On What Grounds Could Yaxiu Make the Board?

"Yayin." 'Weeping Red Hat' Cleios watched the violet spiderweb draping Azura's night sky, cursed tears trickling from the corners of her eyes. "Yayin." At the Happy Family Firm, 'Red Cicada Duchess' Aina, who could be called Funeral's primary early adversary, murmured in a daze. "Yayin." The Six Crests patriarchs looked up, wondering whether it was time to put the plan to change everyone's surname to Sennheiser on the agenda. Fanmula, Moduola, Feidengla, Mengfeila... As the Gospel Board was proclaimed and the spiderweb fireworks bloomed, all of Gospel murmured the same name. "Yayin." In the banquet hall of the Nabistin Imperial Palace, the Empress rose from her throne, spreading her hands to calmly announce the succession: "A new sovereign is born. Yayin is the Echo of the Future; the Yisu Dynasty shall welcome a new Saint." "How is that possible..." "Why him! How could it be him? It can't be him! I'll never accept this!" "No, anything but this!" "The Weaving Ceremony is over, and we're finished too..." When the Gospel Board came to a complete conclusion, many guests suffered outright mental breakdowns—especially the Mercury, Roland, and Kasri families. They had sent people to hunt Yaxiu down; in fact, their bounties on Yaxiu were still posted on the Gospel market right now! It wasn't so much that they couldn't acknowledge Yaxiu as the future Yisu Saint; rather, they refused to accept that they had forged a life-and-death feud with the supreme ruler who was about to ascend the throne of Gospel! If they had acted knowing the consequences, that would have been one thing—at least it would be their own doing. But barely a minute ago, obsessively hunting Yaxiu made them universally lauded pillars of Gospel; a minute later, they had suddenly turned into treacherous rebels plotting regicide! One step to heaven, one step to hell. Who could possibly bear such earth-shattering grievance? A stock market crash could at least trigger circuit breakers, and leveraging up at most lost your principal, but now, by sheer carelessness, they had gambled away centuries of their families' foundations down to the last scrap. Even Sanctuary Sorcerers who had suffered the brutal ravages of 'Wind, Flower, Snow, and Moon' broke down completely in this instant. As for whether offending Yaxiu might blow over with no consequences... Frankly speaking, in recent centuries, no one had ever offended the First Gospel. After all, the princess remained in the imperial palace until ascension, and once enthroned, she was the sovereign wielding Gospel. She was only ever the one offending others; how could anyone offend her? Yet answers to such questions could still be found in history: the dynasties that had once offended the First Gospel were now ancient history; the famous sites that had imprisoned the First Gospel were now ruins; and the madmen who attempted to rebel against the First Gospel couldn't even leave a trace of their deeds behind. The reason they felt such terror was that, unlike commoners, these aristocratic cartels standing at the pinnacle of the ruling class were the ones who felt the Isu royal family's absolute dominion most keenly. Since the Isu royal family could pin them down in their respective cities and forbid vicious competition, the Isu royal family could just as easily crush them to death, making their families disintegrate in an instant or be wiped out in a single day! This was by no means paranoid persecution mania; the Isu royal family had done similar things before! About three hundred years ago, a family produced a Legendary Sorcerer. Not only did he refuse to enter Nabistin, but relying on his martial prowess, he coerced and enticed other families into submission, rapidly expanding his influence across numerous cities. He appointed only his most trusted blood relatives to every vital position and reinforced his rule with Contracts, on the verge of breaking the "Territorial Restrictions" laid down by the Isu royal family. They even erected a tower, hosting banquets for the major families to build prestige and attempt to cement their status as "Second in Gospel." Then, one night, this family suddenly perished. The reason was internal conflict. Because the Legendary Sorcerer valued "loyalty" over "competence," those clansmen who believed they had worked tirelessly were long resentful, while those placed in high positions naturally never felt they were unworthy of their posts. During periods of rapid expansion, blood ties could indeed cement over many