Royal Palace, Residence of the Heavenly Si Family:-

Queen Meng was seen sitting alone beside the window in her room.

It had been five months since Prince Kalong had “died”.

And yet, Queen Meng couldn’t control her…

Joy!

Finally! The last obstacle between her son and the position of the family Patriarch and King of Wangxiu!

She had been spending endless resources over the years, ever since his son was born.

All for one purpose, to get her son into power.

And for this purpose, there was basically nothing that she hadn’t done.

Many of her husband’s other children were crippled by her.

Some of them were killed. Once she had even killed a newborn child and forced the midwife to declare it a stillbirth.

She knew that if she ever went to the afterlife, things would be horrible for her.

But she didn’t stop. And she never will. Not until her son’s position can be secured.

And for this purpose, she had even targeted the branch families as well.

Currently, no viable candidates were left except for her son.

Naturally, she had even arranged for an attack on her son as well. But the only difference was that the attacker was meant to get killed to further improve her son’s reputation.

She knew that if she didn’t do something like this, then all the suspicion would fall on her and both she and her son would be executed publicly.

But leaving all that aside, she was very happy right now.

Now, all that she had to do was to ensure that no new problems crop up before her mission is completed.

‘Kukuku, the sorrow on Concubine Zhong’s face was priceless!

If not for the fact that all my planning and efforts would have been blown to bits, I would have spent days drinking and would have thrown several parties to express my joy!

But I had to control myself!

And instead of parties, I had to organise a damn funeral procession!’

The lavish parade in honour of Harry’s “death” had to be majorly funded from her pockets.

But she figured that this was, in itself, a party of sorts.

This was her way to proudly declare that only her son remained who could become king!

Granted that she did have to ruin her otherwise perfect make-up a little and shed some tears.

But it was all worth it!

But!

Just because there’s always a but in such situations…

Concubine Zhong had created a huge ruckus about it, leading her husband to start an investigation about Prince Kalong’s death.

So, now, she had to keep laying low since the investigation was still going on five months after Prince Kalong’s death!

Now she felt like killing Concubine Zhong and her stupid daughter.

Prince Kalong/Harry’s younger sister, Si Ximing, was a very smart girl of 12 years of age. Smart enough to leave some grown men in the dust.

But thankfully for Queen Meng, her cultivation talents were trash.

So, even though she was very popular as a child initially, her popularity went down after her cultivation talent was discovered.

The poor girl herself felt like destroying her dantian after the amount of bullying she had to face. At least that way, there would be nothing to make fun of. And if she was lucky, it would also end up killing her and freeing her from her miserable life.

Sadly, she was one of Queen Meng’s sources of entertainment. So, how could she die out so easily?

Her several attempts had been caused to fail by Queen Meng, which only made her life worse but gave joy to Queen Meng as she saw Ximing despair.

But all of this led to Concubine Zhong’s status to become equal to the trash in the palace.

Servants didn’t want to serve her. (Or were ordered not to by Queen Meng)

The salary that all concubine get was still given to her. But it had been reduced from 1000 gold coins to just a paltry 1000 silvers.

This might seem a lot from a commoner’s point of view, but considering the amount that royalty needed to maintain themselves, it was negligible.

Plus, 1000 silver coins just amounted to 10 gold coins. And even the palace maids earned 11 gold coins a month.

But how could Queen Meng let it end there?

She had plans to slowly and slowly get rid of all the other concubines so that there would be no chance of any new child being born that could pose a threat to her son.

Unfortunately, this would take a lot of time to do.

But, at least, this was still easier to do than crippling or killing people.

And all of it would definitely be easier than killing that last prince.

Prince Kalong had been the only time that she had come very close to failing.

He had seen her and the Wuyi coming to poison him. And even though it seemed that he had been killed, he woke up a few hours later.

The news had almost given her a heart attack! Her plan was screwed!

But thankfully the Wuyi managed to fix up the situation splendidly!

He had injected more poison under the pretext of removing the poison and pretended that the poison in the prince was so strong that he couldn’t save the prince.

He even injected some poison in himself to make it seem like he tried to help but couldn’t!

What a guy!

And this time, she wasn’t taking any chances!

She ordered the Wuyi to make a teleportation charm and throw the body somewhere in the Great Demon Law Forest.

Now, even if he did live, there was no way that he could survive that hellish place!

Now all that was left to do was to get rid of his sister.

She was smart enough that if her mother annoyed the king enough, he might start thinking of making her the new head despite her lack of cultivation. And her cultivation genius son would be left behind.

Queen Meng swore that by the time she was done, there would be no one strong enough to stop her from making her son rule the entire world.

***

Heavenly Tribulation Sect:-

Elder Zheng was in deep thought.

Now that those two siblings were gone, he could finally relax a little.

That’s why he had persuaded the other Sect Elders to send them on such a mission.

He just couldn’t bear to see some random person suddenly shoot past him in power.

