Chapter 1482: The Nanyang Federation |
Qi Xuansu said to Tantai Ying, “Have the people from the Juesheng Hall come in and collect the bodies.”
Tantai Ying was momentarily stunned. “The Southern Palace Guards are right outside. You don’t trust them?”
Qi Xuansu replied, “Madam Wu just said that it’s difficult to distinguish humanoid insects from ordinary people. I’m worried there may be infiltrators among them. I can’t say the Juesheng Hall is absolutely secure, but they’re still more reliable than the Southern Palace Guards, who aren’t under our direct control.”
Tantai Ying accepted Qi Xuansu’s reasoning. “Alright, I’ll make the arrangements immediately. As for Huangfu Zhu, let’s have the Hall Master handle it. They’re family, after all. Huangfu Zhu is more likely to listen to him.”
Huangfu Zhu was eagerly waiting for the case to be closed, so he would want to return the bodies to their families and provide them with an explanation.
However, the investigation was not yet complete. Qi Xuansu had no intention of releasing the bodies at this stage because there might still be undiscovered clues hidden among them.
This naturally created a conflict. Since neither Qi Xuansu nor Tantai Ying was Huangfu Zhu’s direct superior, it would be inappropriate for them to issue orders directly.
Huangfu Zhu effectively answered to two authorities: the Tawantin Emperor and the Huangfu family. That made Huangfu Ji the ideal person to handle the matter.
Tantai Ying first contacted Huangfu Ji and briefly explained the situation.
Afterward, Tantai Ying informed the Juesheng Hall’s Daoists and instructed them to prepare for a body recovery operation.
Qi Xuansu said, “It seems that there isn’t just one hidden force at work, but several factions competing against one another. At present, we already know of three separate factions. Taking the Divine Eagle Guard incident as an example, Chak Chel’s faction appears to have been attempting to complete the sacrifice.
“The Fallen Apostles and the humanoid insects both interfered with and disrupted the ritual to varying degrees. Adding ourselves to the equation makes four parties involved. That’s not even counting the Southern Palace Guards as victims caught in the middle. The situation is becoming increasingly complicated.”
This was not particularly surprising. After more than two centuries of Daoist Order rule, there were very few mysteries left in the Central Plains. Most remaining secrets originated from within the Daoist Order itself.
The Southern Continent was a different story. The Western Daoist Order’s rule here remained relatively weak. Multiple civilizations had risen and fallen across the region, and vast stretches of land remained untamed and unexplored.
It was not that the Western Daoist Order lacked the desire to investigate. Rather, the Steam Evangelical Sect had kept them occupied and prevented them from expanding their efforts.
Just as the Daoist Order had little time to deal with secret societies while fighting the Buddhist Sect, priorities had to be established. Some matters were more urgent than others. It was not until the era of the third-generation Grand Master that the Daoist Order began systematically addressing the various monsters, cults, and hidden threats scattered throughout the world.
Even then, it was not their primary focus. They simply dealt with those problems while simultaneously pursuing economic development.
Based on the Daoist Order’s experience, suppressing such groups was easy. Eliminating them was not particularly difficult either. The real challenge lay in identifying them. How could they be distinguished from ordinary people? How could the guilty be separated from the innocent? That was the truly difficult problem.
Madam Wu said, “Back during the Insect Immortal crisis, some Insect Immortals really did infiltrate both the Daoist Order and the Western Daoist Order. In fact, they caused considerable damage.”
As the saying goes, having an elder in the family is akin to possessing a treasure.
If Qi Xuansu wanted to learn the precise details of those events, he would have to search through the records himself. The civilization of the Central Plains had always maintained a tradition of official historians, and the Daoist Order was no exception. In fact, the Daoist Order was even more meticulous. Records existed for virtually every formal meeting.
Furthermore, unlike the Confucian tradition of extreme brevity, Daoist records were written in plain language and emphasized detail. The result was an enormous body of internal documentation.
Somewhere within that vast ocean of records undoubtedly lay the truth and all the relevant details. However, finding those details would require an immense amount of time and effort. While it was not exactly searching for a needle in a haystack, it was close enough.
Qi Xuansu was not making baseless conjectures; he had experienced such things firsthand.
Back in Fenglin, when investigating the origins of the demonic fire and the yin energy surrounding Mount Fuyo, everyone knew that the Fenglin Daoist Mansion possessed records from the original investigation. However, due to repeated changes in leadership, the passage of time, the disruption of war, and the replacement or even death of relevant personnel, no one knew where those records had actually been archived.
