At the entrance of the North Sea Commandery City's Town-Guarding Duke's Mansion, Liu Feng, the mansion's chief steward, stared blankly at the Imperial Decree and the many rewards produced by the suddenly arrived imperial envoy.
He was truly stunned—so stunned he could not have been more stunned.
A posthumous title decree!
The Town-Guarding Duke Ye Zhen was posthumously named King of North Sea!
Only the dead received posthumous titles.
Moreover, within Great Zhou's noble-ranking system, kingly titles were divided into three grades: Prince of Consultation, Prince, and ordinary single-character kingly titles.
Like King Wei Liu Wubing before, he held an ordinary kingly title.
Essentially, an ordinary single-character kingly title was the pinnacle a minister could attain. Double-character kingly titles had, throughout Great Zhou's history, always been honors bestowed upon the dead.
In other words, the Great Zhou court believed that Marshal Ye Zhen had fallen—had died—and had thus issued this posthumous title decree.
Liu Feng knew of the Devil Race's retaliation over a month ago. Gu Tieqi and He Qi had led the Zhenhai Army in withdrawing with a great number of Changling Commandery civilians, while Marshal Ye Zhen had personally covered their retreat.
The situation had been incomparably perilous.
Yet everyone throughout North Sea held an inexplicable, boundless faith in Ye Zhen. North Sea had gone through so much, and every time, Ye Zhen had defeated the strong with the weak, even creating miracles. This time should not have been an exception either.
For a time, Liu Feng had thought these were envoys impersonated by some faction, bearing a forged Imperial Decree.
But Liu Feng recognized the man delivering the decree. He was Tong Dehai, the current Grand Supervisor of the Inner Palace in Luoyi, the most powerful of all inner court officials.
There were not many in the