A look of reminiscence filled Xiao Lin's eyes.
Though the scene from that night had appeared in his dreams countless times, upon reflection, a full twenty years had already passed.
"It was the night we were resting at a posthouse on the outskirts of Shuozhou, just before we reached Tianque Pass, that disaster struck."
"What was it?" Faced with a world-shaking case like this, and the chance to learn the truth, Zhao Lan was completely captivated.
"It was poison."
"Poison? Someone poisoned you!"
"Over a hundred men of the Left Central Guard were all poisoned, without exception."
"How is that possible!" Zhao Lan exclaimed in shock.
That was the Left Squadron of the Yulin Guard, the Imperial City's elite. Even the lowest among them were at the Guiyi Realm. Who on earth could have tracked their movements and poisoned them so silently?
"I suspected the Gao Clan, but I heard he died later as well. But that's not the most important part. What happened next..."
Xiao Lin's pupils contracted slightly, as if recalling a terrible memory.
"In his youth, my grandfather was a wandering cultivator from the Martial World. He once received guidance from the wandering immortal of the East Sea, Qingxu Zi, and learned the strange art of Turtle Breath. I used that art to feign death, losing all five of my senses."
Zhao Lan gasped again in a low voice, "Qingxu Zi! One of the Five Great Masters of the World!"
He had always been interested in the strange tales of the Martial World and knew that its people were fond of ranking experts. "The Five Great Masters of the World" was a time-honored title that had been around for a thousand years and held considerable weight.
While not necessarily the absolute top five, they were undoubtedly among the most supreme experts under heaven.
Qingxu Zi had held that title for over a hundred years. He resided on the isolated island "Jade Sea Immortal Mountain" in the perilous East Sea, and was known for his proud, eccentric nature, keeping to himself.
Pei Su's father, the North Guard Marquis Pei Jun, had also been named one of the "Five Great Masters of the World" in recent years, displacing the "Shouyi Hermit," who roamed the world and whose life or death was unknown.
"Exactly. If I hadn't mastered Turtle Breath, how could I have faked my death and deceived the eyes of whoever was watching in the shadows? I don't know how much time passed, but when I slowly awoke, I found myself in the heart of a canyon, surrounded by the bodies of my comrades and many other soldiers."
"My gaze fell upon the Black Casket not far away. Ten feet long and five feet wide, it was the ebony casket of the Divine Blade Dragon Sparrow we had risked our lives to escort."
Zhao Lan's heart was in his throat.
"The Dragon Sparrow was stolen?!"
"I suspected the same, so I walked over and opened the Black Casket."
At this, Xiao Lin closed his eyes, his entire body trembling uncontrollably.
"And then? Was the Dragon Sparrow there?"
Xiao Lin didn't answer, instead asking another question.
"Lan'er, tell me... why do you think the current Emperor went into seclusion on Kongtong Mountain?" The source of this chapter is g.com.
"Huh? I don't know."
The Emperor's affairs were too far removed from Zhao Lan's life; how could he dare to speculate?
"I opened the ebony casket. The gleam of the Dragon Sparrow's blade stung my eyes. And then, I saw it—the scene that has jolted me from countless nightmares, the one image I can never forget for the rest of my life..."
"What was it?" Zhao Lan's heart leaped into his throat.
"Impaled on the tip of the Dragon Sparrow was the head of the current Emperor!"
******
"The Emperor's... head?!"
Pei Su exclaimed in a low voice, staring intently at the black-robed elder before him. He took a long moment to calm himself.
"Yes, Young Master. The Emperor has been dead for twenty years. The seclusion on Kongtong Mountain is nothing but a colossal deception orchestrated by the Old Master and the Empress."
Pei Su was silent.
This deception was, to put it mildly, a bit too staggering.
The Great Jin Emperor, Li Qian, had ascended the throne after winning the brutal struggle of the nine princes. In the decades that followed, he reorganized the military, planned strategies, and reclaimed hundreds of miles of lost territory. He was a man of great ambition and strategy, as well as a talent for governance—a truly extraordinary figure.
