In the Imperial City of the Tolling Lands, another purge had begun. Once again, wagons of bodies began to make its way out of the Imperial City as the Lan and Chen Families were exterminated. The bodies were dumped in a mass grave. The wagons then made their way back into the Imperial City, they were refilled, and the process repeated until the last person of the Lan and Chen families were exterminated. Shā Qì and Qiú Fàn Warriors had already been dispatched to eliminate the Chen and Lan family members that lived outside of the Imperial city and elsewhere in the Tolling Lands.
For almost one week, Minister Lan, Elder Chen, and Elder Chen's two sons were brutally tortured under the command of Elder Wang. No mercy was given. Elder Wang made sure he tortured them separately so they couldn't corroborate a lie. They were also separately imprisoned so they couldn't communicate with each other.
Regular prison guards did not guard Minister Lan, Elder Chen, and Elder Chen's two sons. Elder Wang wanted to make sure that no one was able to get to them. Elder Wang also wanted to make sure no one was able to pass information to them or for them. They were guarded 24/7 by Elder Wang's Qiú Fàn Warriors. Two warriors sat in the cell with each prisoner and three warriors guarded outside of the cell of each prisoner. Their food was prepared and cooked in the Qiú Fàn garrison outside of the Imperial city by Qiú Fàn Warriors. A Qiú Fàn Warrior personally delivered the cooked food to each prisoner carefully.
No one else other than Qiú Fàn Warriors and Elder Wang was allowed near or around them. Elder Wang was taking no chances. He was determined to get all the answers to his questions. Before then, he didn't want to chance one of the prisoners killing themselves or being killed or poisoned by someone else.
After the second day of brutal torture Minister Lan broke and began answering every question Elder Wang asked. On the fourth day, Elder Chen's son's broke, and on the fifth day, the stubborn old Elder Chen finally broke under extreme brutal torture.
Elder Wang was finally able to piece together many missing pieces to the puzzle. Elder Wang knew there was much more than the stubborn old Elder Chen told. However, the things that Elder Chen did reveal was more than enough.
Finally, Elder Wang was able to extract signed confessions from Elder Chen, Minister Peng, and Elder Chen's two sons. Many questions were answered.
Elder Chen met Minister Peng, the former Prime Minister over ten years ago when Elder Chen was still Prime Minister. Minister Peng promised to become Elder Chen's puppet if Elder Chen would help him to become Prime Minister. He promised to listen to Elder Chen and do everything Elder Chen asked him to do. And so before retiring, Elder Chen bought Minister Peng into power and helped him to become the next Prime Minister upon retirement.
Many years later, when the Chen family and the Hàn family open a feud against each other. Minister Peng was instrumental in setting up many of the schemes that Elder Chen used against the Hàn family. Minister Peng, who was hidden in the dark, helped Elder Chen to scheme the Hàn Family to near annihilation one by one.
Things changed when someone from the Jiang Family fell in love and married a woman of the Hàn family. The Jiang family began to interfere in the feud. Everyone knew the unusual close ties the Four Martial Families had. Shortly after the Jiang began to interfere, then all four families began intervening in the feud. The Four Martial Families prevented Elder Chen from annihilating the Hàn Family.
Elder Chen and Minister Peng began to have talks on how to eliminate the Four Martial Families. Elder Chen wanted to get them out of the way so he could annihilate the Hàn Family.
It was then that Elder Chen learned that the mountain he owned held Melded Ore. The agreement was Elder Chen would keep pretending that Veilded Mountain was a piece of shit mountain. That would allow Minister Peng to bring in miners and smugglers to plunder the mountain.
They signed a five-year agreement that Minister Peng would be grant access to plunder the mountain of Melded Ore for five years. In turn, Minister Peng would come up with a strategy and help Elder Chen remove the Four Martial Families for good.
Elder Peng came up with using the strategy of rebellion, and Elder Chen decided it was a good idea to use the rebellion to frame the Four Martial Families. Slowly more people became involved. The Minister of Justice who was extremely jealous of the Four Martial Families and had a money-loving heart. Minister Lan, who had a horrible gambling habit and hid behind the power of Elder Chen and Minister Peng.
Elder Chen's attention and focus was on exterminating the Hàn family and the Four Martial Families. So although he knew of the operation that was beginning on Veiled Mountain. Elder Chen never paid close attention to what was going on. Minister Peng hid the dealings of Veiled Mountain from Elder Wang.
However, things didn't work so smoothly for Minister Peng. So Minister Peng decided to bring in outside help. Minister Peng got the agreement of his half brother Prince Jing. Prince Jing agreed to help Minister Peng extract Melded Ore from the mountain for a percentage of the profit.
It was by chance that one of Elder Wang's sons saw Minister Peng with Prince Jing and the Minister of the guards. He immediately rushed over to inform his father, Elder Chen, of what he witnessed. Elder Chen spent one whole year doing an in-depth investigation on Minister Peng. Elder Chen found out quite by accident that Minister Peng was a bastard child of the Emperor of Josper. Minister Peng was conceived with a maiden of the Tolling Lands. The Emperor of Josper had relations with a maiden years ago when he was a Prince who had come to the Tolling Lands on a diplomatic visit. He got the maiden pregnant and then discarded her.
Minister Peng went to visit the Emperor of Josper when he was young and was rejected by the Emperor of Josper as useless. So Minister Peng came back to the Tolling Lands and set out to prove himself as useful to his father. Although Elder Chen found out about Minister Peng's true identity, Elder Chen decided to still use Minister Peng to carry out his purpose. He then began planning on how to discard Minister Peng afterward using him.
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Minister Peng help Elder Chen to exterminate the Four Martial Families because it suited his purpose. His goal was to weaken and destroy the Tolling Lands as much as possible.
