Chapter 251-The Manga Pariah's Guide to Self-Salvation
From a distance, Ye Zheng sat in the car and caught sight of Bai Muqing far ahead. She had made no effort to disguise her appearance—white to the point of translucence, utterly striking.
Probably because of Bai Yi, every pair of eyes on the entire street was trained on her every move. If she weren't a powerful ability user, some hotheaded person might have rushed forward and done something rash.
Suddenly, Ye Zheng glimpsed someone on the balcony of a building along the street, holding a bucket with a resentful expression, its contents unknown.
Ye Zheng stepped out of the car and removed her hat. That face—known to every person in the nation—appeared under the sunlight.
The person on the balcony panicked and hastily carried the bucket back inside. People on the street turned around one after another, gasping in astonishment.
Cries of Ye Zheng's name rose and fell. Some even wept involuntarily. The accompanying Knights struggled to maintain order amid the crush, and no one questioned why the Pope had gotten out of the car here.
A howling wind surged toward Ye Zheng. For a brief moment, Bai Muqing's expressionless face went blank. After a slight pause, she continued walking forward.
Bai Muqing slipped silently through the impenetrable crowd. She heard Ye Zheng's voice—gentle yet powerful—speaking words of greeting. The excited crowd fell quiet, like the most well-behaved students in a classroom.
For Bai Muqing, "eye contact" was meaningless. Her eyes could not see; they were like glass beads assembled to complete a human form.
When [Divine Domain] sensed Ye Zheng turning to look in her direction, Bai Muqing gazed back.
Through layer upon layer of silhouettes, Ye Zheng could not see her, and Bai Muqing herself did not know the point of doing this.
Perhaps Ye Zheng had only glanced this way by chance, and it was Bai Muqing who needed a moment of unspoken connection to sustain her on the road ahead.
Traveling alongside Ye Zheng was a pleasant thing, but walking together forever was impossible, Bai Muqing thought. Even so, she still hoped their paths would cross again at the next turn.
At the center of the crowd, the gathered heat steamed the atmosphere into something even more fervent.
Ye Zheng smiled as she responded to the enthusiasm, answering their hopes and worries with patience and precision. Sometimes this kind of thing drained more energy than fighting monsters from a Demonic Domain. Even Ye Zheng couldn't always muster the radiant composure everyone expected of her—though she had always managed admirably.
Between conversations, Ye Zheng casually glanced toward the edge of the crowd and caught a faint flash of pure, unblemished white—there and gone in an instant, like snow light reflected under a winter sun.
She discreetly signaled the Knight beside her and, under the Knights' escort, returned to the car and set off for her destination.
Ye Zheng leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes. Her raven-black lashes trembled faintly.
She had anticipated it, but seeing that scene a moment ago, she could not simply sit in the car and watch from the sidelines.
She had to make an example of the Bai family. As Bai Yi's daughter, Bai Muqing could not avoid being implicated. At this critical juncture when everyone was on edge, Ye Zheng needed to maintain an air of absolute resolve—she could not be seen openly protecting anyone connected to the Bai family.
"Let's go."
Ye Zheng opened her eyes and said in a calm voice.
Bai Muqing was no fragile snowman. Neither of them would be stopped by a temporary setback.
The car arrived at the Holy Journey Knights Order's base. Ye Zheng led her people inside, where Wen De was already waiting at the entrance.
Because of her actions, Empire Central Station no longer had express trains. It had taken her two days of detours to reach the lower district, and a certain weariness was unavoidable.
But Ye Zheng had to come in person to give certain instructions.
"We've tracked down Percy's whereabouts. He'll likely 'visit' the place where Bai Yi is held sometime in the next few days."
Ye Zheng nodded. This was within her expectations.
She had deliberately ordered the prison's defenses to be left loose—it wouldn't do if the difficulty was too high and Percy got cold feet.
Bai Yi's ability was formidable; ordinary psychic-type abilities had no effect on him. He also clung to a certain stubborn conviction, and nothing useful could be pried from his mouth.
But if he were facing Percy, perhaps under the influence of "protagonist's halo," he might let slip something useful.
Ye Zheng hoped Percy would not disappoint her.
Wen De continued her report. "A lot of unidentified individuals have been heading to the West District lately. It seems that day's projection made Sierra truly famous."
Ye Zheng raised an eyebrow slightly. After a moment's thought, it wasn't surprising at all—people often admired the strong, and the domineering power Sierra had displayed that day would attract more than a few fanatics.
The Empire had a sizable gray zone, especially in the lower district. Before she had destroyed Empire Central Station, underground fighting arenas hidden in the shadows had been thriving—ability users against ability users, ability users against monsters… The nobles of the upper district didn't dare enter Demonic Domains themselves, but they certainly had the money to experience a different kind of thrill.
Nowadays, however, those people were too frantic and frightened to enjoy anything. Revenue at those gray-market venues had plummeted.
At times like this, some other faction had to take in the surplus of dangerous individuals. It remained to be seen whether Sierra could keep them in line.
As the two talked, they wandered into a quiet, spacious hall before they knew it. A magnificent set of white remains lay at its center, hollow eye sockets silently watching the visitors.
