Drip~ drop!
Beads of blood dripped from her fingertips, striking the ground with startling clarity.
Like bent fingers knocking upon the heart's door.
But the question was truly ironic.
"Do you still need to ask why?" Lou Jiangyue sat there motionless, like a slab of frozen meat pinned inside an icehouse, radiating frost from within and without, long dead at its core. "When have I ever wanted to live?"
If she could have killed herself, she would have ceased to exist long ago.
But Lou Jiangyue could never kill herself. The moment she truly tried to put that thought into action, Yuan Tu would take command of her will, keeping her lucid amid slaughter and awakening her amid bloodshed.
And the price of that "awakening" was far too heavy: the cat she had raised for many years, the wet nurse who had raised her for many years... until she no longer dared touch upon it.
"At least... for a time." Lou Yue spoke with some difficulty.
Lou Jiangyue said nothing.
"Last night, I watched the moon all night." Lou Yue's voice was tangled with emotion. "For one moment, I truly hoped you would tell Shang Shuyi everything. Yet you actually endured it."
Lou Jiangyue's voice was utterly flat, flat to the point that there was nothing in it but indifference. "Tell him what?"
"Tell him I am unworthy of being your father. Tell him I deserve to die." Lou Yue bared his teeth in an ugly grin. "Tell him that the current head of the Yingtian Lou Clan, deputy commander of the Imperial Edict Army, Privy Councilor of the Military Affairs Tower... once consorted with demons?"
Were these words to spread, the entire Central Empire would be rocked by a massive earthquake in an instant!
In the imperial court, among