Family Cultivation: My entire family are Villains-Chapter 534 - 250, Danger!
""Do you think those four families want to break away from Zhongzhou? Great Yu may have suffered damages in power, but they are not someone that those four regional forces can offend, and it’s Great Jin and Qinjian Villa who are stirring things up behind the scenes. Those families are also being forced into a corner."
However, the Chu Kuangren is a smart man. He knows that siding completely with the Jiangbei Alliance would lead to a dead end, so he just hovers between the three families, deliberately paying more each year. As a result, the three families are afraid that the Jiangbei Alliance will lean towards the others, so they only dare to levy a tenth of the tax on them openly, and in secret, they actually refund the money they collect."
Smart indeed!
As Hou Yuxiao sorted out Zhan Taiqing’s words and understood the operation of the Jiangbei Alliance, his eyes lit up, and he instantly felt a surge of respect for Chu Kuangren.
"May I ask Master, what does ’regional forces’ mean?"
Hou Yuxiao was hearing this term for the first time, and his eyes immediately showed a hint of curiosity. The literal meaning was easy to understand, and that was what intrigued him, but judging from Zhan Taiqing’s tone, the term clearly had a specific definition, which is why Hou Yuxiao asked the question.
"Foolish!"
...
Clenching his fist within his sleeve, Hou Yuxiao watched Zhan Taiqing walk past him with an air of superiority and a look that treated him as if he were an idiot. Anger flared within him.
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Of course, while he was angry on the inside, he had no choice but to pretend he hadn’t heard a thing due to Zhan Taiqing’s strength, and continued to follow her with a composed expression.
Fortunately, the Ghost Hand Sword, Han Feng, who was walking alongside Zhan Taiqing, spoke up, alleviating Hou Yuxiao’s embarrassment somewhat.
"Master Hou, when your Hou Clan was promoted to a first-class force, you must have received a family copper seal issued by our Holy Church Headquarters. This copper seal can record the names of members within the force, can be used to make family identity tokens, and within a short distance, it can also be used to sense the whereabouts of one’s clan members. Do you know why this copper seal possesses these capabilities?"
Hou Yuxiao was taken aback, as he had never really considered this question.
"That’s because the copper seal contains the Divine Dynasty imprint!"
The Divine Dynasty imprint?
The first thing that came to mind for Hou Yuxiao was Maiden Hong. During the chaos in Tongling, he remembered that Maiden Hong had mentioned the Divine Dynasty imprint, which was a method used to confer titles to all third-grade demons in the past, stating that they could not be suppressed without this imprint.
When Mo Yunzi suppressed the Blood Demon, she left the Divine Dynasty imprint on its body, and only the Confucian and Daoist Righteous Qi could lift it. After Maiden Hong used Ji Yanzhi to remove the Divine Dynasty imprint from her, she regained her strength of the third-grade Indestructible Realm.
So it seems that the Divine Dynasty imprint is not solely for suppressing demons?
"Because this Divine Dynasty imprint is the Earth Spirit. Why does the Divine Dynasty imprint have a suppressing effect on demons? Because demons are born from the earth, and most of them are originally spirits of mountains and earth, so the Earth Spirit is equivalent to the ancestors of demons, and naturally, they dare not oppose their own ancestors."
As it represents the Earth Spirit, it naturally represents the actual control over a region of land. The larger the imprint a force can control, the larger the territory they rule.
When Great Yu unified the world, he accomplished a feat that had not been achieved by anyone in tens of thousands of years. Despite millennia and vast wildernesses, it was not a simple matter. After the Divine Dynasty conquered the thirteen states of the world, they extracted thirteen portions of Earth Spirit and condensed them into a single Divine Dynasty imprint. Not only did they capture all the demons of the world, but they also gained substantive control over the thirteen states.
Unfortunately, Great Yu later fell from the Divine Dynasty, and the imprint was destroyed in the great war. It’s rumored to have split into over a hundred pieces, which were then divided among the various forces. Those who control the Divine Dynasty imprints are what the Master just mentioned, the ’regional forces.’
The standard for Earth Level, Heaven Level, and Holy Land forces, besides having Martial Arts Experts of corresponding levels, is determined by the size of the imprint they control. Hence, today’s Earth Level and above are the real ’regional forces!’
Today, there are ten Holy Lands, twenty-two Heaven Level great forces, and over eighty Earth Level forces in the world. This perfectly corresponds to the Divine Dynasty imprints that shattered into over a hundred pieces. After pondering for a moment, Hou Yuxiao immediately understood Han Feng’s words.
This was the first time he had heard about the Divine Dynasty imprints.
Hou Yuxiao’s eyebrows knit slightly; he originally thought that with over two hundred thousand sect members and a Martial Arts Expert of the Yin Yang Holy Realm, they would meet the standard of an Earth Level force. But with the Divine Dynasty imprint thrown into the mix, his mood suddenly turned somber.
Ever since the number of Hou Family Warriors surpassed one hundred thousand, he had been thinking about advancing to Earth Level. He wasn’t worried about his Martial Arts Level; as long as he had enough virtue and karmic obstacles, he could continuously improve his cultivation. He was even less concerned about the number of sect members; with the Hou Family’s financial strength steadily increasing and their power growing, it was only a matter of time before they exceeded two hundred thousand members.
But this Divine Dynasty imprint—since it had split into over a hundred pieces back then, and there were already over a hundred Earth Level forces today, doesn’t that mean all those scattered Divine Dynasty imprints had been taken? Did that imply that if the Hou Family wanted to ascend to Earth Level, they would need to eradicate an existing Earth Level force?
At this thought, Hou Yuxiao’s frown deepened. Up until now, the strongest force the Hou Family had annihilated was second-rate, and even that was by leveraging the winds of Rakshasa Holy Sect and conflicts among Holy Lands, not by their own strength alone.
Strictly speaking, the Hou Family had not even reached the standard for a first-class force, let alone destroy an Earth Level force. Facing a first-class force head-on, there was no guarantee they would win.
