Chapter 340: Bribery

An ominous odor of death pervaded the air around the courier station, as more and more people heard rumors – through various communication channels – that the Dragon King was about to slaughter the other competitors. At the same time, absurd news had begun spreading as well: There were unknown people planning to get rid of the Dragon King.

These conflicting yet potentially bloody rumors had kept those people who were not aware of the situation awake at night due to fear. A few suitors who came from wealthy merchant families were the first to crack under the pressure and consecutively announced their withdrawal from the royal consort selection process – even before it begun.

They came here with the purpose of enjoying the atmosphere and did not wish to die for no reason in a bid to win the Princess’s hand in marriage.

The other suitors were adamant about staying, especially the sons of the five tribal chiefs. They knew little about the Dragon King and did not care much about the possibility of bloodshed.

Because of the rumors, Gu Shenwei realized that he had become a harbinger of doom and he received special attention wherever he went. Many residents of the capital of Stone Kingdom especially traveled to the entrance of the courier station just to catch a glimpse of him from afar. Audible gasps from the crowd could be heard whenever his hand went to the hilt of his saber.

However, less than two days later, the latest update was that Dragon King had become good friends with the two young masters of Golden Roc Fort. The previously sworn enemies were even hosting banquets for each other, and many people had also witnessed it firsthand. There were no signs of each side wanting to start a fight against the other at all.

This perplexed everyone.

As such, the Special Envoy from the Central Plain, Lin Tao, summoned the Dragon King for a meeting to discover the reason behind his actions.

“I need to understand the motives of Golden Roc Fort,” Gu Shenwei explained. “I do not wish to start a massacre in Stone Kingdom, nor do I really wish to make peace with them.”

At least on the surface, Lin Tao expressed full confidence in Dragon King and very quickly, he introduced the latter to the Prince of Loulan Kingdom.

Being a youth of about 19 years of age, the Prince of Loulan Kingdom was handsome and spoke in a refined manner. During the meeting, he also showed just the right amount of respect to Dragon King.

The two of them did not talk about the Princess of Stone Kingdom but merely chatted idly and became acquainted with each other. After their initial meeting, Gu Shenwei felt that the candidate chosen by the Central Plain was quite an ideal choice as well – if he were the King of Stone Kingdom and there was no pressure from outside forces, he would definitely pick the Prince of Loulan Kingdom as the prince consort.

Finally, the consort selection process had officially begun.

The first round was family background. Each suitor had to submit his family tree for inspection to prove that he was of a noble bloodline from many generations ago.

Gu Shenwei had always claimed publicly that he was of the Yang clan, and even though the Yang clan had some bearing amongst the martial arts community of the Central Plain, its reputation in the Western Region was close to nothing. Luckily, Fang Wenshi had already prepared for this and compiled an acceptable family lineage for Dragon King.

Fang Wenshi did not state Dragon King’s origins of the Yang clan, rather, he listed down the history of the Great Snowmountain instead. The lineage started from generations mentioned in the legends up until Dragon King took over from the chiefs. His flamboyant writing proved that the people of the Great Snowmountain were descendants from the Emperor of the Central Plain from three dynasties before and they had made the long migration to the Great Snowmountain and took refuge there. He claimed that the title of “Chief of the Dragons and Leader of the Five Peaks” was bestowed upon Dragon King by the gods.

This description of the Dragon King’s genealogy caused many problems for Prime Minister Yang Dou. He dared not proclaim the contents as false, as it would be akin to challenging the Dragon King. Yet, he could not certify its authenticity as well since it would mean that Dragon King was of a more noble lineage than even the King of the Stone Kingdom himself.

In the end, Yang Dou came up with a solution. He would only pick the best out of all the family trees submitted and would not comment or rank the others.

Therefore, the Prince of the Kang Kingdom got what he wished for as his lineage was proclaimed the noblest out of all the suitors. The reason that Yang Dou gave the win to him, was that there were numerous intermarriages between both the Stone and Kang Kingdoms, therefore it was only natural for the prince to have more points in this aspect.

Along with that, the Stone Kingdom had to give some face to the Prince of the Kang Kingdom as they were part of the five kingdoms in Xiaoyao Lake as well.

Next up was a competition of literary talent. Each suitor had to submit an essay praising the beauty of the Princess.

