Inside the Imperial Palace, Xu Tianran held an urgent letter bearing a distinctive Sealing Wax seal.
The letter had come from a mole he had planted inside Mingde Hall. Normally, unless something urgent or important happened, contact was strictly one-way, initiated from Xu Tianran's side.
After all, the Sun Moon Empire explicitly forbade princes—even a crown prince like Xu Tianran—from interfering in any affairs of the Sun Moon Royal Soul Engineer Academy or Mingde Hall.
Those institutions answered only to the emperor of the Sun Moon Empire. Even though the current Sun Moon Emperor was ill and likely had little time left, Xu Tianran still could not extend his hand into them.
Before he ascended the throne, if he dared set his sights on the Sun Moon Royal Soul Engineer Academy and Mingde Hall, the soul engineers who had remained neutral—even ninth-level soul engineers such as Jing Hongchen and Ye Yulin—might take necessary measures to stop him from reaching too far.
If Xu Tianran really did that, the losses would truly outweigh the gains. He would not push a power he would sooner or later command into the opposing camp.
And loyalty that was not absolute was absolute disloyalty. Once he inherited the throne, he would naturally have plenty of time to slowly deal with those who had not clearly sided with him during his years as crown prince.
The author of this secret letter was a spy Xu Tianran had planted inside Mingde Hall. Planting a spy somewhere like that was extraordinarily difficult, and exposure would be bad for both the spy and Xu Tianran.
That made occasions like this, when the other party took the initiative to contact him and pass along information, extremely rare. Accordingly, Xu Tianran was very eager to learn what urgent news the letter