Yang Qing shook his head as he regained control of his wandering thoughts to focus back on the information surrounding the Deer Mountain Kingdom, more specifically their founders.

As he read about it, Yang Qing couldn't help but raise his brows in surprise when he read about them. The Zhou family had roots extending back over 100,000 years though they were not exactly powerful with their most powerful member being the clan leader who appeared about 50,000 years ago and later became the first king of the Deer Mountain Kingdom.

What surprised Yang Qing wasn't that the Zhou family existed so far back, but it was more about the background of the Zhang family. Unlike the Zhou family, it wasn't large, comprising only of one person, Zhang Wei. Zhang Wei had been a retainer of the Zhou family for countless years and followed the Zhou family when they made their expedition into the Deer Mountain Range.

Zhang Wei had been a gifted genius of the sword whom the father of the first king of the Deer Mountain Kingdom presumably took in. The clan did everything to nurture him including sending him to the Jade Leaf Dao Academy, and the One Thousand Battle Hall Pavilion, which helped extract all his latent potential, that he became one of the youngest palace realm experts at the time, boosting the overall strength of the Zhou clan.When it came to the Shi clan, Yang Qing paid extra attention to them. It wasn't that they had done anything to warrant suspicion over all the rest, but when it came to influence, he felt the Shi family had a greater influence outside of the Deer Mountain Kingdom even more so than the ruling Zhou family itself, owing to their alchemy and herbology background.

They had countless connections built both within and outside of the kingdom because of it. The jade slip he had been given was mindful enough to list all the organizations that they had some relationship with, with the list reaching almost 300 names, with 18 of those names belonging to prominent rank 3 organizations. Inside the kingdom, they were also held in high esteem by a lot of the small aristocratic families that owed them a favor for services rendered.

They had relationships all over, and when dating back to the founders of the kingdom, the Shi family leader from back then had a deep friendship with the clan leader of the Zhou family, though their relationship was more transactional as the land which the Zhou family sat on was lush with all manner of spiritual plants. Through it, they managed to strike a long-standing relationship with the Shi Clan that spanned almost 20,000 years.

The Shi family didn't only just have a relationship with the Zhou family, amongst the six founding families they had a relationship with the Chu family also. The Chu family had been small but was well-established because of their inherited physique the gold fire salamander physique which gave them great aptitude and control of the fire element which they used to build themselves up as a smithing family.

Just like the Zhou family, the Shi family had a deep working relationship with the Chu family that spanned thousands and thousands of years. The Shi family had provided financial support and connections to the Chu family as they were starting up which eased their growth and development. Because of the help provided, when the Shi family decided to venture into the Deer Mountain Range, the Chu family joined them.

Though the relationship between the two families seemed more transactional, similar to the one the Shi family had with the Zhou family, the information provided suggested there was a difference in the relationship.Thanks to the thorough work done, the jade slip contained even information on the marriages that happened within the six ruling families, and from it, Yang Qing noticed that between the Shi family and the Chu family, there were a lot of intermarriages, but when it came to the Shi family and the Zhou family, in the 38,000 years worth of history between the two, the number of intermarriages between the two had not numbered more than five in that period, whereas between them and the Chu family, it easily reached over 100.

"Could be the royal family and the Shi family have always been wary of each other... or... Chu family is more of a subordinate to the Shi family hence the interrelationship or they have a deep bond of trust that extends beyond just transactional cooperation...

Mmh, but they didn't seem that way when I visited them.." murmured Yang Qing as he recalled his interaction with the five family heads.

Though they seemed cordial, Yang Qing could feel there was a distance and wariness among them. Then again it could all have been a farce meant to mislead both him and each other. Mind games was the common staple food of most noble families, especially when their foundations and strengths were similar to one another.

After learning about the Zhang family and their founder being a retainer of the Zhou family, out of curiosity Yang Qing decided to look at their marriage history expecting them to have several intermarriages with the Zhou clan, only to find there was only one which was Zhang Quifen who was married to the present king. Before that, the Zhang family had never married anyone from the royal family, or any of the other families.

"That is strange... Considering their relationship, I would have expected there to be more, or do they still see themselves as retainers of the Zhou family which might make it inappropriate for them to marry anyone from there, but then again if that's the case, why did they agree to it?

Was it to show their stance because of the pressure mounting on the royal family, or could it have been for another reason?"

Yang Qing mulled over it for a few seconds before he decided to read through the rest of the report. Getting into the mindset of factions was something that he wasn't good at, hence why he joined the Order in the first place.

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