The Sinners' Queen

The flow of time in Mao's realm was different from the surface world's. A month within the latter translated to three months in the Xia Empire, otherwise, the system would have not told Sofony that the real history of the empire spanned several hundred years. It would have been very odd considering the fact that Mao himself, the founder, was only a little over a hundred years old.

It had been two weeks on the surface and a month and a half since both Sofony and Steffy disappeared. 

In the Xia Empire's Violet Cloud City, Sofony was in the middle of a conversation with one of her high-ranking followers, a royal princess from a kingdom outside of the Xia Empire. Her lovely figure was seated behind a patterned screen, preventing the other party from seeing her face. She had declared to everyone that she would no longer show her face until the new dynasty arose. 

Since ancient times, gods had always been mysterious beings. Sofony was no god, but since she was playing the part, she had to emulate them. This way, the people around her would become more conscious of the fact that her status was different from them.

Veneration comes from the idea that something or someone was completely godly and in a different league than normal, something that could not be reached or touched. 

The mansion had already been transformed into a palace that looked grand and imposing inside out, with an aura that seemed to say that it was housing someone incredible. 

The whole fifth floor was where Sofony resided. The room was richly decorated, although since it was divided into areas, there were more luxury items placed on Sofony's side. A delightful fragrance filled the place, calming the hearts, and clearing the mind. There were barely noises that could get into the room from the outside due to the superb soundproofing. 

The princess who visited was still respectfully kneeling, with her porcelain-like forehead touching the floor. This was even though the conversation had already gone on for several minutes. 

They were talking about the sudden conflict amongst princes of the kingdom. The internal fight for the chance to represent the 'Goddess' Sofia in challenging the Mao Imperial Clan. 

Sofony sat elegantly with her legs crossed behind the screen. A beautiful peach blossom dress wrapped around her body, a fur coat hung on her shoulder. It had been several weeks since she began following the fashion trend of this world, which was that of a 1600th century C Empire. 

She lifted her cup of tea and briefly closed her eyes as she thought about the matter put forward by the princess. 

"The internal conflict caused by ambition... It's indeed a problem," suddenly said Sofony. 

On the other side, the princess' face turned paler and her voice was tinged with panic as she replied, "Your Grace, this one asks for forgiveness for letting such disgraceful news reached your ears."

Sofony shook her head, her shadowy figure on the screen moving accordingly. 

"No. It's I who specified for you ladies to report every notable thing in your territory," replied the 'Goddess' slowly. 

Afterward, she went quiet.

Several weeks ago, the woman had gathered the people from neighboring kingdoms to declare her ambition to replace the Xia Empire. The first task she gave them, apart from the serious stuff that would hasten the spreading of words about the new religion, was this. To have the best princesses or noble ladies of every kingdom be sent to her palace.

Sofony appointed the ladies as her messengers. She did not accept men as her messenger since she had already resolved herself to work on the shadows. As it would be the princes and kings who would fight in the front line, competing with each other on a race to topple down the Xia Empire's imperial clan, she decided it would be no good to mingle anymore with them. At least, not directly. 

This was the reason the various princesses became her envoys.

Of course, she had considered the fact that a messenger had to be someone who could ride horses and travel far. But when she thought about it, messengers, these princesses, were not truly the ones who had to be fast on traveling, it could be left to their subordinates. The actual rule was that messengers would be the only people from their kingdoms allowed to have audiences with her. This would be effective until the uprising ended. In other words, the next time she would meet people not a member of her temple or a messenger would be when a new Emperor was crowned.

Sofony laughed to herself as she recalled everything she said to rile up the ambitions of those princes and generals. The Mandate of Heaven. She didn't think that thing could actually fool them. Or perhaps, she was just underestimating the brainwashing that had been done to the citizen by Leader Mao? 

"The Mandate is indeed fading from the grasp of the Mao Imperial Clan. However, to whom it would be passed to, it would depend on who would contribute the most in the upcoming battle. In making those contributions, luck would definitely play a part, but it would still largely depend on wits and strength." 

Her eyes lifted up, gaze seemed to be piercing into the cloud silk screen before her. Her hypnotic voice then rang once again.

"Princess Hui, remind your brothers that when the time comes, contribution doesn't solely mean how many enemies have been cut down."

"Yes!" The reply came immediately. The voice of the princess was ever respectful and humble.

Sofony continued. "I am sure your royal brothers and the other kings and princes of the other nations are aware of this. However, there are many factors in warfare. It's not all about the soldiers."

"Where do you see an army that is not cohesive and has members constantly fighting with each other? Of course, there has to be a general to subdue them, and I know this position is what the princes and kings were fighting for."

"But if we're going to talk about merits and contributions, are soldiers all there in an army? What about logistics? Key information? Civilians' support? And when one dragged down everyone else because of greed and envy, what contributions would there be to speak of?" 

The princess who was still prostrating before the holy image that could be barely made out through the silk curtain blinked her eyes. She fell into contemplation. 

A few seconds later, the woman regained her senses and after thanking Sofony for her words, she stood up and bowed. "This small one thanks Your Grace sincerely. I've been enlightened. Please allow me to relay this to my kingdom and my fellow messengers now so the infighting would stop." 

"Hmm." Sofony hummed, placing the porcelain teacup down the table. "You may go."

Sofony stood up from her fancy throne and walked towards the window. Her sight lied on the horizon ahead, on the line where the orangish sky and the lake met. She leaned her shoulder and part of her back on the windowsill and crossed her arms above her c.h.e.s.t. 

"What a pain." A frown surfaced on her immaculate features. 

