The atmosphere in the secret chamber was unbearably tragic.
Su Zhen’s towering frame trembled violently.
He stared at the jade pendant engraved with a blood-red lotus spider, tears streaming down his face like beads slipping from a broken string.
“Zitong… My Zitong…”
The iron-blooded emperor, decisive in slaughter and feared throughout the land, wept like a child who had lost his entire world.
In his memories, the Empress had always been delicate and timid, so soft and fragile she seemed boneless.
She would burst into tears at the sight of a dead ant.
Even raising her voice would leave her blushing and gasping for breath.
That pure, flawless moonlight of his had actually been cruelly murdered by these deranged cultists!
Su Jin knelt beside him, his eyes bloodshot and killing intent boiling throughout his body.
“The Netherworld Divine Cult! I swear I’ll tear every last one of you to pieces and grind your bones to dust!”
Father and son were completely immersed in their tragic tale of losing the woman they loved and swearing vengeance in a sea of blood.
Their moving oaths and suppressed sobs echoed through the underground treasury.
In his mind, Su Zhen was already plotting how to mobilize the armies of the Great Yuan Kingdom.
Even if he had to turn the entire continent upside down, he would drag the leader of the Netherworld Divine Cult out and hang him over a lantern fire!
It was precisely at this deeply moving moment—when they had shed enough tears to accompany an appropriately tragic musical score—
that a sudden “buzz” rang out in Su Zhen’s mind.
A bolt from the blue.
It cleaved straight through his sorrowful thoughts.
Then, a crisp, childish voice filled with confusion exploded simultaneously in the minds of both him and the Crown Prince.
[Huh? Wait a second!]
[Why does this thing look more and more familiar?]
That familiar voice belonged to none other than the Imperial Princess, Su Yaoyao, who was turning the jade pendant over and over in her hands.
Su Zhen’s sobs came to an abrupt stop.
With two tear tracks still running down his face, he peered through his blurred vision at his precious daughter standing before him.
Familiar?
What did she mean, familiar?
This was the family heirloom her mother had worn since childhood. Her mother had died when Yaoyao was born—how could she possibly recognize it?
Su Zhen sniffed and was just about to tell his daughter the tragic, beautiful love story between himself and the Empress.
But before he could open his mouth, Su Yaoyao’s penetrating thoughts swept through both father and son’s minds like a violent storm.
[Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh!]
[No wonder that blood-red spider looked so familiar!]
[Isn’t this the VIP, cult-leader-exclusive token belonging to my missing mother?!]
Su Zhen: “???”
Su Jin: “???”
The grief-stricken expressions on the father and son’s faces froze.
They glanced at each other, and both saw the same trace of clear, bewildered stupidity in the other’s eyes.
VIP? Cult leader? Exclusive token?
What kind of cursed words were those?
Su Yaoyao extended one finger and traced the complicated patterns on the back of the jade pendant.
[I knew it! There’s no way I could be mistaken!]
[The third leg on the left side of the red-lotus spider—even the tiny little mark is still there!]
Hearing this thought, Su Zhen lowered his head and fixed his gaze on the pendant.
By the dim light of the flames in the secret chamber, he brought his eyes extremely close to it.
On the third leg to the left of the intricate spider emblem, there really was a tiny plum-blossom pattern carved into the jade with an extremely delicate engraving technique.
It was so minute that it would have been impossible to notice without carefully rubbing the spot with one’s fingertip or examining it at close range.
[Hahahaha! I’m dying!]
Su Yaoyao’s laughter thundered through the minds of father and son, making their heads ring.
[This is the private anti-counterfeiting mark my ridiculous mother came up with back then so her people couldn’t forge her tokens!]
[That devilishly clever design, those lines carved with supernatural precision—there’s no way anyone else in the world could make a second one!]
A private anti-counterfeiting mark?!
Su Zhen’s lips trembled violently.
The jade pendant suddenly felt like a red-hot coal in his hand.
How could his gentle, kind, delicate wife have created something so much like a token from an underground crime syndicate?
[Tsk, tsk, tsk. Su Zhen and Crown Prince Bro are crying so hard. I almost feel bad for them.]
[So it turns out my mother never died!]
[The whole thing was a performance she put on herself!]
Boom!
Those few thoughts exploded like a massive bomb in the minds of Su Zhen and Su Jin, sending a mushroom cloud soaring into the sky.
She never died?!
Zitong hadn’t died back then?!
