I meet all the requirements for becoming a god in this world!

Chapter 232 The Edict of Grace was promulgated throughout the land.

Chapter 230 The Edict of Grace was promulgated throughout the land.

Cheng Laiyun walked around the desk and went to her side.

Gao Heyun neither raised her head nor dodged, but the knuckles of the fingers resting on the hilt of the knife turned white, and her thumb rubbed the patterns on the guard back and forth.

She was nervous.

Cheng Laiyun tentatively reached out, grasped her hand, and removed it from the hilt of the knife.

Her hands were cold, her knuckles stiff, and they curled slightly in his palm, like a startled bird unsure whether to retreat.

After taking his hand, Cheng Laiyun spoke softly:

"Don't shoulder everything alone anymore."

Gao Heyun's shoulders stiffened for a moment.

She could feel his body temperature coming from her palm; it was so hot that it made her fingertips go numb.

She instinctively tried to pull her hand back, but it wouldn't obey; it only trembled slightly in his palm and didn't move.

She kept her head down, so he couldn't see her expression, only that her eyelashes were trembling slightly, as if she wanted to say something but was stopped by something. After a moment, she withdrew her hand.

Her movements were slow, but decisive. She turned her head away, her voice returning to its usual coldness, but a trace of hoarseness lingered in it.

"The matter of the spirit fox is not over yet, don't get distracted."

"I wasn't distracted."

Cheng Laiyun walked around the desk, sat down opposite her again, picked up the intelligence report, flipped through it, then looked up at her with a slight smile.

His tone was somewhat teasing, but mostly serious: "You're the one who made me lose my heart."

Gao Heyun did not respond.

She pushed the documents on the table forward, her fingers resting on the knife handle again, but the finger that had been trembling slightly was now steady.

Gao Heyun took a deep breath, looked directly at Cheng Laiyun, and said solemnly:

"The spirit fox is in Langzhou, but this time it wasn't the spirit fox that attacked me, but another demon..."

"It's a dream monster."

"Dream Demon?" Cheng Laiyun paused for a moment: "Are you sure?" In the Great Yuan Dynasty, thanks to the blessing of the nation's fortune, there was also a border defense array left by the Confucian and Taoist sages.

Ordinary demons are not allowed to enter the distant court.

The reason why the spirit fox could stay in the Great Far Dynasty for so long was because it was not a pure demon.

Because it cannot be restored to human form.

Therefore, it is more like a "beast".

Has the Dream Demon entered the Great Far Dynasty?

Or Langzhou?

"I think the same thing as you." Gao Heyun said calmly, noticing Cheng Laiyun's thoughtful gaze.

"Ordinary demons cannot even enter the distant territory."

"But there are traces of demons in Langzhou."

"I feel that this matter is inextricably linked to that person in Langzhou..."

"Moreover... the fox fled from the capital outwards." "I can confirm that it didn't have time to contact any outside help along the way."

"But just when I was about to find its trail, I was attacked by a dream demon."

……

Gao Heyun finished speaking.

The entire Feihe Hall fell silent.

Cheng Laiyun stroked his chin, his eyes slightly narrowed, pondering the whole situation. After a long while, he sighed softly:

"We still know too little about spirit foxes."

"Hmm." Gao Heyun's gaze was solemn: "We must gather more information about the spirit fox."

"But...that person is probably the only one in the entire world who knows the most information about the Spirit Fox." Cheng Laiyun looked out the window.

The imperial palace of the capital city stands there.

Emperor Jianye.

...However, during the time when Cheng Laiyun was trying to find information about the spirit fox.

The decree of grace was issued quietly.

In order to ensure the smooth implementation of the Emperor's decree of grace, Emperor Jianye directly dispatched Eunuch Lin, a powerful cultivator of the Yu level, from the capital.

……

In the autumn of the 29th year of the Jianye reign, the Edict of Grace was promulgated throughout the land.

The imperial edict was issued from the capital and distributed to the fiefdoms of the seven princes via postal routes. The wording of the edict was extremely meticulous, with not a single word of "reduction" used from beginning to end.

It's all the characters for "gratitude".

His Majesty, out of compassion for the imperial family and unwilling to see the princes and their sons receive nothing, has issued a special decree that after the princes' deaths, their fiefdoms shall be equally divided among all their descendants.

Upon receiving the imperial decree, the Prince of Qingzhou claimed illness and refused to attend court. The Prince of Yongzhou submitted three memorials denouncing this action as a violation of ancestral rules, while the Prince of Liangzhou remained silent.

