172: Rebuilding the Empire

In the capital, a clearing had been cleared among the ruins in front of the Vermilion Bird Gate.

With the imperial palace gone, the temporary hub of the Great Xia Dynasty was established here. A dilapidated military folding table and a few chairs constituted the entirety of Wei Zheng and Li Qingxuan's office equipment.

The sun was fierce, baking the broken walls and ruins until they emitted white smoke.

But fiercer than the sun was the morale of the people gathered around. Commoners, Cultivators, and the remnants of the Imperial Guard surrounded them, layer upon layer; the numbness and despair in their eyes had vanished, replaced by a burning fervor.

"Next item!" Wei Zheng's voice was already hoarse; he gulped down some cold tea and pointed at the mountain of documents before him.

Li Qingxuan cleared her throat. Her voice was not loud, yet it carried clearly across the entire temporary plaza: "...For all those who suffered casualties in this defense of the capital, land taxes will be halved for a period of three years! All meritorious soldiers will be recorded in the registry, and once the imperial court is rebuilt, they will be rewarded according to their merits! All..."

Decree after decree was issued from her lips, devoid of flowery language, containing only the most direct promises.

From within the crowd, suppressed sobs occasionally erupted, but there was more vigorous nodding.

"Lord Wei, Your Highness!" A captain from the Demon Suppression Division hurried over, dried blood still staining his armor. "In the west of the city, the Sect Master of the Qingyang Sect has arrived with their disciples to offer their allegiance, requesting to contribute to the reconstruction of the capital!"

Wei Zheng didn't even lift his eyelids. "Qingyang Sect? I recall they previously claimed they wanted to 'seal the mountain for self-preservation and ignore worldly affairs,' didn't they? What's the matter, can't seal the mountain anymore?"

The captain looked somewhat embarrassed.

"Tell them to go clear the sludge and waterways in the south of the city. Tell them that if they want to contribute to Great Xia, they should start with the dirtiest and most exhausting work." Wei Zheng waved his hand as if shooing away flies.

"Yes!"

Li Qingxuan looked at Wei Zheng without objecting. She understood that at a time like this, what was needed was Wei Zheng's ruthless, iron-fisted approach. The disaster had washed away the vanity and corruption of the Empire, but it had also forged the most resilient spirit.

A Great Xia, scarred and battered yet unprecedentedly united, was slowly standing back up on these ruins.

At nightfall, the temporarily erected tent was brightly lit.

The Royal Ancestor had also arrived; he looked even older than he had a few days ago, his eyes bloodshot.

"The situation with the Dragon Vein is very bad." He spoke first, breaking the silence. "It is like a person who has fallen asleep and cannot be woken up no matter what. I have used all the methods in the royal secret treasury, but I can only barely maintain it so it does not dissipate."

Wei Zheng furrowed his brows and paced back and forth in the tent, his footsteps making the ground creak. "In other words, the capital area will be a wasteland with thin Spiritual Qi for a long time?"

"Correct." The Royal Ancestor nodded. "Unless... we can find a higher level of power to 'awaken' it."

The three of them turned their gazes simultaneously to the center of the table.

The divinity core found in the remains of the divine messenger lay there quietly, emitting a pale golden halo.

"Will this thing work?" Wei Zheng reached out and poked the crystal, then hissed and pulled his hand back as it burned him.

"I don't know." The Royal Ancestor shook his head. "I had the scholars from the Imperial Observatory and the Demon Suppression Division examine it, and they only said it contains a Law they cannot understand at all. It is like... a heavenly book; we cannot even read a single character."

"If you can't read it, smash it open and look, grind it into dust and look!" Wei Zheng said viciously. "I don't believe it. That damned God Lord can use it, and with so many smart people in our Great Xia Dynasty, we can't figure out a piece of broken rock?"

Li Qingxuan looked at the crystal and spoke softly: "I am worried about whether it might have hidden dangers. After all, it is a thing of the God Lord."

"Power is power," the Royal Ancestor said slowly. "The key lies in who uses it and how they use it. It is a pity that we currently lack a key capable of interpreting it."

The atmosphere in the tent became heavy again.

That key was currently lying in the deepest secret chamber of the Demon Suppression Division, its fate unknown.

Wei Zheng sat back down in his chair and irritably scratched his hair. "Fine, fine, we will talk about this later. The most urgent thing right now is to stabilize the situation. Many armies and Sects coming to aid the king have arrived from all over; how to settle them and how to coordinate them are all troublesome matters."

He glanced at Li Qingxuan. "Princess, you must prepare yourself. In the coming days, I am afraid you will need to temporarily manage the state affairs in the name of Regent."

Li Qingxuan's upright figure trembled slightly, but she merely pursed her lips and nodded solemnly.

Watching these two young people shouldering the heavy burden, the Royal Ancestor felt a complex mix of emotions. Although Great Xia had suffered a major blow to its Origin Qi, in a sense, was this not also a rebirth?

Underground secret chamber.

Time seemed to be frozen here.

Li Dong remained lying on the cold jade bed. Under the instinct of his Perfect Dao Body, his bodily injuries were absorbing the surrounding thin Spiritual Qi at an extremely slow rate, undergoing self-repair.

Fractured bones were knitting together, and shattered Meridians were reconnecting.

Everything was developing in a positive direction, yet he just would not wake up.

No one knew that his consciousness was falling into a vortex deeper than death.

He was "awake."

"Awake" in an unprecedented way.

His perception was no longer limited to this small secret chamber; instead, through that damned God Lord's mark between his brows, it was like an invisible net, spreading across the entire Great Xia and even further beyond.

He could "feel" it.

In a deep mountain ancient temple in Qingzhou, beneath the base of a Buddha statue, was hidden a faint aura, originating from the same source as the God Lord's mark.

In a certain fishing village in the South Sea, inside an ancient totem pole worshipped by villagers for generations, the same aura also lay dormant.

There were also those beneath the ice plains of the Northern Territory, deep in the deserts of the Western Regions...

These auras were all in a "dormant" state, so faint that even the Royal Ancestor at the Nascent Soul Stage could not detect them. They were like seeds that had been planted, quietly lurking, waiting for a certain moment to be reawakened.

The God Lord... had not been truly repelled at all!

It had merely had its channel for this descent severed, but the "mental anchors" it had laid across the mortal world were still there!

Next time, it would not even need an attention-grabbing method like a sacrificial formation; it would only need to activate these anchors scattered across the world to erode this world again in a more covert, silent, and soundless manner.

This realization caused Li Dong's consciousness to surge with monstrous waves.

The victory they thought they had achieved was merely the enemy switching to a more insidious way of attacking.

A profound sense of powerlessness welled up in his heart.

However, just at this moment, the ancient stone slab that had been silent in his Sea of Consciousness suddenly trembled slightly.

The "hunting ground map" he had once seen unfolded again.

But this time, the map did not only have a single red dot for the capital.

As he perceived those "mental anchors" scattered across various places, one blurred coordinate after another lit up on the map of the stone slab, flashing with blood-red light points identical to that of the capital, representing "descent channels."

One, two, three... there were a full seven or eight of them!

The capital was merely one of them!

Li Dong's consciousness felt as if it had fallen into an ice cellar.

This was not a war at all; this was a full-scale invasion that had already begun.