134: Chapter 134 The Blank History of Coup

Xie Feng tilted his head to look at Tu Ziguan: "Did the plan to sneak into Fengle City fall through?"

Tu Ziguan flicked away the last speck of debris: "Isn't this also considered sneaking in? Submerging in the water and muddying it up. But has the intelligence fallen through?"

"Having Brain Matter steal it directly, washing and instilling memories, is much faster than us digging through archives ourselves."

"Brain Matter wants payment, right?"

"Old Master Zhao was sent to it to play with for two days."

The two chatted back and forth right in front of the city-defending Cultivators, their tones as casual as if they were discussing what to eat at the cafeteria today.

The city-defending Cultivator's face turned liver-colored, and he drew his longsword with a clatter: "This Cultivator is asking you! What people are you?! Why did you break into the Zhao Family at night?!"

Tu Ziguan only then turned his head, pointed at Xie Feng, and spouted nonsense with a straight face:

"We are passing merchants. Passing through your esteemed place, we saw that the moonlight was lovely, so we came in to tour the residential architecture. This is our employer, surnamed Xie, who does tea business in Yongzhou."

He stepped aside by half a step so the city-defending Cultivator could clearly see the headless corpse in the courtyard whose head had just been slapped off by Xie Feng.

"That guy died by himself. Even after dying, he wasn't at peace, standing up and wanting to bite people. Our employer just conveniently helped him lie back down. It's not trespassing; it's being helpful and righteous."

Xie Feng couldn't be bothered to listen to Tu Ziguan spouting nonsense with others anymore. He struck the ground with his blind cane and turned to walk towards the door.

The direction he walked was precisely where the city-defending Cultivator was standing. The sword tip in the city-defending Cultivator's hand trembled slightly, and his Qi instinctively poured into the sword body, but stopped halfway through.

"Oh? Your intuition is quite high? You actually didn't strike?"

Xie Feng was a bit surprised, chuckling as he looked at this city-defending Cultivator.

Viscous, lazy, icy, scorching, Void Realm-like—wills from different sources existed simultaneously beneath the same person's cloak, like a group of giant beasts crouching at the doorway basking in the sun, while that person simply walked past them as usual.

The Cultivator couldn't see through Xie Feng's cultivation, but he knew that if he stabbed this sword out, those things that were dozing off would open their eyes simultaneously.

Xie Feng walked past him, then took out Lu Mingyuan's memory washer, and amidst everyone's shocked gazes, directly shoved it into the city-defending Cultivator's head.

Tu Ziguan followed behind and waved his hand at that group of people: "Don't be nervous, we're just going back to sleep. The Fengle City of yours has quite good Fengshui, except don't hold red and white events together; it's easy for things to go wrong."

Old Master Zhao shouted half a sentence of "Catch them" from behind, but was pressed down on the shoulder by Tu Ziguan with a force so great that the old man knelt straight onto the ground.

A group of Cultivators clearly saw that the two people in front of them were definitely not easy characters to mess with, and turned their heads ready to run.

The magic in Xie Feng's hands slowly activated. The Spells he had been learning over the past half year were quite numerous.

"Barrier of Nak-Titer"

(Viewers without an impression can look back at the author's notes near the dog biscuit. This Spell is in the book of eibon.)

Along with the activation of the magic, a huge semicircle covered the Zhao Family residence, and all Cultivators attempting to break through were controlled inside.

In a flash, accompanied by Brain Matter's grumbling and cursing, a crowd of people fell all over the ground in front of the Zhao Family door.

When returning to Old Man Chen's adobe house, Lu Mingyuan had already placed Chen Xiaohe on the kang and reconnected her broken tendons using medical knowledge brought by the Yithian mental projection.

Old Man Chen squatted by the stove, his eyes red, but his breathing had already steadied quite a bit.

Early the next morning, when the four of them left Fengle City, Brain Matter crawled out from Xie Feng's forehead and let out a satisfied burp, saying that all of Fengle City's prefectural archives had been completely backed up by it, and following Xie Feng's instructions, it had incidentally turned Old Master Zhao into a dementia patient and sent him back to the Zhao Family's doorstep to fend for himself.

"Didn't I tell you to take a couple more bites before sending him back?"