None of the seven princes explicitly accepted the imperial decree.

However, imperial edicts were not only for the princes to see.

The illegitimate sons of the various fiefdoms learned of this news almost simultaneously. Moreover, the powerful eunuch Lin, a master of supernatural abilities, was present.

Not a single vassal king dared to utter a single complaint.

……

On the evening the imperial edict arrived in Liangzhou, Liang Yi spread the hastily copied edict out on the table, pressed one corner down with an inkstone, and the other corner down with a teacup, making sure it was flat and neat, as if afraid that any character might be blown away by the wind.

He lit an oil lamp and read those lines of text over and over again in the dim light.

He didn't recognize all the words, but the steward had read them aloud at least ten times on the way, so he had already memorized them.

The sentence he knew best was: "After the princes die, their fiefs shall be divided equally among all their sons."

He was not the legitimate son, not the eldest son, not any son on whom high hopes were placed.

He was just the child of a concubine without any official status in the prince's mansion. His birth mother died when he was born, and didn't even have time to name him.

The prince randomly picked up the character "翊" from a pile of old documents and filled it into the family genealogy, thus giving him an identity.

He grew up in the most remote corner of the prince's mansion until he was sixteen, and then was assigned to live alone in this old courtyard in the east of the city.

His elder brother lived in the main courtyard of the Prince's mansion, while he lived here. His brother received 30% of the total amount from his fiefdom's accounts each year for expenses, while he received rent from a few dozen acres of poor land outside the city.

When his elder brother went out of the city, he was escorted by a ceremonial procession, while he rode an old horse that was almost completely bald.

No one treated him unfairly—according to ancestral rules, this was the treatment a son born out of wedlock should receive.

He studied the scroll of imperial edict for a long time, then straightened up, turned around, and strode toward the door.

The jujube trees bore more fruit this year than in previous years, with the fruit hanging densely on the tree, swaying gently in the autumn wind, like a tree full of green and yellow bells.

He watched for a while, then suddenly smiled.

Then he pushed open the door to the side room where the wet nurse lived, handed her the scroll of imperial edict, and told her what was written on it.

The wet nurse was stunned for a long time after hearing this, and she didn't even pick up the needle and thread that fell to the ground.

She looked up at Liang Yi, her lips trembling, and before she could speak, tears streamed down her face.

"Heaven has opened its eyes."

She wiped her face haphazardly with her sleeve, laughing and crying at the same time. She stood up and walked around the room, unsure of what to do. Finally, she took two eggs from the stove and insisted on cooking them for him. That night, Liang Yi tossed and turned on the couch, unable to sleep.

He copied down the contents of the imperial edict and placed it by his pillow. Every now and then, he would reach out and touch it to make sure the paper was still there and that the words hadn't slipped away while he was asleep.

He recalled spending the Lunar New Year at the prince's mansion when he was a child, where his elder brothers would receive lucky money in the main hall.

The illegitimate sons could only wait in the side hall. After their elder brothers had finished receiving their gifts, the steward brought over a plate of broken silver coins, and each of them could grab a handful, however many they wanted.

He was the shortest and had the smallest hands at that time, so he always managed to grab the fewest.

One year, he secretly stood on tiptoe to try and grab more, but the steward saw him and said with a smile, "Seventh Young Master, don't be in such a hurry, you'll have plenty to grab later."

He waited for nearly ten years, and finally it came.

It's not about grabbing at small pieces of silver; it's about grabbing at your own life.

The next morning, he changed into his cleanest clothes—the cuffs were worn white but starched and crisp, and the patches on the collar were neatly sewn with the same color thread—and rode to the Prince's Palace.

In the past, whenever he went to the Prince's Mansion to pay his respects, he would stand outside the threshold of the main hall and wait for his elder brother to finish first before going in, kowtowing, and leaving.

The king would sometimes glance at him, and sometimes he wouldn't.

As he kowtowed and left, he could always hear his elder brother's laughter behind him, wondering if he was laughing at him. Today, as he entered the Prince's mansion, his elder brother happened to be coming out of the main hall, and the two brothers met in the corridor.

His elder brother glanced at him, his gaze holding something he had never seen before—neither kindness nor malice, but unease.

His elder brother used to look down at him with a condescending gaze, but today that condescending gaze was propped up by something, and it was no longer so high.

Liang Yi bowed respectfully and called out "Brother".

The elder brother replied, "I'm here," and then they passed each other.

He stood under the eaves, watching his elder brother's figure disappear behind the moon gate, and suddenly realized something.

