There was no need to worry about the Three Households dragging their feet. Tang Changsheng held such a damning secret over them. Saying it could get their property seized and their families wiped out might be an exaggeration, but it really could bring disaster down on all three!
The Long-Haired Rebellion had forced the Great Chu royal family from power and plunged the whole country into turmoil. Great Chu had nearly been carved up by foreign powers, and in just over a decade of chaos, its population had fallen by tens of millions.
It had also toppled Great Chu from its position as one of the world's dominant powers. More than half its colonies across the globe had been lost...
Even North America, the most important of them all, had slipped away. Now it was the world's second-largest economic power, behind only Great Chu...
Those memories were too painful. Great Chu's fear of the Long-Haired Bandits ran deep, and anything connected to them or the Taiping Church became a target.
Even the Southern Demon Cult, once so powerful, had suffered like a fish caught in the same pond and been largely swept away.
Yet a centipede did not stiffen even in death. Though the Taiping Church's Long-Haired Army had been destroyed, its shadow lingered, flaring back to life from the ashes now and then.
Like the White Lotus Sect in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, it kept resurfacing under new names no matter how fiercely the authorities suppressed it.
As civilization advanced and the rule of law strengthened, Great Chu could no longer use excessively brutal methods to root out the Taiping Church. Its fear of the church, however, had only grown.
If word got out now that the Three Households had hidden a Deity Statue of the Taiping Church's