The moment they stepped inside, the first things they felt were the warm, gentle glazed Buddha light that filled the entire pagoda and the faint, lingering fragrance in the air.
In the square outside, thousands upon thousands of commoners had witnessed Buddha light spilling from the pagoda and dispelling the sinister miasma. They had already fallen to their knees, their thunderous cries of "Long live His Majesty!" piercing the clouds-in their eyes, this was undoubtedly the Buddha Bone manifesting its divine power, a supreme auspicious omen protecting Great Tang. Yet the gazes of Li Xian and his foremost ministers lingered on Sengjia for only a moment before inevitably falling upon the wreckage strewn everywhere, which even the Buddha light could not fully conceal.
The scene inside the pagoda was nothing short of hell!
The heavy stench of blood mingled with the cloying remnants of gu poison that had yet to disperse, assaulting their nostrils. Corpses littered the floor, pools of blood wound between them, and severed arms and mangled limbs lay everywhere.
Li Duozuo leaned against half a pillar, blood pouring from his severed arm; Li Sichong's chest and abdomen were a bloody mess, his breathing faint; Wu Sansi had been reduced to a horrifying mist of blood. And Li Qianli, the only one in the center still more or less standing, had a blue-black face and swayed on his feet, held upright by willpower alone.
Li Xian visibly swayed. Only Empress Wei's firm, timely support kept him from collapsing.
His lips trembled. Overwhelming horror, grief, bewilderment, and a faint, enfeebling dizziness brought on by the combined shock of the "miracle" and the carnage before him left him unable to speak.
Empress Wei's lovely face had likewise lost all color, and tears filled her eyes, but she was a little