At first light, on the desolate imperial road leading to the border of the Great Yan Kingdom,
two magnificent black steeds ambled along side by side.
Riding them was the extraordinary father-daughter pair who had fled the Great Yuan Kingdom overnight.
To avoid attracting attention, Su Zhen had deliberately pasted on a ridiculous pair of drooping mustaches.
He wore a dark-red brocade robe covered in enormous patterns of copper coins. With two walnuts turning between his fingers, he looked every inch the nouveau-riche merchant, practically reeking of money.
Su Yaoyao, meanwhile, had changed into a dusty-gray servant’s outfit, with her hair tied into two round buns.
“Dad, we left in such a hurry that we didn’t bring enough cash.”
Sitting on the horse and swinging her short legs, Su Yaoyao counted on her fingers.
“Things are expensive in Great Yan. We’re crossing the border and entering another country—there’ll be places to spend money everywhere.”
Hearing his daughter’s complaint, Su Zhen was just about to thump his chest and promise that he could get more money somehow.
Just then, a rustling sound suddenly came from the dense woods on both sides of the road.
“Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!”
More than a dozen masked, burly men with fleshy faces and massive cleavers sprang out of the underbrush.
Moving with practiced precision, they lined up and completely blocked the father and daughter’s path.
The One-Eyed Bandit Chief slung his saber over his shoulder and spat arrogantly.
“This mountain is mine to open, and these trees are mine to plant!”
“Old man, hand over every last bit of money and treasure you’re carrying. Do that, and your granddaddy here might leave you with a whole corpse!”
Faced with the sudden robbery, the Tyrant Dad and the Crown Princess showed not the slightest hint of fear.
The father and daughter exchanged a glance. In their eyes burned a greedy green light even more terrifying than that of the bandits.
Talk about a pillow being delivered just when you’re sleepy!
A cruel smile curved Su Zhen’s lips. With a casual squeeze, he crushed the two walnuts in his hand into powder.
“Robbery? Robbery is what I love most in this life.”
Half a cup of tea later,
the dozen-odd bandits who had been swaggering moments before were now huddled together, trembling in the cold wind.
Their tattered clothes had been stripped clean.
Every one of them was left wearing nothing but a drafty pair of red underpants with holes in them.
Su Yaoyao skillfully stuffed the bits of silver, copper coins, and even their chipped cleavers into a large black sack.
“Pathetic paupers! You come out to rob people carrying this little money?”
The Tyrant Dad kicked the One-Eyed Bandit Chief in the rear, his face full of disdain.
“You couldn’t compare to even one toe of your old man back when I was a bandit at Black Wind Stronghold!”
The bandits were on the verge of tears, cursing furiously in their hearts.
These two had not only taken all their money, they had even stolen their clothes and shoes. Who exactly were the bandits here?
Meanwhile, in the imperial capital of Great Yuan, inside the imperial study beside the Hall of Supreme Polarity,
the scene was utterly different from the lighthearted merriment on the imperial road. An atmosphere of suffocating despair hung in the air.
“Argh!”
A desperate, mournful howl rang out from the imperial study, frightening the eunuchs outside until they trembled.
The Crown Prince, Su Jin, sat sprawled in the enormous dragon throne, his hair disheveled.
His eyes, normally cold, ruthless, and filled with murderous intent, were now webbed with terrifying red veins.
Dark circles, the result of being tortured by an all-night work session, lay beneath them.
And before him stood seven or eight mountains of memorials, each half a man tall!
“Why… Why am I being forced to review this utter garbage?!”
Su Jin snatched up a memorial submitted by the Ministry of Revenue, shaking with rage.
“A sow in Longxi had a difficult birth, and they have to write a memorial to tell Father about that?!”
“There’s flooding in Jiangnan, and they still have to write a ten-thousand-word rhymed essay before requesting disaster relief funds?!”
He drew the poisoned dagger from his waist and drove it through the memorial, pinning it to the imperial desk.
The Crown Prince, the Living Hades, felt as if he were about to go insane.
He was an assassin!
A martial fanatic who believed in solving everything with violence!
His hands were meant for killing and drawing blood, not for holding a vermilion brush and dealing with this endless pile of trivial nonsense!
“Father! Yaoyao! You two heartless liars!”
Su Jin threw back his head and howled, tears of abandonment and resentment gathering at the corners of his eyes.
“You went off to Great Yan to eat well and drink your fill, leaving me here to work as free labor!”
