The SilverGold DragonTiger Empire used to have four capitals: two in the east, one in the center, and one in the west. The emperor would travel between them every few years, spending time in all parts of the country to maintain unity. After all, the land was vast; if he always lived in one place, the people who were far away might feel abandoned.
After the cultivators' invasion started, however, the emperor remained in the furthest eastern capital, Golden Dragon City. The most famous feature of Golden Dragon City was the dragon statue placed above the north city gate.
The statue was huge, over 20 meters tall, and covered with a layer of gold. It shone with a blinding light every time the sun shone upon it. It was made of hundreds of tons of pure gold, worth a year's extraction from all the empire's gold mines.
The imperial palace's walls were also coated with pure gold; it can be said that Golden Dragon City had the highest concentration of gold among all cities worldwide.
The city had a population of about 1 million; after all, only the rich could live inside it. However, if one counted all the suburbs and towns surrounding Golden Dragon City, the population would balloon to over 10 million.
One might want to live in the city for many reasons. The city was extremely safe for pedestrians, and although it was enormous, it was not dense. The sewers were built masterfully, so the city was immune to diseases and illnesses. There were many clean green spaces in the city. The over 10 million people outside were de facto slaves to the city, working to provide for the rich residents and maintain their lifestyle.
Another factor was that influential people, even the emperor, regularly walked the city's streets. If one was lucky, one could meet them and even exchange words with the most powerful people in the world.
For these reasons, even being allowed to work as a servant in the city was extremely difficult. Only nobles were allowed to live there by right. If anyone else wanted to live there, they had to pay one gold coin every week in addition to the cost of renting a house, food, etc.
Of course, one gold coin was nothing for rich merchants, but for any ordinary person, it was more than a month's income.
Occasionally, rich people held grand exams to hire servants. Thousands participated in them, begging and struggling to be chosen as servants or even as slaves of a rich person who lived in the city.
Beautiful women might have a chance of being picked by rich young masters, but their only problem was that they could not meet any if they could not enter the city.
For this reason, there was a business called "Love Gambling."
Basically, love gamblers would go to the countryside and surrounding cities, choose beautiful, and preferably virgin, girls, and bring them to the city. Anyone who did not have a criminal background could stay in the city if they paid one gold coin. Love gamblers paid the entrance fee and set up a kind of exhibition in the city.
Young nobles visited the exhibition and picked girls they liked as servants, lovers, mistresses, and, in rare cases, wives. Marriage was not limited; nobles could marry commoners without issue.
Once a girl was chosen, the love gambler who brought her to the city would receive at least dozens of gold coins, possibly hundreds, depending on the generosity of the young master in question. If none of the girls they brought were picked, however, they would lose money, as they would be responsible for the entrance fee and the cost of accommodation for the girls. This is why it was called gambling. There were those who got rich and those who lost all their money.
There was also a market for handsome men, though it was noticeably less hot than the market for beautiful women. There was even an underground market for children. The empire's laws prohibited anyone below ten from marrying, but who would enforce these laws on high-ranking nobles? Nobody cared enough to do so; therefore, the underground market was widely available to anyone with such desires.
Overall, the city was a haven for the rich and a land of opportunity for those intending to climb the social ladder. For anyone else, it was basically hell. One must not be deceived by appearances; there were many twisted nobles in the city. It was not rare for commoner girls who became mistresses of the rich to end up dead in some ditch. Servants could lose their lives over one honest mistake, not to mention those 'nobles' with perverted thoughts about children. The city was shining on the surface but filled with filth beneath the skin.
...
"How dare they?" The emperor threw the golden cup in his hand to the ground, spilling the fine wine on the precious carpet.
"Your Majesty, please punish us for our incompetence!" The ministers all bowed.
"They beat our emissaries, our emissaries! Do you understand? Our emissaries! How long should we tolerate them?" said the emperor with red eyes.
"Your Majesty, Master Dimitri has reached the fourth stage of core formation! We should take revenge. I don't think they can resist us if we use our army of Energy Gathering cultivators in conjunction with Core Formation cultivators and our mortal armies!" The Minister of War, himself an energy-gathering cultivator, said.