The reason why my elder brother used to feel uncomfortable was because he was standing outside the threshold.

The reason my elder brother is uncomfortable today is because he is walking towards the threshold.

This feeling was unfamiliar, but to be honest, he didn't dislike it.

After returning from the prince's residence, Liang Yi did something he would never have done before in his own courtyard.

He opened the courtyard gate, moved a stool to sit at the entrance, and watched the people coming and going in the alley.

The neighbor was a minor official from the Liangzhou Prefectural Magistrate's Office. Normally, they'd just exchange a polite bow, but today, seeing him sitting at the door, I came over and exchanged a few words. "Seventh Young Master, I heard there's been an imperial edict from the capital?"

The clerk lowered his voice, as if he were asking about something he shouldn't be asking.

Liang Yi simply nodded without saying a word.

The clerk's gaze towards him changed.

It wasn't the kind of perfunctory politeness; it was a serious assessment of him, as if they were re-evaluating his worth.

Previously, he was just a marginalized illegitimate son in the prince's mansion, with a status similar to that of a minor official in the prefectural government.

But from this day forward, Liang Yi—though he has no title, no power, and no one to speak for him in court—has a right of succession written in the imperial edict that no one can take away.

Although this right of inheritance would not be realized until the prince's death, it was still a right of inheritance written in an imperial edict, the first thing that belonged to him in his life.

In the evening, the steward returned from the capital.

This time, what I brought was not an imperial edict, but news that had been relayed from the capital—about how the imperial edict came to be.

The news said that the imperial edict was not drafted by the cabinet, nor was it proposed by any senior official; rather, it was proposed by a young provincial inspector from the Regent's Office in front of all the civil and military officials in the court.

The man's name was Cheng Laiyun. The news said that Lord Cheng encountered a case when he was piloting the new policies in Changle County.

A family with three sons was dividing their inheritance. The father gave all thirty acres of land to his eldest son, while the second and youngest sons received nothing and went to complain.

Lord Cheng called the three brothers to the edge of the field and, in front of them, divided the thirty mu of land into three equal plots, ten mu for each family.

After they finished rowing, the three brothers kowtowed on the spot.

Then Lord Cheng told His Majesty about this in court, to all the officials, and to those who thought that illegitimate sons should not receive anything.

He asked, "What's the difference between a prince's illegitimate son and that family's second or youngest son? What's the difference?"

Liang Yi stood by the well, chewing over and swallowing the news brought back by the steward, word by word.

He looked down at his reflection in the well water. A leaf that had fallen from the jujube tree rippled the water, causing the reflection to shatter and reassemble.

He couldn't imagine what Lord Cheng looked like, how old he was, or where he was from.

I don't know why a complete stranger from the capital would speak up for these illegitimate sons who are far away.

All he knew was that from this day forward, there was one more person in the world.

That person was a complete stranger to him, and didn't even know his name, Liang Yi—yet that person, in the imperial court before the emperor, in front of those officials in purple and scarlet robes, uttered a sentence that no one had ever spoken on behalf of their illegitimate son.

He will never forget this person in his entire life.

He squatted down, pulled up the clothesline pole that was crookedly stuck in the mud by the well, found a flat patch of mud in the corner of the yard, and wrote three characters stroke by stroke.

His handwriting was terrible, the strokes were crooked and twisted like earthworms, but he wrote each character with great effort, as if he were carving a monument in the mud.

Cheng Laiyun.

After he finished writing, he stood up, patted the mud off his hands, looked down at the crooked characters, and suddenly thought that the three characters sounded quite nice.

He wasn't sure if those three words were correct, but he thought he would definitely find out when he had the chance to go to Beijing in the future.

If Lord Cheng really is called that, he will set up a memorial tablet in his own courtyard and offer incense to him on the first and fifteenth of each lunar month.

It's not an offering to a god, but an offering to someone who spoke a fair word for Liang Yi.

The wet nurse came out of the side room to pour water and saw him squatting in the corner writing and drawing. She asked him what he was writing.

He straightened up, smoothed the words on the muddy ground with his toes, smiled, and said that nothing was written.

...Liang Yi was just one of the many illegitimate sons of the princes of the realm.

As sons of a prince, how much mistreatment did they suffer from a young age?

How many cold shoulders did I get?

Perhaps only they themselves know the truth.

A single imperial edict shattered their inevitable decline.

How could they dare not accept such a heaven-sent opportunity?

of course.

Some people praised Cheng Laiyun.

Naturally, some people will hate him to the core.