*Gurgle, gurgle...*
As the orchid-soft murmur faded, the only sound left in the guest room was the meat porridge bubbling within the blue-and-white porcelain pot, accompanied by the rich aroma of dragon meat stew steadily drifting through the air.
Tianye's voice had been soft, yet perfectly audible to Jiayi and Li Junwu.
Slanting her golden eyes toward the Western Regions girl by the window lattice, Tianye straightened her posture and gave a light chuckle:
"Because the Overseeing Heaven Pavilion holds control over the Central Plains and forbids ancient beasts from entering, and because living space in the Great Desert is so severely constrained, a protracted war broke out between Linlang and the Insect Saint, along with the clans that worshipped each of them. In the end, Linlang's side won, and through generations of evolution, they became the Dachao people.
"The so-called Great Desert Divine Sons and Divine Maidens are merely special individuals whose affinity with Linlang or the Insect Saint reached a certain critical threshold."
"......"
Having heard this, Jiayi by the window immediately turned her gaze upon this black-dressed girl who had appeared out of nowhere, her eyes tinged with suspicion.
The struggle between the Linlang clan and the Insect Saint clan had been a war over living space, but it was also a religious war—waged with the intent of exterminating every last heretic.
Recalling the histories she had read, Jiayi murmured under her breath:
"Affinity with Linlang and the Insect Saint? Why would the Insect Saint even be part of it? The clans that worshipped the Insect Saint should have been wiped out by our Dachao ancestors long ago..."
"History can be falsified."
Xu Yuan cut across her words. Under her stare, he said measuredly:
"Most likely, for some reason, Dachao's rulers at the time chose to spare the Insect Saint's clan and assimilate them instead."
Thoughts raced through Jiayi's mind, her graceful brows knitting into a tight knot.
"How can you be so certain? Your Prime Minister's Manor only rose to prominence a few decades ago. How could you possibly possess intelligence on that period of history?!"
Xu Yuan rubbed the space between his brows. A sliver of wariness toward the sects rose involuntarily in his heart, and he gave a wry smile:
"I don't know the exact details of that history. I deduced this conclusion by working backward from effect to cause.
"If the Linlang clan had truly slaughtered all of the Insect Saint's followers, that Insect Saint wouldn't be able to find an incarnation vessel today."
Jiayi froze for a second, then asked instinctively:
"What do you mean by that?"
Xu Yuan smiled faintly and said smoothly:
"Didn't I tell you last night that several Saints would come to attack the city? One of those Saints happens to be an offspring of the Insect Saint."
"......"
Jiayi's beautiful eyes widened slightly, filled with disbelief.
As the Great Desert Divine Maiden, she knew the Insect Saint had not perished in that ancient war. Yet as the losing party, the Insect Saint had actually completed the evolution of its source essence before Linlang had.
Her red lips parted slightly:
"How is that possible?"
"Hehehe~"
Seeing the Western Regions girl's shaken look, Tianye suddenly giggled, repeatedly poking Xu Yuan's waist with her forefinger while speaking in a tone tinged with regret:
"Such fast wits. I was hoping to tease the little sister myself."
Quickly assembling all the pieces of intelligence in his mind, Xu Yuan let out a sigh:
"Sometimes I wish my mind didn't work so fast. The more you know, the more reason you have to be wary..."
Biting her lower lip, Jiayi stood up and walked over to sit by the low table. Looking at the two across from her acting in perfect unison, she asked:
"What on earth are you two talking about?"
Xu Yuan met her gaze, his eyes fixed on her:
"You should already have the answer in your heart."
Kneeling before the low table with her hands resting on her thighs, Jiayi clutched her dress tightly:
"Are you referring to our late King's contingency plan?"
Xu Yuan gave a slight nod and said softly:
"Calculating the years and timeframe, it lines up perfectly. That offspring of the Insect Saint should only be in their twenties."
Jiayi still refused to believe it, her beautiful eyes half-narrowed:
"Two Divine Maidens within a single sixty-year cycle has never happened in history."
"Then you are the first exception."