"Your Majesty, please calm down! Their refusal to even accept our surrender shows their confidence! We must not act rashly. Before the development of the Core Formation chapter of our SilverGold cultivation technique, we would have no chance against them," said the Minister of Interior.
The ministers debated among themselves, ignoring the emperor, who was gritting his teeth.
"Shut up, everyone! Get out!" the emperor ordered.
"But, Your Majesty, what should our response be? We haven't decided yet!" said the Minister of War, while the Minister of the Interior nodded in agreement.
"Get out! I will inform you of my decision when it's ready!" the emperor said.
The ministers bowed and left; they knew there was no point in talking further.
After the room cleared, the emperor sighed and said, "Come out, Natasha!"
A girl with silver hair, facial features considered beautiful by most, a fit and feminine body, and masterfully tailored clothes came out from behind a curtain.
"Boris!" Natasha called.
The emperor had taken Boris as his personal name; his legal name was nearly a page long, so it was too much of a bother for his loved ones to use. Instead, he chose Boris.
"Natasha, what should I do? They refused our surrender," he said as he stood up from his throne.
Natasha stepped forward, and the two embraced.
"Boris, please don't be upset," said Natasha.
She was originally the daughter of a farmer; she was brought to the city by a love gambler. The emperor stumbled upon her on the way and fell in love immediately. He loved her so much that he divorced the queen and married her as his first and only woman.
The ruler of the world, the emperor of the SilverGold DragonTiger Empire, looked so big and majestic, but in fact, he was just another human.
His childhood was terrible; his mother treated him like a tool for power, and his father barely visited him every few years. He had many brothers and sisters, most of whom wanted to kill him to have a chance at the throne.
His mother was poisoned when he was eight; the emperor investigated and found his favorite concubine responsible. To stabilize the empire and the throne, he ordered the death of his concubine along with all her children and commanded everyone to watch as they were beheaded.
The children of the emperor's concubines were also his children, but he didn't care about killing his blood. In any case, he had over 1,000 children, so who cared if a few died? Boris was forced to watch as executioners beheaded his small brothers and sisters. After that day, he was unable to sleep well for years, plagued by nightmares of being killed by his father.
His father continued killing his male sidelining over the years, removing his competent rivals and clearing the way for him to sit comfortably on the throne.
After ascending to the throne, Boris maintained a fearsome exterior to prevent the ministers from taking advantage of him, but in his heart, he was terrified of everything. He was like a balloon that could explode with one needle poke. He had no one close to him, no trusted people, no father or mother, no relative he could truly trust. Everyone spoke well to him only because they wanted to take advantage of him. Even though he was the emperor, he was truly miserable.
That was until he met Natasha. That day, he finally found his anchor, someone he could trust and rely on, someone who loved him and someone he loved. Of course, that was what Boris thought. As for what Natasha thought, who knows?
Before Natasha, he was a terrified mouse, an inflated balloon. But after he saw her, he finally put away his fears. Still, even though his mentality improved, the situation on the ground deteriorated; the cultivators conquered the western lands, and the territory controlled by the empire shrank.
"Boris, my dear, we should be patient. I agree with the Minister of the Interior. Now that they have rejected our emissaries, we have no choice but to put all our hopes into developing the SilverGold cultivation technique," said Natasha.
Hearing this, Boris didn't let go of Natasha; he kept hugging her.
"Natasha, let's just run away! I hate this palace!" said the emperor. He hated the palace and the empire; this place contained terrifying childhood memories. For example, it was from this same throne that his father ordered the execution of his siblings.
Boris clearly didn't think deeply about escaping because there was nowhere to run.
Natasha said, "We shouldn't abandon the empire; we can do it, trust me!" She tapped his back as if he were a child.
The emperor was spiritually damaged in his childhood, so it was natural for him to struggle in adulthood. Natasha was a commoner, so she at least had a better childhood. She was also mentally stronger, normally the anchor rather than the ship.
After a few minutes, the emperor finally calmed down and accepted all her suggestions.