After Vyrazul’s death and Drakzen’s escape, the rest of our teams advanced to the palace without much resistance.
Once the devil died and I sent the ssage to the squadrons, the news of Vyrazul’s death spread around the city like wildfire, which made most of the enemy soldiers surrender as they didn’t have anything threatening their lives anymore.
Prince Renjun was the first to reach the palace with his group of soldiers, and the first thing he did was run up to us to see how we were doing.
Slowly but surely, the rest of the teams reached our location, and to calm the people of the capital, we decided to have Renjun do a quick speech from the top of a tower that was next to the palace.
I used sound magic to make his words extrely loud. It wasn’t enough to cover the entire city since it was pretty massive, but it covered quite a large radius.
In his speech, he gave a quick explanation about Empress Yulian’s true self and comnted about his mother, the real empress, being alive.
After saying that Vyrazul had been slain, we could hear the roars and chants of the citizens on the streets celebrating.
The sun was rising as Renjun spoke to the people, and once he was done, I grabbed lina and Yoru and took them to Yuandu to rest.
__________
lina slept for three days after her fight with Vyrazul, and during that ti, Vespera and I were helping the citizens of Guanghua rebuild their hos.
First, we visited the districts that were destroyed to the point nobody could live there and fixed them up in a day.
On the second day, we went to the palace to help with its reconstruction, as more than half of it was wholly destroyed. Funnily enough, Sage Astra also helped us a bit since she said she felt guilty about her student.
On the third day, we visited other districts that weren’t completely destroyed, but they had been abandoned for so long that they were pretty much unlivable, so we remodeled the houses there, too.
Leslie and Yujun followed around every day, which I didn’t have a problem with.
Yujun was more talkative than ever before and kept asking questions about the spells I used to rebuild the houses.
Leslie, on the other hand, said she wanted to practice swordsmanship simply because she thought it looked cool.
Every night, they ca back to Yuandu with to visit lina and would spend the night sleeping between us the sa way we did at the Bao’s mansion.
Yujun even asked Empress Chunhua to adopt so that I would beco his real big brother, which, honestly, made chuckle a lot.
On the morning of the fourth day, and the two kids woke up and were having breakfast in the room when we heard the rustle of the sheets, making us turn our heads to the bed and see lina waking up.
*yawn* "Mornin’," lina said casually while rubbing her eyes.
However, she was greeted by the three of us jumping on the bed and giving her a hug, making her eyes widen with surprise.
"D-did I sleep for too long?" lina asked with an awkward smile.
"Three full days..." I said while still hugging her.
"Oh, no wonder I feel so refreshed," she said with a playful tone.
I told lina everything that had happened while she was sleeping, starting with the fate of Sinoc, who was executed by Sage Astra after our fight.
Drakzen escaped after absorbing the blood of the Minotaur’s corpse.
Nessa managed to kill the greater demons that were guarding Phelena’s temple. Still, what she found inside was a pretty horrible sight.
The building was used by Vyrazul to turn people into demonoids, but out of hundreds of trials, only three of them managed to survive the process, with Sinoc being the one who evolved the most.
The rest of the people would get their bodies deford, explode into a thousand pieces, or lt as if they were made of wax. Safe to say, she saw a scene straight out of a horror movie.
Our squadrons managed to free the people on the outskirts, and once the news of Vyrazul’s defeat spread around, they had an easier ti reaching the palace inside the city walls as the enemy soldiers surrendered.
Emperor Xiaojun was hiding inside a secret underground tunnel, which was the reason we didn’t see him during the encounter at the palace.
In fact, it was Renjun, his own son, who knew perfectly well where his father was hiding and captured him the sa night of Vyrazul’s defeat.
Apparently, Renjun found him sulking in the tunnels since, after the devil died, the curse she placed on him that made him bend to her will had disappeared.
This made Emperor Xiaojun fall into despair as he realized the atrocities he had committed the past few years, not only to his people but to his own family.
Empress Chunhua declared Renjun to be the new emperor, and she herself beca the advisor, saying that it was ti for the next generation to rule over Guanghua.
"And that’s pretty much what you missed the past few days..." I said to lina.
The fate of the corrupt nobles who helped Vyrazul was going to be decided that sa day at the capital, and Renjun wanted us to be present, so after we got dressed, we used the magic quartz to get there quickly.
Funnily enough, there were lots of settlers who didn’t want to leave Yuandu to return to their old hos in the capital. Honestly, I couldn’t bla them.
Yuandu was a nice, peaceful area with enough open space for the villagers to farm their own crops. Not only that, but they also had blacksmith and clothing shops that talented individuals were managing.
Knowing that we were going to leave the magic quartz there to have a quick connection to the capital was the cherry on top for them, as it ant they could live in the peaceful, rural area and travel to the capital to sell or buy stuff at any ti without traveling for days.
Once we were ready, lina, Leslie, Yujun, and I appeared inside the palace, where a group of guards had been protecting the magic quartz, and made our way to the throne room.
Renjun and his mother were waiting for us, making little Yujun run towards them to greet them with a hug.
We had to wait a few more hours for all the prisoners to be brought to the throne room, so we had so tea with the new emperor and his family in the anti.
The trial started with the previous emperor, Xiajoun, who was sentenced to life in prison for betraying his family and his country for a re lustful night with a succubus.
The only reason the man didn’t get the death sentence was because of who he was, which I thought was a bit unfair since, technically, this whole thing happened because of him.
In my mind, executing the corrupt families while keeping the forr emperor alive was unfair, but I decided to trust Renjun’s judgnt.
The Zhao family, who were the first ones we targeted for no particular reason other than them being the first ones we encountered, were all sentenced to work in the mines for life.
Guanghua was rich in minerals, and even though they had workers, being sent to the mines as a prisoner ant that they wouldn’t get paid for their work. To put it simply, they were legal slaves.
’Well, that’s kind of fitting for what they did...’ I thought.
I always believed that death was sowhat of a "lazy" way to punish soone who had committed awful things to other people.
I an, if soone killed twenty people, I would want that person to suffer for the rest of their lives rather than simply ending them without having them atone for their actions.
The Wang and the Guo family, who were the biggest slave traders in the country, shared the sa sentence to work in the mines for the rest of their lives.
All the other families that participated in slave trading were being investigated, and their punishnts would be equal to the treatnt they gave their slaves.
The Bao Family was exempt from being punished, as they were in the group of families that treated the enslaved villagers like true servants with the respect they deserved.
It was the sa for the i and Yushan families, who had to act for years for the devil not to kill them.
Renjun wasn’t sure what to do with the two demonoids, Kana and Igor, as they had been part of Vyrazul’s team but were obviously being threatened by her.
I thought about taking them with us to End Town, but before I could speak up, lina went ahead and said the sa thing, saying that we would take care of them.
The new emperor saw no problem with our suggestion and "sentenced" Kana and Igor to beco our helpers.
The trial of all these people took hours, occupying the entire day, and we still had a few parts of the city that needed to be rebuilt, so we decided to stay in Guanghua for a few more days to help them out.
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