"No, absolutely not!" Shang Xingyan waved his hands, "How could a subordinate plot against a superior? Absolutely not, absolutely not!"

I reckoned that Ye Yang was just trying to trick Shang Xingyan.

That old fox, Shang Xingyan, was very clear about matters of hierarchy.

He had always addressed me as "Young Master," which was partly due to my mother, but mainly because of his ingrained sense of hierarchy.

He wouldn't set a trap for my father.

I looked at Shang Xingyan and said, "The ones who acted were from the civil officials' faction, right?"

Shang Xingyan nodded, "According to the information our Embroidered Uniform Guard has gathered, that seems to be the case."

"Young Master, you should understand that civil officials like to form factions. Sometimes, they don't need interests; just conflicting ideas are enough to create factions."

"Regarding the Heavenly Tribulation, the civil officials in the Underworld are also divided into many factions. Besides those bewitched by the Samsara Sacred Lord, who vainly try to restore the era of the Human Sovereign, the remaining ones also have different attitudes."

"Some people think that the Heavenly Tribulation is the will of Heaven. Since Heaven intends to cleanse the art practitioners, we should comply with the will of Heaven. Even if it means the end of the world, we should act in accordance with Heaven."

"Of course, there are also those who advocate actively facing the tribulation. But their idea of facing the tribulation is different from the thinking of the art practitioners. They believe that the emperor should be controlled by the civil officials' faction."

"At the very least, an emperor shouldn't emerge who, after resisting the Heavenly Tribulation, becomes ambitious and causes chaos in the human world."

"If necessary, the emperor can be eliminated after the tribulation is overcome."

Only then did I ask, "Are you saying that the civil officials' faction has already found the emperor?"

Legend had it that the emperor was lost in reincarnation.

Although the reincarnation of ghosts is under the charge of King Zhuanlun, the specific tasks are handled by the civil officials and ghost messengers under the Zhuanlun Palace.

From this point of view, the civil officials' faction is more likely to grasp the whereabouts of the emperor in reincarnation.

Shang Xingyan said, "We can't be sure yet."

"We only know that more than twenty years ago, the civil officials' faction brought back Jun Jixue. Therefore, we have always suspected that Jun Jixue is the reincarnation of the emperor."

"Him?" I frowned involuntarily.

Jun Jixue did resemble the emperor in some ways. He himself cultivated the Dao of the Emperor, and he once told me that the name "Jun Jixue" came from: "You are buried beneath the spring, your bones turning to mud; I dwell in the world, my head covered with snow." This also resembled the experiences of the emperor back then.

Could Jun Jixue be the reincarnation of the emperor?

Shang Xingyan said, "This is just our guess, and there is no direct evidence. Even the civil officials' faction doesn't have direct evidence to prove that Jun Jixue is the emperor."

"Whether the emperor has emerged from reincarnation and returned to the human world, and who the real emperor is, can only be determined by opening the Emperor's Soul Return Land."

"Now, everyone's eyes are focused there!"

I pondered, "If the Emperor's Soul Return Land is the key, then Zhu Zining shouldn't be gathering heavy troops here."

Shang Xingyan said, "Zhu Zining wants to take a two-pronged approach. Jiang Chen guards the Soul Return Land, which is enough to resist the art practitioner forces. Here, she is responsible for dealing with the Official Master."

I glanced at the Embroidered Uniform Guards who were still catching ghosts all over the mountains and plains, and said, "Let's not talk about this for now. What's the deal with my father being given Meng Po soup?"

Shang Xingyan said, "I really didn't know about Pian Xian going after the Official Master back then. If I had heard any rumors beforehand, I wouldn't have allowed her to act recklessly."

"By the time I discovered that Pian Xian was missing and wanted to chase after her, the records of the Official Master and Pian Xian reincarnating into the human world had already been erased."

"The Official Master is very careful every time he reincarnates. He doesn't contact us, and we can't contact him. Even if the subordinates of the Embroidered Uniform Guard brushed shoulders with the Official Master, they wouldn't recognize him."

"That's why we lost contact with the Official Master."

"When the Official Master's memory recovered, you were already born. The Official Master requested Lord Yama to grant a special permission to change your fate, and we learned that he had married and had children in the human world."

"After the Official Master returned, he had a secret talk with several civil officials. No one knows what they talked about, but the Official Master also stated that he would no longer pursue the matters of the past."

"Without those civil officials causing trouble, he wouldn't have become a couple with Pian Xian, and he wouldn't have experienced the joy and happiness of being a father."

"Moreover, those civil officials didn't have any murderous intentions towards him; they just wanted to use the bonds of family to prevent the Official Master from returning."

"The Official Master himself said: Those guys, in a sense, helped him succeed, so he didn't plan to pursue the matter further and suppressed it."

I nodded. This was very much in line with my father's character.

However, I also felt that the civil officials' faction should pay some price for my father to let go.

Otherwise, he wouldn't have taken the initiative to suppress those grievances from the past.

Since my father was no longer pursuing these matters, there was no need for me to dwell on them.

I changed the subject and said, "Shang... should I call you Uncle now?"

Shang Xingyan said solemnly, "Young Master should still call me Old Shang! The hierarchy cannot be abandoned."

Old Shang was still this kind of person. I also knew that now was not the time to get entangled in these matters, so I directly asked, "This time, how much of the Reincarnation Department's power has the Embroidered Uniform Guard wiped out?"