Alexander Smith
Alex, Joshua and Edward managed to capture all fourteen second major realm cultivators smoothly without any interference. All that is left is Charles now. He has already received a message from James that the Barony Of Milton has been successfully occupied. Under normal circumstances, the baron (being the leader) should have been the first to be taken captive. However, Charles' crappy cultivation means he is not an immediate threat and can be left towards the end. It is toward this last step when the hidden third major realm cultivator finally decided to take action.
"Halt in the name of the royal family!"
Alex immediately recognized the approaching third major realm cultivator as Prince Dominic. Although he had never met this prince in the past, the family has obtained a picture of all known third major realm cultivators in the kingdom. On hindsight, this is not surprising. Charles' father is after all an important minister in the royal court.
"Under royal decree, I hereby declare this war unsanctioned. Since there is no casualty, you are to release all captives immediately and revert everything to status quo." Prince Dominic haughtily demands.
Unsanctioned war!? You have been hiding behind the scene observing everything and didn't stop the war. Now that Charles has been defeated, you blatantly want all the captives released and the war outcome reversed?! Since the royal family has decided to be shameless and unreasonable, there is no longer any reason for Alex to hold back as well.
"If this is an unsanctioned war, why did you not stop the war in the first place. I know you have arrived long before my parley with Charles." Alex counters as he reveals his third major realm cultivation as well. Both Joshua and Edward also immediately took out a level four talisman each.
The message is clear. 'We don't fear your cultivation realm!'
Being caught off-guard, Prince Dominic his now in a difficult position. He can no longer throw his weight around to bully Alex's family into submission.
Seeing that Prince Dominic has no idea how to proceed, Alex quickly made a suggestion. "Prince Dominic, the outcome has been decided. I swear on my honour as a noble that all the captured nobles will be treated as per their social status demand. You might as well return and inform all their family members to prepare the needed ransom for their release. I don't expect them to pay a premium but they better match past practices. Don't think that you can short change our family just because we are outsiders."
Prince Dominic quickly assesses his current option. One, there is no guarantee that he can defeat Alex. Two, he can't discount Joshua and Edward simply because of their lower cultivation realm. They are both holding a level four talisman. That is aside from the level four scroll they had just used. What if both of them still has more level four offensive items in their possession? If that's the case, the chances of him get captured as well is not impossible. He can only back down for now and return to seek his royal brother decision. It would appear everyone involve in the conspiracy has greatly miscalculated due to Baron Alex's forbearance.
*****
The aftermath negotiation that came two weeks later gave Alex an unexpected surprise. Since the whole fiasco was started by Charles, his father, the Count Of Winsloff has taken the lead on the negotiation. Prince Dominic is also present at the meeting and he believes the prince has to be present to counter the fact that he is a third major realm cultivator. After the superficial greetings, the Count Of Winsloff suspiciously asks, "Are your family part of the Yeomrang Imperium? It must be so. Three cultivators practicing the Undead Sovereign pathway must not be a coincidence. More importantly, the extravagance use of level three and four single-use items mean your family is way wealthier than any nobles of this kingdom. I believe even those powerful nobles in the Stormhaven empire will never hold a candle against your family. What is your family's motive in our kingdom? We know our kingdom's circumstance well enough that there shouldn't be anything here that should attract the attention of a powerful clan from the immortal realm."
The mention of Yeomrang Imperium is a nice surprise. Alex has to say he is quite familiar with this empire located in the immortal realm. Any modern cultivator of the Undead Sovereign pathway will have heard of this empire or more importantly, its legendary founder. Emperor Of Death, Kim Min-jun. Joshua idolization couldn't be hidden the moment Yeomrang Imperium was mentioned. It is no secret within the family that Joshua is a big fan of Emperor Kim. His achievements is legendary. As far as he knew, the Yeomrang Imperium is a powerful empire that controls twelve main worlds with hundreds more main worlds in both the immortal and lower realm its vassal.
Prior to Emperor Kim's rise to power, death related cultivation pathway was never seen as part of the orthodoxy. Command over death is one of the most easily abused and in most cases, cultivators couldn't resist the shortcuts in pursuit of power. Robbing graves for undead armies, mass slaughter of mortals to cultivate vengeful ghosts, the list of atrocities are almost endless. The deviant cultivators never stop coming up with new methods in pursuit of greater power. Throw in the fact that anything related to death don't align well with the world of the living, one can imagine the fear and misgiving towards any cultivators tapping into the power of death.
Since Emperor Kim's rise, he started introducing strict rules within his own domain and severely punishes any cultivators that break his laws. Those under his rule began to see those who tap into the power of death in a positive light. Take war for an instance, his empire employs very little living beings to fight its wars. While other sects, kingdom and empire will be grieving and organizing mass funerals for the loss of sons, daughters, fathers and mothers as casualties after a war, Emperor Kim's domain will probably only see a fraction of those funerals. Emperor Kim has a philosophy where any tasks that are highly dangerous are left to the dead. There is a popular saying within his empire.
"The descendants build the empire while the ancestors protect it".
Aside from transforming the entire cultivation world's perception on cultivation pathways tied to death, Emperor Kim is also famous for a number of other achievements. One of them is coming up with an alternative solution to dealing with vengeful ghosts. In the past, there is only a single-minded solution to deal with vengeful ghosts from harming the living in the cultivation world. Those vengeful ghosts that can be purified, are purified and sent to the afterlife. For vengeful ghosts that resist purification, cultivators only choice is to obliterate them out of existence. In some cases where the vengeful ghost is too powerful, the only choice is to seal the vengeful ghost until it ceases to exist (even ghost can't persist for eternity).
However, Emperor Kim doesn't agree to the cultivators' solutions for all vengeful ghosts that can't be purified. Vengeful ghosts came into existence not out of lingering obsession to the world of the living. Those that can't move on to the afterlife due to lingering obsession will just be turned into a ghost. Only those that died in extreme hatred, unwilling to move on will turn into a vengeful ghost. Emperor Kim has nothing to say about any villains that became vengeful ghost. Since they remain unrepentance even after death, their fate of being obliterated out of existence is well deserved. However, the majority of vengeful ghosts are a byproduct of great injustice while they are still alive. What is even more disheartening, most of these vengeful ghosts are the creation of deviant cultivators.
For ghost cultivators, their most powerful spirit artifacts are all powered by vengeful ghosts. The more vengeful ghosts are used to power a spirit artifact, the greater its offensive and defensive capability. Under normal circumstances, where would deviant cultivators find so many vengeful ghosts? To satisfy those deviant cultivators' greed for power, their solution is obvious. Intentionally cause a made-made disaster, revealing the truth before killing those mortals to provoke them into becoming vengeful ghosts.
For all these pitiful vengeful ghosts that have suffered great injustice while they are alive, Emperor Kim felt that destroying them after death is a continuity of this great injustice. The cultivators' reason for destroying these vengeful ghosts are also out of helplessness. The moment someone turns into a vengeful ghost, it will lose all form of rationality. What is left is endless hatred for the living. Alex simple understanding of Emperor Kim's reason is like how lawyers defended a murderer under the insanity plea. The murderer is not of sound mind and needs treatment instead of further persecution. This is one reason that Alex can fully supports.
Emperor Kim's solution is a bit controversial but the result speaks for itself. All vengeful ghost that comes into the Yeomrang Imperium custody are first given an attempt for purification. When purification failed, these vengeful spirits are then assigned to cultivators following a new immortal cultivation pathway he pioneered. Yin-Yang Enforcer.