And now, the Jiajing Emperor had succeeded in cultivating immortality.
He had begun to care less about political maneuvering and started arranging officials, princes, and gentry as he pleased.
Yet he had forgotten that this would backfire.
Now he remembered.
He began compromising with those officials.
He could not compromise directly, so he resumed his cryptic, riddle-speaking ways.
And the officials also began choosing to compromise with him.
After all, if this continued, everyone would suffer heavy losses.
So the common folk once again learned: "The Emperor isn't dead. That was just a rumor. It's still Jiajing now."
And after this incident, Jiajing discovered his own weakness:
The common people were not actually under his direct control.
He had known this before, which was why he had used political maneuvering to deal with those people.
Now he decided to use a more direct method.
He would use immortal arts to solve the problem.
Thus began another round of exploitation of the common people.
Only, he spared the great aristocratic clans and those high-ranking officials.
But on this day—
Wenren Sheng and the other three had already decided to reveal their daggers.
They could no longer tolerate Jiajing's reckless meddling.
He was a typical feudal emperor, fierce only at home.
Weak against outsiders.
He appeared to have defeated a band of Dwarf Pirates, but everyone knew their true nature: a small number of hired Dwarf Pirate thugs, with Great Pirates as their backers and local forces everywhere serving as their support.
Yet against the real great enemy, the northern grasslands, he suffered defeat after defeat.
Not until Qi Jiguang grew up did things change.
"Killing Jiajing is easy. Bringing peace to the realm is hard. So we must kill him, then impersonate him. That is the only way to minimize the