A deathly silence filled the Hall of Eternal Life.
Pulling the heavy Exorcism Mask off her head and face, Baozhu asked, "Is he dead?"
Li Yuanying sat beside the imperial bed. After studying the emperor for a moment, he replied, "No. He only fainted from fright. Whether he'll wake again, though, is hard to say."
Baozhu inwardly breathed a sigh of relief. Only then did she slowly approach and carefully examine her own father, the man who had buried her alive-the Supreme Ninth-Five of the Great Tang dynasty.
He had aged far beyond the loving figure in her memories, his skin wrinkled as a chicken's and his hair white as a crane's feathers, his face contorted and his fingernails long as hooked claws. In these final days, he had grown so suspicious that he would let no one approach him with anything sharp, not even scissors to trim his nails. His labored breathing carried a wheezing hiss from his throat, like a leaking bellows.
All of this made the emperor look less like a human than some aberrant monster. The parts of his features that resembled her own sent an especially uncanny chill crawling through Baozhu.
An unpleasant odor emanated from the dying old man. Even the most meticulous care could not hold back the stench of decay as his body and mind crept toward death.
The brother and sister had never intended to see him again. If they could make the emperor "voluntarily" abdicate and spend the end of his life as a harmless retired sovereign, that would be the most dignified ending possible after father and son in the Imperial House had turned against each other.
But after returning to Chang'an, they learned from their informants that the emperor had reclaimed the imperial seal and kept it on