"Didn't I just fail to hold back and take three more bites?"

Tu Ziguan shook his head, feeling that Xie Feng's mental state would be corrupted by this bug.

Brain Matter poked half its body out of Xie Feng's forehead, its three mouths letting out extremely loud burps in turn, its chitinous carapace shimmering with a unique dim, moist luster under the morning light after eating its fill.

It wiped the remaining residue on the edge of its mouthparts with its forelegs and lazily spoke: "The fake identities are settled. The City Defense Mansion archives have blank travel passes, I filled in your names, and by the way, I planted a segment in that city-defending Cultivator's memories. He now firmly believes that last night he was beaten up by a few Jianghu Loose Cultivators at the Zhao Family, and the three of you never appeared from beginning to end."

Brain Matter continued: "I dug up a little new clue in that city-defending Cultivator's head; you guys should listen."

Its mental fluctuations unfolded an extremely rough directional map deep within Xie Feng's consciousness, marking the location west of Fengle City and at the border of Yuzhou.

"We are now very close to Yuzhou. The Sect behind this city-defending Cultivator is called the Chisha Sect, which itself is just a fourth or fifth-rate small faction, but above the Chisha Sect there is still a master, Yuzhou's largest Sect, the Taixuan Sect. The Chisha Sect offers tributes to the Taixuan Sect every year in exchange for activity permits in the border areas. And the Taixuan Sect has recently been pulling off a big move, and the Chisha Sect has also been requested to contribute manpower and effort."

Lu Mingyuan stuffed the remaining half piece of dry ration back into his bundle, frowned slightly, and took over the conversation.

He indeed understood the Sect landscape of this era much better than Xie Feng and Tu Ziguan; before coming, he had flipped through quite a few old archives in the Scripture Pavilion of Xiangfu Palace.

The Taixuan Sect is the local tyrant of Yuzhou, deeply rooted in Yuzhou for hundreds of years. Under its command, it manages several affiliated Sects and Loose Cultivator Families, and even Yuzhou's local officials dare not touch it.

And the reforms promoted by The Tenth Emperor after ascending the throne almost every single one weakened the Sects' control over local regions: airship manufacturing, the re-examination and selection of local officials in various states rather than appointing them from Sect vassals, and the imperial court also began adding directly affiliated post roads and trade routes in various states, bypassing the old post roads under Sect jurisdiction.

These measures directly shook the profit Foundation of the Taixuan Sect and other Sects, cutting off more than one line of its sphere of influence and grey income in Yuzhou.

"The Taixuan Sect has started connecting and lobbying several major Sects in Yuzhou and surrounding areas that are dissatisfied with the royal Family's new policies, preparing to force an abdication."

Lu Mingyuan tied up his bundle, leaned against the wall of the adobe house, and continued.

"Their demands sound very simple: the Emperor withdraws the new policies and restores the Sects' local official-selection rights and post-road jurisdiction. But if the Emperor does not agree, they plan to resort to force directly."

The master of the Taixuan Sect has reportedly achieved a Breakthrough to the seventh realm, and the affiliated Sects under his command add up to five or six sixth-realm Elders, with ordinary Disciples numbering at least several hundred. Small characters like the Chisha Sect were just pulled in to make up the numbers."

Tu Ziguan pulled out the colt magazine, counted the bullets, and pushed it back in with a snap.

"So The Tenth Emperor has only ascended the throne for two months now, and his dragon chair hasn't even grown warm yet, and the Taixuan Sect is preparing to lead several hundred people to charge into the imperial palace and drag him down? At this time point, the imperial court hasn't even gathered that group of eighth-realm old eunuchs yet. Has The King in Yellow descended?"

"This is the key," Lu Mingyuan said. "In later historical materials, there are only a few extremely vague records of the usurpation incident, generally meaning that the Taixuan Sect united various Sects in Yuzhou to apply pressure, which ultimately ended without a definite result."

But as for how it 'ended without a definite result', not a single word is mentioned."

"If the imperial court did not have enough power to suppress it, then another force must have intervened or something went wrong within the Taixuan Sect."

Lu Mingyuan's Yithian memories did not contain this segment of content, which was very strange. Logically speaking, their library shouldn't have such unclear historical records.