Afternoon.
The blazing sun shone over the earth, while cicadas in the trees chirped tirelessly.
A scorching heat hung in the air, leaving people unable to find peace of mind.
To Lu Wu-bing and the others, this slight change in temperature was nothing out of the ordinary and had no effect at all.
But some of the delicate women in the harem could not bear it.
They came up with all manner of ways to escape the heat, shouting and cursing from time to time...
Some servant girls were even punished for failing to handle their tasks properly.
The sounds of weeping and harsh scoldings drifted faintly through the air.
"Begin."
Lu Wu-bing had little interest in the old Emperor's harem. He had not entered the palace to observe the myriad lives beneath all this alluring splendor, either.
When he was still thirty yards from the Cold Palace, he stopped.
He instructed Shen Xinzhu to make her move.
Now that they had roughly pinpointed the target's location, Lu Wu-bing did not wish to waste time. He simply drove straight at the heart of the matter and came knocking at the door.
He knew that against an old eunuch who had concealed himself in the palace for nearly two hundred years—and who was possibly a great expert of the Return to Simplicity Realm—
making sure such a person could not escape would undoubtedly be an exceptionally arduous task.
He had considered mobilizing the army to surround the place, but after thinking it over carefully, he decided it was unsuitable.
It was not because those soldiers were too weak to be of use.
Rather, once he mobilized the army for a search and encirclement, the other party would notice at once. It would only startle the snake in the grass.
"This old