【There was nothing more to say about this.】

【Everyone was a Martial Saint, with no fundamental gap in strength.】

【The only titles above their heads were something like "So-and-so of the Li Imperial Clan."】

【You had a whole bunch of them.】

【Crushing domination.】

【While Li Liushui and the others might not treat you with absolute reverence, they would at least grant any request you made.】

【Meeting the emperor was nothing at all.】

【This time, you met Li Chengqian in the Qianyang Hall, the main hall where state affairs were discussed.】

【"The progress has sped up..."】

【In the previous simulation, at this point in time, Li Chengqian should still have been pretending to be mad.】

【But this time, he had already started governing. Although he hadn't gained full control over the court and the military, he no longer had to play blind-man's-bluff with the palace maids in a small garden.】

【"Benefactor! It's really you, Benefactor! We haven't seen each other for decades, and now you're already a Martial Saint Realm powerhouse! I am truly amazed!"】

【Reunion of old friends.】

【In front of the full assembly of civil and military officials, you talked about your chance encounter at Qing River and the fireworks on New Year's Eve.】

【The high-ranking officials of Great Qian were all astonished to see that you, a mere commoner, neither bowed before the emperor nor showed any reverence, and were instead laughing and chatting with him, almost arm-in-arm.】

【One by one, they all began guessing just what kind of background you had.】

【"Benefactor, since you've come to see me, is there something you need my help with?"】

【"I need to borrow something."】

【"Speak your mind! I must set an example for the world. Repaying kindness is a traditional virtue of our Great Qian!"】

【"Imperial Mausoleum Nethersoil."】

【Before Li Chengqian could even speak.】

【Qin Rong, standing at the head of the left column in the hall, barked out.】

【"How dare you! The Imperial Mausoleum Nethersoil is the very lifeblood and foundation of our Great Qian! How could we allow an outsider like you to borrow even a single speck!"】

【A group of civil officials immediately followed his lead, forming a united front.】

【One after another, they petitioned the emperor to reject your request, suggesting he give you more gold, silver, treasures, and titles instead.】

【If you hadn't known that Qin Rong, that old geezer, never wavered when it came to fighting foreign enemies, you'd definitely have given him a beating right then.】

【Li Chengqian, being at a critical juncture in his power struggle, couldn't openly defy all the officials.】

【So, he proposed a solution.】

【In a few days, there would be the Grand Ancestral Sacrifice. At that time, he would draw a divination slip from the Ancestor Dragon within the Imperial Mausoleum.】

【If the Ancestor Dragon agreed, he would take some Imperial Mausoleum Nethersoil out for you.】

【You and Li Chengqian exchanged a glance.】

【You understood.】

【No matter how the divination slip was drawn, there was only one possible answer.】

【A few days later, within the Imperial Mausoleum's forested grounds outside the capital, you witnessed a grand sacrificial ceremony of staggering scale.】

【Important officials from all over the nation, along with hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians, paid their respects simultaneously.】

【The most shocking part was seeing hundreds of thousands of livestock being driven into the Imperial Mausoleum.】

【Then, blood-curdling screams rang out, and a bloody light emanated from within the mausoleum.】

【You tried to probe it with your Divine Sense, but found it was blocked.】

【As a Heaven-Grade Formation Master, you couldn't detect any barrier formation on the Imperial Mausoleum.】

【In fact, you couldn't even see a proper protective formation anywhere.】

【Logically, as the burial grounds for successive generations of the imperial clan, it should have been guarded and defended by formations.】

【"Li Wentian..."】

【Combining what the Free and Unfettered God and Founding Ancestor Shen had told you, along with some information you had previously uncovered on your own.】

【The analysis wasn't difficult.】

【The second human Guardian after the ancient times, who single-handedly established the Great Qian Dynasty and was called the Ancestor Dragon by later imperial descendants, was the Martial God, Li Wentian.】

【Although he was dead, his power had been preserved.】

【The annual Imperial Mausoleum Ancestral Sacrifice was, in fact, a means to sustain this power, allowing it to endure longer.】

【That was why, even with wars raging in both the north and south, the Grand Ancestral Sacrifice was carried out with meticulous precision.】

【Compared to maintaining the Ancestor Dragon's power, the wars on the northern and southern fronts were mere trivialities.】

【As long as Li Wentian's power could still be deployed, the imperial surname of the Five Regions could never be changed.】

【You heard that, in the earliest times, what was used for the sacrifice was not livestock, but living humans.】

【About five thousand years ago, Emperor Yingzong of Qian abolished human sacrifice and improved the sacrificial method, allowing livestock to be used instead.】

【In previous years, the livestock used for this sacrifice were cattle and sheep sent from the Northern Frontier.】

【This was a very important reason why the relationship between the Central Plains and the Northern Frontier had always been relatively good.】

【This year, to cooperate with Li Chengqian's plans, the Northern Frontier had not paid tribute. The livestock for the sacrifice was purchased from farmers and herders within Great Qian's territory.】

【In any case, the imperial court had certainly allocated the funds.】

【Whether the lower-level officials actually paid, and how much they paid, was clearly something the Great Qian court, currently in turbulent times, had no energy to oversee.】

【After the Grand Ancestral Sacrifice ended.】

【Li Chengqian brought out a portion of the Imperial Mausoleum Nethersoil in a specially made container.】

【He said the divination slip from the Ancestor Dragon indicated agreement.】

【Qin Rong and the others couldn't argue with him or accuse him of lying.】

【This was a transparent scheme.】

【A way to give each other a graceful way out, so no one would cause trouble.】

【"Thanks."】

【"Benefactor, there's no need to thank me. I still have to rely on your elder brother to help me seize the imperial power back from those treacherous ministers."】

【When there was no one else around, Li Chengqian stopped referring to himself as "Zhen" when speaking to you.】

【"Once my elder brother helps you reclaim your power, Chengqian, I hope you will continue to cooperate with the Shen Family's plan, arm all citizens, and prepare to fight the enemy!"】

【"Naturally. In fact, this has been ongoing. But I know Qin Rong and his ilk haven't truly put their hearts into it, merely going through the motions out of fear of the Shen Family's martial strength. From now on, I will formulate the war strategy in greater detail. No matter how powerful the enemy is, the Central Plains, the Five Regions, will fight to the very last!"】

【"As for people like Qin Rong, though they are greedy and power-hungry, they are also invaluable combat strength. They can be suppressed, but don't kill them. Settle accounts with them after the human world has successfully passed its tribulation."】

【"The Benefactor is wise. You read my mind exactly."】

【Looking at the container in your hand, and thinking about what the Imperial Mausoleum Nethersoil really was, your expression turned quite unpleasant.】

【In the last simulation, you had discovered that this substance wasn't like soil; it was more like flesh.】

【This time, with your higher status and ability to converse on equal footing with people like the Shen Family Founding Ancestor, the Guardian, and the Free and Unfettered God, you had already learned from them what it truly was.】

【Sustaining Li Wentian's power required more than just the annual sacrifice.】

【It also required that, after each emperor's death, a secret technique left by Li Wentian be used to fuse their physical bodies into Li Wentian's own corpse.】

【Generations of emperors had been fused in this way, and now Li Wentian's corpse was a hideous, terrifying, indescribable mass.】

【The Imperial Mausoleum Nethersoil was this very mass of flesh and blood.】

【Knowing that you had to refine pills from this stuff and then swallow them was, of course, a bit nauseating.】

【Fortunately, the pill refining process involved high-temperature sterilization, so it wasn't a huge problem.】