Meeting The Emperor: Part Three [Cosplay Cultivator Chap 86]
From what Tang Ze had heard, the emperor was a Nascent Soul cultivator. The Imperial Family had an ancestor who was at the Eternal Soul level, but this person was not directly involved in ruling.
There were a number of reasons for this.
For one, actually ruling a country was hard and often tedious work. Take what Zhang Long did for their squad - he was just a squad leader, and even that position involved a lot of work that could be better utilized in cultivating. The sect did give him slightly more resources for it, but it did not make up for the extra work he had to do.
One could only imagine how much more work running an empire involved.
Why bother with that if you were a high-level cultivator? More likely than not, they would not even have the skillset needed. The Supreme Elders of the sects rarely did all of the administrative work, which was done by their subordinates instead.
At a smaller level, in their own sect division, most of the management was done by the prefects and Elder He Xuan just signed off on all of them.
In the history of the Raswatian Empire, there had been two Hinayana realm cultivators who were outside of the Imperial Family. Through the Imperial Family's good fortune, neither of them coveted the throne. Although they theoretically could have taken over the Empire, they would also be wary of any secret methods that the Imperial Family might have to deal with them. Not to mention it was easier to simply pressurize the Imperial Family for whatever they wanted rather than toppling the whole structure of the Empire on itself. During these time periods, the Imperial Family basically became unofficial lackeys of the Hinayana realm cultivators.
In the same vein, this ancestor of the Imperial Family had appointed this current man to be the current emperor.
The second reason was that Eternal Soul cultivators had limited lifespans. The old ancestor needed to remain in this world, as without him, the Imperial Family would end up losing a huge portion of its power to the point that they might end up being deposed. Even with the Imperial Family's resources, there was no easy guarantee that each successive generation, or even tens of generations, would produce another Eternal Soul realm cultivator.
This ancestor was currently hibernating in some form of stasis, as far as Tang Ze knew, which allowed for his lifespan to be preserved until he needed to be awakened by the current members of the Imperial Family.
Tang Ze's mind was whirring as it went over all of these things that he had been told. No doubt, the Imperial Family had to live in constant fear that something might shake the foundations of their rule, or even snatch their throne from them.
No wonder they were constantly paranoid about people around them. Just thinking about being in that kind of position gave Tang Ze an intense headache.
He was greatly thankful for having the Rising Phoenix sect's protection hovering over him - because of that, the Imperial Family couldn't just seize and possibly torture him to interrogate him without reason. Or at least, they would hesitate to do so. Of course, this protection came with a cost in that he also had to contribute to the sect, but what could be obtained in this world without giving up something in the first place?
"Excellency," Tang Ze said, thinking of something on the fly. "If you wish to know the truth - the answer is that I did not lie at all about who my parents were. I was ah... a Nascent Soul cultivator in my earlier life. My body decayed while I had entered closed cultivation, and yet I remained as a spirit. This was a long time ago, and I meditated even while in spirit form with the help of a technique I had developed to maintain my spiritual form, hoping to reach the Eternal Soul stage. Yet, I failed, and so attempted to use another technique to grant myself a new body - but this experiment turned me back into a baby, my memories and some powers intact. I took care of myself until I came out of seclusion and... the rest is history."
His story was based off of what Xian Yue would likely tell the world when she came out of seclusion after she had ascended - only in her case, she would be at the Hinayana realm, at which point no one would be able to challenge her even if they wanted to second-guess her story.
Tang Ze however, was far weaker and could only hope that the emperor wasn't going to challenge his story seriously.
The emperor was musing over Tang Ze's story.
He had heard from the third prince that this Tang Ze was a bit of a simpleton - though he knew that this could not be true.
Unlike the third prince, the emperor was privy to the conspiracy to steal the Grimoire of Heaven - he had been the mastermind behind the same, after all!
The Grimoire of Heaven would be quite useful for training the potential heirs of the Imperial Family and expediting their cultivation progress. Had the emperor had it, he felt that he could've reached the Nascent Soul realm a century earlier than he otherwise would have. Such progress would hopefully assist in nurturing a future Eternal Soul cultivator to emerge from their ranks by shortening their cultivation journey, giving them more time to potentially reach that realm. Their old ancestor, even with their special method of keeping people in stasis, could not endure forever.
Word had reached his ears that this was the person who had unraveled their plot which had taken so long to orchestrate - a heist that had taken nearly a century to plan undone in a matter of a few hours by Tang Ze.