The thing was that initially, he had invited them to the sect. But after coming here, they had decided to go under Elder Feng instead of him.

This irked him a lot. But he thought that since Feng didn’t know their potential, they wouldn’t be able to grow as much and would eventually run back to him.

But instead, they somehow ended up progressing faster than even he could have helped them do.

This not only had increased their standing and importance in the sect, but it also made people appreciate Elder Feng.

‘Those cheat b*st*rds! How dare they all lie to me!?

I bring you here and you leave me for some random guy you met here?

And not only that, it turns out that you and that guy had more secret than what you let others know.

Serves you right! I used your own disciples to kill your precious disciples!’

Yes, that is what had happened.

Elder Zheng had quite painstakingly managed to get his hands on some advanced level cultivation techniques and somehow convinced Elder Feng’s disciples to kill Qing and Shin.

They had been told that they would get these techniques along with becoming his inner disciples.

Zheng knew that this deal was a loss for him. But, looking at the big picture, he felt that this was a very little thing.

But the thing that confused him a little was the fact that those disciples had not returned.

He was getting anxious. What if the two escaped? What if he got backstabbed by all of them?

His thoughts were running wild.

He horribly wanted to go check upon them.

But unfortunately for him, due to the disappearance of the two stars of the sect, the entire Heavenly Tribulation Sect was in chaos.

And because of this, all activities had been stopped.

No one was allowed to go out on missions. And a separate group of investigators was hired to look into the matter.

Everyone was currently complying with the new rules.

So, if he did something like sending someone on his own, all eyes would be on him. And even if he could somehow remove the suspicions on him, he would still be severely punished for breaking sect rules.

And that punishment was something that he just could not afford to take.

At the least, his entire reputation, which he had painstakingly built over a hundred years, would turn to dust in the snap of his fingers.

If all went normally, he would be stripped of all his cultivation, crippled and thrown out to the streets. And if the judge was in a bad mood, he could even be killed!

‘Well screw it! I’ll just have to bribe some of those investigators to do it for me!

It’s only natural for them to check up on the location where they ‘disappeared’, right?’

***

He had done it!

It took another whole month, but finally, some of the investigation team members had agreed to do his work, though for a very hefty price that he did not like one bit.

Still, something was better than nothing, right?

Now it was just a few more months before they will need to go investigate in the forest!

Yes, “a few more months”.

The thing was that these investigators’ heads were high-level cultivators who had already lived for a very long time, much beyond human years.

So, naturally, their sense of time got skewed after living for hundreds of years.

That’s why it was surprisingly normal for investigations to take years!

A very stupid thing, but who would argue with beings that powerful?

An investigation taking around a year was considered very fast.

As for the young investigators who still had a proper sense of time?

They used to enjoy it a lot!

Depending on the case, their salaries could sky-rocket for long periods.

And that was excluding any extra bribes they received.

That’s why, a lot of the times, the younger investigators themselves used to stretch out the time they took to investigate. Especially if the case had a high salary as a reward.

Who doesn’t like to fill their pockets with gold anyway?

The only time cases were shortened was if someone gave them more money at once than what the case would have originally given them.

So, even though, after paying a hefty amount, Elder Zheng was getting his work done a few months later, he was very happy.

Also, living for more than a hundred years did distort even his sense of time to a certain extent.

he was so happy that he was bursting at the seams.

But then again, if he let those seams burst open, his head too would end up bursting open. Just this time in a more literal sense…

And this is what annoyed him a lot.

Even though almost everyone in their sect was doing all sorts of shady stuff that would get them killed, they still pretended to enforce the laws of the sect.

They were some of the most shameless bunch of people he had seen in a very long time.

Last he checked, even crooks had a code of conduct based on trust and honour and whatnot.

But not these guys!

If anyone was caught, usually the ones who had done the worst crimes were the first ones to punish him and kill him.

And it was a normal day when threats were being exchanged amongst everyone. And these threats mainly included the person revealing the other person’s crimes if they tried to expose them.

This was all common.

Elder Zheng was no different.

If someone were to check his private belongings, they would find very detailed evidence about the crimes done by many others in the sect.

And this wasn’t just Elder Zheng. Everyone had such a collection.

And ironically, this was what acted as a system of checks and balances to ensure that the sect’s public image was maintained.

Elder Zheng had seen several good people join the sect, only to turn into the worst kind of scum due to the things everyone did in the sect.

He knew that this sort of thing was wrong. But it now felt like a necessary survival skill he had.

This had actually been one of the reasons for eliminating the siblings.

The speed at which they were growing would have led to the entire scandal running under the cover of the Heavenly Tribulation Sect to come into the eyes of the public.

And whatever happened, this was something that just couldn’t be allowed.

But thankfully, he had managed to get the resources and timings just right to get rid of this threat.

The siblings were now dead.

Unfortunately, some members of the sect may have been sacrificed in the process, but all that was still pretty acceptable if you saw the big picture.

And now, all that was left was to go confirm the results of the assassination.