132: Chapter 132 The Royal Family Is Not the Boss Yet

When Xie Feng and the other two knocked the door open, they felt somewhat strange.

The honest old man and his wife had Faces covered in dried tear tracks.

The calculations of Xie Feng and Lu Mingyuan were very simple.

In the middle of the night like this, the inn definitely would not take in people like them without travel permits, so they could only bite the bullet and knock on the commoners' doors to ask for a place to stay.

That brat Tu Ziguan looked the most like a good person, so they made him go up and act submissively, saying they were traveling guests willing to pay money.

When the old man saw they weren't bad people, he was first startled, and then a wave of powerlessness and sadness crept up into his heart.

The grief of losing a beloved daughter always crept up during quiet moments to gnaw at the heart.

The old man invited the three of them in.

On one hand, the elderly couple wanted to pour their hearts out to others; on the other hand, seeing that the three of them were extraordinarily dressed, they held onto a sliver of possibility, hoping the three could offer a slight helping hand.

As long as their daughter could return, at worst the old man would take the two of them and flee out of the city, hiding their identities and going elsewhere.

Xie Feng sat across from the old man, holding that bowl of completely cold coarse tea in his hand.

The tea was brewed with old tea dregs, tasting astringent and bitter upon entering the mouth, but he drank this bowl of throat-scratching coarse tea sip by sip without putting it down.

Tu Ziguan sat beside him, the expression of habitual levity on his Face completely vanishing after listening to Old Man Chen's stumbling narration.

The elderly couple's tears gushed forth once more, transforming into anger that flowed into the hearts of the legendary self-detonating king and the outlaw.

The two indeed had a mission on hand, but fundamentally they were still scoundrelly good guys.

Helping the old man out without exposing themselves couldn't be simpler.

Moreover, to put it bluntly, let alone a rundown city like this, go out and ask if any ordinary Eighth Realm Cultivator would dare to mutually detonate with Xie Feng?

After Old Man Chen finished the last word, his whole body seemed to have been drained of strength, hunched over as he sat by the stove, his two heavily calloused hands resting on his knees and trembling slightly.

His wife beside him could no longer cry out any tears, and simply used her sleeve to repeatedly wipe her eyes, the coarse fabric of the sleeve wearing the corners of her eyes red.

Tu Ziguan silently pulled out two small gold bars from his waist.

The old man hurriedly refused, thinking the three of them were powerless and could only give some money to help him.

The old man said they dared not beg the three to save anyone; the Zhao Family had Loose Cultivator roots, and the city-guard Cultivators gave them some Face. They just felt too choked up inside and wanted to find someone to talk to. After talking, they would let the three rest and leave early tomorrow morning without getting mixed up in trouble.

Hearing these words, the two across from him were already about to explode.

Ancient crap from hundreds of years ago bumping right under our noses—if we didn't care, would we still be human?

The Zhao Family, right? Tonight, those two red lanterns at your front door will be changed to white ones for you!

"Lu Mingyuan, keep an eye on the uncle and his wife. The two of us are heading out for a bit."

Xie Feng placed the teabowl on the stove and stood up.

"Where is the Zhao Family residence?"

Old Man Chen froze for a moment, his murky eyes widening slightly in the dark, his lips trembling before he finally stated the location.

East of the city, a grey-brick residence, a three-compound courtyard, with red lanterns hanging at the entrance.

Xie Feng nodded, picked up the cold crystal blind staff leaning against the wall, turned around, and pushed open that extremely old wooden door.

Tu Ziguan followed behind him, gently flicking off the safety of the modified colt at his waist.

Lu Mingyuan did not speak, only straightening up from beside the doorframe, gently pulling the door shut, and sitting in the room to begin comforting the elderly couple.

Xie Feng and Tu Ziguan walked on the loess-rammed main street of Fengle City, the night wind whipping sand grains across the street surface. In the distance, the red lanterns at puffing entrance of the Zhao Family residence were still lit.

Tu Ziguan walked while hoisting the gun barrel onto his shoulder.

"I say Brother Feng, how did it rot down to this under the rule of The Tenth Emperor? No matter how rundown Fengle City is, it is still a city, and the city-guard Cultivators are squatting right in nearby Sects. A small Family like the Zhao Family with Loose Cultivator roots dares to forcibly seize a commoner's daughter for a ghost marriage—are the city-guard Cultivators dead people?"

