The Emperor

The rain came down in sheets. Li Huowang, his body twitching uncontrollably from time to time, knelt on one knee, gasping for air.

The wounds on him that had been on the verge of closing had not only split open again, but had been joined by several new ones. He was badly hurt.

The person who could kill Anping was no ordinary hand. The Daoist Ji Lin had found from who-knew-where was incredibly strong, almost as strong as Danyangzi.

His lightning technique, especially, was mysteriously unpredictable and terrifyingly powerful. But thankfully, Li Huowang at this moment was no longer the Li Huowang of before.

Peng Longteng hoisted a blood-stained rockery high above her head and slammed it down with all her might onto the dying beggar-Daoist on the ground.

With a violent tremor that shook the earth, the Daoist’s entire body splattered outward like a watermelon struck by a giant hammer.

But that still didn’t seem enough to vent her anger. In the pouring rain, Peng Longteng lifted the blood-caked rockery and smashed it down again onto the remains.

After several more blows, there was nothing left in front of her but a sunken pit. The flesh and blood had been splattered clean away.

“Enough! I said enough!” The moment Li Huowang’s words fell, Peng Longteng’s raised rockery smashed directly into her own body, passing right through her headless torso and hitting the ground. She had turned incorporeal again.

Li Huowang, having caught his breath, stood up. He opened his mouth and spat out Li Sui. “Sui Sui, be good. Help Daddy with something.”

Li Huowang walked over to the gruesome pyramid of skulls, reached out, and plucked Princess Anping’s head from it. He handed it to Li Sui. “The Black Tai Sui is good at parasitism, right? Can you control this head?”

“Dad, I’ll try.” Li Sui extended a tentacle, took the head, and absorbed it into her own body.

After a moment, when Princess Anping’s head rose again from within Li Sui’s form, its eyes were already blinking.

“Dad? Like this?” The beautiful, feminine head, propped up by a dense cluster of tentacles, smiled at Li Huowang and asked.

Li Huowang had originally thought that if Li Sui couldn't do it, he’d have to skin the head and use the Zuowandao’s method to perform a “Painted Skin.” But it seemed everyone had their specialty. When it came to this kind of thing, the Black Tai Sui was still very skilled.

Looking at her natural smile and expression, Li Huowang nodded in approval. “Yeah, that’s good enough. As long as you show your face, as far as other people can see, Princess Anping is still alive.”

“Since Princess Anping couldn’t escape the pursuit, I’ll help her keep up the escape. Li Sui, I know you’re very tired, but we don’t need to keep this up for too long. Just hold out until the Supervisory Heavenly Office returns.”

With that, Li Huowang led Li Sui back inside the palace. He quickly found Princess Anping’s corpse. After hollowing out the internal organs, Li Sui crawled in and began to look even more like the princess.

Li Sui washed the blood from her body and slipped into a set of light-colored silk skirts with stitched-in gold thread. The wide skirt gave her plenty of room to hide her tentacles.

Underneath, she wore a pale pink brocade bodice. Light blue tassel earrings hung from her earlobes. Her black hair was coiled into an elaborate willow-leaf hairpin. Apart from the white silk ribbon around her neck to hide the severed head’s stitching, she was almost identical to the Princess Anping Li Huowang had first seen.

“Alright. Let’s go! We’ll take a long walk past the hidden sentries, let them know Princess Anping is still alive.” Li Huowang took Li Sui’s hand and rushed out into the heavy rain.

Many things happened that night. But when Shangjing City woke up again, washed clean by the overnight rain, everything seemed as if nothing had happened. The smell of blood in the air had been scrubbed away completely. The city’s commoners went out to work as usual, went to buy groceries as usual.

And at this very moment, Gao Zhijian had already driven his cart into Shangjing City. He looked around with some bewilderment at the dense signboards and shop arches lining the wide road on both sides.

Logically, as the Emperor of this place, he ought to feel very familiar here. But why did he have absolutely no recollection of it at all?

Did I really not leave the palace often in the past? Gao Zhijian wondered silently to himself.

After pondering for a while, Gao Zhijian steered his cart further down the main road. After traveling some distance, when he saw the familiar vermilion city wall, a hint of recognition flickered in his eyes.

He remembered this place. When he was a child, someone used to carry him, and he’d often seen walls this color.

Getting down from the cart, Gao Zhijian tried to calm his excitement. Clenching his fists, he walked toward the imperial guards at the city gate.

Seeing Gao Zhijian’s massive build, the guards at the gate frowned. Cold glints of steel could be seen from the battlements above.

When he was about two zhang from the guards, Gao Zhijian stopped, and the two sides stared at each other.

After a few breaths, a look of confusion appeared on Gao Zhijian’s face. “How strange. Don’t they recognize me? I’m the Emperor. Even if I’m a past Emperor, they should still know who I am.”

Gao Zhijian stepped forward two paces and pointed at his own face, about to speak.

“Imperial grounds! How dare you!” Sharp halberds were thrust toward Gao Zhijian the moment he spoke. He immediately felt a prickling numbness between his brows.

As a fellow practitioner of the same lineage, he could feel the oppressive killing intent radiating from the wall. The other party’s cultivation level was far above his own. This was not a warning. If he took one more step, he might end up dead on the ground.

Gao Zhijian hurriedly retreated back to his cart, watching the towering palace walls from a distance. For a moment, he didn’t know what to do. This seemed… somewhat different from what he had imagined. I am the Emperor… aren’t I?

Just as Gao Zhijian was thinking this, a figure brushed past him and shot toward the side gate of the main entrance.

But unlike Gao Zhijian’s treatment, the guards at the gate didn’t even glance at the man. They let him slip right through the unlatched side gate.

Once inside the palace, the man’s legs churned rapidly beneath his robes, as if he were gliding, as he rushed toward the Emperor’s bedchamber.

When he reached the outside of the bedchamber, he deliberately slowed his pace and walked inside.

Though he had slowed down, he was still hit squarely by a flying inkstone, which split his head open.

But he dared not show any insolence. The only reason was that the person who had thrown it was the current reigning sovereign.

He prostrated himself on the ground, his voice trembling with fear as he reported. “Reporting to Your Majesty… Her Highness, Princess Anping, has still not been found.”

“Drag him out and behead him!” A single roar from Ji Lin easily pronounced a man’s death sentence.

“Your Majesty!! Your Majesty!! Mercy!!”

The eunuchs and palace maids inside the bedchamber were all terrified into silence, each fearing they might be the next one.

But amid this fear, one eunuch appeared remarkably composed. An old eunuch, holding a whisk made of gold and sui years in his arms, approached the enraged Ji Lin and soothed him. “Your Majesty, please do not worry. Your old servant has performed a divination. According to the hexagram, the Princess Anping has… fallen. The offering from the single-lamp sacrifice shows the same.”

The pearl tassels on Ji Lin’s crown swayed violently as he spoke. “I don’t want to see hexagrams! I want to see the person! What if that Anping knows some kind of illusion? I want to see the body if she’s dead, the corpse if she’s alive! I want to see her head! You’re all a bunch of good-for-nothings!”