Moreover, suppressing the rebellion was the primary concern at the time, so no one was particularly interested in searching for old documents. As a result, the entire investigation had to be conducted all over again.
Similarly, when the old Creation Project was dissolved and reorganized into the Huasheng Hall and Tianji Hall, combined with the Eight Tribes leaving the Daoist Order, considerable chaos followed. It was during that period that the Xuan Jade began leaking out of the Daoist Order. Many research results were either abandoned or lost altogether.
Only in recent years had the Huasheng Hall begun reorganizing the vast archives left behind by the Creation Project. They frequently unearthed strange and fascinating discoveries from piles of old documents, leading people to jokingly remark that their inventions relied on archaeology.
Now things were much simpler. With someone like Madam Wu present, a firsthand witness and participant in those events, many difficulties could be avoided.
She was essentially a living history book.
If Madam Wu ever wrote a memoir from her own perspective titled Two Hundred Years of Turmoil in the Daoist Order, it would undoubtedly become a bestseller.
Even the Three Deputy Grand Masters would likely purchase a copy, since none of them had personally experienced the entirety of those two centuries, and much of the content would possess considerable historical value.
Of course, Madam Wu was not the only one. The Three Yin Beings and others represented entirely different perspectives as well.
Madam Wu said, “Back then during the early stages of developing Nanyang, the Daoist Order had not yet firmly established itself. The Buddhist forces and local Wuist Sect in the Funan Kingdom were constantly watching the Daoist Order with hostility. That alone wasn’t a major problem. They did not dare openly oppose the Daoist Order and were not its match anyway.
“The real issue was that the Daoist Order had not yet discovered the existence of humanoid insects nor even conceived of such a concept. In fact, the Daoist Order initially regarded them as a branch of Daoist cultivators native to Nanyang.
“On the surface, humanoid insects resembled Daoist cultivators in many ways. They constantly addressed one another as fellow cultivators and maintained organizational structures similar to those of the Daoist Order.
“Apart from being somewhat more brutal, they did not appear particularly problematic. At the very least, they placed great importance on commerce and were especially fond of auctions.
“The Daoist Order’s strategy has always been to unite all forces that can be united. To put it bluntly, that means winning over one group while suppressing another.
“Under those circumstances, it was natural to cultivate friendly relations with the humanoid insects, who appeared quite similar to the Daoist Order, while suppressing the Buddhist and Wuist factions of Nanyang.
“Then the problem emerged. These humanoid insects were not truly human in the conventional sense. They cherished absolute freedom and despised the Daoist Order’s rules and restrictions. They only submitted outwardly because the Daoist Order’s military forces were pressing heavily upon them.
“About three months after the humanoid insects had ostensibly submitted to the Daoist Order, the Buddhist Sect dispatched a Mahasattva. Accompanied by a High Priest of the local Nanyang Wuist Sect, the Buddhist Mahasattva met secretly with several Insect Immortal Sect Masters to discuss plans for expelling the Daoist Order.
“They secretly established the Nanyang Federation of Daoist Expulsion to save the world and expel the Daoist Order. Some exiled Confucian loyalists and even members of the Holy Court’s Goddess Society joined them. This organization would later become the predecessor of the Heavenly Court.
“They were no amateur operation. They established a formal organizational structure, personnel assignments, strategic objectives, operational slogans, deployment plans, code phrases, and much more.
“Then, acting under secret orders from the Buddhist Mahasattva, they formally launched an uprising. A Buddhist Mahasattva is roughly equivalent to a Deputy Grand Master of the Daoist Order, a core figure within the highest levels of Buddhist leadership.
“In that uprising, the humanoid insects served as the main force. Since they had already publicly submitted to the Daoist Order, they possessed many insiders and collaborators.
“The male humanoid insects handled direct assaults on the front lines, while the female humanoid insects engaged in sabotage behind the scenes. You both know the Daoist Order’s old tradition. It constantly preaches equality, yet female Daoists have historically found it difficult to access the highest levels of power.
“As compensation, the Daoist Order makes a point of treating female Daoists favorably in public and maintaining the appearance of enlightened equality. As a result, the middle and lower levels of the organization generally favor and protect female Daoists.
“Male Daoists dominate both the highest and lowest levels, while female Daoists occupy much of the middle-level management. Because of this, the Daoist Order was not particularly wary of these female humanoid insects. For example, some of the female humanoid insects were assigned to the Huasheng Hall branches.