"It's me who spoke about merits and contributions. Yet in reality, I don't care about those. How tasteless for me to pull out such nonsense from stupid fiction works."

Sofony thought for a moment and then decided to check out the territories outside the Xia Empire. Perhaps, she truly needed to inspect the kingdoms to see how the preparations were going since things here were proceeding without a problem. The preaching of the new faith could be left to her subordinates as the doctrine and holy texts had been finished more than a week ago. 

'Let's see. The Wa State should be in that direction?' Wearing her cloak, Sofony telepathically informed Governor Su that she would not be around for some time. After that, she started the teleportation, which was the first time she did after arriving in this world. 

...

...

She could not stay in one place and not be without things to do. Otherwise, she would lose her mind from missing Gio and the others who were left in the Surface Layer. 

'I must work hard so I can return as soon as I can.' It had been her mantra since she declared to destroy Mao's empire from within. 

The Kingdom of Jin only had around a hundred thousand citizens, but impressively, about half were soldiers. It was ruled by a former clan of generals of Wa State so it was easy to guess what happened between the two kingdoms before. Given their history, it was only because of the threat of the colossal Xia Empire that the two kingdoms had yet to battle it out to death. 

Sofony walked down the street curiously, following the stream of people heading towards the palace. Considering her beauty and charisma that no cloak would be able to hide, it was nothing short of a miracle that nobody had noticed her yet. But of course, it would be an entirely different matter if she was invisible. It was because of that she could look around uninterrupted, marveling at the ancientness of the kingdom that was quite hard to not feel gawk at due to the fact that the real history of this world was so short. 

'There are about ten kingdoms working together with me and when tallied their population together, there are about three million citizens.'

'This Kingdom of Jin is one of the smallest ones.'

'I guess the capital city only appeared so boisterous and vibrant because they gathered most of the citizens here.'

Sofony looked up and subconsciously murmured, "Mao is truly an egotistic monster."

She made this conclusion upon remembering the actual population in this world. The ones he had abducted must have been split into two groups, one for experimentation, the other for the purpose of injecting new people into this realm.

'He must have been having fun ruling over these people and watching them stage all sorts of things.' Disdain briefly appeared on her countenance before she cleared her thoughts and went back to sightseeing.

Like what she did yesterday, the woman took in the fresh sight all around the city before visiting the palaces of the ruling clans. She checked the residences of the royals and high nobles the most. One time, she got intrigued by a youthful prince who seemed to be not favored by the king as she had not seen him before. 

The person had a large ambition and was secretly in contact with more than half of the generals and ministers, easily defeating the crown prince in terms of influence and resources. Yet to her surprise, the handsome, exotic-looking prince, whose age was around the late teens and early twenties, also had high accomplishments in martial arts. If she were to evaluate the guy's overall strength, it should be at the level of Sofia when she was not using any skills or items gotten from the system. 

'A candidate.' Sofony's eyes were full of approval, her lips curling up. 

She could not help but speak to the person. "I couldn't believe the sickish prince who acted small and foolish before his father is this strong in secret."

"Who!?" An alarm cry escaped out of Prince Rong's mouth, his pupils dilating as he roamed them around for the intruder. He stopped practicing and turned around with his spear firmly in hand. The man's body was in a full state of alert, ready to cut down whoever he would see.

Unfortunately, there was nobody in sight even after he swept his gaze around a couple of times. He became tenser. "Show yourself!"

Then a reply came, sounding a bit teasing. "Boy, are you qualified?" It was followed by sweet laughter that suggested the voice was either from a witch or a beautiful woman. 

The prince sported a grim face. He felt insulted. But since the other was hidden, yet seemed so close to him, speaking right to his ears, he had formulated a guess in his mind about the identity of the other. "A magician?"

"Oh?" Sofony felt intrigued. It had been weeks since she arrived but it was her first time hearing that term. However, it was not hard for her to deduce that the other was referring to system hosts and wielders of system items. 

She laughed and said, "Prince Rong. I feel quite offended for being mistaken for those beings." 

"Then what are you?" The prince became more vigilant as the other party knew his name and seemed to be very powerful. 

"Like what I said, you're not qualified to know. But I'm a magnanimous person and am willing to leave a hint." Sofony was in front of the man. She took out something from her inventory and materialize it before the prince. The latter instinctively caught it, as if he was influenced by something unseen to freed one hand from the spear just to accomplish that. 

A moment later, when he finished inspecting what he had grabbed in the air, a low gasp came from him, his eyes widening in surprise. 

Sofony tilted her head and smiled, still invisible. "It's just a negligible thing. But who knows? Maybe in the future, it can help you do something great."

The prince was left in the courtyard at a loss about what had just happened. He had now an inkling who the person was, yet when she came to his senses, the woman had already left, her presence nowhere to be found.

Right. Sofony had already teleported away. Due to that recent encounter, an idea to pass her time meaningfully popped up in her mind. It was now her goal to search for talented people to bestow some items from the system with, like the face-changer he had just handed over to the prince.

Several minutes later, she barged into a royal gathering in one of the desert kingdoms. The one that caught her eye this time was a valiant and intelligent-looking princess.

She was already pondering what item to give the other woman when a series of notifications suddenly echoed within her mind. 

<System Announcement!!!!>

<System Announcement!!!>

<System Announcement!!!>

The first few ones told about the extremely dire straits of one of her allies, the exact name not mentioned. As for the last one, it left her in disbelief despite it being repeated three times.

<System: Host 137! Chris Meyer, Half-Host 98, has been captured by a high-ranker. The alliance has been officially terminated!>