"Your Majesty, news has come from the Southern Wasteland. Among Shen Shi's followers, heretical devotees of the God-Worshipping sect have appeared. As this matter concerns the imperial family, the local authorities dare not make a decision on their own and request Your Majesty's sacred judgment!"
After Zhao Xiang descended from the city tower, someone immediately stepped forward to report.
The person was a woman named Gongsun Yue, barely over thirty. She had gained considerable renown for her talent in her teens, later passed the imperial examinations, and began working under Zhao Xiang at an early age. By now, she was the brush-holder of the Imperial Study.
During the previous dynasty, the Imperial Study had employed only eunuchs. The New Dynasty had abolished this bad custom, however, and thus loosened its restrictions on personnel.
As Zhao Xiang was a woman herself, she also preferred to appoint female officials in such matters.
The heretics of the God-Worshipping sect were a group that had emerged in recent years. The gods they worshipped were not the false gods of those former sects, but strange lives that had embarked upon the path of evolution early amid the changes of heaven and earth.
By worshipping these beings, they too gained a portion of divine wonders.
The court, however, exterminated such people without mercy. In any case involving god worship, even merely executing three clans was considered a light punishment.
For worshipping gods meant willingly degenerating into the slaves of demons and monsters. Without question, it was digging at the foundations of the human path.
"Shen Shi... calculating the time, he should be a little over twenty now..."
"When I first met him, he called me Sister so timidly."
Perhaps because her emotions had been stirred earlier, Zhao Xiang did not immediately say how the matter should