Dawn was approaching.
Zong Chuke's residence was drenched in blood.
There were no flames, no shouts, none of the screams and wails that usually accompanied the slaughter of an entire household.
The Plum Blossom Guards of the Princess's Residence never made unnecessary noise when killing.
Three Fifth Realm masters had struck, joined by the Twenty-Four Floral Periods and a host of other experts. The result was thirty-seven heads arranged in a neat plum blossom pattern on the tiles of the main hall-all Zong Chuke's wives and children. His martial cultivation destroyed and a heavy cangue locked around him, Zong Chuke knelt on the floor, his eyes wide with disbelief.
Petty villains always gloated when their schemes succeeded.
But when someone else stooped just as low to deal with them, they could no longer laugh.
At this very moment, Li Lingyue was repaying tooth for tooth, eye for eye!
You took the first turn; I would take the next.
If you dared strike first, I would slaughter your entire household!
Clean, swift, and without a single survivor.
No.
One survivor remained.
He had been left alive to witness-and remember-these thirty-seven heads tonight!
Zong Chuke knelt in the blood, staring into his first wife's eyes, which refused to close no matter what.
The Plum Blossom Guards had already withdrawn.
They had come like the tide and retreated like shadows. Not one of them spared him another glance.
Zong Chuke had "disappeared" from this world.
At court, he was the chancellor "ambushed and killed by bandits." In a cell in the deepest reaches of the Ten Directions Secret Prison beneath the Princess's Residence, however, he would live on in another fashion.
For a very long time!
When the news reached the palace, Empress Wei was pacing anxiously by candlelight with an outer robe