Chapter 8 – Oh God-Emperor, I got the Families to feud in full force

“The families always fight for the largest bone, even if you have a whole chicken in your other hand.” - ‘Emperor of the Four Elements Qiang Qianfan’ on the reason he took down the system

Chao Li and the heads, or whoever didn’t enter the full stasis, of the thirty families assembled in the capital city of He Xao at a Li-owned hotel.

Members of press came in protection gear and the assembly was about to start, it was 9:59. The cultivators were all in deep thought, most in meditative states, serene and calm.

Ding, it turned 10:00.

The atmosphere went from calm to a raging storm in a matter of seconds.

Emperor of the Four Elements Chao Li, who was now the acting emperor, stood up:

“Ladies and gentlemen of the thirty great families, it is 10am on Sunday, 19th of September. We have come to discuss the future of our great nation after his majesty, God-Emperor Qiang Qianfan has decided to go into stasis to stave off the parasite.

His order for me, was to prepare us for the Demon Moon. If needed he will leave stasis during the Demon Moon to deal with some of the most powerful opponents. However, our situation is dire, many of our most skilled cultivators, who have lived and fought in multiple Demon Moon battles, are in a similar state.

With the current situation, I would be very happy if we could all work together to prepare for the war to come, and with that, let this council begin.” Chao Li sat down, with a slight smile on his face. His hope was to unite the families and get the support and trust needed to stave of the Demon Moon.

The representative of the Young family, Emperor of Wisdom Thomas Young, stood up, he waited three seconds as is customary for branch families to wait, however no one discourtesied him by standing up. ‘Interesting’ Chao Li didn’t expect the Young family to be the first.

“This is Thomas Young, on the record. It has come to my attention, that all evidence suggests that the parasite and all its victims have been caused by the Li family.” ‘Well this was not expected.’ Chao Li understood, how powerful of an accusation that was.

The Li family representative Jade Emperor Verli Li stood up, ‘That’s not smart.’ Chao was silently judging his nephew. The Lye representative also stood up, then the Xu representative, both Samper Lye and Viler Xu were Emperors of the four elements, just like Chao.

Even as they stood up, it was up to Thomas to finish his statement.

“Families, which were on friendly terms with the Li family, including mine had been mostly spared, but if you look, the Li family only has 4 Emperor-level sick, while our family, which has been very friedly with them has had 12. The Lye family, their greatest rival, has had 47 of their Emperor-level cultivators get sick.

This is however all circumstantial, luck could have caused this. However...” He made a pause for effect “However, the evidence becomes damning when you look at the businesses that have been hit.”

“Our magical ore business supplies the Li family jewelry business, so none, I repeat none of the miners and harvesters have contracted the disease.

Our venture into Alchemical medicine which is in direct competition with the Li family Alchemical medicine business, has been hit. Hard. Out of our 31 stores in the country, 22 have had massive outbreaks of the virus.

One of the children in my family has supplied me the idea for this conspiracy and while I don’t have all the data yet, here is THREE HUNDRED businesses that were affected, where the Li version of the business has almost always gone un-scathed.

The last bit of evidence, is the fact that before the God-Emperor, may he bless us from the spirit realm, decided to go into stasis, me and 9 other family heads, ones who have good relations with the Li family were told that it would be Chao Li becoming the representative.

I obviously invested knowing this would increase the power of the Li family, not knowing this whole affair was prepared by the Li family, my honor compels me to speak, for me and my family have unfairly reaped benefits of such dishonorable behavior.

Before ending my speech, I see many have stood up to speak as well, I want to offer the Li family an olive branch, if they but cure the plague they wrought on this world I am willing to look upon them leniently.” Thomas sat down. The atmosphere was raging, and many more had stood up.

‘Well, that will probably derail the whole meeting.’ Chao stood up and said

“The next person to stand up was Verlic Li, he will have the next word, but as there are many elders standing, make your statement short.” Chao sat down.

“This seems misguided.” Verlic wasn’t serene anymore, he wasn’t angry, but the wrath of a rampaging stampede raged behind his words “Even if it looks bad, this is all circumstantial evidence. It wouldn’t stand up in a court of law. I never ordered or heard of anything of the sorts. Everyone around the table knows that I don’t operate like this, the family doesn’t operate like this. If I had done it, it would be much subtler. We are being set up.”

