Destiny in Cinders

Hearing An Jing’s deductions, Madam Huai looked at him with a blade-like gaze. ”Child, I have gone down that train of thought of yours long ago. All these years... every hour... I’ve been thinking of it all.”

She gradually sat straighter in the bed. ”I believe full well that the divine cult is capable of such things. They are more than capable of shaping the situation to play out the way they want, creating tragedies and comedies alike to stimulate the birth of one child of destiny after another. But one thing you should know is that the divine cult never hides what they do! An Jing, you can’t blame all the suffering in the world on the divine cult!”

Her voice sounded firm and resolute. ”I was the one who was enchanted by the beauty of the spirit flower. My father was the one who underestimated the strength of the fierce tiger. When it really came to it, these choices were of my own making. The Lord Inspector of the North might have sat on the sidelines and watched my father and the rest of the convoy die. Perhaps she only saved me because she saw me awaken my lifearc. But isn’t it too much to blame everything that happened on others? On the divine cult? Things would be so much simpler if I could.”

With a voice more serious than she had ever mustered before, she continued, ”That’s why, I firmly believe that, if only for that one time, they came to my aid because of the goodness in their hearts. I cherish that shred of goodness with all my being. I swore an oath to help anyone I can for the rest of my life since that incident. This is the life and path I have chosen. This is my divine guidance. My heavenly will.”

It was at that moment that the massive mirror of six suns in the firmament stopped rotating and vanished into flashes of light. The fiend qi that loomed over the city was nowhere to be seen. The flashes of lightning in the distance arced toward the main administrative hall of Keensight and disappeared within it.

”Lord! Lord Overseer!” The chubby city manager who had been manipulating the flow of the terrestrial veins to resist the corruptive fiend qi that arose out of nowhere came running out of the major formation to welcome the ebony-robed official who had just landed in the courtyard.

Zheng Mo was overjoyed that help had finally arrived. What had happened in Keensight was far beyond his capabilities, whether it came to capturing the princess, thwarting the True Fiend Cult or holding off the snow calamity. All three together had pushed a minor official like him to his absolute limits.

Keensight could’ve been wiped out had things been the slightest bit different! The reinforcements he had been promised never arrived on time to help him finish even one of those tasks. So, when help finally arrived, he felt a massive weight lift off his shoulders.

Though he welcomed the official with joy, what he got was a slap squarely in the face rather than an official ready to talk business. The ebony-robed official whipped Zheng Mo with his sleeve and knocked him to the ground.

Overseer Cao watched the chubby man roll on the ground and coldly said, ”Look at all the chaos in Keensight. Heavenly fiends run rampant. Demonoids roam the streets. Is this how you serve the imperial court, City Manager?”

”Uuuuuh! Aaaaaah!” Zheng Mo didn’t even think about how many teeth he lost from the slap. Minor wounds like that were of no consequence to Fortification Realm mandated officials. The thing that really hurt him to the point he couldn’t even speak was how the overseer’s slap had taken the authority to control the terrestrial veins of the city away from him.

Typically, when a senior took away such rights, they would absorb most of the backlash and only leave the junior official barely enough backlash to make them cough out some blood, allowing them to retain their dignity. Overseer Cao, however, was too mad to contemplate such niceties and didn’t take on any of the backlash at all, leaving it all with Zheng Mo.

The chubby man was practically being grounded and pounded by the power of Keensight, not even able to let out a groan of pain. He wasn’t even able to die as he experienced pain like never before. Given the relative gentle nature of terrestrial veins, the backlash wouldn’t kill him. It would only cause him to experience more pain than dying ever could.

”You allowed followers of the True Fiend Cult to cause chaos in the city! You didn’t even cooperate with the Blackguard to aid their mission, resulting in deaths and casualties!” Overseer Cao named Zheng Mo’s crimes one after another as he raised his hand and unleashed lightning unto the suspicious figures within the administrative building, striking them dead before they could flee.

He was so mad that he even smiled. ”Look at how much they have infiltrated the administration! Yet, you didn’t notice any of it. How did your parents raise you? How could you allow scorpions to fester under your nose?! Tell me. Did you get recruited into the True Fiend Cult too?”

What? No! Those are false accusations! What Blackguard? I didn’t even know that they’re here! And what did I have anything to do with the infiltration? Isn’t that the guardian adept’s job? Zheng Mo’s mind snapped out of the pain. He opened his mouth and struggled to explain. ”Lo-lord... I...”

”And you’re still making up excuses!” Overseer Cao glared at the poor official, causing him to shrivel up like cooked shrimp once more. Imperial officials, even those one rank above, had immense power over those beneath them. Zheng Mo, however, was only a minor official in a small city. The overseer was so much his senior that he couldn’t even endure being glared at.

In actuality, Overseer Cao wasn’t truly mad at Zheng Mo for failing to do his duties. After an extensive investigation, he knew better than anyone that this could hardly be blamed on Zheng Mo, a mere scholar-official whose superior disappeared out of nowhere, most likely eliminated by the demonic cult or some fey or fiend abomination. The fact that Zheng Mo had been able to keep some measure of stability in Keensight was already commendable. The overseer wasn’t counting on him to capture the princess either. In fact, what really made the overseer mad was that Zheng Mo had done much better than he should have.

I thought he was just a useless piece of trash. Who knew that he would actually be able to achieve something once he put his mind to it? Overseer Cao furrowed his brow and raised his hand, using the terrestrial-vein network of Keensight to assess the situation while he fumed. Curse him. He’s useless when I need him to be useful and the exact opposite when I need him to fail. Why couldn’t he just flee for his life when danger came knocking? Had he allowed the True Fiend Cult’s ritual to succeed, Princess Mingjing wouldn’t have escaped!

The daughter of King Jing, Xuan Mingjing, was the younger cousin of the current imperial majesty. Overseer Cao wasn’t aware of what her infraction was, but it didn’t matter since the court had issued an edict for her capture. She was to be captured alive at any cost.

With things having developed to this degree, the overseer couldn’t be bothered to wonder what she had done to be on the receiving end of this treatment. He focused on his mission and hoped that his junior officials could take care of it before he arrived on the scene and got involved in the complex karmic weave of fate. Yet, it seemed that he would have no choice but to take action himself. Getting wrapped up in trouble like this was not a good omen for his future.

The mere thought of that sent him raging. He glared disdainfully at Zheng Mo. ”How could trash like you deserve to be an official of Grand Chen?!”

He raised his arm and called for an ethereal-looking yet solid scroll of light gold to appear in his hand. On it was a grand seal, red as fresh blood, depicting mountains, rivers, and all life under the heavens and in the oceans. The scroll gave off such an immense pressure that everyone in the administrative building felt the subconscious urge to kneel.

This was none other than an imperial-seal edict, a symbol of highest authority that the imperial court granted to overseers. It implied an official imperial sanction that allowed its bearer to execute first and judge criminals after the fact. It was also capable of stripping all dao mandates that ranked lower than the eight wastelands and four seas mandates!