It had to be said that, by this point, this audience had changed in nature.
No, it would be more accurate to say that it had changed in nature yet again.
Originally, this had been an award ceremony for those who had rendered great service.
Later, because of the selfish motives and schemes of the major nobles, this award ceremony had become a battlefield for political power and interests.
But now, because of Shien, this battlefield had turned back into an award ceremony—one where everyone was trying to persuade Shien to accept a reward.
That was right.
By the end, all the nobles had joined Anxi in urging Shien to accept his reward.
There was no helping it. If they could not get Shien to accept a reward, they were going to collapse.
From beginning to end, Shien had acted as though he would not accept rewards without merit, nor would he accept them even with merit. Every word out of his mouth had been righteous and morally upright, to the point that he was practically becoming a saint. He only lacked ascending on the spot to become the savior of the world.
Under the baptism of Shien's righteous rhetoric, the nobles felt as if they were about to be brainwashed. They had actually begun to feel the heroic urge to die for their country.
This gave quite a few nobles a terrible fright. They desperately shook their heads, unwilling to accept such intensely brainwashing righteous rhetoric, yet Shien's arguments came one after another without a single repetition, enough to shake the convictions in everyone's hearts.
Under such circumstances, some nobles even began to feel ashamed, thinking that they had contributed nothing to the country, that they were parasites with no use whatsoever, and that their very lives were a