Crushing Great Cang's Fortune to Death!

The girl emperor had left.

She had come swiftly, and departed in an instant.

Qi Lin was still thinking about the laws of the kingdom when she and her black-and-white-clad attendants vanished from sight, leaving only dust behind.

Only after she left did this deathly silent place come back to life.

"Qi Lin!"

Suddenly, Xiao Chiyan, whose face had been overcast for some time, called out in a chillingly vicious voice.

Qi Lin turned his cold gaze on him.

"Her Majesty dealt with Yan Dinghao and Qin Zheng, yet left Xiao Chiyan alone. That shows just how exalted his status is, and how outrageously the Xiao Clan wields its power in the Divine Capital."

Qi Lin knew full well that, with a thirteen-year-old girl forced onto the throne, how could the Great Cang Kingdom possibly be free of trouble?

So the Xiao Clan, or any other powerful clan in the Divine Capital, really was not to be trifled with...

Otherwise, Xiao Chiyan would be another pile of bones underfoot by now.

"You're attending class with Her Majesty tomorrow morning?" Xiao Chiyan raised an eyebrow. "Then congratulations. At least you'll live until noon tomorrow."

"You've fixed the time so precisely. Are you the King of Hell?" Qi Lin said.

Xiao Chiyan's shoulder twitched.

Quite a few of the handsome youths from the Two Moons Pavilion behind him could not help laughing.

"Stop laughing and collect the corpses. The classroom stinks," Qi Lin added.

They looked down at the several sets of remains and could laugh no longer.

"If you're not dead by noon tomorrow, there's only one possible reason."

Xiao Chiyan pointed south. "That would be because I felt like dragging you to Mystic City myself, to watch my Xiao Clan slaughter the city."

With that, he had his people collect the remains and left.

"Qi Lin, Xiao Chiyan is the Xiao Clan's Blood Ancestor's grandson. Be on your guard against him."

"I have something else to do, so I'll be going."

After chatting for a few moments, Tang Biao, who was only thirteen but looked like a middle-aged man, left as well.

He looked rough and wild, but he was thoughtful and righteous.

Qi Lin had taken his words of support today to heart.

"Master Fu, let me help you."

Everyone else had left, but Master Fu remained behind alone, silently cleaning the classroom.

"There are classes tomorrow. The kingdom's law classroom cannot be stained with blood." Master Fu rose and glanced at him. After a moment's silence, he said, "You start washing. I'll go gather up Qin Zheng."

Qi Lin looked at the bloody powder covering the ground outside. "That won't be easy to gather."

"His elderly mother is still at home. She has the Five Decays disease and doesn't have much time left." Master Fu bit his lip. "I'll gather what I can."

Hearing that, Qi Lin was speechless for a moment.

"You needn't dwell on it." Master Fu sighed. "He was no good man. He did plenty of evil to hold on to his position. What happened to him today was cause and effect."

With that, he gazed up at the heavens. "I just can't help wondering: how does a person live this life the right way?"

"Master Fu, if your conscience is clear, you've lived it right. If it isn't, you've lived it wrong," Qi Lin said.

Master Fu paused, then shook his head and laughed. "You little brat, putting on airs like an old man. What the hell do you know?"

Qi Lin smiled and said no more, silently cleaning up the battlefield.

Master Fu demanded a high standard of cleanliness, so it took Qi Lin a full hour to finish.

"You took Xiao Ling'er's and Lan Ming's void rings. Don't use the things inside them in public, or you'll invite trouble," Master Fu suddenly warned.

"Master, don't you think I have enough trouble already?" Qi Lin said, caught between laughter and tears.

Master Fu shook his head. "One thing has nothing to do with the other. If someone tries to kill you in the Divine Strategy Manor, defending yourself is righteous, but killing someone and taking their treasures is not! If righteousness is on your side, Her Majesty can speak for you. If it isn't, helping you would damage her reputation."

"I understand." Qi Lin nodded deeply.

Master Fu let out a quiet sigh and sat on the threshold of the classroom, silently wiping the Great Cang Kingdom's book of laws, which he treasured so dearly.

But the blood had soaked into the book. How could it be wiped away?

"I'm sorry."

Qi Lin sat down beside him.

"There's no need. It wasn't your fault."

Master Fu looked up into the distance.

The sun was setting, and its afterglow still lay upon the earth, yet across the realm, a horde of demons was already dancing in chaos.

"The Great Cang Kingdom is doomed!"