Xu Yuan casually cut her off, lifting the lid of the blue-and-white porcelain pot before him to check on the dragon meat stew. Turning back to Jiayi, he said measuredly, "An Innate Dao Body is seen only once in a century, yet history has seen multiple Innate Dao Bodies living in the same era. It is simply a matter of probability. Dachao's population base just hasn't reached the scale of Great Yan."
With that,
Xu Yuan ladled out a bowl of the meat stew and pushed it across to the Western Regions girl.
In the silence that followed,
Jiayi's glowing green pupils trembled faintly, as if something deep within her was beginning to fracture.
The information this man spoke of was scattered and disjointed, but once pieced together, the picture it formed filled her with a suffocating sense of despair and helplessness.
She revered the late King.
She revered that late King who had made himself the medicine to cure Dachao of a thousand years of accumulated rot.
Ever since learning what the late King had done for Dachao, she had come to loathe those vermin in the royal court—creatures carrying the late King's bloodline yet knowing only how to scheme and scramble for power.
Her noble status as the Divine Maiden gave her a chance to steer Dachao along the path the late King had paved.
That was why she had to seize supreme power in Dachao.
Yet now, all of this intelligence showed that all the late King's efforts back then were nothing more than an illusion, like flowers in a mirror or the moon on water.
The late King had calculated everything correctly.
He had correctly anticipated the internal conflicts among the Yan people and the century-long ambition of the Yan Emperor to root out the sects, yet in the end, none of it made any difference.
The situation was still unfolding exactly as the Yan people desired, and their Dachao people remained nothing more than pawns in the hands of Great Yan.
Jiayi wanted to deny it.
After all, much of the intelligence just now was merely the one-sided claim of the Great Yan Prime Minister's son before her.
Yet in the next moment,
Xu Yuan's calm voice pierced straight through the beliefs she held so dear:
"Are you thinking about Nalan Ting? Thinking about how a formidable ruler like him was ultimately reduced to being a pawn in our Great Yan's internal feud?"
"......"
A gust of cool breeze blew into the guest room through the window lattice. Jiayi's robe slipped slightly from her delicate, jade-fair shoulder, and her emerald-rippled pupils contracted violently.
Seeing the girl's expression, Xu Yuan shook his head gently.
Combining this with what he knew from Cangyuan, he could roughly deduce what was passing through her mind.
What Jiayi, this Great Desert Divine Maiden, truly wanted was to lead the Dachao people to conquer and rule the Central Plains, not to walk a path of assimilation and compromise.
Nalan Ting's precedent had given her that confidence, yet now she was abruptly told that every single calculation of that Dachao King had been orchestrated in advance by Great Yan's sects...
Boom.
The faith she had held since childhood came crashing down just like that.
With no intention of consoling this Divine Maiden sister, Xu Yuan drove his words like daggers into her heart once more:
"If you had been born fifty years earlier, you might have stood a chance carrying forward Nalan Ting's dream. But as for now...
"Give up. You don't have a single chance.
"The Great Desert Divine Maiden whom Nalan Ting left behind to unite and stabilize Dachao's politics was turned by the sects right after his death into a tool to control the Insect Saint.
"Whether you wish to admit it or not, Nalan Ting, your great restorer, was nothing more than a pawn manipulated in the palms of their hands.
"He was, and so will you be."
For Dachao to rise, it required successive generations of rulers to all be brilliant, ruthless visionaries. Yet their lineage had already been undermined by calculation, leaving a generation broken. Even in the worldlines of Cangyuan where Jiayi served as the final boss, she met nothing but a gruesome demise.
Across so many endings, the only faction capable of breaking into the Central Plains and establishing a true foothold was Guyuan. Even then, those demons had only seized two of Great Yan's fourteen provinces, and they still had to constantly fend off counteroffensives from the Yan dynasty and the story's protagonists.
"......"
Xu Yuan ladled a bowl of dragon meat stew for each of the three women in the room and let out a faint sigh:
"Still, I really didn't expect that the mother of that Insect Saint's offspring would be the previous generation's Great Desert Divine Maiden.
"It truly is lamentable... don't you think, Jiayi?"
Chapter 627