The sons of the tribal chiefs were flummoxed by this and caused a huge commotion as they went looking for the Prime Minister. “I want to see the Princess. How can I write anything without even meeting her?” “It wouldn’t be a problem to write a few hundred words about her if I can see her just once.”

Yang Dou spent a lot of effort explaining to them what a competition of literary talent entailed. “Imagine how the Princess looked like, and if you really can’t, you may make it up. It’s not a competition about the accuracy of the description of her looks, but rather whose writing is more elegant,” he said.

“Elegant writing? Writings are all about the same, do you mean to say that characters from the language of the Central Plains would look better than ours?”

Thankfully, Gu Shenwei’s essay did not rank the last, nor did it become a laughing joke with the help of these people.

The Prince of Loulan Kingdom won first place in this round and everyone was convinced by the results except for, not surprisingly, the sons of the tribal chiefs.

The third round was about kung fu. Most of the candidates knew their place and forfeited the competition except for three sons of the tribal chiefs, who openly challenged the Dragon King to battle.

More than half of the city’s population came to watch the competition on the day itself. The first contestant wielded a huge saber, about tens of catties heavy, and just as he swung it over his head, four of his fingers were already sliced off by the Dragon King. He withdrew from the competition, howling loudly from the pain of defeat. Upon seeing this, the other two contestants immediately forfeited the competition.

It was supposed to be a duel that would go down in history for Stone Kingdom, yet it concluded in less than 15 minutes from start to end.

The fourth round of the competition was about wealth.

Prime Minister Yang Dou had prepared many huge wooden dippers at the entrance of the palace, and all the suitors had to do was to pour gold into them. The one who poured the most would be declared the winner of this round.

Unfortunately, the Dragon King was ranked last for this round. The gold that he brought was not enough to even cover the bottom of the dipper fully, and his results were even shabbier than the sons of the tribal chiefs.

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The wealth competition had overtaken the kung fu competition as the most closely watched round in the consort selection process.

The few sons of the tribal chiefs soon conceded defeat after the Dragon King had done so; even the richest of them could only fill half a dipper.

The competition waged most intensely amongst three people: Shangguan Fei, as well as the princes from the Kang and Loulan Kingdoms.

Carriage after carriage carrying gold was shipped from Golden Roc Fort, and as the competition continued into the evening of the second day, the amount of gold from Shangguan Fei had already filled up five dippers and weighed tens of thousands of catties heavy. He had finally defeated the other two worthy opponents and won a unanimous victory, gaining an important point for himself.

All of the gold was kept sealed. If the contestant became the prince consort, the gold that he presented during the competition would serve as a betrothal gift while everybody else’s gold would be returned as it was.

It was an arrangement that everyone agreed to readily, simply because it was common knowledge that the consort of the princess would become King of the Stone Kingdom sooner or later, therefore the ‘betrothal gift’ would eventually fall back into his hands.

There were four winners from the previous rounds of the competition: Prince of the Kang Kingdom with the best lineage, Prince of the Loulan Kingdom who possessed good literary talent, Dragon King who won in kungfu, and Shangguan Fei, who had the most wealth overall.

They were now left with the last segment of the competition – Character. This was also the hardest to judge out of the rest. Yang Dou came up with a splendid idea: All of the 11 suitors, along with the King of the Stone Kingdom himself, would have to cast a vote each for the person they deemed to have the best character amongst all the contestants. The person with the most votes would be declared the winner of the character contest.

His reason was very simple – the person who could win the approval from his competitors would definitely have the best character amongst them.

If the winner of this round was also one of the winners from the previous four rounds, then he would be declared the prince consort. If not, Yang Dou would have to come up with another competition until a suitor won two rounds of the event.

The brilliant part about the plan was that in the quest to become the prince consort, the four previous winners who had the best hope of becoming the prince consort would be forced to use all sorts of means to bribe the other seven competitors. In this way, almost everyone had something to gain from and Stone Kingdom would not have to spend a single tael of silver at all.

Yang Dou gave everyone three days to think about who they should vote for. As such, the open competition had turned into people pitting against each other in secret. The special envoys from Norland and the Central Plain no longer concealed their motives and personally visited each suitor as they attempted to entice or force the voters into voting for the candidate that they supported.

As an onlooker, Gu Shenwei gained the trust of both parties on the surface. As a result, he already knew about the vote count for each candidate after the end of the first day.

