Besides the two largest opposing forces in the north and south, plenty of other restless souls across the land had seized the opportunity to emerge, raising the banners of rebellion and purging the emperor's inner circle as they stirred up trouble.
Take the White Lotus Society, for instance. The cult had suddenly reappeared in Shandong after vanishing for nearly a century. Its current leader, Tang Saier, stirred the people with prophecies that the Bright King (that is, Amitabha Buddha) would descend and Maitreya would be reborn. She organized tens of thousands of followers to seize cities and territory, and for a time, no one could rival her momentum.
In the southeast, there was a man named Li Zha, rumored to be the reincarnation of a two-headed dragon from the heavens. Born with great fortune and two heads and four arms (are we sure he wasn't a conjoined twin?), he caught the eye of a local landowner, who married off his pig-fat daughter to him. The landowner then joined forces with other powerful landlords in the southeast, funding Li Zha with a great deal of money and provisions to help him raise an army and vie for the throne.
Then there was the southwest...the northwest...the northeast...
In short, the entire realm had become a complete mess!
Fortunately, though the situation had grown somewhat chaotic and dangerous, Fu Tianchou and the others hadn't spent the past half month sitting idle.
With a million taels of gold and a hundred Daoist soldiers at their disposal, Fu Tianchou and the others had taken complete control of the Capital City, through bribery and threats alike. Using the city as their base, they had steadily expanded their reach into the surrounding regions.
What truly concerned Hao Shuai, however, was that once the human world descended into