Afternoon in Heaven Dou City should have brought warm sunlight and bustling streets, yet a chill more piercing than the depths of winter pervaded the main hall of Prince Xue Xing's residence.
A personal guard stumbled and crawled into the hall, his armor caked with dust and dark red blood-the very captain Xue Xing had sent to wait for news outside Soulbreak Valley.
His face was as white as paper, and even his breathing came in frantic gasps. He dropped to his knees with a thud, his voice trembling like a dying candle in the wind:
"Your Highness! Disaster! The ambush at Soulbreak Valley... failed completely! Commander Shadow was killed, all three hundred ambushers were wiped out, and even Elder Yu Luomian of the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Clan... defected to Spirit Hall!"
"What?!"
Prince Xue Xing sprang from his carved chair, his face instantly turning iron-dark. The white jade teacup he had been toying with smashed against the gold-brick floor with a crack, scattering shards and splashing tea across the hem of his brocade robe.
He rushed up to the guard in a few strides and seized his collar, his eyes as vicious as a beast poised to devour its prey, his knuckles whitening with the force of his grip:
"Say that again! Wiped out? Shadow is dead? Yu Luomian defected to Spirit Hall? How is that possible! Three hundred Soul Masters! Two Soul Douluos were stationed among them! How could not a single man have survived?!"
"It... it was Spirit Hall! They deployed seven Titled Douluos, Your Highness!"
The guard struggled to breathe in his grip, his face flushing red, his voice trembling on the verge of tears,
"Elders Gui Mei, Yue Guan, Dugu Bo, and Demon Bear, together with Elders Ci Xue, Snake Lance, and Holy Dragon