Tianjin was wealthy, and its Royal Palace was naturally magnificent. Zhao Yingluo's name alone revealed that her father had believed in Buddhism.
The Tianjin Royal Palace possessed a distinctive grandeur. Buddhist statues and murals filled its halls, countless images of Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, and arhats shining against the walls, their gold dust displaying all their sanctity.
Yet this place of solemn, sacred images was now spattered with blood. Before the palace, ten figures like iron towers, clad in armor and wielding broad swords, charged forward with their blades dancing. Luo Jialan and Zhao Yingluo followed behind them, with more than three hundred people at their backs, all wearing fanatical expressions as they cleared away the Palace Guards who had yet to react.
Zhao Yingluo and her people walked straight into the King of Tianjin's bedchamber. Naturally, the king tried to flee. Zhao Yingluo advanced directly with her sword, and the King of Tianjin cried out in terror, "I am your uncle! I am the King of Tianjin! You cannot kill me!"
Zhao Yingluo wasted no words. She stepped forward and beheaded him with a single stroke. Scarlet blood splashed onto her skirts, which fluttered in the cold wind seeping through the doorway. She hacked his head free with force and lifted it in her hand, then looked around and coldly asked a maidservant, "Where are the rebel's children?"
Zhao Yingluo knew that this King of Tianjin had four sons and three daughters. During her rule, two of his sons had already been killed for offending her, and she had married one daughter off to a country in the Western Regions. The remaining four were all still young and must be in the palace.
The maidservant pointed toward the rear hall. Carrying her sword and the head, Zhao Yingluo entered the Inner