“They took advantage of that opportunity to harm large numbers of wounded Daoist personnel through poisoning, sabotage, and other underhanded methods, causing extremely serious consequences. In the end, all of them were executed by the Daoist reinforcements that arrived on the scene.
“Of course, some Daoist disciples were also corrupted and bought off, serving as internal collaborators. However, they were ultimately a minority.
“After reviewing the incident, the Daoist Order concluded that the Buddhist Sect and the humanoid insects were the principal culprits. On one hand, they intensified their suppression of the Buddhist Sect in Nanyang. On the other hand, they launched an in-depth investigation into the humanoid insects.
“As a result, the humanoid insects’ secrets were completely exposed. The Golden Tower Council issued a formal resolution and launched the Hundred-Day Insect Extermination Campaign, ordering the capture and execution of every humanoid insect without exception. Later, the extermination campaign expanded beyond the Funan Kingdom and spread throughout all of Nanyang.
“The humanoid insects’ resistance was naturally fierce. However, they fought independently rather than as a unified force, so they were ultimately destroyed by the Daoist Order.
“It was also during this process that the Daoist Order gradually uncovered information regarding the Spirit Realm. Even so, they never discovered the exact location of the Spirit Realm.
“Moreover, the Daoist Order never forgot its original mission of developing the economy and expanding prosperity. Exterminating humanoid insects was never the primary objective. One could even say that the humanoid insects were ultimately eradicated because they obstructed the Daoist Order’s path of development. Thus, the Daoist Order never pursued a deeper investigation into the matter.
“After these events, the Nanyang Federation of Daoist Expulsion suffered devastating losses. Its remnants reorganized themselves into the Nanyang Federation of Mutual Aid, becoming a secret society.
“Later, the Golden Patriarch left the Daoist Order and traveled to Nanyang, where he seized control of the Nanyang Federation of Mutual Aid. After purging and restructuring it, the Golden Patriarch used it as the foundation for what would become today’s Heavenly Court.
“Another portion of its assets and personnel was later absorbed by Wang Jiaohe and reorganized into the Nanyang Trading Company.
“At roughly the same time, traces of humanoid insects were also discovered in the Southern Continent. The Western Daoist Order suspected that remnants of the Nanyang humanoid insects had fled through the Jawa Kingdom to Sahul, and from there escaped to the Southern Continent.”
“On the surface, it appeared that the Western Daoist Order had learned from the Daoist Order’s experience and was responding to its call by launching its own extermination campaign, driving the humanoid insects to near extinction.
“In reality, the Western Daoist Order initially paid little attention to those humanoid insects who had escaped from Nanyang to the Southern Continent. Only after some of them repeated the same tactics, using their similarities to Daoist cultivators and constantly addressing others as fellow cultivators to infiltrate the Western Daoist Order did the Order become alarmed.
“The Western Daoist Order’s extermination campaign drove the humanoid insects completely underground. However, the Western Daoist Order paid a price for it. Much of that cost came from friendly-fire incidents during the difficult process of distinguishing allies from enemies. In some cases, some people simply used the insect extermination campaign as a pretext for eliminating political rivals.”
The story Madam Wu told demonstrated one thing clearly. Not only were humanoid insects skilled at disguising themselves as ordinary people, they were also highly adept at infiltrating the Daoist Order itself.
They were like the cockroaches of Lingnan, perhaps not dangerous enough to kill someone, but certainly capable of making one’s skin crawl.
Tantai Ying voiced the obvious concern directly. “Are there humanoid insects inside the Western Daoist Order and the Tawantin Court?”
Madam Wu sighed. “When you spot a single cockroach, the house is usually already full of them. Given what we’ve seen, there are probably humanoid-insect infiltrators. I even suspect that this resurgence of the humanoid insects will take a different form.
“Rather than organizing into large groups, they’ll likely disperse into smaller groups and focus on infiltration instead of direct confrontation. They know perfectly well that they are no match for the two Daoist Orders in open conflict.”
Tantai Ying frowned. “According to that humanoid insect’s testimony, there is someone above their Supreme Elder. That means someone is secretly controlling the humanoid insects. Last time it was a Buddhist Mahasattva, so who could it be this time? A Patriarch of the Holy Court?”
Qi Xuansu finally spoke. “Whoever it is, I propose that we report this matter to the Gold Council for discussion. The Western Daoist Order needs to take this threat far more seriously.”