“Once I finish dealing with this garbage, I swear I’ll go to Great Yan and drag you back!”
The Crown Prince’s impotent roars echoed through the imperial study for a long, long time.
Across an unbroken chain of mountains and over the border between the two kingdoms,
the story moved straight toward the distant neighboring country—the Great Yan Kingdom.
Deep within the Ten Thousand Mountains lay a region perpetually shrouded in deadly miasma, where the sun never seemed to shine.
At the center of this death zone, which even birds could not cross,
stood a towering and sinister complex of black palaces.
Demonic asuras with grotesque faces were carved into the walls, while spirit-summoning banners fluttered everywhere in the wind.
This was the headquarters of the Great Yan Kingdom’s foremost evil cult, a place that struck terror into the hearts of countless righteous martial artists.
The Netherworld Divine Sect!
Inside the main hall, two rows of braziers burned with eerie blue flames, casting the chamber in a sinister glow.
At the very center of the hall, atop nine tiers of white jade steps,
stood the sect master’s throne, forged from pure gold and encrusted with countless top-grade rubies.
A stunning woman dressed in flamboyant red lounged lazily upon it.
Her black hair spilled down like a waterfall, falling freely around her. Her features were exquisite, yet they carried a sharp, aggressive beauty.
In her long, foxlike eyes swirled an overbearing disdain for the world and an arrogance that placed no one beneath the heavens in her regard.
This was the mistress of the Netherworld Divine Sect—and the empress of Great Yuan who had vanished eight years ago.
Ye Honglian!
Weak and helpless?
A delicate moonlight beauty?
It had all been an act this woman had put on back then to conceal her true identity.
She rested one foot casually on the edge of the throne while holding a Western Regions night-glow cup in one hand.
“Boring. This is so boring.”
Ye Honglian gently swirled the crimson wine in her cup, her breathtaking face filled with profound ennui.
“The righteous sects of Great Yan are far too useless. I haven’t even exerted myself, and they’ve already fallen in droves.”
Just as she was muttering and complaining about how dull her life had become,
“Achoo!”
Ye Honglian suddenly let out an earth-shaking sneeze.
The night-glow cup nearly slipped from her hand, and a few drops of wine splashed onto the back of her snowy-white hand.
She was an unparalleled master, immune to every poison and unaffected by heat or cold. How could she suddenly have sneezed?
Ye Honglian slowly sat up straight, her lovely brows drawing together slightly.
A faint yet ominous chill, making her feel as though she were being pricked from all sides, crept up along her spine.
“Strange. Why do I feel as if two shady characters are watching me?”
Ye Honglian rubbed her chin. A hint of wariness flashed through her beautiful foxlike eyes.
In this world, the number of people capable of making her feel such a sense of danger could be counted on one hand.
Her instincts told her that something major was about to happen.
Better safe than sorry.
Ye Honglian slammed a hand down on the armrest of her throne, her commanding voice echoing through the hall.
“Someone come!”
Two protectors, their bodies shrouded in black robes, flashed into view and dropped to one knee.
“Pass down my order. Immediately reinforce the defensive formation outside the sect headquarters with two additional layers!”
“Activate all the poisonous mechanisms and traps to their highest level!”
She refused to believe that her impregnable sect headquarters could actually be breached and taken over.
And at that very moment, on the imperial road outside the border of the Great Yan Kingdom…
The setting sun at dusk stretched the shadows of the two black horses long across the ground.
Su Zhen sat astride one of them, carefully wiping the gleaming Longquan Sword in his hand with a scrap of cloth. Reflected in the blade were his eyes, slightly reddened with excitement.
Wife, you’ve kept me in the dark for far too long. Once I catch you, I’m definitely going to reassert my authority as your husband!
Beside him, Su Yaoyao sat cross-legged on horseback.
In her hands was a small abacus made entirely of pure gold. Her fair fingers clicked the beads back and forth.
“After cleaning out this cult, we’d better make at least another million taels of gold to make it worth our while.”
“Otherwise, all this hard work on my international business trip will have been for nothing!”
Father and daughter exchanged a glance, identical spine-chilling smiles curling across their lips.
“Giddy-up!”
With a loud crack of the whip, the two steeds shot toward the borders of the Great Yan Kingdom like arrows loosed from a bow.
The pounding hooves kicked up clouds of dust.
Was the Netherworld Divine Sect of Great Yan ready to welcome these two wildly unhinged ancestors?
