The moment Bibi Dong returned to the Pope Palace, she slammed the doors behind her with a thunderous bang.
The two guards outside shuddered. They exchanged a glance and silently retreated a few steps.
She strode to the throne but did not sit. She stood before it with her arms locked across her chest, breathing hard.
Her fingers crushed the fabric of her ornate papal robe, and her teeth ground together.
"I'm furious... absolutely furious!"
She slammed a fist into an armrest. The solid jade gave a dull crack, and fractures spread beneath her knuckles.
Bibi Dong panted as the meal replayed over and over in her mind.
Ah Yin's gentle face. Su Yu's infuriating grin. And the word "teacher" that she herself had forced through clenched teeth.
"When have I ever suffered such humiliation?" she growled, her voice echoing through the empty hall.
"The Pope of Spirit Hall, forced to call some brat 'teacher'—and in front of an outsider!"
The more she thought about it, the hotter the fire in her chest burned.
She had spent half her life crawling out from under Qian Xunji's shadow and climbed over countless corpses to claim this seat. Since then, she had never bowed her head to anyone.
Yet that brat Su Yu had made her break her own rules again and again.
In the courtyard today, it had been that face every time. Every time, she had been left unable to swallow her anger or spit it out.
What she hated even more was that, however furious she got, the moment she remembered that face—so nearly identical to Qian Xunji's when he was young—she could not bring herself to hurt him.
She wanted to hang him up and whip him. Her head was full of ways to torment him until she