Needless to say such a person could not be a simpleton - and the emperor's evaluation of the third prince had fallen as he felt that the third prince had the wool pulled over his eyes by Tang Ze. Tang Ze was clearly quite crafty and clever, and his 'inexperience regarding social matters' as the third prince described it was obviously just a ruse.
However, despite knowing all of this, the emperor could not openly say anything to Tang Ze regarding that matter without confirming that the Imperial Family was indeed involved, something he couldn't do. The emperor had also deduced that if Tang Ze could unravel that plot, he also could've been able to infer that the Imperial Family was behind it.
In the same vein, despite knowing that the Imperial Family was responsible for the heist, meaning the emperor certainly had been in on it, Tang Ze couldn't say anything either as he had no concrete evidence.
Both of them, despite knowing the truth, and also knowing that the other person probably also knew the truth, could not say anything.
"So it is like that..." the emperor finally said. "Quite a fascinating story, it was well worth it to summon you hear to listen to it. Unfortunately, that concludes our time together."
'That's it?' - Tang Ze thought to himself, but didn't voice that sentiment out loud.
It had been just under an hour, but then again, the emperor's schedule was likely packed - Tang Ze thought, and quite frankly, he was just happy enough for the emperor to let him go and fly back to the sect with his head still attached to his shoulders.
However, Tang Ze had a sinking feeling that the emperor had not fully believed the story that he had fed him. If he had dug into Tang Ze's past, he would likely get to know that Tang Ze had no cultivation talent at the beginning, which would contradict the rest of his story.
He would need to work better at fabricating something - maybe he should find a desolate cave and fill it with junk in case anyone wondered where he had been lost all those supposed years as a spirit.
Most importantly - he really did need to lay low for the next few years at least, until he was so strong he could punch his way through anything. No... even then he would be at risk of some kind of weird technique that did not rely on physical ability.
He could have stayed for a few more days if he wanted to - or so the invitation went, but he was not dumb enough to take them up on that offer and hightailed it out of there as soon as he could.
The emperor, though he put this matter out of his mind for the time being given he had other, bigger problems to deal with, did make a note that Tang Ze's background would have to be looked into further.
Even if what Tang Ze was saying was the truth, if they had good enough investigative methods, they would be able to verify it.
Certainly, the emperor felt, the third prince could not be trusted with a matter like this and had just displayed his own incompetence in not recognizing Mt. Tai. He would have to leave this matter to one of his more astute children in the future.
One of the benefits that Tang Ze now had access to, thanks to his achievements in the Novice Tournament was that he could now access and accept missions that were posted on the sect's mission board.
Normally, the sect would assign missions to people, though in the case of the Initiates this was all mainly mundane tasks that really couldn't be called missions per se.
While people, once they became regular members, would be assigned more difficult tasks by the sect, they could also choose to take up missions from the mission board.
These missions were not assigned to anyone and could be taken up by whoever was interested.
The Initiates usually couldn't take these missions as they were deemed to be too weak to undertake them, but Tang Ze had shown that he had tremendous strength during the Novice Tournament, and so it was accepted that he had earned the privilege of taking up some of the missions there.
Personally, Tang Ze thought that it was hypocritical of the sect to have sent him on that mission to guard that toll booth when he had recently joined and then stop him from taking up missions that were less dangerous than that, but there was little that complaining about all of that would change now.
"I would like to take up this mission," Tang Ze said, handing over a flyer to the prefect in charge of these missions.
The prefect frowned. "Are you… sure?"
The mission involved traveling to a village where a number of children had been afflicted by some kind of mysterious illness. Their local medicine man couldn't deal with this, and so they had sent a request to the sect.
The village was a rather remote one and didn't have any resources of significance, and as such, their only recourse was to appeal their issue as a charitable case.
The sect would occasionally take up missions on a charity basis, though as one might expect, there were far more of these missions requested than the sect could possibly do.
Given this, the reward for the quest was rather meager in the number of sect merit points awarded. Whoever would take up the mission would almost certainly either be operating at a loss or a razor-thin margin, even if one excluded the opportunity cost that came with taking up this mission as it meant that they would not be doing something that was more productive in the time it took to complete this mission.
On top of which, the prefect knew that Tang Ze was strong, but this was something that required the services of a healer. Per the prefect's knowledge, Tang Ze had no aptitude when it came to that aspect.