The handwriting was elegant and clear, every stroke revealing the writer's care and solemnity.
"I know this act is presumptuous and oversteps my bounds. If Your Majesty has no wish to intervene, I dare not insist, nor will I harbor resentment."
"If this gambit fails, I will spare nothing of myself. Even if I must burn away the remnants of my soul, I will sever the roots of demonic corruption clinging to the Ji Clan bloodline, lest they soil Your Majesty's hands."
"There is only one matter in which I earnestly beg Your Majesty's mercy."
"My younger sister, Lingri, has a pure heart and unwavering loyalty, her temperament fierce as fire. If the tide proves irreversible... I implore Your Majesty, for the sake of the slender bond we share as descendants of the Ji Clan, to grant her some protection."
"Shuyue offers a hundred bows in supplication."
Yun Huang lowered his gaze, his fingertip unconsciously curling gently around Qing Kitty's soft ear tip.
Among the Ji Clan's main lineage, siblings had long followed the custom of taking names and titles from the sun, moon, dawn, and dusk.
Shuyue, Lingri.
For this pair of "sun and moon" to retain such sincere concern for each other amid the filthy mire of imperial power struggles and Heavenly Demon corruption, each willing to become a shield to keep the other safe, was indeed rare.
But Yun Huang had lived too long and witnessed too many pleas and sacrifices more tragic, more sorrowful, or more hopeless than this.
The heart of an Immortal Emperor, tempered through ten thousand tribulations, had long since become as unyielding as chaos divine iron and as cold as the dark ice of the Nine Netherworlds. How could such a trifling display of "sibling devotion" move him?
Yet these siblings had