“Pfft!”
Scalding black blood came spewing from Lin Zhenxiong’s mouth.
The crimson blood splattered across the war chariot, a horrifying sight.
He gripped the edge of the chariot so tightly that his fingernails had split from the strain.
The pain shooting through all ten fingers could not compare to even one ten-thousandth of the despair and humiliation crushing his heart at that moment.
It was over.
All over.
Lin Zhenxiong gasped heavily, his chest heaving violently.
His bloodshot eyes stared at the vast imperial palace square before him.
He looked at the hundred thousand invincible ironclad troops he had once been so proud of.
This army had been the strongest foundation of his confidence—the force he had relied upon to intimidate the court and trample the world beneath his feet.
He had exhausted generations of the Lin family’s wealth and spent countless amounts of silver, gold, grain, and provisions to forge this army of fierce warriors, a force that had never known defeat.
But now?
Those hundred thousand fierce warriors had become the greatest laughingstock under heaven.
The elite soldiers in whom he had placed all his hopes were rolling around on the ground in groups of three or five.
Some were dancing bizarre, indecent dances.
Some clung to their comrades’ legs, wailing as they confessed the secrets of the money they had secretly stashed away.
Others had removed their heavy helmets and were shaking their hips wildly at the front of the formation, grinning like fools.
An army that had conquered cities and seized fortresses?
They were nothing but a pack of clowns who had lost their minds and abandoned every shred of dignity!
Lin Zhenxiong’s vision gradually blurred. His ears were filled with thunderous, weightlifting-bell-like laughter.
Every burst of laughter was like a resounding slap, striking him brutally across the face.
It trampled the dignity of Lin Zhenxiong and the honor of generations of his Lin ancestors into the most filthy mud.
He understood.
He understood completely.
There was no way he could succeed in his rebellion with this useless rabble dancing on the ground.
Forget storming the gates of the imperial palace—even if he ordered them to pick up their blades now, they would not know which end to swing!
The army’s morale had collapsed, and military discipline had been destroyed.
These hundred thousand men were finished!
“Why… Why did it turn out like this…”
Lin Zhenxiong muttered to himself, his voice thick with despair and unwillingness.
The imperial ambitions he had plotted for ten years.
The supreme power for which he had sacrificed everything.
All of it had been drenched and shattered by this absurd pink rain!
He refused to accept it!
He refused to accept losing to an eight-year-old little demoness just like this!
“Bang!”
Lin Zhenxiong slammed his fist into the war chariot, leaving a deep dent.
After passing through despair, his eyes rapidly transformed.
The scheming and calculations of a man in power gradually faded from his gaze.
In their place appeared the savage glint of a beast that had lost everything, gone mad, and was now fighting with its back to the wall.
If a vast army was useless—
If every scheme and stratagem had been destroyed by the little demoness’s strange hidden weapons—
Then he would resolve everything in the most primitive and brutal way possible!
As long as he killed Su Zhen, as long as he butchered that demon girl from the Su family who was pretending to be some divine mystic, the world of Great Yuan would still belong to Lin Zhenxiong!
“Demon girl…”
From deep in Lin Zhenxiong’s throat, he forced out two hoarse words.
Then he raised his head and threw both arms wide toward the sky.
“Demon girl from the Su family! I’ll kill you!”
The great general had gone mad!
He threw back his head and let out a terrifying howl into the pitch-black night sky.
The sound did not seem capable of coming from a human throat.
It was shrill, high-pitched, and filled with a murderous fury that seemed to tear through everything in its path.
It was like the roar of a terrifying beast that had been trapped in the abyss for ten thousand years and had finally broken free of its chains.
The howl pierced through the earth-shaking laughter of the hundred thousand soldiers and shot straight into the heavens.
The Imperial Guards standing atop the palace wall heard the sound wave.
Their eardrums throbbed with pain, their blood and qi churned in their chests, and they could barely remain standing.
Just as everyone stared in terror at the great general on the war chariot—
Lin Zhenxiong moved.
He seized the heavy armor cloak on his body with both hands.
“Riiip!”
A deafening sound like tearing silk rang out.
The sturdy cloak, made of fine silk and steel chainmail, was ripped in two by his bare hands!
With savage force, he tore the shattered pieces of heavy armor from his body one by one and casually tossed them at his feet.
Then Lin Zhenxiong’s body began to undergo a horrifying transformation.
“Crack, crack, crack… crack, crack, crack…”
A dense series of crisp pops, like beans exploding in a pan, came from within him.
Every bone in his body ground against the others, shifted out of place, and rearranged itself.
Lin Zhenxiong had already been a tall man, but now his body grew another several inches.
The muscles that had once been somewhat slack swelled and bulged.
Each muscle was as hard as granite, brimming with terrifying, explosive power.
His skin gradually took on a strange, dark bluish metallic sheen.
