Early the next morning, the main hall of Pope Palace.
The air was so cold it felt as though ice crystals might form in it.
Bibi Dong sat high on her throne, her papal robes immaculate.
Bloodshot from a sleepless night, her eyes were ringed in red. Purple-black killing intent flickered around her, so potent that it sent fine cracks spreading across the fine vermilion brush on the desk.
She hadn't slept a wink.
The sight of Qian Renxue lowering her eyes as she combed Su Chen's hair the night before was like a parasite burrowing into her bones, replaying over and over in her mind.
That serenity, that harmony, had been unbearably grating.
"Why?" Bibi Dong clenched her back teeth.
To protect that man, she was willing to give up her life and swallow even the deepest humiliation.
Qian Renxue was an outsider. What gave her the right to touch his hair so openly?!
Jealousy burned in Bibi Dong's chest, leaving her breathless, while killing intent surged through her meridians.
"Give the order." Bibi Dong's face was livid, her voice filled with undisguised fury. "Effective immediately, extend the cordon around the Library Pavilion by three miles."
"Anyone within three miles who has no business being there is to be detained on the spot, no questions asked!"
Below the throne, more than a dozen Cardinals shivered in unison.
And that wasn't all.
Bibi Dong slashed a heavy cross over a dossier with a sweep of her brush. "Revoke all the Heaven Dou delegation's privileges in Spirit City. Any member who leaves their residence is to be expelled immediately!"
As the orders were read aloud, the bone-chilling killing intent pressed the entire hall into a deathly silence.
Everyone could tell the Pope was losing her mind, putting a blade directly to the throats of the Heaven Dou Empire and the Worship Hall.
"Your Holiness!"
Angela braved the terrifying pressure of Bibi Dong's Soul Power and stepped forward, dropping to her knees so hard that the floor tiles thudded beneath her. Cold sweat instantly soaked the back of her red robes.
"This order must not be issued!" Angela pressed her forehead to the floor and spoke rapidly. "The delegation is tied to the Heaven Dou Imperial Family, and the Great Worship is already looking for an excuse to make trouble."
"Besides, extending the cordon by three miles would be tantamount to announcing to the entire city that the Library Pavilion holds a world-shaking secret. That would push that person... straight into the eye of the storm!"
That person.
Those three words struck Bibi Dong precisely where it hurt most.
The pressure in the hall plummeted.
Bibi Dong's hand froze in midair. Her fingers tightened slightly, and with a sharp crack, the already cracked vermilion brush crumbled to dust.
She stared at Angela, her chest rising and falling violently.
After a long struggle, she shut her eyes and forced down the bitter, blood-tinged rage in her throat.
Su Chen had no Soul Power. She couldn't let him become a target for everyone.
"The Heaven Dou delegation's privileges remain unchanged. The cordon will stay as it is."
Bibi Dong opened her eyes again, her voice hoarse. "But the inner city will be under a full curfew starting today. After nightfall, anyone caught wandering the streets will be killed without mercy."
"Understood." Angela let out a long breath and scrambled back to her place in the line.
The atmosphere in Pope Palace was stifling. Everyone felt a deep dread at Bibi Dong's volatile temper, stirred by a single person.
At the same time, in the Young Master Palace.
Sunlight streamed through the window lattice, falling across the cold marble floor.
Qian Renxue sat alone before her dressing table.
She wore no finery, only a thin, plain undergarment, and gripped last night's wooden comb tightly in her right hand.
She stared at the faint dark circles beneath her eyes in the mirror.
She hadn't slept all night.
The thought of how she had stood behind a man without Soul Power, combing his hair like some lowly servant, sent a jumble of absurdity and irritation surging through her chest.
"This is insane." Qian Renxue slammed the comb onto the table and stood, pacing back and forth in a restless fury.
She tried to use her Soul Power to erase every trace of last night's humiliating memory.
But the moment her Soul Power stirred, her fingertips trembled of their own accord. An ancient serenity that reached deep into her soul once again crept along her fingertips and climbed into her nerves.
That strange aura had intoxicated even her Six-Winged Angel Martial Soul.
Qian Renxue stopped short.
For twenty years, she had practiced day after day, enduring cold, monotonous cultivation. She had never once experienced the comfort of letting down every guard.
