The first lunar month was usually when human flame aura burned strongest, and the days leading up to the Shangyuan Festival were the best-known Human Festival. Yet this Spring Festival in the Great Yong capital was clearly very different.
With the Son of Heaven sheltering them, monsters and demons were, to a certain extent, free of restraint in the mortal world. Even some of the city's ghosts and gods would not act against them lightly.
By the fifth day of the first lunar month, the Magic Appraisal Assembly had been running for five days. Dozens of mages and evil creatures had already died on the Magic Appraisal Platform. Leaving aside those the emperor had ordered beheaded, Xiao Yuzhi had personally slain six evil creatures.
In the early hours of that morning, inside the Emperor's Bedchamber, Jin Lan carefully moved the emperor's hand off her chest. Her smooth, naked body then slipped sideways out of bed, and a gentle curl of her finger brought her clothes onto her body.
After glancing at the emperor, Jin Lan turned into a thin wisp of smoke and drifted out through a crack in the bedchamber window. None of the guards nearby noticed a thing.
The smoke flew over the Imperial Garden, crossed the palace walls and the river surrounding them, and passed over almost half the Imperial City before finally entering an immense complex of buildings.
This had once been the Tan Residence. Now, apart from a few maintenance workers employed by the court, no one lived here.
Jin Lan appeared in one of its courtyards and walked through it alone, admiring the residence's elegant layout and the hidden workings incorporated into some of its buildings.
Tan Yuanshang truly deserved his place among the rarest figures in all history. Though the Tan Residence had