Chapter 70

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Chapter 70

"Gone wild? Did they hurt anyone?!"

Xuandaozi suddenly stood up from his seat. Thankfully, the situation was better than he had imagined. Those two suddenly going wild were quickly subdued. They did seriously injure someone, but fortunately, the person was not dead. With so many cultivators present, a Medical Cultivator quickly came to help.

"They have already been tied up. It seems they were affected by demonic energy."

The audience at this Hundred Sects Conference consisted of invited cultivators from various sects. Those who could not participate and were not invited could only watch edited clips recorded on Camera Stones afterward to see the cultivators’ performance.

After all, the Hundred Sects Conference is a showcase of various talents, not an event meant to share each sect’s dark history with the entire spiritual world.

Xuandaozi immediately sighed in relief, "It’s good that nothing is wrong."

However, thinking about his Thousand Mile Landscape Map, his heart sank again, "What about the other eliminated disciples? Should we pause their competition in the Foundation Establishment Stage and Golden Core Stage?"

The elder from Tianheng Sect, who was in charge of organizing the competition, said, "Right now, there are no issues with those two competitions. The eliminated disciples can come out smoothly. We checked with the Zhaotian realm, and the other cultivators that came out are fine, so we will keep the competition going for now."

There are simply too many disciples here; they cannot suddenly stop the competition. Doing so would not only alarm everyone but could also cause chaos. It is better to keep things low-key and investigate quietly for now.

"For now, that’s all we can do," Xuandaozi said. "You all hold on and keep the situation steady. I will go ask my senior brother to find a way to safely bring them all out of the Thousand Mile Landscape Map."

Some elders from the sect, worried about their disciples, grumbled, "It’s not just about finding a way; you must bring them all out!"

The sorrow and joy of humans seem not to connect, as the commotion outside did not affect the cultivators in the illusion.

Time flows very quickly in the illusion; by the time Yun Chuyou came to propose, it seemed to the audience like the scene just cut for a moment, and now they were already preparing for the wedding.

When a grand master wants to marry, no one in the world can stop him. After all, he is not an emperor. If he marries an unsuitable wife, there will be many gossipy ministers pointing fingers and murmuring.

This wedding was supposed to be very grand and lively, but Yun Chuyou did not want it to be so noisy, did not want to host so many guests, and did not want to waste money just to show off.

Xie Qi actually wanted everyone in the world to know, but Yun Chuyou did not agree, and he listened to his future wife, following all of Yun Chuyou’s ideas.

Yun Chuyou did not like to fuss or care much about appearances; such an extravagant wedding would cost a lot of money. Xie Qi said that everything he has is hers. Spending so much money on a wedding made her feel sad; it would be better to keep things simple and use the money wisely.

Anyway, no matter how grand the wedding was, the honor went to the Grand Master Mansion and the Prime Minister’s Office, so Yun Chuyou did not care about those details. She cut out all the complicated processes and wanted everything to go quickly.

However, this wedding was not too low-key, as the gifts from the Grand Master Mansion were especially generous. On the day of the wedding, the procession with the bridal gifts truly showed off a magnificent display.

Seeing those valuables, everyone could naturally tell how much the grand master valued his new wife.

But what everyone talked about more was the kindness of the very young and beautiful grand master’s wife.

To celebrate the grand master’s marriage, the Grand Master Mansion used the money that was supposed to be for show and built a large tent outside the city gate, giving rice porridge to the refugees for a month.

The refugees could not enter the city; there were also tents set up in the city, providing food for those poor beggars and people without enough to eat.

As long as they say a kind blessing for the Grand Master on his wedding, they can receive rice porridge.

The rice used for the porridge is high quality, cooked into a thick and white consistency. Each day, the porridge also has different ingredients, such as some vegetables and minced meat added to it.

Of course, the amount of vegetables is not much, but for refugees, it is still very good food that can fill their stomachs.

However, the Grand Master Mansion is not easy on those trying to pretend to be refugees to get free porridge. Although this good porridge is available all day at the city gate, with someone watching over it around the clock, each person can only receive it once a day, and they must register with their household information.

In the city, the rules are a bit more relaxed; poor people and beggars can receive it. There are standards for recognizing who is poor or a beggar; those who are thin and ragged are considered poor, while those who are plump and well-dressed are definitely not eligible.

The porridge is given based on the number of people. For adults, regardless of gender, the standard serving is one large spoonful, which is almost the amount of one bowl.

Drinking such thick porridge for a day, even without eating anything else, can help them survive. For children under ten years old, they receive only half a bowl, and they must drink it all at once.

For women, they must drink half a bowl of porridge on the spot before they can receive another half bowl.

This method ensures that porridge goes into the children’s stomachs, protects women from exhaustion, and supports families with sick members, where only the women can go out to get food. If a woman drinks half a bowl, she can take the other half back to help her family.

In this situation, even if someone takes advantage to get free food and drinks, there won’t be many of those people.

