The Villain Princess survived the Imperial Riot

"You attacked our stronghold... No." Crete shook his head. "If you had already won a great victory, you wouldn't have come to me at this time."

"Because I'm curious, why exactly are you involved with the worms...Have you really surrendered to the worms?"

"Haha, how could someone like you understand the principle of self-sacrifice for justice—" Crete sneered contemptuously, "Worms are unimportant. Only weak-willed cowards would be led astray by deception."

"Like Gros Lier?"

"I admit that he is a chess piece. Not only him, but me too." Seeing that he could no longer hide it, Crete simply stopped trying to hide it.

"You should know what kind of disaster will be caused by using worms to plot this conspiracy." Hestia's voice was equally low.

"When the docile sheep, content with living from day to day, face the greedy wolf, how do you think we can make them stop harboring any hope of surrendering and begging for mercy?"

"So, you're willing to provoke the Empire into wielding the butcher's knife, and even spread a poison laced with worms, sacrificing millions of lives to achieve your goal?" Hestia clapped her hands in approval. "That's quite an ambitious idea, I see."

"Forced to wield a butcher's knife?! Stop pretending!" Krete, enraged by the princess's words, leaped from his chair. He strained against the massive restraints, his muscles straining and blood vessels bursting. But he still leaned halfway over the table, glaring fiercely at the princess, his eyes nearly bulging out. "You kill for power, you kill for pleasure, you do whatever it takes to maintain the supreme order. What else can't you do?"

"I must correct you. This princess upholds the humanitarian spirit and has always been committed to helping those in need. It's only because of hypocrites like you, under the guise of righteousness, that the Empire's mission of benefiting the world has been hampered." Hestia said righteously. "You have treated millions of Cloudtop City residents as expendable pawns. This is the true heinous crime."

"It's just a necessary sacrifice." Crete almost bit his gums to make them bleed, not knowing who he was trying to convince.

Chess pieces...

Hestia remembered Crete saying he was also a pawn. So, was he willingly a victim of the rebellion, in order to fully intensify the Frans' hatred of the Empire?

"It's a good thing to be so righteous. When the flags of rebellion are planted all over France, isn't it time for you secret cultivators to reap the power of rebellion?"

Hestia stopped talking nonsense. She walked to the stone wall on the right and reached out to press the runes on the wall. The surface of the extremely solid stone wall gradually faded and turned into a thin transparent glass, revealing the confused look of Gross opposite who was doubting his life.

"Well, you heard everything?" Hestia shrugged.

Crete immediately realized that he had been plotted against by the imperial princess.

Gross's breath was quickened. "Why, Crete? Didn't you tell me that what we are doing is awakening people's consciousness to resist oppression?"

"You can't figure this out. If you don't have the awareness of sacrifice, then you deserve to be a coward." Crete didn't argue, but watched his companion's face getting redder and redder.

"That's millions of lives. Look, this is your trusted companion. You've been fooled." Hestia, piercing the dissipating glass like bubbles, walked towards Gross and freed him from his restraints. "He wants not only your death, but also everything you know and know. What an arrogant and conceited executioner! Why don't you reconsider whether all the negative things you've witnessed in the empire are the work of these conspirators behind the scenes." As she spoke, Hestia handed a dagger to Gross and whispered, "You are a joke, dying for such a heinous bastard."

"Don't listen to him, Lil!" Crete suddenly realized something and said in shock, "She is bewitching you and stimulating the worm toxins remaining in your blood—"

"How dare you mention poison!"

Gross didn't know what the worm meant, but he understood from Crete's words that his trusted companion had deceived him, instigated him to become a murderer who harmed innocent lives, and used some kind of potion or toxin to influence his thoughts!

His blood boiled and he rushed straight towards the comrade-in-arms who he could rely on yesterday, and stabbed the dagger into his neck.

Blood gurgled out.

"You made me kill someone!"

"You're causing everyone to die with you!"

“We could have done more!”

Gross attacked like a madman, cutting one blow after another.

After a long while, until Crete stopped breathing, he stared at his bloody hands in horror, his lips trembling: "What did I do... I killed Crete... I killed someone..."

Unable to accept the reality, Gross raised the blade again, ready to pierce his own heart.

Hestia strode forward and kicked his wrist, dislocating it and sending the dagger flying into a dirty corner.

"Why don't you let me die!" Gross was in so much pain that he couldn't breathe.

"Because the Empire is the guardian of the law and represents fairness and justice," Hestia said solemnly, "Even if you are guilty, you should be judged by the law. No one can lynch you—not even yourself!"

"Law..." Gross was unfamiliar with the word.