Verlic sat down, ‘My nephew did mess that up quite spectacularly, although the Li family being set up might persuade a bunch of his allies.’ Chao stood up again.

“Samper Lye if you will.” Chao was still shocked but it was not audible on his words, his main goal was to answer questions, to give ideas that he found reasonable and steer the debate in case it got too out of hand, however, in this case he couldn’t do that, because that would be an admission of guilt on behalf of the Li family.

“The Lye family extends its gratefulness to the Young family for opening this topic. Under current circumstance we believe there to be tampering from a party, and while the Li family does seem the likeliest suspect, we cannot prove anything. It would not only help the family, but personally please me, if we were able to find the culprit and sentence him...” He looked towards Chao and Verlic with lightning crackling behind his eyes. “...or her, to the full extent of the law.” Samper sat down.

Chao stood up again “Xu family next.”

Viler Xu spoke with a soft voice “If this discussion had happened 2 days ago, I would be inclined to defend the honor of the main family, however, a duel from three days ago, between Tamara Li and Janette Xu resulted in Janette winning. Janette being the youngster she is” he snickered “she’s only 21 years old, was rowdy and a bit rude to the Li family representative. Yesterday, we found that both Janette, her parents, and her one sister all had the parasite, even though they were tested the day of the fight at the stands. My feeling is, that arrogance has taken over on the side of the Li family ‘If they haven’t caught me yet, I can push it further.’ Ending the cultivation career of our most prominent young talent is definitely a despicable act.” Viler sat down.

‘If that was all true, that does put my family in a bad light’ Chao thought, he stood up again.

“Next...” He kept on calling family after family, discussion after discussion, and after 20 hours, he finally stood up and said “20 hours had past. Last speaker.”

After which the last speaker had another short dig at the Li family. Chao started his finishing remarks.

“A definitive answer on the subject of Li interference with the parasite has not been found. I therefore suggest holding another summit, not unlike this one, to find a decision on the next step. Under such circumstance, of the family the current stand-in for the God-Emperor has lost trust, I believe it would be in the interest of our nation if I stood down from power. No solution for the problem of the Demon Moon has been identified, I suggest holding another separate summit for this question once again.”

“Those in favor of me stepping down, stand up.” First the Lye representative stood up, next the Bao and Young representatives. After a while, 18 representatives were standing. ‘A sad way to go, but understandable.’

“Next, a vote for the new replacement for myself.” The voting ballots would have a seal that each of the family members would be able to identify as their own.

“In classical fashion, the names with 2 or more votes will be put into the second round. Next 3, 4, 5 and so on votes, until one person has 16 or more votes, including the one I cast.”

The decision was thrown around for a while until it was just the three, Thomas Young, Samper Lye, and the heir of the Zhou family Jade Emperor Jala Zhou, one of the two women who were heads of families. Thomas was the only one from a branch family, the way the cookie crumbled, it was likely that the order of main and branch families changed with these votes.

“Very well, time for one of the last two votes.” Chao had about enough of what was happening. He didn’t know if the Li family, his own brothers and sisters, had actually released the parasite, but it didn’t look good.

If the Lye family got enough evidence, a full-scale civil war could erupt between the families, and he didn’t want to be a part of it. ‘I need to make my own investigation. Also, we need a cure, as soon as possible, maybe I should work on it.’

Thomas Young was eliminated for the heads of two of the factions to duke it out. The Lye faction was sure the Li family released the parasite, while the Zhou family didn’t believe that to be the case, it was however obvious the Zhou family would lose, they had just 12 votes, where the Lye family got 11 and the Young trailed behind at 8.

“The last voting, between the Zhou and Lye family.”

It ended up being 13 to 18, the Lye family “As such, the new stand-in for the God-Emperor Qiang Qianfan is Emperor of the Four Elements Samper Lye.” A short applause started.

