An emperor wasn’t an ordinary person, after all. In many instances, he could not act on his own interests.

With his strength, he was considered the number one cultivator in the world. This, paired with the authority that he wielded as emperor, should have made it easy for him to eliminate the Chu clan and claim their salt and iron resources for himself. However, he still chose to dispatch Sang Hong, who tried to employ all sorts of schemes to cause the Chu clan to collapse from the inside. The emperor needed the other clans to antagonize the Chu clan precisely because he required a justifiable reason.

Such a reason would be enough to convince the masses of his cause, even though the intelligent people within the court would still realize what was going on. These were the conventional rules of the court.

Without this, everyone would begin to question his actions. Once that...