"You still have a chance to redeem yourself," Hestia said bitterly. "I cannot bear to see such a brave and resolute young man of the Empire fall into the hands of evil. I admire your spirit of resistance, but your struggle is misguided. Think about it, the real murderer is still at large, even mingling within the Empire and the ranks of the Free Will."

"You're saying... that the cruel and merciless nobles are actually those conspirators, that worm... who are fanning the flames?"

"Indeed! You finally understand the Empire's good intentions!" Hestia praised. "If all the free-willed rebels were as wise as you, the Empire would have long since freed itself from the worms' deception and oppression and established a perfect nation where everyone is happy! And now, the opportunity to heal the division lies in your hands. Don't you want to witness the birth of a perfect nation?"

"I?"

Gross didn't understand, but after listening to the silver-haired girl's words, he suddenly felt that he had become extremely important and was the indispensable savior of the world.

"What should I do?" He didn't know who to trust, and this girl who believed in law and justice seemed to be the only one he could count on.

"I'll let you go back and persuade your fellow rebels to mend their ways." A cunning smile crossed Hestia's lips. "Remember, you are innocent. Your evil deeds were instigated by treacherous villains. When you return, countless people will question you and try to deceive you, but you..."

"I won't be deceived again!" Gross gritted his teeth and said, "I can't... fall on the same stone twice." He supported his weak body and knelt down to express his gratitude. "Thank you, miss. If it weren't for you, I would still be kept in the dark!"

"This is what a defender of justice should do."

Hestia couldn't hide her smile, and then asked Stein to clean up the mess in the prison and "try" several extremely vicious occult criminals.

After leaving the forest prison, Chloe couldn't help but ask the princess, "What are you thinking about recruiting the free-willed blade cultivators?"

After witnessing how the princess easily broke the friendship between the two rebels, Chloe decided not to allow the princess to have in-depth exchanges with the sisters of the Cocoon Sisterhood.

She was really worried that one day the princess would steal the sisterhood with a few words after a night of passion, causing large numbers of cocoon girls to abandon their sisters and mother.

Especially, the princess is really beautiful. Handsome and cool, with just the right amount of aloofness and arrogance, which many sisters like.

More importantly, the princess also has a pair of jade feet with golden proportions. Even she, the heir who wanders among many groups, can't help but take a few more glances.

"Surrender? Wrong. He has turned from darkness to light." Hestia chuckled. "I will reward him with money and a title, so that everyone will know the benefits of loyalty to the Empire."

"He's not serving the Supreme Empire..." Chloe pursed her lips and said softly, "He's serving his own conscience and ideals."

Chloe was not as easily fooled as the hot-blooded young man. Even if those anthropomorphic nobles, bureaucrats, wealthy businessmen, and powerful upper-class people really did evil because of the worms, it was their unscrupulous nature that gave birth to the worms, not the worms that bewitched them.

"No one would think so," Hestia said happily. "Glory, freedom, redemption. Thorns, war, revolution. Six Blades dominate the landscape of free will, yet there's no harmony between them. Gross Lier will be a signal, a medium for me to communicate with certain Blades."

"Wield a blade?" Chloe wasn't familiar with the concept of free will.

She wanted to ask further questions, but the princess remained silent, keeping her in suspense.

The best is the brilliant blade.

Hestia thought from the carriage.

The goal of most Blades is to turn the empire upside down and send the emperor and nobles to the guillotine, but the Glorious Blade is an exception.

He was a deeply hidden royalist who rebelled against the Empire solely to restore the Frantic Sun Dynasty. According to official history, it was Huihuang who, at a crucial moment, switched sides, established a secessionist nation in northern Fran, and set the stage for the free-will split, allowing the Iron Cross to breathe a sigh of relief and avoid complete annihilation in the turmoil.

……

PS:

I still hope that everyone will not support the book, post it in the middle, recommend it, etc. I don't have any of them, and I don't dare to ask the editor to read it. Collection is actually not important, it will eventually go up, but if there is no follow-up reading, then it is really gone.

Volume 29: Dreamers: . Beyond the Center

Niuti District, Little Magic Mouse Boutique Lane.

After the legendary Celestial Dragons shot the cruel and tyrannical Inquisitor, the atmosphere in Rat Alley did not ease at all. Instead, the surrounding gangs took advantage of the situation and dozens of murders broke out within a few days.

Ultimately, these gangs have to rely on the police station and the tax-farming consortium for their survival. The death of the prosecutor has affected the power structure of the Oxhoof District. The brief power vacuum has attracted countless greedy hyenas, all of whom have an invisible rope around their necks, and it is the bigwigs of the Governor's Office and the Inquiry Office who are wrestling behind the scenes.

