<h4>Chapter 872 Decay of the major families (10)</h4>


    Even with the damning evidence presented against them, the Gui n members under indictment still tried to deny the charges as they tried to shift the me on other families iming their innocence in the matter.


    They said it was the other families framing them for those deeds because they were jealous that the Gui family was the only one among the six founding families to have still maintained its growth even after their founder had passed on while the rest of the families were struggling to stay afloat.


    But with the amount of damning evidence presented against them such as the visual recordings, documents of which some even had soul-binding seals to them, along with the testimonies of the assassins of the Underground Ferrymen, their excuses carried no water and the only thing it managed to do was add on to their troubles for lying to the court.


    Eventually, they turned on each other as they tried to throw one another under the bus, the me game eventually extended to other members of the n and other parties that had evaded the investigative of the Order.


    During their spree of trying to pull others into the mud with them, some even confessed that there were those within their n who had colluded with members of the Five Clover Kingdom here and there for a significant fee.


    One of those implicated in the collusion was an old fossil of the n, who had trained many in alchemy. Though he wasn''t a supreme elder like Gui De, he was just as respected because of his attainments in alchemy, those who had benefited from it, and his age. He could be considered Gui De''s uncle by seniority and just like him, he too was a quasi-pce stage expert, though he was weaker and had leveraged the usage of pills to attain it so he could extend his lifespan. His name was Gui Weimin.


    Gui De''s face darkened when he heard that Gui Weimin had colluded with one of the princes of the Five Clovers Kingdom to supply them pills, potions, and certain rare herbs that could only be found in the core regions of the Empire and in exchange, that prince would grant him an audience with one of the elders of the Zou n.


    Gui De didn''t need to hear the rest of the testimony to guess as to Gui Weimin''s intentions. The closer Gui Weimin came to exhausting his lifespan and dying, the more fearful he became of it and it wasn''t long before the maddened obsession with staying alive kicked in. He burned through countless resources within the n to stop that from happening.


    There were only two ways he could do that, one was if he used a natural treasure that extends his lifespan, and the other was if he broke through to the pce realm. Finding a natural treasure that extends one''s lifespan was just as difficult as ascending to the heavens.


    Treasures that were capable of such a feat, at the very least, would be at the absolute peak of the ascendant grade and because of their nature, they were rarer to find even whenpared to other ascendant and saint grade treasures.


    No matter how much wealth they had, even if they emptied the coffers of their entire n, and even thrown in that of the entire Red Maple Empire, they still wouldn''t be able to afford the clues to such a treasure, let alone buy it.


    Theycked the resources and the connection to acquire it, and if by someck they managed to get their hands on it, would they be able to keep it long enough to use it or would the rest of the Red Maple Empire wake up one day and find the entire Gui n had been ughtered to thest man within their grounds without a clue who did it or why they did it.


    Gui Weimin''s situation could only be remedied one way and that was for him to break through to the pce realm and have his lifespan leap from 4,500 to 15,000 years in a single bound. Realistically, it was the only feasible option if it wasn''t for the fact that Gui Weimin didn''t have enough talent to take that leap, and to make up for it, the n expended countless resources that could bridge that gap.


    They were hemorrhaging resources for that effort, it was Gui Weimin, a senior they all respected and admired, of course, they were going to do all they could to support him, going even to the extent of backstabbing old friends, swallowing up theirpetitors, lessen their support for the war because they didn''t want to pour their resources in two bottomless pits.


    If they had to pick between their n and supporting the war efforts at the border, of course, they would put themselves first. Maybe if they produced a blue-grade alchemist or a pce stage expert they could revisit the issue but with the Gui n having no blue-grade alchemist nor a pce realm expert like the Zhang, Mo, or the Duan royal family did, of course, they were going to pick themselves at the expense of the rest.


    But even with their self-preservation and how ruthless they had been in how they went about their business, he would have never expected a collusion with the Five Clovers Kingdom.


    The reason he neverpletely agreed to cutting off their entire support at the border was because he knew what would happen to them if the Empire lost that war. The Five Clover Kingdom would carve them up and devour them not sparing even a single bone.


    But hearing this.. that one of their well-respected elders was supporting the enemy all so he could escape death, that he didn''t see iting.


    What if he was asked to sell out his n for a chance at extending his life, would he hesitate?


    Even though he didn''t want to admit it, Gui De felt he knew what Gui Weimin would choose if he had to choose between the two.


    ...


    Yang Qing ignoring the inner turmoil of Gui De was hard at work as he dly recorded everything down which he then transmitted to the Shadow Hawks Division, and the Yellow ins Branch to follow up on it.


    If everything was as those n members said, the Gui n would end up receiving a significant blow to their foundations.