But that was only the beginning.
In the next moment—
A terrifying fluctuation beyond the power of words erupted violently from Lin Zhenxiong’s body!
“Boom!”
There was no flash of fire and no explosion.
Yet the invisible blast of air was a thousand times more violent than a storm!
This was true qi!
A surge of pure, powerful true qi, condensed and domineering to an extreme!
The instant this true qi emerged, the war chariot beneath Lin Zhenxiong let out a mournful groan.
Under the pressure, the solid shafts and wheels cracked inch by inch, transforming into a pile of scrap metal.
Then the terrifying wave of air swept madly outward.
Within a radius of three zhang around Lin Zhenxiong, the air itself seemed to have been sucked dry.
The heavily armored rebel soldiers who had been near the chariot, throwing their arms around one another and dancing the cancan, did not even have time to scream.
Their massive, heavily built bodies were flung away like leaves in a gale.
“Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!”
Dozens of iron-clad brutes weighing hundreds of pounds were blasted into the air.
They crashed down like dumplings dropped into a pot, slamming into their comrades in the distance and knocking down a huge swath of soldiers.
The sudden turn of events left everyone who had not yet completely lost their minds deeply shaken.
On top of the palace wall, the commander of the Imperial Guards clung desperately to the crenellation, barely managing to keep his footing.
He stared wide-eyed at the terrifying figure in the distance, his body shrouded in dark blue-green true qi.
“What… What realm of true qi is that?!”
The commander’s teeth chattered uncontrollably, and his voice was filled with despair.
As one of Great Yuan’s foremost imperial experts, he himself was a powerhouse who had entered the Grandmaster realm.
Yet before the aura erupting from Lin Zhenxiong, he could not even summon the courage to draw his blade.
It felt as though an ant on the ground were looking up at a divine dragon in the ninth heaven!
“Impossible… This is absolutely impossible!”
The commander shook his head frantically, cold sweat soaking his entire body.
“He isn’t an ordinary First-Rank expert! He… He’s actually a Great Grandmaster!”
Moreover, judging from the degree to which this true qi had been refined and the might with which every casual gesture stirred the currents of heaven and earth—
This was certainly not something a newly advanced Great Grandmaster could possess!
So Lin Zhenxiong, that old fox, had been hiding his strength all along!
He had concealed his true cultivation and deceived everyone under heaven!
He was actually a rare peak-level Great Grandmaster!
A peak-level Great Grandmaster!
Even across the entire continent, such a person was as rare as a phoenix feather or a unicorn horn.
That was the pinnacle of martial cultivation—a true existence capable of standing alone against an entire nation!
Legend had it that a peak-level Great Grandmaster could project true qi outward and pierce a target from a hundred paces away.
They could ignore ordinary bows and heavy crossbows, taking an enemy general’s head amid ten thousand troops as easily as reaching into a bag.
No wonder Lin Zhenxiong had dared to brazenly plot to usurp the throne.
It turned out that he not only commanded an army of a hundred thousand—he himself was the most terrifying trump card of all!
“Heaven means to destroy Great Yuan!”
The commander of the Imperial Guards closed his eyes in despair.
Faced with an army of a hundred thousand, they could still fight to the death, using the city walls to wear down the enemy’s forces.
But against a Grandmaster at the peak of his power who had completely lost his mind…
The towering imperial walls were laughably fragile, as though they had been made of paper.
At the brink of total military collapse, Lin Zhenxiong unleashed his full strength.
He slowly raised his head, his blood-red eyes fixed on the top of the city tower.
He saw Su Zhen in his imperial dragon robes. He also saw Su Yaoyao, wearing a ridiculous mask.
“Demoness, today, I shall use your blood to wash away the humiliation inflicted upon my Lin family!”
At the pinnacle of martial cultivation, the fury of a Grandmaster could leave a million corpses in its wake!
Lin Zhenxiong bent his knees slightly, and the hard ground beneath him shattered.
“Boom!”
A tremendous explosion rang out as he broke through the sound barrier.
His entire body shot into the air like a gigantic black eagle!
The protective qi erupting from him was astonishingly powerful.
The pink poisonous mist filling the air could not even come within three feet of him.
Even the wind currents in midair were forcibly torn apart by the force of his ascent.
He ignored the poison on the ground and soared skyward through the blazing flames that filled the heavens.
His target was the very top of the imperial walls!
Capture the leader first.
Moving at a terrifying speed imperceptible to the naked eye, Lin Zhenxiong left a fading afterimage in the air.
Carrying a berserk killing intent powerful enough to destroy heaven and earth, he lunged straight at the tiny figure atop the city tower.
And at that very moment, Crown Princess Su Yaoyao was sitting in a high-backed chair that had appeared there at some point, a handful of melon seeds in her hands.
Faced with the fatal assault of a peak Grandmaster…
she was calmly cracking melon seeds.
