"There is one more thing I don't understand that I'd like to ask you about."
Yang Qing suddenly thought of another question. "What exactly were those tokens of the Twelve Holy Envoys that the Eastern Splendor imperial family left in the outside world meant for?"
"The Twelve Holy Envoys were the twelve personal guards who attended the Sacred Emperor back then. You could also call them the people he trusted most."
Gongsun Ze concealed nothing in response to Yang Qing's question, explaining everything clearly.
Much of this, however, was information Yang Qing and the others had already uncovered themselves. Hearing Gongsun Ze explain it again merely served to confirm what they knew.
Of course, there were also things they had not known before.
"The so-called twelve tokens were merely a way for those Holy Envoys to ensure that, one day, a wisp of their loyal souls could enter the Imperial Mausoleum and remain by the Sacred Emperor's side."
"You mean each of those tokens housed a Holy Envoy's soul?"
This revelation startled Yang Qing.
Extracting a portion of one's own soul and lodging it in an object to escape the cycle of reincarnation was an exceedingly ancient form of witchcraft.
Such witchcraft could only be performed when a person was at their strongest, when their soul was whole and could not easily be assailed.
Moreover, without the recipient's willing consent, this witchcraft could not succeed.
More importantly, what made a human human was the presence of three souls and six spirits within the body. Without even one of them, a person could not be whole.
Yet, to follow the Sacred Emperor for all eternity even after death, those Holy Envoys had been willing to forcibly extract and seal away a wisp of their own souls in the prime of their