Chapter 721: Teaching Politics
“After Zong Ge was struck by the Blood Vengeance Axe, to resolve that issue, I dedicated myself to gathering a lot of information for a time to understand the history of the Blood Vengeance Axe.”
Zi Di continued to narrate, “Before the great rebellion, Blood Kin City was called Snow Fall City.”
“Snow Fall City’s lord was a member of the royal family, and when the rebellion became enough to sweep in, he feared death upon defeat and disgracefully surrendered to the rebel army.”
“When the Ice Sculpture King put down the revolt, he recaptured Snow Fall City. Originally, he wanted to punish Snow Fall City Lord, but the king’s mother pleaded for leniency, after all, he was of the royal bloodline.”
“The king still allowed Snow Fall City Lord to keep his position; however, he renamed the city to Blood Kin City.”
After Snow Fall City Lord learned of the new name, he couldn’t withstand his guilt and committed suicide that same night.”
“From that day onwards, the Blood Vengeance Axe was lost to outsiders, wandering between many owners before finally ending up in the hands of a snow elf expert, he relied on this axe to open up territory in this city and establish the Axe Gang.”
Cang Xu quietly listened, waiting until Zi Di’s speech was finished, before suddenly saying, “Miss Zi Di, before arriving in Blood Kin City, you were ambushed halfway by a mysterious gold level, likely to be the Axe Gang Leader.”
Zi Di nodded, “Although we haven’t ascertained the truth of this to this day, after Zong Ge killed the Axe Gang Leader, our investigation and analysis felt that the probability was very high.”
“As for why the Axe Gang Leader attacked us, its probably due to his personal friendship with Teng Dong Lang.”
“The reason why he recruited Jia Bing and Lin was for absolute safety. According to the information we gathered, this conformed with how the Axe Gang Leader customarily used his soldiers.”
“Luckily we had the Pearl Bubbles, otherwise…” When she said that, Zi Di revealed a trace of lingering fear.
Cang Xu said in passing, “Teng Dong Lang was a gang boss, Lin was Ice Spear City’s largest gang leader, and the Axe Gang Leader goes without saying. You don’t think that these three having the same role is too coincidental?”
Zi Di replied, “What else? Transcendents from the military don’t have any capacity for production, isn’t relying on their strength to earn a normal living?”
Cang Xu shook his head, “If that was the case, then becoming mercenaries would be more rational, why did they all become gangsters? The cultural differences between gangs and the army are vast.”
“I believe that their discharge from military service was a camouflage, an arrangement of the royal family.”
“It is simple to verify, check and add up the amount of people in it. I think there should be many such cases of this. They should have started 40 years ago and become more inundated as time passed.”
The dragonman youngster pondered, “IF that is true, isn’t it a bit strange?”
“These large quantities of discharged soldiers, why didn’t they become city guards and instead became systemically problematic criminal gangs?”
Zi Di thought of something, “By doing this, they can cut down on military spending.”
“Gangs have income. At the same time, veteran organized powers can muscle into the space the original gangs occupied, and it can also be considered to be a covert type of increased law and order.”
Cang Xu added, “This is not the Ice Sculpture Royal Family’s true goal. I personally believe the royal family is secretly expanding their armed forces, relying on the pretense of gang syndicates to clandestinely maintain troops. When their time of need comes, the king will issue a call to action, and large numbers of gangs are bound to proactively answer with generous enlistments.”
“The reason why the Ice Sculpture Royal Family did this should be to vie with the powerful Sheng Ming Empire.”
The dragonman youngster was startled, “Wait a moment, did you say vie with the Sheng Ming Empire?”
Zi Di had a weird expression, “The Ice Sculpture Kingdom and the Sheng Ming Empire have a good relationship. Heavenly Emperor Sheng Ming didn’t even hesitate to send his Thirteenth Prince to serve as a hostage prince in the Ice Sculpture Kingdom. Where did this vying with the Sheng Ming Empire come from?”
Cang Xu had the look of one who saw beyond the facade of the world, one more emphasizing, “That’s right, the royal family is doing this to vie with the Sheng Ming Empire.”
The dragonman youngster and Zi Di looked at each other in dismay.
The two felt that Cang Xu was speaking more and more out of place.
Cang Xu then said, “The Ice Sculpture Kingdom is mainly composed of snow elves, what do you two feel about this country’s popular customs?”
The dragonman youngster said, “Snow elves are inherently arrogant, and duels are popular domestically, the popular customs are quite plucky.”
Cang Xu nodded, “With such popular customs, how will they submit to the Sheng Ming Empire? For a long time now, the Ice Sculpture Kingdom has always maintained sovereignty.”
“When Ice Sculpture Kingdom was first established, the snow elves were a unified whole, they defeated the other races led by the barbarian race and completely dominated Ice Sculpture Island.”
“After the country’s founding, they cleaned out the borders and often sent troops on expeditions.”
“Afterwards throughout history, they repeatedly defeated powerful invaders and counterattacked them back until they destroyed their enemy’s base before stopping.”
“This country’s military ethics is abundant.”
“The attitude this country has means it will absolutely never surrender easily. Despite the Sheng Ming Empire’s power, it can’t yet reduce the Ice Sculpture Kingdom to a vassal state.”
“Our emperor clearly understands this, therefore, he sent the Thirteenth Prince to serve as hostage and by means of his role as a great power, formed an inseparably close relationship between both countries.”