His achievements were second only to the founding emperor, the Founder of Jin, among the five generations of the dynasty's emperors.
To think he had been dead for twenty years without anyone knowing...
"So, on the surface, it was an escort mission for the Divine Blade Dragon Sparrow to the north, but in reality, it was a secret operation to transport the Emperor's head to Tianque Pass?"
"Correct. The Imperial Court was in turmoil over the Emperor's seclusion, and our clan became the target of all criticism. It was difficult to act in secret, so we chose to do it in plain sight, using the Dragon Sparrow as a lure and the Imperial Guard as an escort. No one would have suspected a thing."
"The Imperial Guard Commander, Gao Xun, was a secret agent of our clan. He traveled with the escort to the north and administered the poison just before Tianque Pass."
"But... for some unknown reason, his second-in-command, Xiao Zhongyong, faked his death and escaped. Not only that, but he also took the Divine Blade Dragon Sparrow with him!"
Pei Su exhaled slowly, processing this world-shattering information. If even a whisper of this got out, it would be enough to plunge the world into chaos.
Although the questions about his journey had been answered, new, even greater questions had arisen.
For instance, the Emperor's death?
And why did the clan want to transport the Emperor's head to Tianque Pass?
What exactly were the Empress and his grandfather plotting?
In a daze, Pei Su felt as if he were slowly beginning to touch upon the turbulent and treacherous undercurrents of the Imperial Court from twenty years ago...
******
His throat worked, but he couldn't utter a single word for the longest time. His face was a ghastly white with horror.
The Emperor of Great Jin! In the minds of all, he was the most revered figure between heaven and earth, the sovereign who ruled the land of Shenzhou!
Even though he had been in seclusion for twenty years and had not managed state affairs, the common folk only speculated that His Majesty was perhaps seeking a breakthrough to the peak of the Heavenly Being realm, to achieve immortality and become a terrestrial immortal.
Who would ever guess that the Emperor was already dead!
To put it another way, who in this world could possibly kill an emperor?!
From the day an emperor ascends the throne, he is protected by the fortune of the Royal Dynasty. The kingly aura of the world gradually converges upon him, and even without any cultivation, he can reach the peak of the Dharma Form realm, nourished and pushed by this aura.
With the added protection of the dynasty's fortune, he is invincible among those of the same realm.
In an age where the path to immortality has been severed for thousands of years, the emperor of a dynasty is the undisputed number one in the world!
Otherwise, how could a royal dynasty, in just a few hundred years, suppress those ancient and formidable thousand-year-old clans, or keep in check the martial sects with their deep-seated foundations?
"How... is that possible?"
Zhao Lan finally managed to speak a complete sentence, but his voice trembled violently. A strange fear spread from his chest to his limbs.
He was a citizen of Great Jin, steeped in the ideology of loyalty to the sovereign since childhood. In his mind, the Emperor was the true sky, and as long as he was there, Shenzhou would not fall into chaos.
And now, the sky... had fallen!
Not only that, but the Imperial Court only had a Crown Prince and had not enthroned a new emperor. This meant that the current Great Jin...
The dynasty has no ruler!
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Having revealed the secret he had hidden for twenty years, Xiao Lin felt no relief, only a heavier burden.
"The horror and panic I felt then were many times greater than what you feel now! Devastated and heartbroken, I couldn't bear to see the Emperor suffer the indignity of being impaled on a blade, so I rushed forward and pulled out the Dragon Sparrow..."
Xiao Lin closed his eyes, his voice trembling slightly.
"I looked around at the fields of dead bodies, the land stained with blood. My mind was blank, I had no strength to think or plan. I grabbed the blade and fled, terrified that if I stayed a second longer, I would be discovered!"
"By who?!"
Zhao Lan's eyes were wide.
"Who murdered His Majesty?!"
Xiao Lin shook his head.
"For the past twenty years, I have thought about this question every single moment. The various factions of the Imperial Court have churned in my mind. Today, I believe there is no other answer."
"The ancient and powerful Pei Clan!"