Li Qinglian gazed calmly into the distance when a guard's voice sounded beside his ear.
"Li Qinglian, we can talk."
Li Qinglian froze, then whipped his head toward the guard beside him.
The movement put the other guards on alert.
Li Qinglian raised a hand, and the guards fell silent.
"Withdraw ten feet."
The guards protecting him quickly backed away.
Only he and the guard who had spoken remained.
Now that Li Qinglian had become emperor of New Tang, no magic could exist within thirty feet of him, even when he did not activate the Way of Forbidden Laws.
That meant Sun Tzu could not sense what was happening within that range through the military formation.
And with the battle raging, Sun Tzu was even less likely to notice anything here.
"Li Qing?"
A sliver of Li Qing's spiritual imprint was hidden within the guard's mind.
The guard looked at Li Qinglian and nodded. "It's me."
Li Qinglian fell silent for a moment. "Thank you. Without you, I could never have reached this position and rebuilt the Great Tang Empire."
Li Qing chuckled. "It was nothing."
"You came to me for a reason, didn't you?" Li Qinglian asked calmly.
"Of course. How does it feel to be a puppet emperor?"
Helplessness entered Li Qinglian's eyes. "If I could live forever, why would I want to be an emperor in name only?"
Li Qinglian had spent some time thinking and now understood that, from beginning to end, every move he had made was merely a move by someone else's piece on their Chessboard.
The feeling left him angry, but even more than that, it left him helpless and despairing.
Even the divine position he had once been promised no longer seemed sweet.
It was only another kind of piece, another kind