Zi Di interjected, “The masses all say that the Heavenly Emperor deliberately treated the Thirteenth Prince as a hostage, but in reality, it was to prepare for and provide cover for the Wilderness Continent invasion.”
Cang Xu nodded again, “Seeing through the chaotic situation before us, we can research it from a higher angle and look down at the structures from a higher vantage point.”
He deeply sighed, using some a somewhat raging intonation to say, “Heavenly Emperor Sheng Ming is a man of grand ambitions, the unification of the Sheng Ming Continent did not stop his journey, and he has mobilized the entire empire’s strength to attack the Wilderness Continent, that is the theme of our era.”
“To attack the Wilderness Continent, the imperial army has to cross the ocean and has to establish stable supply routes.”
“Heavenly Emperor Sheng Ming began his arrangements long ago. Sending the Thirteenth Prince as a hostage to the Ice Sculpture Kingdom was one of them. The second is the imperial pantheon targeting ocean gods, suppressing and ganging up on them, Charming Blue Goddess was a casualty of this.”
“However, when the imperial army was establishing bridgeheads on the Wilderness Continent, the Pirate Throne rose at this subtle juncture and the pirates of the Main Plane immediately became incomparably rampant. What do you think of this?”
“Yes, on the Main Plane, the Sheng Ming Empire is entirely worthy of being the greatest force, it is the sole continental power. The rest of the powers absolutely don’t want to see the empire’s attack succeed and annex another continent.”
“Therefore, on the face of it, the empire is the conqueror and the beastmen resist, it is a contest between two continents, the Sheng Ming Empire vs the Beastmen Clan Alliance. In reality, it is the Sheng Ming Empire confronting the pressure of the entire world. Beside the beastmen clans, the other powers haven’t openly gone to war, that’s all.”
“If the Heavenly Emperor wants to conquer, first of all, he has to ensure his ocean transportation lines are secure. Relying on teleportation is not economical, the empire would go bankrupt halfway through the process.”
“If Divine Domain Descent was serviceable, then why haven’t numerous gods put it into common usage since the ancient days? After endless development, the Divine Domain Descent spell should have grown into a conventional method of transportation. But in fact, this isn’t the case. For the same reason, this proves this applies to other transportation methods.”
“Therefore, the good old way of sea transportation is the only solution.”
The dragonman youngster nodded, expressing his approval while secretly speculating, “Divine Domain Descent really is risky. Charming Blue Goddess was forced into this dangerous situation. Under the circumstances, she deployed the saint beast in Ocean Mother Nest to protect it. Apparently, since Charming Blue Goddess is asleep, my repeated invocations of Divine Domain Descent was authorized by the Godhead. That’s how I was able to exploit it!”
Cang Xu continued, “In order to create maritime transportation lines, the Sheng Ming Empire began to exert itself and issue a good deal of policies. Our journey through Snake Rat Island and Two Eyes Island are embodiments of those policies. Snake Rat Island’s Lord Tan Qiu and Two Eyes Island’s Hun Tong both received the empire’s nobleman incentive policies. They conquered an unremarkable island, paving the way for the empire’s war machine through blood and flesh, developing a vast number of maritime station points. These station points linked together can support a few main maritime transportation routes.”
“Of course, based on what we know right now, Snake Rate Island can only provide sideline support, while Two Eyes Island’s position was pretty good, it seems it was careening towards becoming one of the hubs of a transportation line.
“If Two Eyes Island is like that, what about Ice Sculpture Island?”
The dragonman youngster’s and Zi Di’s heart shook in tandem.
The two looked at each other, equally seeing the other’s sudden realization.
They began to understand the reason and essence of the confrontation between the Ice Sculpture Kingdom and the Sheng Ming Empire.
Cang Xu explained, “Ice Sculpture Island is different from the vast majority of islands, it has a considerably vast surface area, and a very long history. The Ice Sculpture Kingdom is entrenched in the ocean, and nowadays has three great saint level combat powers, and once had a legend level too, its foundation is quite deep. Their attitude and factions will undoubtedly have an enormous influence on the maritime transportation lines.”
“Standing on the Ice Sculpture Kingdom’s point of view, their citizens naturally crave for freedom and long to maintain their autonomy.”
“Standing on the Sheng Ming Empire’s point of view, annexing the Ice Sculpture Kingdom is the best and most secure outcome. But the empire doesn’t have a good way of taking direct action. On the one hand, the Ice Sculpture Kingdom has a strong military, top quality alchemy technology, and a plucky character. On the other hand, the snow elves have two big external connections. One is to the Frost Continent, where the snow elves originated from. The other is to the Life Continent, that place is made of elven kingdoms large and small.”
“If the Sheng Ming Empire recklessly attacks, it might lead to these two continents drastically reacting, so the empire has to tread cautiously.”
“Therefore, we saw a good deal of the Imperial Secret Spy Agency like Snow Bird Harbor City Lord moving around in the Ice Sculpture Kingdom. From just the secret spies like Snow Bird Harbor City Lord, code name [Emancipator], and also [Usurper], one can understand they want to overthrow the Ice Sculpture Kingdom’s current regime! Their rapacious designs are abundantly clear.”
The young man nodded repeatedly. He was already secretly trying to track down who else belonged to the Imperial Secret Spy Agency. Snow Bird Harbor City Lord had already been exposed, and [Usurper] was certain to be greater than he. The dragonman youngster initially suspected the Li Jian Clan. This clan controlled the Second Navy Fleet, and during the naval battle with Da Han’s pirate alliance, they put their own safety before principal, it really was suspicious.