Chapter 410: Pursuit

Li Musheng gave Cao Gaoshan a long look. Heaven, earth, sovereign, parents, teacher, and the sovereign ranked even above family. For someone of the Tianjin Guards, not putting the emperor first but instead worrying about a princess's lifetime happiness said something about the man. He was a coachman, but he had a genuinely warm heart.

"Let us wait and see how things develop. If the Yuanwu Emperor ultimately agrees to the marriage, once I have finished with White Emperor City, I can make a detour through Great Chu."

Li Musheng shook his head as he spoke. The Great Chu imperial family happened to hold one of the Tianqi Secret Treasury keys, and going to Great Chu would give him the chance to collect it at the same time.

For the moment, however, Li Musheng had no time to deal with his sworn sister's situation. Besides, she was a clever and unpredictable girl, not the kind to be easily pushed around. She should not be in any serious trouble for the time being.

What Li Musheng was actually more concerned about right now was his reputation in the martial world.

If only he had not so carelessly let those seven major sects' people walk away that night at the Qingxuan Temple. Those people were now spreading stories about him all over the martial world.

Saying he was a thorough and complete demon lord who surpassed even the Demonic Patriarch in his prime, and urging all righteous martial world figures to be vigilant and on guard.

Though Li Musheng's demonic cultivation was admittedly not weak, being condemned as a demon lord was a bit excessive.

Whether someone's demonic cultivation was high or low had nothing to do with whether they were an actual demon lord.

The only explanation was that the seven major sects' experts simply had a limited view of the world. And the same was true of the demonic world, for that matter.

Though the three demonic sects had been nearly wiped out at the Qingxuan Temple, there were still remnants of the three sects remaining.

And recently, word in the martial world had it that the surviving disciples of the three great demonic sects, upon hearing about what Li Musheng had done, were now searching all over the world for his whereabouts.

These demonic figures were all competing desperately to become his disciples, hoping he would raise the banner of a demonic revival and lead the demonic path to a new era of glory.

Li Musheng had no particularly good solution for any of this at the moment.

He could only leave it to time, and let the facts speak against the rumors.

After all, if he were truly a demon lord, he would presumably have wiped out the seven major sects by now, and if those people had even a shred of intelligence they would eventually figure out what they should and should not be saying.

"Let us keep moving. White Emperor City is still probably just under two weeks of travel away."

Li Musheng gathered his thoughts, indicated for Cao Gaoshan to drive the carriage, and said no more.

At those words, Cao Gaoshan also said nothing further. Though the matter of Great Chu pressuring Great Li into a marriage alliance was genuinely a difficult problem for Great Li at the moment, for the Eighth Prince in front of him it was simply a matter of making a trip.

After all, Cao Gaoshan had watched everything that happened in Taixuan City from beginning to end. Li Musheng had killed the Great Xuan emperor without a second thought, and had even supported a completely unprecedented female emperor onto the throne.

Great Chu was also one of the five kingdoms, and perhaps marginally stronger than Great Xuan in overall national power. But even so, the Great Chu imperial family would have absolutely no way of stopping Li Musheng.

"I know that as long as Your Highness is here, if Princess Huarong does not wish to marry, no one can force her."

Cang Yinyue looked at Li Musheng quietly, her voice steady with certainty on the matter of Li Yuanling.

Li Yuanling, for all her rank as a Great Li princess, had never put on any airs, and though the time Cang Yinyue and Shen Anran had spent with her was brief, the three of them had become as close as sisters.

Both she and Shen Anran naturally worried about Li Yuanling's situation. But with what Li Musheng had just said, whatever Great Chu was planning was likely about to have the same outcome as the last Great Xuan.

...

At the same time, a group of newcomers arrived quietly in the Great Xuan imperial capital.

These people wore robes embroidered with cloud patterns in unfamiliar styles, their dress and appearance entirely unlike the people of Great Xuan, as though they had come from beyond its borders.

But every one of these people carried martial cultivation that was deeply unsettling, and a martial world expert in Taixuan City who curiously reached out to probe their origin had been killed on the spot the moment one of them glanced in his direction.

The moment this group entered Taixuan City, they went directly to the Qingxuan Temple, every one of them carrying an expression of extreme urgency.

"The information was accurate. Dream of a Thousand Autumns was indeed hidden in this pool."

A middle-aged man wearing a white robe embroidered with gold-edged cloud patterns and a white cloth about his head spoke in a low voice, the group hovering in the air above the dark pool in the mountain of the Qingxuan Temple.

The night the three demonic sects had opened the Demonic Cores here had not been a quiet one, but the Great Xuan court had long since sent people to manage the aftermath.

As a result, the Qingxuan Temple now showed little out of the ordinary beyond some traces left by the fighting of that night.

Even so, these people clearly had a means of detecting residual signs left by the Meng clan's divine treasure. The three ancient families had coexisted on Qishan for thousands of years, and none of them knew each other better.

"All those years of searching, and the Meng clan remnant hid it here all along."

Someone in the group spoke up. Since the destruction of the Meng clan, the two families had never stopped searching for Dream of a Thousand Autumns, but had consistently come up empty.

When Dream of a Thousand Autumns had stirred and produced its unusual phenomena, the noise it made had been significant enough that the two families' eyes and ears had caught it. Upon receiving word, both families had immediately dispatched capable people, traveling from Qishan overseas without stopping day or night to reach Taixuan City.

But they had arrived one step too late. The Meng clan's divine treasure was already gone, clearly taken by someone ahead of them, or possibly retrieved by the Meng clan's surviving descendant.

Had Li Musheng not intervened, the greatest winner of that night at the Qingxuan Temple would undoubtedly have been Daoist Qingyu, and Dream of a Thousand Autumns would have ended up in her hands.

The reason she had awakened Dream of a Thousand Autumns early, beyond drawing in the three demonic sects, was naturally also to draw in her enemies.

Had things gone as planned, the two ancient family experts now arriving would have been the first step in her revenge. But as things stood, the unforeseen had intervened, and she had provoked Li Musheng, someone she could never hope to deal with.

"Can you use your gifted divine ability to identify whoever took Dream of a Thousand Autumns?"

The middle-aged man in the cloud-patterned white robe turned and looked toward a young man in the group.

At those words, the young man swept the surrounding area with his eyes and gave a slight nod, "The time that has passed is considerable, but I can try to sense the events that took place here. I cannot guarantee results."

The white-robed middle-aged man gave a slight nod, "No harm in trying."

The young man then sat cross-legged in the air and slowly closed his eyes. His head began emanating a soft, hazy radiance that spread outward in every direction with the dark pool as its center.

About half a cup of tea's worth of time passed before the young man slowly opened his eyes, the radiance from his head gradually fading.

But his expression when he opened his eyes was one of considerable exhaustion. He looked at the others around him and said, "I saw the person who took Dream of a Thousand Autumns. But their martial aura was exceptionally unusual, unlike anything I have encountered in my life. I could not make out their true face at all."