All of Egypt's nobles and high officials had been assassinated overnight. Such a major event spread throughout Memphis and soon began to travel even farther.
At first, the officials had thought of sealing off the news, but that was impossible.
If only one or two people had been murdered, it might have been manageable.
But now, every top-ranking noble in Egypt had been killed. An incident of this scale could never be successfully concealed.
Thus, the spread of the news was simply allowed to happen.
All the highest-ranking nobles in Egypt dying in their homes in a single night was something that had never occurred before.
For the Egyptian people, it was like a fantasy come true. Soon, rumors spread everywhere.
Some said that because of Egypt's current chaos, the deaths of these nobles were a warning from the gods to the Pharaoh.
Some said that certain recent policies of these nobles had angered a particular deity, and their deaths were divine punishment.
There were even rumors claiming that the death of Meleran II had not been an accident at all, but a murder, and that the deaths of these people were the revenge of the Pharaoh's guardian god, Horus.
And so on, and so forth.
Among the people, the rumors were extremely noisy and widespread, but the most popular one was the claim that Meleran II had been murdered and that Horus had taken revenge.
Originally, although Egypt's upper echelon knew the true cause of Meleran II's death, they had concealed the truth from the public.
The official statement was that Meleran II had died of old age.
After all, although these high officials dared to assassinate the Pharaoh, they did not dare let the common people know the truth.
In the minds of those ignorant masses, the Pharaoh was the descendant of the gods, a divine being walking the earth.
They could die of old age or by various causes, but they absolutely could not be killed by others, especially not by these ministers.
Otherwise, the people's hatred would fall only upon them.
However, now, this truth that had been buried for years had somehow begun to spread, and very quickly many people came to believe it.
If this had happened in the past, when those nobles were still alive, they would naturally have been alarmed and tried to suppress the rumors.
But now, the very people at the center of those rumors were all dead. Memphis was in chaos due to the sudden power vacuum. Who was left to stop the spread of rumors?
In fact, the source of these rumors was Alaric.
This was also part of his plan with Nitocris.
This was meant to help Nitocris regain control of Egypt after completing the assassinations, preventing the subordinates and supporters of those nobles from taking revenge on the Pharaoh or once again turning the Pharaoh into a puppet.
One had to understand that assassinating the previous Pharaoh, supporting a new one, and making that Pharaoh a puppet was not something that could be achieved by just one or two people, or even all the top nobles acting alone.
To accomplish such a great act that overturned Egypt's traditions, these nobles, despite their power, still needed a group of followers to support them, promote their cause, and handle the details of many plans.
For a long time, three forces had ruled Egypt: the Pharaoh, the ministers, and the priests. They represented royal authority, administrative authority, and divine authority.
Among them, because the Pharaoh was regarded as the descendant of the gods, a large portion of divine authority had always been in the Pharaoh's hands.
Under such circumstances, the ministers and priests were merely servants, subject to the Pharaoh's will.
However, beginning from the era of Pharaoh Pepi, the usurpation by the nobles had essentially been a joint effort between the ministers and the priests.
Through administrative and divine authority, they suppressed royal authority.
This was extremely difficult to accomplish, but once achieved, it was equally difficult to reverse.
Because these usurpers and their followers represented the power of the priestly and official classes.
Therefore, if Nitocris handled matters improperly, even if she successfully took revenge and killed those usurpers, power would still be seized again by their successors.
They were not fighting as individuals, but as an entire class.
So, to prevent this from happening, what should Nitocris do?
To be honest, although Alaric had never sat on a throne, he had held high positions in several worlds.
Combined with the accumulated knowledge of thousands of years from modern society, he was far more perceptive than Nitocris in matters of power and political struggle.
He deeply understood that if Nitocris wanted to truly regain power, her own strength, even combined with his help, would not be enough.
Even if Alaric alone could slaughter all the ministers and priests of Egypt, what then?
That would only bring greater trouble, divine punishment, misunderstanding from the people, and no one left to handle state affairs.
This was not how the game of power was played.
If Nitocris wanted to regain authority, she needed sufficient supporters, her power base.
So, from the moment she ascended the throne and was sidelined, did Nitocris have such a foundation?
Nitocris believed she did not. After all, she could not even find a single maid she could completely trust.
But Alaric told her that she did have such a foundation, and that it was far more powerful than she had imagined.
That foundation was the people of Egypt.
One thing was universally known in Egypt, the Pharaoh was the son of the gods, the incarnation of divinity, a human god on earth.
In the hearts of the people, Pharaohs were great beings who could stand shoulder to shoulder with the gods.
It was precisely for this reason that those ministers did not dare reveal the truth even after murdering Meleran II.
It was also for this reason that, even though Nitocris had been stripped of real power by the officials, her prestige among the people was still incomparable to that of all the ministers and priests combined.
Even though Egypt had been thrown into chaos by these conspirators in recent years, causing the people to suffer, Nitocris's own actions had earned her considerable goodwill.
She cared about the nation's livelihood, worked hard to develop the country's economy, encouraged agriculture, and personally supervised farming when the Nile flooded.
These actions gave her a people-friendly image.
In the hearts of the masses, she had always been a good Pharaoh. Egypt's chaos was merely the legacy of previous rulers, and the incompetence of current ministers.
There was no helping it.
Like some people when criticizing politics, the Egyptian people often believed the king was a good person with good intentions, and that it was the subordinates who ruined things.
Especially when the king was willing to put on a public display.
Of course, this did not mean Nitocris's actions were mere performance. But in this era, personally mingling with the people was indeed rare.
The ministers disapproved and even thought that associating with peasants lowered her status.
However, it was precisely this behavior they despised, along with the natural mass foundation of the Pharaoh's identity, that allowed Nitocris to gain unimaginable prestige.