    Even without those additional testimonies that implicated more members of their n, just the loss of the twenty-two members present was sure to cause significant damage to their reputation.


    About three-quarters of those present were high-ranking elders of the Gui n and none of those present wasn''t a top- tier orange grade alchemist.


    Even if the Gui n was an alchemist n, how many top-tier orange-grade alchemists did it have? Losing fifteen top-tier orange-grade alchemists was sure to impact them greatly.


    Nurturing alchemists requires considerable resources and time to do, especially ones at the level of those present. Recing fifteen top-tier orange-grade alchemists would likely take a few hundred years at least.


    If they had a blue-grade alchemist to guide them, that timeframe would shrink down considerably but the Gui n didn''t have one, and if they hadn''t yet produced a single one in close to 20,000 years, what were the chances they would produce one anytime soon, or that they would even be allowed the time to do that.


    When it came to certain matters such as treason, the Order''s hands were tied, what Gui Weimin did or didn''t do wasn''t the Order''s business, but a few hours from now every city from the border to the imperial capital of the Red Maple Empire would know of the snakes they harbored within its territory.


    Same with all the single-target assassination victims. Assassinations in the cultivation world weren''t exactly a prosecutable offense by the Order. Assassinations were part of the cultivators'' world, the Order would only get involved and prosecute someone if the assassination led to the annihtion of an entire household, or organization in which the victims included mortals, children, or people not of that world, or if the Assassin organization used was one that was on the Order''s hit list.


    For those kinds of assassinations in which their hands were tied, the Order would try its very best to ensure information about the perpetrator reaches anyone with deep ties to the victim. The Order couldn''t collect that debt, but that person surely would.


    Even if they were symbols of justice and fairness,they were still part of the cultivation world and sometimes itsws took precedence over the Order''sws, one just had to judge when that time was,and the affairs of the Gui n was one such time.


    Yang Qing patiently waited as those elders sold each other out, spilling everything they knew in desperation, not even taking the time to negotiate a deal for the information they spilled. Only when they were done did he deliver the sentence. Gui De did say a few words on their behalf, but his mind wasn''t there even as he did it. His words seemed more perfunctory and casual as a result. Like he was doing it just to go with the motion and fulfill his duty as the vice n master of the Gui n.


    Twenty-one of the twenty-two n members were sentenced to life imprisonment in Requiem and considering the things they did, their stay there would be anything but pleasant. Yang Qing had a feeling the students at the Institute would be having fresh sparring partners sometime in the future.


    As for the one remaining Gui n member, Yang Qing exercised his judicial discretion and executed him on the spot in front of the other n members.


    Judicial discretion was the authority granted to a judge to enforce their sentence personally, bypassing the Requiem. To avoid the judges unterally taking matters into their own hands all the time, a limit was imposed on its use, and someone of Yang Qing''s rank had twelve of them for the year, and he decided to use one today.


    Whenever a judge felt they wanted to use it, they would need a majority approval from the spirit council, a high-ranking figure from Requiem, and the Judicial Review Committee. Since all three divisions had a live viewing of the court proceedings via the monitoring arrays in the courtroom, once Yang Qing presented his request to exercise his judicial discretion, it didn''t take long to receive a response.


    The three divisions approved his request, and unanimously at that. The n member he executed had been the n member who had his victim beguiled with an illusory art that had him ughter his entire family, brutally at that. He had a wife, two concubines, four sons, and two daughters, of which two of his youngest children who were two of his sons, one was seven months old, and the other was almost two years.


    That n member had his victim y his entire family and the spell was cancelled after he was done. That victim got targeted all because he refused to trade a family heirloom that he wanted to pass down to his eldest child.


    The heirloom in question was the core of a spirit beast, a luminous moth. The core had no special abilities other than its ability to heal minor wounds, calm emotions, and induce a peaceful sleep in whoever wore it.


    It had been passed down in the victim''s family for thousands of years, and he wanted to pass it down to his eldest child, his daughter. But his n went to shambles when that Gui n member saw it on him and asked for it.


    The victim politely declined as he cited his reasons for doing so in the hopes the Gui n member would understand. Luminous moths were not rare, and the core they had wasn''t all that unique among them either as it belonged to one that was at the early stages. With the might and resources of the Gui n, they could buy thousands of them that were way better than his if they wanted to and would have sold his to them if it wasn''t a family heirloom. and the deep sentiment attached to it as a result of it.


    Things didn''t go as he expected. He ended up controlled by a secret art and massacred his family in a vicious and sadistic way and then was left to stew in the horror he had created. That victim ended up self-detonating after he saw the sight of his yed family.


    Yang Qing executed that n member by incinerating him to ashes, delivering his death, swiftly, a kindness he didn''t afford his victim.