"If this were placed in our era, let alone right under the eyelids of Emperor Zhou Weixi, even in any town in Qingzhou garrisoned by the Governors Mansion, such an incident from its occurrence to the Imperial Guards showing up would not exceed ten days. Within three days, this Zhao Family would have been utterly wiped out, and even the Sect behind them would take the fall."

Xie Feng tilted his head.

"Indeed, the Ministry of Punishments deals with cases of this nature extremely severely; light cases result in the confiscation of property, while heavy cases result in execution of the entire clan."

"If the city-guard Cultivators dare to turn a blind eye, they are implicated as well."

"This is the governance framework of the Nine Provinces that Zuo Ciyuan personally told me about inside the Governors Mansion: the Sect manages cultivation, the imperial court manages order, and local officials and city-guard Cultivators supervise each other. No one dares to let such things happen within their jurisdiction."

Tu Ziguan nodded.

"So in this era, the imperial household's control has not yet extended to such small places? The imperial court can manage prefectures, but not counties; it can manage counties, but not the countryside."

"Today's city-guard Cultivators, rather than being maintainers of order, are more like balancers after a game of chess among various factions."

"The old master of the Zhao Family previously ran a caravan, accumulated Family wealth, and had personal friendships with the city-guard Cultivators—this is capital."

Tu Ziguan lowered the gun barrel from his shoulder and spun it around in his hand.

"Simply put, imperial power does not reach below the county level."

"Pretty much."

"Emperor Zhou Weixi took six generations of time to extend the tentacles of power from the imperial capital to the prefectures, and then spent who knows how many years reaching the counties."

"Now it is The Tenth Emperor, and it's just starting out."

"The imperial household is busy setting rules at the top level, changing Dragon Robes, standardizing flying boat specifications, and inviting The King in Yellow into the palace. These major events are already enough to give the emperor a massive headache, and no one has the bandwidth to care about a small place like Fengle City."

Relying on this matter, the two roughly deduced the current status of the imperial household, and as they spoke, they had already walked in front of the Zhao Family residence.

The two extremely large red lanterns at the entrance were still lit, the red-paper couplets on the lintel fluttering slightly in the night wind, and two servants leaned crookedly against the doorframe, one crossing his arms and yawning, the other with half a toothpick still dangling from his mouth.

Seeing from afar two figures walking over from the other end of the street, the servant with the toothpick pulled the toothpick out of his mouth, jerked his chin at Xie Feng, and shouted vaguely: "The guests have dispersed, the wedding banquet is over, the two of you please come early tomorrow—"

Xie Feng did not stop.

He walked straight up to that servant, without even using the cold crystal blind staff. He pulled his right hand out from his cloak and delivered a backhanded slap right across the Face.

The Physical Body strength of a Fourth Realm Cultivator striking a Mortal's Face caused the servant to not even have time to grunt; his entire body spun half a circle and crashed into the door panel, sliding down the door panel and collapsing onto the ground unconscious.

Tu Ziguan acted almost synchronously; before the other servant had time to swallow the toothpick in his mouth, he was struck on the back of the neck with a chop of Tu Ziguan's palm, his whites rolling back as he went limp beside his companion.

Xie Feng crouched down, pressed his left hand onto the top of one person's skull, and shouted toward the direction of his own forehead: "Brain Matter! Come out and clean the floor! Alter the memories of these two tonight."

From deep within the choroid plexus of his lateral ventricle came an extremely dissatisfied murmur, and then a pigeon-sized dark brown beetle extremely reluctantly burrowed out from between his eyebrows, its three mouths opening and closing simultaneously as it cursed and crawled into the first servant's ear.

"You Old Ones vessel never sympathizes with the hardship of a working bug. During the day I help you perceive the Shaggai neural network of this era, and at night I have to help you modify memories. Do you know how much hormone modifying short-term memory consumes?"

"You've monopolized all the anger for today."

"Deal!"

Tu Ziguan had already pushed open a crack in the main door of the Zhao Family residence and glanced inside.

The front yard was empty; the tables and chairs from the wedding banquet had not yet been cleared away, and the ground was littered with melon seed shells and spilled wine stains.

The festive candles in the main hall were still lit, and those two extremely long and narrow white silk ribbons were swaying slightly in the draft blowing through the hall, forming an extremely eerie picture together with the large red double-happiness characters beside the white silk.

The two swaggered into the front yard of the Zhao Family residence.