What made her grit her teeth—and yet left her with a secret thrill—was the vicious, possessive look on Bibi Dong's face when she kicked the door open, as if she were ready to devour someone alive.
The lofty Pope had lost her composure.
"Young Master." Outside the hall, a trusted attendant reported in a trembling voice, "The Pope Palace has just issued an order placing the inner city under a full curfew as of today."
The attendant swallowed and recounted, from start to finish, the terrifying gloom that had hung over the Pope that morning, along with the several crazed orders she had nearly issued.
Qian Renxue spun around when she heard the report.
She returned to the dressing table, picked up the wooden comb, and slowly twisted her lips into a cold, crooked smile.
A curfew?
A lockdown?
The more that woman tried to keep everything under guard, the more it proved she had a guilty conscience—and that she was afraid!
"Mother, look at you now," Qian Renxue murmured.
She realized that her thoughtless gesture the night before had struck that arrogant woman right where it hurt.
A fierce desire to win sprouted like weeds and grew wildly.
She coveted that strange aura that soothed her soul, but she also wanted to see Bibi Dong lose her reason and make a humiliating mess of everything.
The air in the hall turned icy. The maids were cowed into silence by her cold, aggressive excitement, and all bowed their heads even lower.
The sun was already high in the sky when Su Chen woke in the Library Pavilion.
Sunlight filtered through the cracks in the old windows, casting mottled shadows across the brick floor.
Su Chen stretched, and his joints cracked several times.
After washing up, he settled back into the bamboo chair, his eyes half-closed, and summoned the system in his mind.
"Bring up the records for Subjects 001 and 002."
The Eye of Omniscience's Light Screen appeared, displaying two sharply contrasting data curves that hovered before Su Chen.
The red one represented Bibi Dong, and the gold one represented Qian Renxue.
Su Chen studied the curves as they rose and fell, sometimes gently, sometimes like a roller coaster, and began a calm review.
As a fisherman with an all-seeing view, he only needed to look at the results to work backward and deduce what had happened.
"Every time Bibi Dong's curve surges, it's because I've acted meek, grateful, or humble." Su Chen tapped the armrest of the bamboo chair lightly with his fingers.
On the surface, she was a decisive Pope. Deep down, though, that woman was a paranoid obsessive, starved for affection and utterly intolerant of betrayal.
She needed absolute emotional reassurance and complete, unquestioning dependence.
"As for Qian Renxue..." Su Chen turned his gaze to the golden curve.
Qian Renxue's baseline affection was extremely low. But the moment Bibi Dong kicked in the door the night before, the golden line had shot up more steeply than ever before.
"Proud, rebellious, and pathologically competitive." Su Chen chuckled as he labeled the Heaven Dou Crown Prince.
What worked on Qian Renxue wasn't flattery, but "competitive provocation."
As long as she could get under Bibi Dong's skin, as long as she could prove she was better than that woman, she'd come charging like a shark that had caught the scent of blood.
Having figured out the tempers of these two "Mother Tyrant Dragons," Su Chen glanced at the warning section in the corner of the Light Screen.
[Subject 003 · Liu Erlong] [Awakening Condition: Emotional breakdown threshold must reach its limit.]
Su Chen thoughtfully rubbed his chin.
The Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Clan's "Mother Tyrant Dragon" had a temper as fierce as fire.
At this point in time, there was only one person who could light the fuse and send a woman like that into a complete breakdown: Yu Xiaogang, the "good-for-nothing" who had been avoiding her.
"Yu Xiaogang, Yu Xiaogang... It's time for that sanctimonious face of yours to be torn off."
Su Chen reeled in his wandering thoughts and focused again on the two curves in front of him.
His current situation looked like he was benefiting from both sides, but in truth he was walking a tightrope over a cliff.
If he let Bibi Dong and Qian Renxue tear into each other over their rivalry and start fighting openly in Spirit City, then he, a "variable" with no means of protecting himself, would be crushed to dust by the shockwaves.
He had to keep control.
A complete "Master of Balancing" plan rapidly took shape in Su Chen's mind.
He would use his information advantage to adjust the pace of their rivalry during their daily encounters.
He couldn't let Bibi Dong become so possessive that she killed Qian Renxue, nor could he let Qian Renxue's provocations cross Bibi Dong's line.
This wasn't just about staying alive. He also had to keep this "love triangle" within controllable bounds and maximize the explosive gains to his own benefits and cultivation.
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