“Clack, clack, clack.”
The crisp collision of the beads on the solid-gold abacus echoed through the spacious underground hall.
To Su Yaoyao’s ears, the sound was more beautiful than celestial music.
Dozens of rosewood chests stood open in the center of the hall.
Silver ingots gleamed white, gold sycees shone brilliantly, and stacks of banknotes were piled as high as little mountains.
This was the headquarters of the largest underground black market in the capital of the Great Yuan Kingdom.
Su Yaoyao lounged comfortably in a grand chair draped with an entire white tiger hide.
She crossed her legs without a shred of decorum, tapping her toe as it bobbed in the air.
In her left hand was a handful of sunflower seeds. With her right, she toyed with a golden abacus, humming a cheerful tune whose words were impossible to make out.
“Three prosperous connected shops in the eastern part of the city, valued at twenty-five thousand taels of silver.”
“The deed to the underground gambling den in the south of the city, valued at forty thousand taels.”
“And these several chests of ready cash just hauled out of the underground bank’s vault—one hundred and twenty thousand taels in all!”
The more Su Yaoyao counted, the more energized she became. Her beautiful, seductive eyes practically glowed green with greed.
Just an hour earlier, she had led this gang of black-market desperados in completely looting the capital’s number-one underground bank.
The banker who had dared to compete with her for business was currently hanging naked from a crooked tree outside the city, left to shiver in the cold wind.
“Boss is mighty! Boss is magnificent!”
Beside her, a burly man with a face full of flesh and a scar running straight across his left eye held out a bowl of tea with a deferential smile.
“Ever since you took over our black market, business has grown bigger and bigger. Following you, Boss, the brothers are finally getting a taste of the good life!”
Su Yaoyao spat out a sunflower-seed shell, took the tea bowl, and moistened her throat.
“This is nothing. Follow your boss, and I guarantee you’ll be eating well and drinking fine liquor every day from now on.”
Su Yaoyao had been a max-level poison doctor and mechanical engineer in the interstellar era. After transmigrating to ancient times, if she didn’t establish a monopoly and make a fortune, she would be letting down all the technology and ruthless ingenuity packed inside her head.
In this lawless underground world, morality was the bottom line.
And she had no bottom line.
Not only would she monopolize the capital’s black market, she would open branches throughout the entire kingdom.
Making money this quickly was far easier than working for a living in the interstellar era.
“Go. Add those several century-old wild ginseng roots in the storeroom to the accounts. Tomorrow, take them to the auction house and turn them into cash.”
Su Yaoyao waved her hand grandly, carrying herself like a general directing the fate of the world.
Scarface was just about to accept the order when a sudden change occurred.
“Boom!”
A deafening explosion rang out like thunder striking the ground.
The underground hall began to shake violently, and dust sifted down from the ceiling.
Quick as a flash, Su Yaoyao snatched the golden abacus off the table and stuffed it into her robes.
“What’s going on? An earthquake? Or did that banker come back from the dead with a bunch of ghosts to collect his debt?”
She frowned and unhappily brushed the dust from her clothes.
Bang!
Before anyone could react, the black market’s iron gate—said to be strong enough to withstand even an elephant—was blasted apart from the outside, shattered into countless splinters of wood and shards of metal.
The sharp fragments shot into the hall like a torrential downpour. Several black-market enforcers who failed to dodge in time were pierced like pincushions and collapsed into pools of blood, screaming.
The hall descended into chaos.
“Grab your weapons! Someone’s here to wreck the place!”
Scarface roared as he drew the nine-ring saber from his waist, his layers of flesh trembling.
The black-market enforcers had spent years living by the blade and reacted with astonishing speed. One after another, they drew their weapons and stared fixedly at the billowing smoke where the gate had been blown apart.
“Boss! This is bad! This is really bad!”
A blood-covered underling crawled out of the smoke, rolling and scrambling on all fours.
Crying out as he came, he left a long smear of blood across the floor while clawing his way toward Su Yaoyao.
“What are you wailing about? Even if the sky falls, someone taller will hold it up!”
Su Yaoyao remained firmly seated in her grand chair, without even uncrossing her legs.
“It’s not the sky falling… It’s—it’s the imperial army!”
The underling’s face was filled with terror as he desperately clutched at Scarface’s trouser leg.
“The Imperial Guards have broken in! The brothers outside are all dead!”
At those words, the entire hall fell silent.
Even Scarface, a hardened killer who had never batted an eye at taking a life, sucked in a sharp breath.
The Imperial Guards?
They were the royal troops who answered only to the emperor himself!
Though their black market was brazen, they had only ever dared to throw their weight around in the underground world.
The imperial court had always turned a blind eye to them. As long as they did not rebel, the two sides kept out of each other’s way.
