Soul-Searching Technique

The entire courtyard was shocked, and the Imperial Guards atop the palace walls erupted into loud clamor.

Right inside the residence where Tai Zuo conducted his daily affairs, right within the outer walled enclosure of the imperial city, such a thing had happened in broad daylight! Within the imperial city of the Blood Qin Empire, aside from the Imperial Guards on duty and the eunuch guards within the palace, no one else was permitted to carry so much as an inch of steel.

Yet that dark-faced eunuch had actually drawn such a dagger. This was a grave crime punishable by the confiscation of one's household and the extermination of one's clan.

Drawing a dagger would have been bad enough, but with a single stroke, he had slaughtered Eunuch Anshun, the Treasure Presentation Assistant under the Clan Affairs Commissioner—one of the six offices under Tai Zuo's rule.

Anshun, that young eunuch whose handsome features carried a touch of eerie allure, was a known figure within Tai Zuo's residence. The palace eunuchs of the Blood Qin Empire were divided into nine ranks and twenty-seven grades. First, second, and third rank were chief eunuchs; fourth, fifth, and sixth rank were commonly called "palace eunuchs"; seventh, eighth, and ninth rank were known as "eunuch officials," the proper inner ministers. As for those castrated men without rank, they were merely ordinary servants—slaves no one would spare a thought for even if they were beaten to death.

Anshun was a proper Principal Fourth Rank chief eunuch, only one step away from the rank of chief supervisor. For one so young to attain such a position, and even be placed in the Clan Affairs Commissioner's office within Tai Zuo's residence, where he was entrusted with the weighty duties of overseeing the casting of the personal seals of