conflicts of real interest; but once the weight of self-interest completely tipped the scales against blood, those conflicts would rebound with tenfold savagery. The rebels seized the window when the Legendary Sorcerer entered the Void Realm, turning his daughter through love, and shockingly succeeded in assassinating him. But the civil war that erupted immediately after engulfed the entire clan, leaving virtually no survivors. Even looking back on that annihilation afterward, no matter how one looked at it, it seemed like self-destruction with zero trace of external influence. Yet no one was naive enough to believe the Isu royal family hadn't acted. If nothing else, while it was true a Legendary Sorcerer could be assassinated while entering the Void Realm, the vast majority of sorcerers—even in the safest of places—would set up a safeguard or two to alert them against outside intrusion before diving into the Void Realm. Perhaps the Legendary Sorcerer had merely been careless or lazy that night, diving into the Void Realm without setting any alarms. But such outrageous "negligence" alone was enough to send a chill down the spines of later generations. Were families like Mercury truly monolithic and unassailable? How much sturdier were the castles these families had cultivated for centuries, in the eyes of the Isu royal family, than children's sandcastles on a beach? The rebellion simmering within Qinna and Evalin had erupted so forcefully not merely out of ambition, but even more so from fear. In truth, the two were one and the same: realizing that the blade of Isu had always been hanging over their heads was precisely what birthed their defiance and longing. And so Mercury and the others could not bear to sit by and watch Yaxiu ascend the throne—regardless of whether Yaxiu would retaliate. If Yaxiu sought revenge, their deaths would simply be a bit more tragic and official; if Yaxiu did not seek revenge, they would live every waking day in terror, suspecting every minor misfortune to be a sign of Yaxiu striking, slowly bleeding themselves to death like meat sawed by a dull blade. When all was said and done, the pressure exerted by the First Gospel was simply too crushing, heavy enough to shatter their defenses of reason. Yet they lacked the power to resist the First Gospel—no matter how powerful they were, could they possibly be mightier than the Elven Dynasty or the Fireseed Dynasty? More importantly, the Isu royal family did not need these families to help govern. While these sorcerer families possessed a certain level of progressiveness and played a vital role in technological development and productivity growth—and the fact that the Isu royal family invited them to witness the imperial succession demonstrated their significance— —they were merely important, not indispensable. Even if every single person here and the families behind them were wiped out, Isu's rule would remain rock-solid. At most, production and development would stall, taking time to recover. The Isu royal family's refusal to contact the outside world was wise; no one could afford the price of incurring the princess's displeasure—unless... Thinking up to this point, the crowd couldn't help but look toward the main figures who had just wreaked havoc in the banquet hall. No wonder Sennheiser and Berdette had nearly torn down the palace without drawing the slightest reaction from the Empress! Setting aside Qinna and Nona—Gospel had repeatedly declared Yaxiu's claim over them, proving how doted upon they would be by Yaxiu in the future. After Evalin was invalidated in the Happiness Board, she turned to serving as Yaxiu's personal secretary, acting like a loyal hound as if completely dominated. And Anfiel was Igola's wife, while Igola was the fanatic who hadn't hesitated to overturn all of Gospel just to resurrect Yaxiu; add in the fact that Yaxiu was very fond of Anfiel's daughter Leya, and rounding it all up, Anfiel was practically Yaxiu's own sister from different parents. As the new sovereign's harem, what was tearing down a palace to them? "Evalin..." "Patriarch Sennheiser..." "Respected Lady Berdette..." "Crest Guardian of Fanmula..." Just as the guests began ingratiating themselves with them, an enraged voice echoed through the hall. "Gospel has made fools of us!" Mercury's eyes were blood-red as he ground his teeth and snarled, "The criterion for the Gospel Board was clearly 'only the purest, most innocent, kindest, and most wonderful maiden'! On what grounds could Yaxiu make the board?! On what grounds?!"