As dusk deepened, towering chimneys on the coast spewed out clouds of dust and mist, while people huddled in narrow streets, struggling to survive. The houses were low, crushing people like ants in the cracks between the bricks. The sky was gray and hazy, and the sacred lighthouse, a symbol of the empire's great achievements, was particularly eye-catching.

The weather is extremely cold, and the price of wheat has increased by 40 percent in half a year, and is still climbing with no sign of stopping. Even if the workers who have a living work day and night, they may not be able to fill the stomachs of a family of three.

However, the Lilan family's house was full of fresh meat and canned jams, the stew pots in the house were filled with the aroma of fish, several women in their thirties were sitting by the fireplace chatting, a little girl of seven or eight was staring at the big pot on the fireplace meticulously, and a delicate blonde girl was stirring patiently with a spoon, pouring in carefully prepared spices at the right time.

"Mara, do you remember that the tax collector is going to raise taxes again? He said the empire is going to war again." A dog-eared demihuman woman spoke casually. "We don't know whether there will be a war or not, but if the taxes are raised further, I can still rely on my two small workshops to survive for a while, but everyone else can't hold on."

"Is that so..." Mrs. Lilan agreed softly, not knowing how to respond, so she just covered her mouth and coughed a few times.

Since the incident with the prosecutor, the Leland family has indeed undergone significant changes. The most obvious change is that more and more neighbors have come to visit with gifts. Even Mrs. Mason, a "big shot" in the community who would never have any interaction with her on a daily basis, has extended an olive branch of friendship to her and asked about her well-being from time to time.

Another woman, a woman with a mature appearance, cracked sunflower seeds and sighed, "Hey, do you know about the Gao Xier family on Street 7? The small shop owner who sells daily necessities went bankrupt the day before yesterday because of the tax. He made up his mind to sell off his remaining property, hoping to take his family to the New World to start a new life. Guess what happened?"

"What's wrong?"

"The immigration company is a hollow shell run by a bunch of goblins. They only own a few shabby fishing boats they rent. They're so shabby they can't even sail a few miles offshore, let alone cross the ocean..."

"Were they shipwrecked?"

"It would have been a shipwreck, all over," the young woman smiled, seemingly devoid of sympathy. "Those furry dwarfs had some kind of ticket promotion in the last few days before sailing, saying there were still plenty of seats available in the lower berth... You have no idea how many desperate people rushed to grab their tickets, and in the end..."

"What happened?" Mrs. Leland, who had been knitting quietly, looked up curiously. "Didn't you get a ticket?"

"We got it! How could we not? Those tickets are just a bunch of waste paper! Those goblins ran away long ago after getting the money!"

Immediately, the women in the house were filled with righteous indignation and took out the traditional skills of the goblin merchants passed down from generation to generation and whipped them one by one. The air was suddenly filled with a happy atmosphere.

Mrs. Leland did not smile, but was thinking about whether her eldest daughter was doing well at school.

During this period, there were news reports of riots every day in the newspapers, and even the upper city was not at peace. Mrs. Leland was very worried that Viola was dazzled by the prosperity of the upper class and ignored the potential dangers.

Mrs. Mason suddenly said, "Come to think of it, Mara, the tax collector hasn't come to you yet, has he?"

"Uh...it seems so." Mrs. Lilan nodded.

"Viola is the princess's friend. Who would dare to impose taxes on your family? Don't forget how the last censor died. I heard that the princess pointed a gun at his head and then—boom!"

"The princess has a lot of power, right?"

"More than just big? He's a Celestial Dragon! In front of a Celestial Dragon, even the Governor has no choice but to be humble!"

"In that case, Mara, could you please ask the princess to be flexible and exempt everyone from taxes this winter?"

"Ah?" Madam Li Lan looked flustered. She didn't know why this was brought up again. She said softly, "The princess and I are not related at all. How can my words have any effect..."

"Of course your words are useless, but isn't Viola a friend of the princess? Even the tax farmers don't dare to come to you."

"That Viola is always clumsy and doesn't know how to flatter others... If Her Highness feels offended..."

"You're worrying too much. Besides, why bother the princess with such a trivial matter? Tell Viola to come back and personally greet the tax collector. Who among us dares to disobey her orders? She has the princess standing behind her!"

"Huh? But this..."

"Mara, you and your family are all suffering, but the people in our community are still struggling! Do you want to see your neighbors collapse in front of you, one by one, from hunger and cold, overwhelmed by the burden?"

"...Then, then me."

Mrs. Lilan looked around anxiously, hoping to find someone to help her make a decision, but the only person she saw was Domis.