Transmigrating over ten thousand years late, I was forced to become a mighty presence

Chapter 526: Chapter 233: Solar Eclipse_1

Just a few hours after Xia Yunqiu’s negotiations with the Netherworld ended, the news about the Secret Realm Square-Inch spread rapidly throughout the entire Imperial Capital.

The reason for this situation might be that the ministers and nobles released the information as revenge against the Netherworld Demon God, or perhaps someone wanted to muddy the waters to gain greater benefits.

But no matter what the cause, the spread of the message could no longer be stopped.

Noble families, merchants, Loose Cultivators—almost all well-informed cultivators—came to know of a soon-to-open Secret Realm Square-Inch within the Imperial Capital within just a few hours.

With the spread of the Secret Realm Square-Inch, the entire process of Xia Yunqiu’s negotiations with the Netherworld also became known throughout the Imperial Capital.

Many people vividly recounted the events that had taken place in the Netherworld Manor, speaking as if they had personally experienced the whole affair.

For the vast majority of low-level cultivators and ordinary people, the existence of the Secret Realm Square-Inch was of little concern to them, whereas the negotiations between Xia Yunqiu and the Netherworld Demon God drew more attention.

Xia Yunqiu had turned the tide and protected the interests of Great Xia, and this had become the consensus among most people, with more and more recognizing the recently titled Heaven Traversing Princess.

In contrast, Emperor Xia, who had not shown himself at all during the negotiations, received more mixed opinions from the masses.

Some people thought Emperor Xia was enduring humiliation and bearing a heavy load, playing a bigger game with the Netherworld.

But many more believed that Emperor Xia’s promises to the Netherworld constituted a loss of sovereignty and national humiliation, and if it weren’t for Xia Yunqiu turning the tide by offering the Secret Realm Square-Inch to placate the Netherworld, a third of the Incense Fire God Realm would have become a hidden danger that could lead to the collapse of the Great Xia Dynasty.

Some radicals even claimed that Emperor Xia did not deserve to sit on the throne at all.

If this had been a normal time, discussing the Emperor of Great Xia so broadly would have already provoked a reaction from the Imperial Court.

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But currently, all of Great Xia’s Imperial Court’s energy was focused on the Secret Realm Square-Inch, and two of the Mount Luofeng 6 Hell Deities had forcefully entered the Imperial Palace wanting an explanation from Emperor Xia for the leak.

After learning of the existence of the Secret Realm Square-Inch, many grotto heavens and blessed lands also showed an eagerness to try their chances, prompting Emperor Xia to mobilize Great Xia’s powerful experts to constantly monitor the sect residences outside the Imperial Capital.

Compared to these troubles that could shake Great Xia, the common folks’ discussions about Emperor Xia were truly a trivial matter.

Even the Admonishment Ministers and Imperial Censors, responsible for overseeing public opinion, consciously or unconsciously ignored these matters.

One of the Three Excellencies, the Admonishment Minister, had been a participant in the Netherworld Manor meeting, and after the meeting, he voluntarily entered the Palace to reproach Emperor Xia for the promises made to the Netherworld, accusing him of destabilizing the foundation of the state.

Emperor Xia, in a rage, forcibly removed the Admonishment Minister from his post. Other Admonishment Ministers and Imperial Censors, all subordinates of the Admonishment Minister, harbored dissatisfaction with Emperor Xia’s actions and were naturally reluctant to become involved at this time or to help Emperor Xia suppress public opinion.

In this way, accusations of Emperor Xia’s moral decay and national humiliation spread unusually quickly from the Imperial Capital throughout all of Great Xia.

However, compared to the numerous ordinary folks and low-level cultivators who were engrossed in gossip, the high-level officials of Great Xia and the inhabitants of grotto heavens and blessed lands focused on clearly different things.

…

Time passed, and it had been a full three days since the Netherworld meeting.

Three days before, with the leak of the Secret Realm Square-Inch news, various sects had used their communication methods to send the message back within their grotto heavens and blessed lands.

In the three days that followed, powerful experts from grotto heavens and blessed lands began converging toward the Imperial Capital.

Even the Netherworld, too, sent another group of supernatural beings to step into the territory of Jing Province, heading toward the support of the Imperial Capital’s Vermilion Bird and White Tiger.

The Imperial Capital Marketplace saw a rapid increase in unfamiliar faces, with many sect powerful experts no longer concerning themselves with the Imperial Capital Great Array Formation, leaving their sect residences outside the Imperial Capital to step into it.

There were many more Qi Training cultivators in the marketplace than usual, and even the rarely-seen great Spirit Transmutation cultivator gradually made their presence known. The entire Imperial Capital almost underwent earth-shattering changes.

In the face of the rapidly increasing sect cultivators inside the Imperial Capital, some of the elite proposed to activate the Imperial Capital Great Array Formation to capture all sect cultivators in one fell swoop when the solar eclipse appears and the Secret Realm Square-Inch begins.

Many ministers and nobles supported this suggestion, yet others argued that this move wouldn’t harm the foundation of the sects in their grotto heavens and blessed lands, but rather would completely enrage the sects.

If the rules of heaven and earth gradually restored later, even more sect powerful experts would retaliate against Great Xia without any bottom line, inevitably leading to mutual destruction.

It was because of such concerns that the Great Xia’s Imperial Court could only turn a blind eye to the gathering sect cultivators.

As the outside world roiled with tumult, it was unusually quiet within the Lang Huan Garden of Xue family’s Manor.

Shen Yuan still sat upright before the stone table. The miniature black hole of playing weiqi silently distorted space, continuously trying to capture the rhythm of this world, as if wanting to completely merge into this part of the universe.

He had been sitting there motionlessly for three days.

Since the news of the Secret Realm Square-Inch spread three days ago, Shen Yuan had been accumulating power, preparing for the opening of the secret realm three days later.

By leveraging Xia Yunqiu’s staged act with the Netherworld Demon God to invite all the forces of Great Xia to participate in the Secret Realm Square-Inch, Shen Yuan had already set his strategy in place.

No one would have thought that the so-called faith in incense and the position of the City God were merely a facade. The real purpose behind the Netherworld and Xia Yunqiu was to spread word of the Secret Realm Square-Inch.

Even shaking the foundation of Emperor Xia’s reputation to assist Xia Yunqiu in controlling more of humanity’s fate was just a minor trick along the way.