Liu Erlong's Awakening Conditions

The next morning, the main hall of the Pope Palace.

The air was so cold it felt as if ice shards might fall from it.

Bibi Dong sat high upon her throne, her papal vestments worn with meticulous precision.

Her eyes were bloodshot from a sleepless night, and the purple-black baleful aura surrounding her flickered in and out of existence, causing fine cracks to spiderweb across the high-quality cinnabar brush on her jade desk.

She had not closed her eyes all night.

The scene from last night—Qian Renxue, head bowed and submissive, combing Su Chen's hair—played on a loop in her mind like a festering sore.

That tranquility, that harmony, was blindingly offensive.

"How dare she?" Bibi Dong gritted her teeth until they ached.

She would give her own life to protect that man; she would swallow the deepest humiliations for his sake.

Qian Renxue, a mere outsider, how dare she touch his hair so brazenly?!

The fire of jealousy stifled her chest, and killing intent rampaged through her meridians.

"Issue the order." Bibi Dong's face was ashen, her voice laced with undisguised violence. "Effective immediately, expand the blockade around the Library Pavilion by three miles."

"Within those three miles, any unauthorized personnel are to be detained on the spot, no questions asked!"

Below the dais, a dozen Cardinals shivered in unison.

That was not all.

Bibi Dong swept her brush across a file, marking a vicious cross over it: "Revoke all privileges of the Heaven Dou delegation within Martial Soul City. Any member of the delegation found leaving their quarters is to be expelled immediately!"

The bone-chilling killing intent accompanying these decrees left the entire hall in a deathly silence.

Everyone could tell that the Pope had lost her mind; she was effectively holding a blade to the throats of both the Heaven Dou Empire and the Worship Hall.

"Your Holiness!"

Angela, bracing against the terrifying soul pressure, stepped forward and knelt heavily onto the stone floor, her red robes instantly soaked through with cold sweat.

"This order must not stand!" Angela pressed her forehead firmly against the ground, speaking with rapid urgency. "The delegation is tied to the Heaven Dou royal family, and the Great Worship is currently looking for any excuse to strike."

"Furthermore, suddenly expanding the blockade by three miles is tantamount to announcing to the entire city that the Library Pavilion holds a world-shaking secret. This will push that man... directly into the eye of the storm!"

That man.

Those two words struck the exact weak point in Bibi Dong's armor.

The air pressure in the hall plummeted.

Bibi Dong's hand froze in mid-air, her fingertips tensing, and with a sharp crack, the already fractured cinnabar brush crumbled into dust.

She stared at Angela, her chest heaving violently.

After a long moment of weighing the consequences, she closed her eyes and forcibly swallowed the blood-tinged bile rising in her throat.

Su Chen possessed no soul power; she could not let him become a target for everyone.

"The Heaven Dou delegation's privileges remain as they were, and the blockade will stay as it is."

Bibi Dong reopened her eyes, her voice raspy. "However, starting today, the inner city is under a total curfew. After nightfall, anyone found wandering the streets will be executed without exception."

"As you command." Angela let out a long breath and scrambled back into the ranks.

The atmosphere within the Pope Palace was suffocatingly oppressive, and the others felt a profound, trembling fear at Bibi Dong's erratic behavior, all sparked by a single person.

At the same time, the Young Master Palace.

Sunlight filtered through the window lattice, spilling onto the cold marble floor.

Qian Renxue sat alone before her vanity.

She wore no formal robes, only a thin, plain undergarment, her right hand gripping the wooden comb from the night before.

She stared at the faint dark circles beneath her eyes in the mirror.

She hadn't slept all night.

The mere thought that she had stood behind a man with no soul power and combed his hair like a lowly maid sent a surge of absurdity and agitation rampaging through her chest.

"I've truly gone mad." Qian Renxue slammed the wooden comb onto the table, stood up, and paced back and forth in a fit of irritation.

She tried to circulate her soul power to completely erase the humiliating memory of last night.

But the moment her soul power began to flow, her fingertips trembled involuntarily. A sense of ancient peace, reaching deep into her soul, climbed along her nerve endings once more.

It was that strange aura that even her Six-Winged Angel martial soul found intoxicating.

Qian Renxue's footsteps came to an abrupt halt.

For twenty years, she had undergone cold, monotonous, and grueling cultivation day after day; she had never experienced such a sense of comfort where she could let down all her defenses.