Master Fu's eyes suddenly reddened. Clutching the Great Cang Kingdom's laws, he shed a few tears.

"Master, what... happened to the late emperor?" Qi Lin could not help asking.

"Something that shook the entire kingdom, and you don't know about it?" Master Fu glared at him.

Qi Lin said sheepishly, "I was ten then. My grandpa had just run off, and I worried every day about having nothing to eat."

Master Fu let out a long breath. Looking again at the book of laws in his hands, he sighed. "Three feet of ice does not form in a single day's cold. It took a hundred years of change for our Great Cang Kingdom to reach this point. During that century, the Five Decays disease emerged, prison demons threw the world into chaos, and the great clans rose to power, coercing the throne for their own gain. The late emperor struggled to hold on for a hundred years, but in the end he could not fend off calamity."

The Five Decays of the Heavenly Dao struck close to home for Qi Lin. Over the years, hundreds of people in Mystic City had died from the disease of the Five Decays of the Heavenly Dao, burdening countless families.

"An emperor is the pillar of a kingdom!"

Master Fu's voice caught. He suddenly seized Qi Lin by the shoulders, his eyes wide. "Three years ago! The late emperor died suddenly, and to this day no one knows who killed him. His body was cut into eighteen pieces and hung in a row over the palace gates. Each piece was bound with a profound restriction; a single touch would burn it to ashes!"

Hearing that, Qi Lin could imagine the scene.

The ruler of a kingdom had been butchered in such a way. It was a loss of sovereignty and a disgrace to the nation!

And the worst part was, no one even knew who had done it?

That made it all the more brazen!

Master Fu wept bitterly. "The next day, all twenty-five of his consorts were hanged naked in the Great Cang Hall. Every one of them had been violated to death, and even now, no one knows who the culprit was..."

"This..."

Qi Lin's breath nearly stopped. The mere thought of such a national humiliation sent a chill through his body.

"There's more!"

Master Fu looked toward the imperial palace, his voice like burning thunder, angry lightning raging in his chest. "On the third day, the princes and princesses who had fled in all directions, forty-nine in total, were all captured and refined alive into blood puppets! To this day, those forty-nine blood puppets remain sealed in coffins, each one bound with a vicious restriction that kills anyone who touches it. No one dares move them... And those forty-nine coffins have been placed on both sides of the central path before the Great Cang Hall. Even today, anyone attending court must pass between them!"

"Qi Lin!"

Master Fu turned back and gripped the boy's arm. "Those beasts mean to use the bloody corpses of those forty-nine princes and princesses to crush our Great Cang Kingdom's fortune to death! The youngest of them was not even a year old, yet suffered such cruelty. Their souls cannot move on, imprisoned in a sea of blood forever, without reprieve! Who did it? Which clan? Or was it many clans?"

Qi Lin fell silent for a moment, unable to answer his questions.

After all, his questions had no answers yet.

Master Fu abruptly let go and collapsed to the ground, wailing, "My Great Cang Kingdom! If the Nation-Protecting Divine Church had not intervened, slain all who stood in its way, and protected Her Majesty Huangxi, ensuring she ascended the throne and carried on the kingdom's life... we would already be slaves of a fallen kingdom!"

Hearing this, Qi Lin recalled the girl emperor's words and actions today, and everything he had not understood suddenly became clear.

"She..."

Born into this world, her entire clan wiped out, she had been left alone and raised to a precarious throne, to steer a dynasty riddled with wounds.

How tragic and heroic was that?

Her forty-nine brothers and sisters had been refined into blood puppets, their souls imprisoned in a hell of blood, their bodies still displayed along the path to court. Every day she walked that central path, yet could not save them.

How bleak was that?

Qi Lin was not the ruler of a kingdom, so he could not fully feel everything she had endured.

But he did know one truth.

"In a world of martial cultivation, when a kingdom is on the verge of destruction and its laws cease to exist, the powerful of the great clans suck the people dry. Ordinary people are forever nothing more than fuel for troubled times..."

Better to be a dog in peaceful times than a person in an age of chaos.

Before he knew it, the setting sun had sunk into the deep mountains, and the Divine Strategy Manor plunged abruptly into an abyss of darkness.

Qi Lin rose and looked in the direction the girl emperor had gone, his gaze deep.

"Now, only the candle flame that is Empress Huangxi remains of the Great Cang Kingdom."

"If she goes out, hungry ghosts will roam the world and human hearts will twist. If even the people of Mystic City cannot be kept safe, then all the people of Great Cang will be left without even their bones..."