The Grand Master Mansion is very wealthy, and the money saved from the wedding could easily provide rice porridge for a month, or even for a whole year without any problem.

The scene will not show any adult content, so Yun Chuyou is getting married here, as if she couldn’t build any feelings with her husband, and then the next scene jumps to a chaotic moment.

She could feel that suddenly, there was an extra memory in her mind of a warm life with Xie Qi, as if her life had been fast-forwarded, directly skipping to half a year later, and then just like that, it jumped to a year after their marriage.

That month of providing porridge eased the refugees’ attack on the city gates, but it could not change the situation in the world.

Natural disasters combined with man-made troubles; after a prince raised a rebellion in one area, rebel forces sprang up everywhere like wildfire, adding fuel to an already chaotic era.

The unrest outside was severe, and the capital was not much better. The emperor issued a self-blaming decree, but it was of no use. The emperor, who had once been very attached to power, finally agreed to step down from the throne after facing several assassination attempts.

Before he died, he passed the crown to the new prince.

The reason he is called the new prince is that the former prince was involved in a conspiracy and was already deposed by the emperor, and his biological mother, the queen, was also deposed.

Then the emperor chose the concubine’s son to be the crown prince. However, because of the emotional scars left by the empress, even though the concubine’s son was made the crown prince, the concubine remained a concubine.

The matter of deposing the crown prince happened six months ago. Yun Chuyou had just gotten married when the princes began to fight.

Evidence was uncovered showing the crown prince harming the people and being corrupt. More importantly, they found a brand new dragon robe in his residence, a robe only the emperor could wear.

The crown prince claimed he was being framed, but after being imprisoned for a little while, he conspired with the empress to poison the emperor and take the palace. Of course, this plot was eventually revealed, and the emperor exhausted the little bit of fatherly love he had for this son, completely giving up on him.

Yun Chuyou originally worked in the Prime Minister’s Office. When the crown prince rebelled and was deposed, the Prime Minister’s Office was naturally affected as well. However, considering the Prime Minister’s long service and many disciples, the emperor did not execute the entire family but instead exiled them all.

Of course, the married women were not counted as part of the Yun family, so when Yun Chuyou entered the Grand Master Mansion, she did not face any charges.

Some women from the Yun family had already married but were abandoned by their husbands because their own families were in trouble.

However, those who divorced also quickly faced consequences. They investigated the matter and discovered it was the Grand Master Mansion behind it.

Yun Chuyou did not like her grandfather, but she disliked even more such heartless men who abandoned their wives and children when trouble arose.

The people outside only remembered at this moment, that although the Prime Minister’s Office has fallen, the eldest daughter of the Prime Minister’s Office once married the grand master.

But this young lady did not like socializing at all; she neither went out to meet guests nor held banquets to invite others. Besides the grand master, hardly anyone had seen her.

The grand master was willing to help her, which showed he did not dislike Yun Chuyou. Because of this, the Yun family girls who had married were not too severely affected by their families.

The former crown prince died not long after being locked away in the cold palace, with the outside world claiming he committed suicide out of fear of punishment, which deeply saddened the emperor at the time.

However, the emperor was clearly hard-hearted; he wanted to pass the throne to the current prince, not just out of parental love, but mostly for himself: if the crown prince lost the kingdom, it would be seen as the new emperor’s fault, allowing him to save face before his ancestors.

Once he handed over the throne, it was as if a heavy burden was lifted from the emperor; it wasn’t long before he took his last breath. During this time, he had suffered many assassination attempts, had numerous wounds, fevered several times, and his condition was critical. Now he was merely holding on in a last burst of life so that at least the new emperor could have a legitimate reputation.

Several princes who had been fighting amongst themselves for the throne suddenly cared little for it at this time.

Because one year from today, the imperial city was already on the verge of danger. The forces of rebellion were advancing rapidly, capturing many cities, causing chaos outside the palace and unrest within it.

The court and the people were in turmoil; many officials were implicated by the rebels and faced consequences, and the afternoon market, which rarely saw executions, had recently become a river of blood.

As soon as the new emperor took the throne, he heard someone say, "The rebels have broken through the city, Your Majesty, you must escape quickly!"

The new emperor did not flee, but bravely defended the city, and then was killed by the chaotic army.

In his final moment, he remembered his past as a cultivator and realized that everything that had happened during this time was just a false trial.

He waited to be transported away, but something unexpected happened: he became a transparent spirit, his consciousness floating above the blood-stained palace, not leaving this place.

After becoming a spirit, this cultivator saw many familiar faces.

There were many beings like him in the palace city; some had once worn eunuch robes, some wore maidservant clothes, and some had even been his consorts during this time, including the wasted prince who had died half a year ago, who was also a participating cultivator.

They had been trapped here for a long time, looking at the new emperor with sorrowful expressions.

"Something went wrong in the trial illusion; we cannot escape!"