Surprisingly, both Shangguan Fei and the Prince of Loulan Kingdom each claimed to be equal with eight votes each; however, this didn’t add up because that would mean the total votes were more than the highest possible count of 12 votes if this was true.

Gu Shenwei knew that if this were the case, that means there were three other people, aside from himself, who double promised their votes to both Norland and the Central Plain.

The conflicting counts were soon discovered by both parties and therefore a new round of alliance-making began. This time, the lobbying became even bolder.

The Special Envoy from the Central Plain summoned Dragon King for another meeting and made an exception as he did not beat around the bush this time. He went straight to the point and said, “I suppose you should know how important the support of the Central Plain means to the Great Snowmountain, Dragon King.”

Gu Shenwei nodded.

“Does that mean I can place my complete faith in you, is it right to say that? You’ve been very close with Shangguan Fei lately, Dragon King. You wouldn’t change your mind at the very last minute and vote for him, would you?”

“The Great Snowmountain knows its place and would never go against our promise to the Central Plain. Furthermore, Golden Roc Fort will always be our enemy. I will never help Shangguan Fei,” lied Gu Shenwei, naturally because he knew that the Special Envoy from the Central Plains was lying as well.

Maid Lotus had been observing Lin Tao’s guard troops in secret and noticed that they were all kung fu experts with extraordinary skills who were purposely dressed as normal guards. They completely matched the list provided by Zhong Heng and they rarely ventured out, neither did they try to start fights with anyone, but there were visible traces of their skills reflected in their behavior. It would be extremely hard for commoners to notice it – but not for Maid Lotus.

These 10 kung fu experts were the assassins sent by Wei Song to murder Dragon King and Zhong Heng. Gu Shenwei knew very well that they both kept secrets from each other, but he pretended that he knew nothing about the assassins.

“Someone is trying to double-cross me,” said Lin Tao as he squinted and looked sullen, no longer as composed as before. “I will not show that person any mercy when I find out who he is,” he continued.

“It’s a crucial period for all of us and you shouldn’t overreact about it, Mr. Lin. Focus on finding out who these double-crossers are and try to persuade them.”

Lin Tao nodded in agreement; however, he was extremely cautious and still refused to give out the specific list of names.

In comparison, Shangguan Fei had much less trust in the Dragon King. He thought that he would be able to win the competition easily and did not expect to encounter such a huge obstacle in the process. He asked, “Be honest with me, Dragon King. You made a promise to both parties to vote for them, am I right?”

“No,” Gu Shenwei continued to lie. “Why should I vote for the Central Plain after they had cast us away? Furthermore, if the Prince of Loulan Kingdom was to become the prince consort, he would definitely accept the throne of the Stone Kingdom and become a willing puppet of the Central Plain. This does not bode well for Great Snowmountain.”

“Do you really have a way to prevent the King of the Stone Kingdom from abdicating his throne?” asked Shangguan Fei anxiously; he was confused by the Dragon King’s standing as well.

“Yes, but I would need your cooperation. You will be the prince consort and I will help the Stone Kingdom to maintain its political independence – this is our deal.”

“Yes, yes. Sigh, it’s not easy to be the prince consort as well. The Lord apparently said that everything had already been arranged, so why is it still turning out this way?”

The first person to be revealed as a swing voter was the Prince of the Kang Kingdom. He had spent a considerable amount of effort to lobby for himself but was enraged when he realized no one was going to support him. Therefore, he decided to benefit at the expense of both parties at play; by getting a large enough monetary reward if he was going to lose. Even when he was exposed, he was not embarrassed about it and announced publicly that he would vote for the party who offered more money.

The entire second day was spent in open struggles and covert maneuvering to get the support of the Prince of the Kang Kingdom. First, threats were issued followed by the increased number of bribes. The servants who were responsible for passing messages between the involved parties were as busy as ants scurrying around different locations.

As it drew closer to midnight, Norland and Golden Roc Fort won the decisive victory. Shangguan Fei won the vote of the Prince of the Kang Kingdom with a promise of an unknown monetary reward. He was ahead of the Prince of Loulan Kingdom by seven to eight votes.

Gu Shenwei felt that this was an unwise move on the Prince of the Kang Kingdom’s part as it would invite unrest to his kingdom, but his actions had also drawn everyone’s attention and this, in turn, brought Dragon King some valuable time to prepare for the final battle.