Conversation stopped at once. Ye Zheng gazed at the remains and heard a soft sigh from deep within her heart.
Using that piece of bone from Margaret's original body, Wen De had located the rest of the Dragon Bone. But they were buried deep underground, sealed by special devices, and no suitable method had been found to extract them.
Ye Zheng had deliberately allowed Sierra and her dragon-bodied followers to storm into the main city of the South District, hoping they could give it a try. Unfortunately, Sierra had also left empty-handed, leaving only an utterly upturned city center—word was the destroyed public roads still hadn't been repaired.
Ye Zheng stared for a long time—so long that even Wen De could not tell what she was thinking.
"Sierra will very likely attack this place to take it. Have the guard strengthened."
The two turned to leave. Ye Zheng spoke slowly: "She won't accept losing the Dragon Bone to me—by the way, how is the Holy Journey Knights Order's recruitment drive going?"
Before Wen De could answer, they drew near the training grounds. Ye Zheng spotted a familiar figure hurrying past, apparently too rushed to notice her presence.
"Mother seems to be in high spirits."
Ye Zheng's eyes curved into a smile.
Wen De smiled too. "Ms. Shu has been handling the recruitment recently. She's from the lower district and is your mother in the secular sense. She treats people with grace and tact, and her ability level is quite good as well. Everyone adores her."
"In that case, I won't disturb her for now."
The Holy Journey Knights Order was her innermost force. This all-female knight order had once been dismissed as insignificant; now it was the number-one aspiration of every female student in the Empire—the sword and shield most valued by Pope Ye Zheng.
Ye Zheng drifted into a moment of reverie. If such an order had existed when Shu Wan was young, perhaps she would have walked an entirely different path.
But it was not too late now. It was never too late.
Ye Zheng went over several more matters with Wen De, then personally visited the once-glorious General Bai—now a prisoner—Bai Yi, in his cell.
Wen De waited outside. What the two discussed remained unknown. Ye Zheng emerged shortly and asked for arrangements to return to the upper district.
Over the following month, the upper district was rocked by one shock after another. Everyone lived in fear.
Using the failed campaign against Sierra as leverage, Pope Ye Zheng swiftly purged certain parasites from the Sei Curia and promoted outstanding members of the Holy Journey Knights Order along with senior Nuns from the convent to fill the vacancies.
Never before had the Sei Curia had so many women. Under normal circumstances, the outcry would have drowned the Papal Palace.
But given how the people had practically elevated Ye Zheng to sainthood, and given the mysterious death of the previous Pope and the high-ranking clergymen who had perished in the West District, no one in the Sei Curia dared risk opposing her—opposing her felt as terrifying as opposing a god.
Even those Ye Zheng had ousted didn't dare utter a word of protest, departing in silence and without fuss.
The upheaval Ye Zheng stirred did not stop at the Sei Curia. The Emperor's court also suffered unprecedented turmoil.
At first, the other great aristocratic families watched Bai Yi's downfall from the sidelines. Their sighs were laced with nothing but relief—relief that they weren't the unlucky one—and some even schemed to profit from the situation.
But as Bai Yi's Excommunication took effect, troubles large and small erupted across Bai family lands. Since there was no longer any obligation of loyalty to the excommunicated, the peasants stopped paying taxes to the Bai family, refused to hand over their crops, and the commoners who had been conscripted into forced labor departed alongside the disillusioned knights. Internal fractures tore the Bai family apart.
The unrest spread. Commoners on neighboring estates watched the rebellion unfolding on Bai lands and gradually began to harbor ideas of their own, no longer obediently paying tribute.
The knights and guards stationed in the Middle District and lower district territories mostly came from humble backgrounds. Once they learned the truth about Dragon Bone, they could no longer bring themselves to toil for the upper district's aristocrats, turning a blind eye and growing lax in their duties.
Women, too, stopped waiting for the lord's court to grant them divorce—they simply packed their bags and left.
More than a few sharp minds had already realized that if this continued, the consequences would be beyond imagination. Their power was being shaken as never before.
The cleverer ones had already figured it out: Ye Zheng's playing of the Excommunication card was aimed squarely at the entire upper district!
The Bai family was merely a breach point. With the collapse of the Bai family, certain ancient and entrenched institutions were tottering on the brink.
The documents piling up on the Emperor's desk grew ever higher. The Emperor could no longer be bothered to look at them. Day after day he stared at the dense, cramped text, listening to the ceaseless prattle in his ears, his golden eyes darkening.
Though the last thing he wanted was more bad news, ever since Ye Zheng had burst onto the scene a year ago, things never went his way.
"The Pope has just made a public announcement—"
"She intends to mobilize the Sei Curia's resources to excavate all the Dragon Bone buried beneath the lower district and Middle District, so that the Empire's citizens need no longer live in fear atop them…"
The Prime Minister kept his head low, a note of helpless resignation threading through his wary tone.
"Your Majesty, if you were to personally oversee the removal of the Dragon Bone—cast them to the farthest reaches of the Empire and correct your ancestors' mistakes—perhaps things could still…"
"Get out."
The Emperor sat on his throne, chin propped on one hand, and replied evenly.
Yet the hand gripping the throne pulsed with bulging veins.
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