Elder Chen saw it as getting rid of his enemies. Although he knew his actions would help weaken the Tolling Lands. In his opinion, the Tolling Lands were strong enough to do without the Four Martial Families.
He also had his eyes on the Armies of the Four Martial Families that the four martial families would leave behind. He thought that as long as the Armies of the Four Martial Families were still under the control of the Tolling Lands. Then it didn't matter if the Four Martial Families were sacrificed.
No one thought that the Four Martial Families would use apart of the massive fortunes they accumulated over the years to generously pay off every one of their warriors and dissolve all of their armies.
The four families gave their warriors their final order. That order was to disperse, and the warriors did. Within two days, hundreds of thousands of warriors of the Armies of the Gour Martial Families vanished. The Four Martial Families did not want their warriors whom they considered family to be schemed against the way the Four Martial Families were schemed against.
After the four martial families were all annihilated, the Prime Minister went to the garrisons of the Four Martial Families. He went to take command of the armies of the four martial families. However, all he found were empty garrisons that were stripped bare.
When this was reported, everyone was utterly stunned. This was not the actions of someone who was rebelling. By the time everyone calmed down and began to ask questions, it was too late, the hundreds of thousands of warriors had already vanished into thin air. And the Four Martial Families were already exterminated.
This greatly vexed Elder Chen and the Prime Minister. They thought with the Four Martial Families out of the way. They would be able to take command of their armies. The armies of the four martial families were well renowned for their bravery, fierceness, and genius on the battlefield.
Elder Chen and Minister Peng decided to take their wrath out on the youth and children of the four martial families that the Imperial family turned a blind eye to and allowed to escape. They began to catching and killing the escaped children and youths of the four martial families.
As the wrath of the Elder and Minister calmed. They began to treat catching and killing the escaped children and youths of the Four Martial Families as a game.
After Elder Chen finished with the Four Martial Families and the Hàn Family, that was when he turned his sights on Prime Minister Peng. Elder Chen began to monitor Minister Peng. That's was when he found out about the presence of outside forces in the Tolling Land. He knew that Minister Peng had met with his half-brother. However, he was unaware that Minister Peng brought in outside forces with the help of Prince Jing
Elder Chen also found that many of his supporters were bought off by Minister Peng. However, when he confronted Minister Peng, it didn't go so well. Minister Peng already had all the power he needed. So Elder Chen's threats didn't mean much to him. Minister Peng also threatened Elder Chen. Elder Chen was the one who brought him into power. Knowing that there was Melded Ore on Veilded Mountain, Elder Chen still signed an agreement with Minister Peng granting him five years to plunder the mountain.
Shortly after the confrontation Minister Peng and Elder Chen had a falling out. For some odd reason, Elder Chen didn't consider himself a traitor. So knowing that Minister Peng helped outside forces enter the Tolling Lands to plunder its resources didn't sit well with him. However, his hands were tied. At times he even had to help eliminate certain people who had loose lips. Tens of Thousands of people were killed off to contain this secret that threatened to explode at any moment.
The smugglers monitored their own which helped a lot. The smugglers built their own gambling dens, brothels, wine houses, inns, and many places of entertainment. The smugglers were only allowed to drink, entertain themselves and satisfy their needs in these places.
This was to contain the flow of money and to keep the mouths of the drunk smugglers closed. If an excessive amount of money were allowed to flow throughout the Imperial City it would draw too much attention. Many smugglers were eliminated for breaking the rules set for them, or for allowing alcohol to loosen their lips.
One of Elder Chen son's even confessed to assisting in burning down a brothel a year ago killing hundreds of people in the brothel because a smuggler got too drunk and talked too much. Everyone who was in the brothel needed to be silenced. He also confessed to burning down more than one wine house for the same reasons.
When it was all said and done, Elder Chen and Minister Peng were on the same ship. Elder Chen knew that if Minister Peng went down. Minister Peng would drag him down with him.
Elder Chen began to get his house in order and looking for a way out. That was when Liu Tian Qu came along and bought the old Chen's Garden Residence. Elder Chen thought Wang Fen Yong was buying the residence and immediately tried to gift the residence to Wand Fen Yong to curry favor. When that didn't work, he sold it for 1000 Gold.
When Liu Tian Qu offered to buy the mountain, Elder Chen saw that as the perfect opportunity. It would give Elder Chen the chance to give the Prime Minister a slap to the face. Not only that, but it would also make the outside forces flee with the Melded Ore they work hard to extract from Veilded Mountain. It, too, would force all the corrupt officials from Minister Peng side back to the Chen family side. To Elder Chen, it was killing three birds with one stone.
Never would he have expected things to go so horribly wrong. Even until now, he couldn't understand how he became one of the birds the stone hit. If it weren't for the reincarnation of Liu Tian Qu, then everything would have gone the way that Elder Chen planned for it to go. Unfortunately for him, the one person who was capable of changing the dynamics of the Tolling Lands and the Northern Lands was reincarnated.
Although Elder Chen investigated, his investigation didn't unmask the infestation of corruption that was going on. Had Elder Chen realize just how deep the corruption had gone. He would never have sold the mountain to Liu Tian Qu. He would have found another way to extract himself from the situation.
The Emperor, the Grand Prince, and Elder wang was so dismayed to see this signed confession. It made them aware of just how lacking they were that all this activity was taking place right under their nose, and not once did they get a hint of what was going on. After seeing this signed confession. The Emperor and the Grand Prince determined in their hearts to do better and be more vigilant.
They decided not to worry over what Minister Peng may or may not have leaked to Josper. What was done was done. Instead, they decided to use their energy to began major changes in the Tolling Lands. So that way whatever information that Josper had would become useless in their hands.