"Now you know how much mercy I showed you, Your Majesty."
Empress Lu: ...
As Wen Xu spoke, he flicked the blood from his sword. It had stained the blade when he pierced the state preceptor's Dantian. Bright red and scalding hot, it looked nothing like the blood of a black-hearted man.
For a cultivator, having one's Dantian destroyed was a punishment worse than death. Wen Xu had not killed Lan Qiao outright, but the moment Lan Qiao lost his cultivation, he became a decrepit man in his fifties. He looked even older than that.
"State preceptor, it seems your backlash has begun."
At those words, Lan Qiao reached out in a panic, only to see the wrinkled, aged skin of his hand. The terror of that instant far surpassed the pain of his Dantian shattering.
He had become a common mortal. Never again could he be the state preceptor who summoned wind and rain across the Great Sheng Dynasty.
Lan Qiao strained to summon his spiritual power, but not a trace stirred at his fingertips. He burst into furious curses, sounding so vigorous that no one would have guessed he had a sword wound in his abdomen. The sight sent Empress Lu shrieking backward, but he had no attention to spare for anyone else. "Do you know what you've done?! Aren't you the reincarnation of the Imperial Star? Do you know what I and the Great Sheng Dynasty's national fortune—"
The reincarnation of the Imperial Star?!
Empress Lu stopped backing away at once. She lunged forward viciously. "What do you mean, reincarnation of the Imperial Star? Isn't he rotten to the core from birth? Tell me! Yutan lied to me? He lied to me? How dare he lie to me! Why did you all lie to me?!"
Wen Xu