What made her grit her teeth, yet feel a hidden sense of triumph, was the look on Bibi Dong's face when she had kicked the door open—that vicious, possessive expression of someone ready to kill to protect their own.

The high and mighty Pope had finally cracked.

"Young Master." Outside the hall, a confidant reported with trepidation, "The Pope Palace has just issued a decree: the inner city is under a total curfew starting today."

The confidant swallowed hard, recounting the terrifying low pressure surrounding the Pope that morning, as well as the several frantic orders she had nearly issued, without missing a single detail.

Qian Renxue turned around abruptly after hearing this.

She walked back to the vanity, picked up the wooden comb, and a twisted, cold sneer slowly tugged at the corners of her mouth.

Curfew?

Lockdown?

The more that woman guarded against her, the more it proved her guilty conscience—it proved she was afraid!

"Mother, so you have days like this too." Qian Renxue whispered.

She realized that an unintentional move she made last night had actually struck the sore spot of that arrogant woman with pinpoint precision.

An intense desire for victory grew like wild grass.

She not only craved that strange aura capable of soothing her soul, but she also wanted to see Bibi Dong lose her composure and suffer a humiliating, total defeat.

The air in the hall dropped in temperature instantly; the maids were so frightened by this cold, aggressive excitement that they buried their heads even lower, not daring to make a sound.

The sun was high in the sky at the Library Pavilion.

Sunlight filtered through the gaps in the dilapidated windows, casting mottled shadows on the floor tiles.

Su Chen slowly woke up. He stretched, his joints popping with a few crisp cracks.

After washing up, he sat back in the bamboo chair with half-closed eyes and summoned the system in his mind.

"Pull up the data records for Subject 001 and Subject 002."

The Eye of Omniscience screen popped up, and two sharply contrasting data curves hovered before Su Chen's eyes.

The red one represented Bibi Dong, and the golden one represented Qian Renxue.

Su Chen watched these curves, which were sometimes flat and sometimes soaring like a roller coaster, and began a calm review.

As an "angler" with a god's-eye view, he only needed to see the results to reverse-engineer the process.

"Bibi Dong's curve—every surge is accompanied by my displays of weakness, gratitude, or humility." Su Chen's fingers tapped lightly on the armrest of the bamboo chair.

That woman might be a decisive Pope on the surface, but deep down, she is a paranoid person who is extremely starved for love and has zero tolerance for betrayal.

What she needs is absolute emotional value and unreserved dependence.

"As for Qian Renxue..." Su Chen's gaze shifted to the golden curve.

Qian Renxue's base favorability was extremely low, but the moment Bibi Dong kicked the door in last night, that golden line experienced its steepest climb ever.

"Arrogant, rebellious, pathologically competitive." Su Chen chuckled, labeling the Heaven Dou Crown Prince.

What Qian Renxue responds to isn't flattery, but "competitive stimulation."

As long as she can annoy Bibi Dong, as long as she can prove she is stronger than that woman, she will pounce like a shark smelling blood.

Having grasped the temperaments of these two "tigresses," Su Chen glanced at the warning section in the corner of the screen.

[Subject 003: Liu Erlong]

[Awakening Condition: Emotional collapse threshold reached.]

Su Chen rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

The "female tyrannosaurus" of the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Clan had a personality as fierce as fire.

At this point in time, the only fuse capable of causing such a woman to completely collapse was none other than that "trash" Yu Xiaogang, who had been hiding from her.

"Yu Xiaogang, oh Yu Xiaogang, that sanctimonious face of yours is about to be torn off."

Su Chen reined in his wandering thoughts and refocused his gaze on the two curves before him.

His current situation, while appearing to be playing both sides, was actually walking a tightrope on the edge of a cliff.

If he allowed Bibi Dong and Qian Renxue to completely tear each other apart in their rivalry and start a direct battle in Martial Soul City, he—a "variable" who appeared to have no self-preservation ability—would definitely be crushed into dust by the aftermath of their fight.

He had to control the situation.

A complete "master of balance" plan quickly took shape in Su Chen's mind.

Using information asymmetry, he would actively regulate the rhythm of stimulation between the two during their future daily interactions.

He could not let Bibi Dong be so protective of her "food" that she killed Qian Renxue, nor could he let Qian Renxue's provocations cross Bibi Dong's red line.

This was not just for survival; it was to ensure that this "Asura field" remained within a controllable range, maximizing the critical hits to his own interests and cultivation.