown Prince?"
Xiao Wan'er seemed to have been drained of all her strength. She withdrew her spiritual energy and leaned into Liu Mingyin's arms.
"But if we turn a blind eye, how much nobler can we be than the executioner?" she asked painfully.
No one answered.
After a while, she whispered, "Let's bury them."
Xiao Wan'er used her magic to dig a deep pit in the woods beside the official road. Liu Mingyin placed the bodies one by one into the pit. Xiao Wan'er changed her hand gestures again, and the excavated soil returned to the pit, filling it up firmly. Then, Xiao Wan'er used her magic to transform the soil into a stone tablet, engraved it with a knife, and placed it beside the grave.
This area became a small burial area, with a stone tablet at the edge that read "Tomb of the Innocent Friars."
"Let's go." Xiao Wan'er took a last look at the newly completed cemetery and left with Liu Mingyin.
The Emperor and the Crown Prince knew that large families, Buddhist temples, and Taoist monasteries would create life tablets for their disciples. While the person was alive, the tablet remained; but when the person died, the tablet shattered. The mass death of the Dragon Guard monks could not be concealed.
So the emperor decided to strike first.
A Jinwu Guard happened to pass by the scene and happened to find the dead. After reporting it to the Chang'an Order, it happened that the dead had already been buried when the Chang'an Order arrived at the scene.
The emperor wrote letters to the leaders of the various factions to which the deceased belonged, expressing his deep sorrow over the death of his followers. However, if one were to investigate further, they would find that they knew nothing.
The victimized sects were furious, but helpless, and could only publicly declare that they would sever all ties with the imperial court. However, they had little contact with the court in the first place.
As for the civil and military officials in the court, they were shocked.
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