What was happening today?
Had the authorities decided to raid the black market?
Su Yaoyao’s fingers stopped moving as she cracked sunflower seeds.
She didn’t care about the Imperial Guards.
What she cared about was the dozens of chests of gold and silver she had just seized.
“People from the imperial court? They’ve come to steal our money?”
Her eyes narrowed, and her expression gradually turned dangerous.
Step. Step. Step.
The steady, heavy rhythm of marching footsteps emerged from the smoke at the entrance.
The scrape and clank of heavy armor sounded with every step, each one pounding against the hearts of everyone present.
Along with those footsteps came a suffocating, terrifying killing intent.
It was so dense that it extinguished every trace of resistance in the black-market enforcers, as if icy water had been poured over them.
The temperature in the air plummeted. Even breathing became difficult.
The smoke slowly cleared.
A tall, slender figure stepped over the scattered limbs and severed bodies covering the floor and entered the underground hall.
The newcomer wore a dark black-and-gold dragon robe. Five-clawed golden dragons embroidered along the hem seemed to bare their teeth and brandish their claws in the firelight, so lifelike they appeared ready to leap from the fabric.
He was extraordinarily handsome, with deep, sharply defined features that looked as though they had been carved by knife and axe.
Yet his narrow eyes held a cruel, chilling savagery.
He looked like a bloodthirsty lone wolf that had just awakened and was preparing to slaughter everything in sight.
He was the master of the Great Yuan Kingdom, the reigning tyrant—Su Zhen.
In his hand, he carried a three-foot-long sword pointed downward, its blade gleaming coldly.
The legendary peerless sword.
The Dragon Spring Sword.
The imperial blade, symbolizing royal authority, dripped with glaring red blood.
“Drip… drip…”
Thick blood slid down the edge of the sword and struck the ground, splashing into clusters of scarlet plum blossoms.
In the dead-silent hall, the sound rang out like a death knell.
Behind Su Zhen surged several hundred fully armed Imperial Guards.
They held icy spears and surrounded the entire underground hall so completely that not even a fly could escape.
Their frigid killing intent sealed off every possible route of retreat.
Clang!
The nine-ring saber fell from Scarface’s hand.
His knees gave way, and he crashed heavily to the ground, his entire body shaking like a sieve.
“T-The emperor…”
It wasn’t only Scarface. The moment the black-market underlings recognized the dragon robe, their psychological defenses collapsed.
Every one of them threw down their weapons and knelt on the floor. Some were so terrified that they wet themselves on the spot, filling the air with a foul stench.
That was Su Zhen!
The most bloodthirsty tyrant in the history of the Great Yuan Kingdom!
Rumor had it that on the day he ascended the throne, he had all the families of the officials who opposed him—several hundred people in total—beheaded outside the Hall of Supreme Harmony. Blood had flowed like a river.
Anyone who caught his attention had to queue up to report to the King of Hell—and then cut in line.
“It’s over… It’s all over. We’re all going to be executed along with our entire families today…”
The underlings shut their eyes in despair, praying only that the tyrant would grant them a quick death.
Su Zhen came to a halt. His cold gaze swept across the hall like a radar.
At last, his eyes passed over everyone kneeling on the floor and landed directly on the center of the hall.
It landed on the only little girl who had neither knelt nor moved from the grand chair, where she sat with her legs crossed.
A bloodthirsty glint flashed in Su Zhen’s eyes.
He tightened his grip on the Longquan sword and strode toward Su Yaoyao, his long legs carrying him forward one step at a time.
The bloodstained tip of the sword scraped across the floor with an ear-piercing shriek.
Murderous intent descended upon Su Yaoyao like a tidal wave.
Su Zhen stopped in front of the grand chair and raised his arm.
The icy Longquan sword came to rest against Su Yaoyao’s slender, fair neck.
With the slightest exertion of his wrist, her perfectly good head would roll across the floor.
Life and death hung by a thread.
Yet even when faced with a predicament terrifying enough to shake an ordinary person to the core, Su Yaoyao did not so much as blink.
Her gaze did not linger on the tyrant or his bloodthirsty sword.
Instead, she looked past Su Zhen’s shoulder and fixed her eyes on the Imperial Guards behind him.
More precisely, she was staring at the heavy, finely crafted standard armor they wore.
Su Yaoyao’s eyes grew brighter and brighter as the calculations in her mind began to clatter away.
Wow, they’re all top-grade cold-iron linked armor!
The quality, the craftsmanship—what superb smelting materials!
If all five hundred-plus suits of heavy armor were stripped off and tossed into the furnace at the arms factory to be reforged…
Just how many muskets could they make? And how many glittering gold ingots could those be traded for?