Su Zhen felt the world spin around him. His breathing grew rapid and ragged, like an old bellows.
Su Jin was so startled that the poisoned blade fell from his hand.
With a crisp clang, it struck the ground and echoed through the secret chamber.
Father and son stood there like two statues scorched by lightning, utterly incapable of controlling their expressions.
Su Yaoyao continued broadcasting her thoughts at full force, showing not the slightest concern for the psychological endurance of the two men.
[I remember now. The spatial system transmitted the original host’s hidden memories to me, and there was a record of this.]
[Back then, this woman thought the imperial palace of the Great Yuan Kingdom was just too boring!]
[Every day, all she had to do was watch the consorts scheme against one another and listen to Su Zhen ramble on about state affairs. She was so bored she was practically growing mold!]
[So she used a top-grade fake-death pill she bought on the black market and simply faked her death to escape!]
[She abandoned her husband and son, ran away in the middle of the night, and pulled it off in one smooth move. You’ve got to admire the efficiency!]
Su Zhen’s eyes widened until they were larger than lanterns.
The exclusive favor he had been so proud of, the love he had lavished upon her as though he could give her the entire world—in her eyes, it had merely been “boring” and “so dull she was growing mold”?
Abandoned her husband and son? Ran away in the middle of the night?
Was this really the virtuous, refined, learned, and gracious Empress he had known?
Su Yaoyao stared at the corpse of the assassin on the floor, her heart filled with wonder.
[Running away would have been one thing, but apparently she found life too peaceful, so she went to start a business in the neighboring Dayan Kingdom!]
[I heard the people there are fierce and unruly—the perfect place for gang warfare.]
[She went on a rampage of operations and directly built herself a faction there, becoming the terrifying leader of a heretical cult!]
The Dayan Kingdom! Starting a business! Leader of a heretical cult!
Those words were like poison-coated blades, viciously slicing into Su Zhen’s fragile heart.
Su Zhen felt as if his soul were about to leave his body.
The beloved wife he had mourned for eight years, weeping bitterly every year on the anniversary of her death…
Had actually gone to an enemy kingdom and become the leader of a heretical cult?!
Su Yaoyao nudged the stiff corpse of the leading assassin with the tip of her foot.
[No wonder these assassins seemed so pathetic. They couldn’t even withstand a few moves from Big Brother.]
[The ones lying on the ground are probably just low-level contractors working for her!]
[There’s no way the elite forces of the Divine Cult would bite down on poison and kill themselves without even putting up a decent fight!]
[They’re obviously just a bunch of temporary hires paid to do a job!]
[My mother really is something. Even after becoming a cult leader, she’s still so stingy. She didn’t even give them permanent positions with decent benefits!]
What blood feud? What irreconcilable enmity?
What promises to crush the Netherworld Divine Cult? What vows to butcher them until not a single bone remained?
After all that, the mastermind behind the Netherworld Divine Cult was actually the very person they had been preparing to avenge—the victim herself?!
What kind of absurd, surreal tragedy was this?
Su Jin stood there with his mouth hanging open, staring blankly at the assassin’s corpse.
He had just sworn to slaughter every last one of those heretical cultists.
Would that mean he had to lead an army to exterminate his own mother?!
If he really led an army over there, would that count as putting righteousness before family—or as a mother and son finally reuniting?
The Crown Prince, the Living Hades had never been this speechless in his entire life.
And at this very moment, the person taking the hardest hit was none other than Su Zhen himself.
He was rigidly kneeling on the ground.
The tears of grief that had just gushed forth like a spring—
The instant he heard those thoughts—
Whoosh!
They flowed backward, defying the laws of physics.
The tears retreated into his eyes, and his grief dissolved into nothingness.
Now, filling Su Zhen’s chest was nothing but the overwhelming absurdity of realizing he had been deceived for eight years!
Like a rusted gear, he turned his head little by little, with excruciating stiffness.
His neck emitted the creaking sound of bones grinding against one another.
His eyes, still threaded with red veins, stared at his precious daughter before him—the one holding a jade pendant while casually enjoying the spectacle.
His entire worldview shattered across the floor.
Shattered into pieces so fine that not even a broom could sweep them up.
Su Zhen’s lips trembled violently.
His mind kept replaying the image of his wife from all those years ago: gentle as water, so delicate and meek that she hardly dared to raise her voice.
I have mourned for eight years…
My frail, helpless deceased wife…
Was actually the female gang leader who founded a cult?!
