Chapter 576: The Beginning

“I’m being framed! I’m being framed!”

“You bastards, do you know who I am? I’m the son of a marquis house! You dare treat me like this—watch it, I’ll kill you!”

“Let go of me, waah... I didn’t take part in any of that, I didn’t...”

The Dion marquis’s estate was in total chaos now, with none of its former elegance and quiet. Sharp and several of the Dion sons were being roughly dragged onto carriages by royal knights, curses and shouting nonstop.

Sharp still looked fairly calm and didn’t struggle much, but his useless younger brothers were completely panicked—greasy fat trembling as they bawled and cried, all while threatening and hurling abuse at the knights around them.

Outside the estate, the area had been completely cleared—no one was allowed to watch in name, but in an unnoticed corner, beneath an ordinary umbrella, two figures still stood shoulder to shoulder, silently watching.

“They move fast. They issued the arrest order already?”

“That’s thanks to Ariel. She dug up a huge amount of dirt on the Dion family in no time—embezzlement of private assets, smuggling, illegal drug trafficking, harm to civilians. Even if we still haven’t found proof of an attempt on the Crown Prince, this is already enough to arrest them first.”

“Just like Ariel.”

Muen rubbed his chin, looking a little smug as he said, “I knew she was the perfect fit for something like this.”

“Oh?”

Celicia shot him a sidelong glance. “You make it sound like you know Ariel very well.”

“Do I?” Muen played dumb with practiced ease.

“Heh.”

Celicia didn’t say anything more. She also didn’t linger on the scene in front of her—she turned and left immediately.

Muen quickly followed.

“Not watching anymore?”

“Like you said, Ariel is here. There’s no need to keep watching.”

“True. But with what’s been found so far, is it enough to make the Dion family disappear completely?”

“Hard.”

Celicia said, “Those sons of Old Marquis Dion probably won’t escape death, because the things I just listed were done by them. But Sharp himself is very clean so far. I doubt he’d personally get his hands into that kind of business—it’ll take deep digging.”

“Is that so?”

While they chatted, Muen turned his head to look.

Sharp, being bound and escorted toward the carriage, seemed to sense something and suddenly looked this way.

“Singlehood Grudge” had erased their presence, so Muen didn’t know whether Sharp truly felt something at this moment or if it was just coincidence, but in that instant, Muen saw hatred and rage buried in Sharp’s eyes—no despair.

“Looks like he hasn’t given up.”

“Of course. As long as the Inner Council hasn’t fallen and the Crown Prince hasn’t fallen, he’ll still have hope. So prying anything out of his mouth will also be very difficult. He’s not like those brothers of his—someone Old Marquis Dion raised as an heir isn’t going to be some useless piece of junk.”

“I can personally vouch for that.”

Muen rubbed his chest, which still seemed to ache faintly, and nodded seriously.

Even though he really had escaped from beast-transformed Sharp back then, the process could be called embarrassing to the extreme. The last time someone made him that embarrassed... was the last time.

“At least this time, the Inner Council took a major hit.”

Using Old Marquis Dion’s corpse as the blade to slice open that thin film above the darkness, the Dion family’s ugliness was now laid out in the open. As long as Ariel kept digging deeper, sooner or later she would dig out the Inner Council behind it.

Next, whether they cut off their tail to survive or use other moves, they would inevitably pay a huge price.

It looked like Muen had finally gotten revenge for how he’d been toyed with before.

But...

“Don’t let your guard down. The Inner Council isn’t as simple as we think. .”

Celicia suddenly said.

“Oh?”

Muen raised an eyebrow. “Even a hit this brutal can’t severely wound the Inner Council?”

“Of course it can, but...”

Celicia’s tone shifted as she looked at Muen and asked, “Do you know why the emperors of every generation trusted the Campbell family so much?”

“Because...”

Muen blinked, then answered without thinking at all: “Because you don’t have many kids?”

It wasn’t some profound question.

For hundreds of years, the Campbell family had almost always been one line per generation—never flourishing, as if cursed by something even more vicious than the royal family’s curse, doomed to never prosper.

But that was both a pitiful flaw and, in a way, also an advantage.

“Because there are so few descendants, it’s hard for the Campbell family to form overly tight ties with other great noble houses. Any emperor, when facing a family with status and power yet unable to truly grow into something unshakable, would find it hard to become suspicious, right?”

“Exactly. The Duke of Campbell is, in name, the leader of the royalist faction as a major power, but in reality that faction depends on the Emperor’s authority. The Duke of Campbell is only the leader, not the founder—and throughout history, most emperors have liked a ‘lonely high-status figure’ like the Duke of Campbell.”

Celicia spoke very bluntly, as if she didn’t care at all that the one listening was the Duke of Campbell’s only son.

“And the opposite of that is the Inner Council we’re talking about.”

“It is a combined body of many ancient nobles, countless roots hidden within the Empire. In these thousand years of coexisting with the Empire, through marriage, bloodlines, master-disciple ties, and利益—through every possible method—the nobles of the Inner Council kept extending their roots, stretching their tentacles into every corner of the Empire and binding themselves tightly to it. Even though they suffered Father’s constant suppression, what can be suppressed is always only what’s on the surface.”

Celicia reached out and pointed at a tree nearby, one that looked like it had snapped during the earlier unrest.

“Roots hidden deep are hard to suppress, because the tree’s root system is too vast. We don’t know which roots are good and which roots are bad. That’s the real trouble.”

“...True.”

Looking at the tangled roots buried deep underground, Muen suddenly crouched down.

“In that case, there should be something even more troublesome, right?”

“Yes.”

Celicia crouched as well, extending her fair, jade-like ~Nоvеl𝕚ght~ hand to stroke the tender new sprout that had grown from the broken stump.

“Now the tree has fallen, and those bad roots have gained a sprout that can let them grow even stronger...”

“So, in order not to be dug up by the roots—and even more, in order to let this sprout replace the tree—those bad roots will start to act... without regard for anything.”

A white dove landed.

Celicia took the delivered letter and skimmed it quickly.

Then she closed her eyes and let out a soft sigh, as if unsurprised at all.

“As expected... it’s begun, hasn’t it?”

...

...

“Sharp has already been locked up.”

The robin landed on the window ledge.

“Should we send someone to take care of him?”

“No.”

Albert paced the room with his hands behind his back, not even lifting his head. “He isn’t that fragile. Let him eat a bit of hardship—consider it the price for his mistake.”

“The chairman really is a strict father.”

The robin sighed, flapped its wings, and flew onto Albert’s shoulder, its voice dropping much lower.

“News from over there—the preparations are complete.”

“Is that so?”

Albert’s eyes, which had looked a little restless just moments ago, flashed with a sharp light, as if he’d been waiting for exactly those words.

“Good!”

Outside the window, the night was still heavy and deep, as if all the filth and ugliness in the world belonged in places the sunlight couldn’t reach.

Albert wore a splendid formal outfit, gold patterns edging the fabric, perfectly highlighting the noble identity of the Crown Prince. He walked out with steady steps, no longer weak or unsteady like before.

A maid with a blank expression followed behind him. The robin spread its wings again and vanished into the night.

Soon, Albert crossed an unguarded corridor and once again arrived before that door guarded by two statue-like knights.

“Move aside. I want to see... Aldrich.”