Angel Wheel

015 Angel Round

The next morning, Ming Shu continued wandering around with Old Zhao, mainly heading toward several areas he knew of that might contain forbidden grounds where Ghost Spirits were imprisoned and refined, examining the surroundings and conducting a thorough investigation.

If they needed to fight here, they could make some preparations in advance.

As for communicating with several Aristocratic Clans in the city, that could only be left to the Sky-Toppling Observatory—or rather, the Demon Hunter organization under it. Only they had the foundation to speak with the Aristocratic Clans as equals.

Ming Shu had no such status now. If he went there, they would not even meet him, much less listen to what he had to say.

As for his visit to Earl Ying's residence last night, it was because they had discovered Ming Shu first, making it worth his while to make a small investment. Even if the investment failed, it would only be an extremely minor loss for Earl Ying.

Besides, he could not even be considered the earliest investor, because the Sky-Toppling Observatory had already made a seed-round investment.

Just look at the few people around Ming Shu—not one of them belonged to the Imperial Clan Court, let alone the Imperial Guards of the Emperor.

After the new Emperor ascended the throne, the transfer of power within the Imperial City, along with the subsequent purge, would still take some time to complete.

Even with King Chu having fled south and making frantic preparations to launch a rebellion there, the fact that he still showed no intention of sending troops first revealed just how chaotic things currently were inside the Imperial City.

As for Ming Shu, who was already a commoner, being ignored was simply being ignored.

Earl Ying did not know exactly what arrangements the Sky-Toppling Observatory had made for Ming Shu behind the scenes, or what its purpose was.

The mere fact that the Sky-Toppling Observatory had entered the game and begun laying out its plans was enough for Earl Ying to follow its lead.

Especially since he was about to abandon the family business he had operated for decades and start over in the south. By comparison, using some of the things he could not take with him to invest in promising young people seemed like a decent choice.

Recently, Earl Ying had already invested in quite a few people among the neighboring prefectures and commanderies to the east and north. He tried to choose people who were as inconspicuous as possible. Offering help in someone's hour of need mattered more.

As for Qing Shui County, it was merely another bargaining chip in his hands.

He needed the Sky-Toppling Observatory to understand how dangerous this powder keg was before he could obtain more bargaining chips.

Yet he also had to maintain that delicate balance and could not let it explode too soon. If it exploded too early, he might be seriously injured himself.

A sense of distance was essential.

Earl Ying had already left Qing Shui County before dawn. Large quantities of documents and books had long since been moved in secret.

They had been transferred in separate batches. More than half a month ago, when the late Emperor in the Imperial Palace had secretly sent word that he might be gravely ill, Earl Ying had begun moving his wealth.

He had not only laid out plans in the south; he had also made arrangements in the western borderlands. He simply had not expected that, in the end, the two legitimate princes would remain—one ascending the throne, while the other still managed to flee south.

How could such a situation have occurred without the Dao Sect's interference behind the scenes and the tacit approval of several other great clans?

The thousand-year-old Immortal Dynasty had finally reached its end.

The original pie was no longer large enough to divide. The old rules had blocked some people's paths upward, while those same people had sealed off the hopes of those beneath them.

There were no eternal enemies. Earl Ying was the man who had nowhere left to retreat.

Too many people had their eyes on his slice of the pie. If not for his grandfather's far-sighted planning—laying things out in advance, outliving Earl Ying's father, and paying a considerable price to pass the title directly to him—the title in his hands would have fallen another rank today.

That method had been forced upon him.

The rules had been agreed upon when the Immortal Dynasty originally granted titles to Aristocratic Clans and nobles: every time a title was inherited, it had to be reduced by one rank.

Everyone had their eyes on this slice of the pie.

Those with higher titles were waiting to take whatever extra remained in your hands.

Once the title was reduced, the regulations in every area had to be lowered accordingly. Even the number of guards protecting your home was subject to a limit.

Not to mention the most important thing of all—the land.

At the same time, a whole mass of people below were desperately trying to climb upward.

The Ximen Family was Earl Ying's greatest rival in Qing Shui County. In truth, the Ximen Family had been built up by his grandfather.

He had then handed this sharp blade to the Immortal Dynasty, allowing it to believe that it could maintain a balance among the local powers and prevent one family from becoming dominant.

Sometimes, the local officials sent by the Immortal Dynasty would borrow the Ximen Family's power to pull Earl Ying's family back. At other times, they would turn around and use Earl Ying's strength to strike at the Ximen Family.

That had been all his daily business for decades. And in secret, no one knew how many other arrangements he had made.

The Ximen Family's connection to the north had also been secretly tied together by Earl Ying. Under normal circumstances, he could not break free from the restrictions already in place. Only a sudden, accidental, large-scale upheaval could help him achieve complete freedom.

Break out of the shackles of this existing circle.

From the light into the shadows.

The troubled times began.

From a chess piece into the player moving the pieces.

Earl Ying had never shown outsiders his true strength. A third-stage scholar in the Scholar's Realm seemed to possess little actual combat ability.

Only the few confidants he trusted most knew that Earl Ying was also a great master of the Martial Dao.

Moreover, his First Madam came from a prominent family with ties to Dragon Tiger Mountain.

These were the foundations accumulated by several generations of his family. At last, they could be turned into tangible gains.

Farmland was dead, and gold, silver, and property were dead as well. Only by making them all serve a purpose could he create an inexhaustible source of momentum to push himself upward.

His family had once thought of entering academies and the Imperial Academy, transforming themselves into a scholar clan and stepping onto a new path upward.

But those scholars had gone too far in bullying others. They had directly excluded the descendants of nobles like them, whose ancestors had relied on Military Merit to become aristocrats.

This was also an indirect reason why those nobles, who had originally held a hand full of excellent cards, ultimately declined one after another.

In this regard, the Emperors of successive generations and the people of the academies had been natural allies.

Yet the Emperors also wanted to use the nobles' eyes to keep watch over the scholar-officials serving as local officials in various regions. They wanted to maintain a balance as well.

In the end, the balance was bound to collapse. The factional struggles among the scholars were already as chaotic as the Seven Kingdoms.

Apart from their tangled networks of marriage ties, there were also teacher-disciple relationships. Disciples who stabbed their teachers in the back and stepped on their senior fellow disciples to enter the Grand Secretariat were everywhere.

When it came to ruthlessness, who could surpass those scholars at the top of the Immortal Dynasty? In order to enter the Grand Secretariat, they would even drag down their own teachers.

Earl Ying had seen far too many such things over these decades.

He had been utterly disappointed in the Great Jin Immortal Dynasty and had long since seen through its decay, foolishness, and ignorance.

They fought only over empty reputations. Just wait and see how long they could hold out in the troubled times ahead.

The scholar-officials who actually got things done were all held down by them, unable to rise.

On top of that, natural disasters had continued to strike among the people, while that group of refined gentlemen knew only how to spout empty rhetoric. In the final years of the Immortal Emperor's reign, they had also consumed a tremendous amount of the nation's strength and fortune.

It would still be difficult for this wall not to collapse.

Every faction was waiting for it to come crashing down so they could divide the pie anew.

Not long after Ming Shu left the Earl's Mansion, the entire residence had already been emptied.

He had decided to detonate it ahead of time. Consider it a small gift for the Sky-Toppling Observatory and the young Ming Shu.

In any case, he did not want the barbarians from the north to succeed in whatever scheme they were plotting.