Yin Gujin remained impassive. Any words Gu Yunzhi spoke concerning the Sacred Ancestor and the Da Chen Imperial Court were automatically erased by the restriction, yet Gu Yunzhi did not care in the least. "Victory and defeat among aristocratic clans? What meaning does that really have? What we want to understand was never something like that!"
"Villagers in the countryside will poison the fish and shrimp you raise. Farmers from the neighboring village will clog up the well your village uses to irrigate its fields. After a woman's husband and sons have all died, they will drive her away, devour her clean down to the bones, leave behind no name, and may even slander her as being possessed by an Evil Ghost, claiming she ran into evil and went mad!"
"When a relative has a child, a childless woman may burn with jealousy and deliberately hold the child close, shout loudly into its ears, shake it, and do everything in her power to turn the child into an idiot. They hold the child with smiles on their faces, while secretly pinching with their nails, wrenching and tugging with all their strength... Do you think they are mad? Or that they did it deliberately? No. When these people are truly discovered, they panic and flounder. They never considered the consequences, nor did they ever think of bearing them."
"Just like all of you."
"Once the aristocratic clans and Heavenly Officials got a bite of meat, they would never allow anyone else another bite. No matter what the Sacred Ancestor may have originally intended, the Heavenly Official system was meant to suppress the aristocratic clans. Yet the official factions and master-disciple factions that arose from that very system replaced everything—and sought to clog everyone else's wells."
"You knew Da Chen was declining,