Official talks between Emperor-level cultivators always took long, and even though this was a hurried event, the sun-rays betrayed that not only had Monday begun, it was close to noon. A whole day and a half spent on power-hungry bickering. Chao was a bit disappointed, not because he wanted to be the stand-in as much as that it solved almost nothing.

Chao was now a free agent though, he hadn’t been a Li family hound for over five hundred years and he wasn’t going to start now. He had a good enough relationship with them, but if they had made a plan such as this, he would have to disavow those ties.

Well its not like you can implant a parasite like this personally, someone somewhere was going to know the answer, and as someone who took precautions to not get affected, by appearing through his familiar, he could easily infiltrate any operation. The only problem of such an approach was, that would implicate not only the Li family further but him as an accomplice.

Maybe making sure a cure was ready, was the most apt way of proceeding. ‘I’ll learn everything there is about different cure proposals and such. Maybe I could even help, who knows.’

He appeared back in his office and spoke to his secretary “Bring me all the recent reports about the parasite research.”

With that, the secretary departed.

********

Monday morning, Vera was visiting Lang in the same getup as before, looking for the last sample, she brought the container from the fridge she hid the samples from Sunday in.

The visit went without a hitch, but as before the guard had escorted her there and back. Before she left she told the guard “You know, I don’t think I’m going to be coming tomorrow, so stay safe.”

The guard just smiled and nodded knowingly.

Vera was exhausted, using the protective gear and waking up so early was exhausting. She was still far from attaining Perpetual Consciousness, especially with her under-average Body Realm mastery. ‘It’s not under average for the regular person, just among other cultivation students in my university.’

Vera was rushing to the university before The Box was brought through the seals. She printed ‘For Vera Shim’ on the container.

She dismounted from her sword on the courtyard, still in her protective gear and continued towards the lab. Fong, the medical teacher, was bringing the box out in his own protective gear. “Shit” Vera cursed under her breath.

“You have something to add to the Box?” He asked.

Vera looked down and did a small nod, bringing the container closer to the Box and placed it on top. Hoping it would be inconspicuous, she afforded a small bow to Bian and left to the female toilets again.

Fong was looking at the container, that he found weird, he got a sense of deja vu from the person but couldn't put his finger on it. The container had ‘For Vera Shim’ written on it, at that moment it clicked. Bian opened the container to find human blood and other liquids.

‘So Vera has been smuggling illegal material into the school? That just won’t do.’

Meanwhile Vera had changed her clothes to a more regular school regulation clothing. She went up the steps to the principal Mark Hugh’s office and knocked on the door.

“Enter” Mark had a whistly voice, but he was a proper immortal, at the Cultivation Emperor level. During his formative years, the ‘new’ system had been just tested, but it turned out to be extremely useful for practitioners who tended to get stuck on certain techniques, such as Mark himself.

Vera entered to see Mark sitting down on a carpet, he was about 120 years old but he didn’t look a day over 30 as most Emperors tended to. The word Emperor itself signified that immortality at least as a result of time had been overcome.

Vera stammered out “Sir, I’ve brought a report that I’d like you to read. Hopefully you won’t regret backing my research at the start of the year.” Vera was blushing, very much aware that should he please, Vera’s existence could be erased in a matter of seconds.

The principal started scanning over the papers, in less than 40 seconds he was done.

“Yes, very impressive, is there some way to help in speeding these 2 months for people who can survive having their blood replaced by Koshi extract?” Mark Hugh asked in an inquisitive tone.

“Access to a Crucible? An apprentice who would look over the experiments and maybe write out parts of the reports?” The Alchemical Crucible was an apparatus that combined Runecraft, Soulcraft and Alchemy which could speed up time inside of itself.

There were a couple problems in most normal situations, where damage would happen to food that was being aged, or metal which had starts of cracks from the aging process. However, bacterial growths had an even wider development path within the Crucible.

The problem with that was, that they could change to the point where they attack human organs and such.

“Can’t most of the Emperors use stasis and just wait patiently?” Vera asked.

“Well if my information from yesterday’s Council are anything to go by, it would be imperative if his majesty Qiang Qianfan could come back.” he took a deep breath “As soon as possible. Dismissed.”

With that Vera made a deep bow and left the principal’s office.