Chapter 437
They watched as, amidst the pouring rain, the goddess’s chariot blazed with multicolored radiance. The goddess, clad in flowing rainbow robes, stepped out from the chariot one step at a time. With each step she took, a beautiful lotus bloomed beneath her feet.
Those lotuses also shimmered with light—some white, some cyan, some gold, some red… The goddess walked step by step toward… the sky!
The rain falling from the heavens parted around her, not a single drop touching her beautiful celestial gown.
The common folk had only ever heard that immortals could fly, but this was the first time they had witnessed a goddess walking on empty air, lotuses blooming with every step.
“We pay homage to the Great Goddess!”
“We pay homage to the Great Goddess!”
Cries of worship rose and fell one after another in Yue Fuguang’s ears.
“Rise, all of you!” Yue Fuguang’s voice came from the sky, ethereal and distant, carrying an innate, mysterious divinity and authority. Whether they were near or far, the voice seemed to speak directly into their ears.
“We thank the Great Goddess!” Before the people could rise on their own, they felt an invisible force lifting them up.
Some obeyed and stood up, and the force disappeared. Others instinctively tried to resist, unaware that the more they struggled, the tighter the binding power became.
Yue Fuguang suddenly realized that her entrance could only intimidate for a moment. So, taking advantage of the moment when these people’s minds were shaken and their control over those around them relaxed, she used the lifting force to capture them all at once.
Thus, the scene along the road became one where over a hundred people among the crowd struggled desperately against the invisible bonds.
Those around them stared wide-eyed, not understanding what was happening. These “villagers” seemed to be pulled and dragged by an unseen force, quickly lifted into midair.
Then, with a loud bang, they were dropped like dumplings into an open space in the middle.
Mud and water splashed everywhere, and cries of agony rang out incessantly.
Yue Fuguang looked down at the crowd below; from the moment she acted to the moment she pulled out all one hundred-plus people, only a few breaths had passed.
But that was enough time for the people below to snap out of it. Yet, surprisingly, among the tens of thousands of people lining the road, not a single one stepped forward to question the reason.
Were they frightened?
That reaction wasn’t right. With tens of thousands of people, shouldn’t at least one or two have rushed out to demand why she was arresting people for no reason? Shouldn’t they have said something like, “Even immortals must be reasonable”? After all, in the early days of the drought, many had criticized her as “ineffective.” Could it really be that there wasn’t a single self-righteous saint or saintly figure among them?
If so, she was indeed quite lucky today?
Little did Yue Fuguang know that the news of her refusing to forgive believers had already spread far and wide. Every local person kneeling here today had been carefully selected by the local magistrate as the most devout followers.
Otherwise, if an entire county had heard that the goddess was passing through, even if not everyone came out, there would certainly have been more people than this.
Yue Fuguang thought the county just had a small population, unaware that there was not a single rebellious local among them.
As for the people from outside, the county magistrate stood among the crowd, his gaze cold as he looked at the unfamiliar faces bound like zongzi by Shen Jian’s men.
Although he couldn’t tell what was wrong with these people, if the Young Preceptor had singled them out for arrest, they must have some problematic identity.
He stepped out of the crowd, bowed to Yue Fuguang in the air, and said, “Your subordinate, Feng Su, magistrate of He Lian County, pays respects to the Young Preceptor.”
“Magistrate Feng, are you puzzled as to why I am arresting these people?”
“Your subordinate knows that the Young Preceptor must have a reason for arresting them. I will not ask. However… is there anything this county can do to help?”
Yue Fuguang raised an eyebrow at his response and finally took the time to study this magistrate of a lower-tier county.
Feng Su, a second-class jinshi graduate from the tenth year of Tianyou, was thirty-eight years old this year. He was of medium build, with a slightly dark complexion. He had served as magistrate of He Lian County for five years. Because he had no connections in high places, even though it had been nine years since he passed the imperial examinations and was appointed as a magistrate in the provinces, he was still just a minor magistrate.
Moreover, every place he had been assigned to was a lower-tier county.
But judging by his governance record, while unremarkable, it was still decent and competent.
The words he spoke suggested that this man had both intelligence and emotional intelligence. What he lacked was merely an opportunity—and opportunities were something Yue Fuguang had in abundance.
“These people are enemy spies.”
Yue Fuguang’s words were light and calm, but to those present, they struck like thunderbolts.
Not just Feng Su, the county chief, but even the common folk of He Lian County knew what enemy spies were.
Although He Lian County was still somewhat far from the border, when it came down to it, Xinzhou was a border region of Dayan, with some land bordering Nanyue.
The people living near the border had truly suffered from Nanyue’s depredations. Every single year, there would be several skirmishes at the border.
The area here was suffering from a drought, and it was said that the neighboring country of Nanyue had also not seen a single drop of rain in over six months. The people there were barely surviving.
Could these men be those wolves from Nanyue, knowing that their goddess could control rain, and coming to snatch her away?
Among the people, there were not a few clever individuals, including many scholars. A quick thought led them to guess that these men harbored ill intentions.
“Great Goddess, are these men here to snatch… snatch away…?” A man dressed as a scholar, his blood running hot with anger, boldly shouted out his question. But when he got to the end, realizing what he had impulsively done, he instinctively shrank back in timidity.
He had read the goddess’s poetry countless times and revered her deeply, so he suddenly felt that asking such a question would be an act of blasphemy.
Yue Fuguang watched his face gradually turn red, his eyes darting around in embarrassment as if looking for a crack in the ground to crawl into.
But the rain-soaked earth, now swollen with water, offered him no such refuge.
“You guessed correctly. These men are indeed targeting me.”
The confirmation of his guess caused an uproar across the crowd. The once-silent wilderness, filled only with the sounds of wind and rain, suddenly came alive with the most rustic curses from men, women, the elderly, and children.
Taking the mothers of the targets as the center, relatives as the radius, fathers as the fulcrum, and ancestors as the goal, Yue Fuguang deeply experienced the diversity of linguistic expression.
Some bold men even wanted to rush over and kick the bound one hundred-plus men.
“Silence!”
As soon as Yue Fuguang called for silence, it was like pressing the pause button on this torrent of national cursing. When the people realized what they had said to the goddess in their fury, they were terrified and knelt to beg for forgiveness.
Hadn’t those words defiled the ears of a divine being!
“We beg the Great Goddess for forgiveness!”
“We beg the Great Goddess for forgiveness!”
Yue Fuguang waved her broad sleeve, and a gentle breeze swept through. As the people began to bow, the breeze supported them and straightened them up.
“When the world suffers a great drought, traitors and thieves inevitably run rampant, and petty schemers covet the lands of Dayan. I only wish for you all to remain ever vigilant and never give the enemy an opportunity to take advantage.”
“We will uphold the goddess’s decree!”
“We will uphold the goddess’s decree!”
Yue Fuguang brushed aside the faint embarrassment that flickered through her heart and instructed Feng Su, “Magistrate Feng, you should thoroughly spread the news of this matter among the uninformed citizens of He Lian County.”