After leaving France, they did not head south to Venice, but traveled east instead.
Leaving Constantinople, they followed the Silk Road through Western Asia, Central Asia, the great desert, and Hexi, finally returning to the East.
The White Lotus Sect followers under Bai Weiwei had traveled south from Dadu back then, and were now active across vast stretches of the north.
And so Jiang Yang and Bai Weiwei continued east, finally reaching Yingzhou, where the White Lotus Sect was most active.
At the time, the Yuan Dynasty's court was corrupt, the realm was in chaos, and the people could barely survive. It was a time of intense activity for the White Lotus Sect, the Maitreya Sect, and other such groups.
When Jiang Yang and Bai Weiwei arrived in Yingzhou, the White Lotus Sect's leaders at the time, Han Shantong and Liu Futong, had already been making preparations for quite some time.
Han Shantong, in particular, claimed to be an eighth-generation descendant of Emperor Huizong of the Northern Song.
Jiang Yang and Bai Weiwei did not descend upon the White Lotus Sect as gods, but came to Yingzhou under her identity as the White Lotus Holy Maiden.
Although Han Shantong and Liu Futong acknowledged Bai Weiwei's identity as the White Lotus Holy Maiden, they did not assign her a single soldier.
Han Shantong was ambitious. He even hoped that Bai Weiwei would marry him, uniting all the White Lotus followers under heaven and restoring the Zhao family's realm.
Bai Weiwei was utterly speechless at the time.
She had made such solemn assurances before Jiang Yang earlier, and now she had lost a little face.
Still, relying on the Holy Maiden's prestige, the rumors of her near-divinity, and the deterrent power of divine oracles, she managed to establish that they would rally