Zhi Yue lifted her cup, took a sip herself, and smiled faintly.
In front of each envoy sat a cup of wine.
They hesitated for a moment.
That wine… it couldn't be poisoned, right?
Zhi Yue didn't rush them. She acted as if she didn't notice their unease, set her cup down, and ordered calmly, "Begin the performance."
The king's personal guards immediately stepped forward to make the arrangements.
Everyone else exchanged glances, then gradually sat down again.
Behind the great hall, the atmosphere was completely different. Everyone there was watching Yun Jin nervously.
"Senior Yun, what do we do? Are we really supposed to go onstage and perform? We don't even know what to do!" The elf girl's voice trembled slightly.
Their group was scheduled as the tenth act. From the sound of the music outside, the first performance had already begun.
They hadn't practiced anything at all these past few days. Of course, they were never planning to actually perform for the king. But what exactly they were supposed to do instead… none of them had a clue.
"Relax," Yun Jin said with a faint smile. "I doubt we'll even have to speak."
Everyone blinked in confusion.
She chuckled softly.
The nobles of the Shi Tribe wanted to pull the king down from her throne.
They'd need a reason. They'd been holding back on the matter of capturing rare races all this time.
Obviously, they'd been saving it for today. None of them truly cared about saving anyone. They just needed a pretext to strike.
So let them start first.
Too bad for them, though—none of their plans were going to work out today.
Even if they didn't fully understand what she meant, everyone trusted Yun Jin completely. Their hearts slowly began to settle.
The performances went on.
Meanwhile, Yun Jin secretly sent word to the disciples of the Wushuang Sect to begin their part of the plan.
At the same time, she used her spiritual imprint to contact the old woman.
The ceremony had begun. It was time for her to prepare for her escape. If she broke out now, even if the king sensed something was off, she wouldn't have the time to verify it herself. She'd be forced to sit and wait.
Two operations moved in tandem.
Zhi Yue sat upright on her throne, that faint smile still lingering on her lips.
Then suddenly, her expression shifted slightly.
Just now, she'd felt it—the chain she'd used to bind her mother had snapped.
Broken? How?
Someone had entered the forbidden bamboo forest? How was that even possible?!
Her gaze turned ice-cold as she swept it toward the nobles.
Heh.
Who else could it be but them?
She'd underestimated those rats. She thought all they could do was collude with outsiders. She didn't expect them to actually find her mother's prison and rescue her.
So that's their move, huh?
Fine then.
Today, she'd show them what it meant to crush everything with absolute strength.
Zhi Yue's eyes grew colder by the second.
Across the hall, the nobles exchanged uneasy looks, tension rising between them. The king wasn't even bothering to hide her killing intent anymore. If they couldn't drag her down today, then they'd all die instead. This time, they could only win. Losing wasn't an option.
The tension between both sides grew thick enough to choke on.
Then Zhi Yue narrowed her eyes.
Good.
Very good.
It wasn't just her mother's prison.
Even the cages holding the rare races had been breached. Her personal guards had been stationed there, yet the only thing they managed to transmit before dying was two words: sword qi.
A sword cultivator? Someone had stormed the cages using sword qi?
But that area was guarded by Mirror Two himself. How could anyone break through that?
Zhi Yue's gaze shifted back to the nobles.
So, they'd really grown some nerve.
The foreign envoys were still here, which meant the attackers had to be private forces trained in secret. She'd spent ten years in seclusion, and they'd been busy laying their little traps all along.
The nobles straightened in their seats, trying to look calm, but their minds were buzzing.
"The king looks like she's about to make a move on us."
"It doesn't matter. We've already burned the bridge."
"Still, didn't she look completely unfazed earlier? Why's she suddenly so wary?"
"Come on, look at how many of us there are. Of course she's wary. She was just pretending to be calm before."
"Yeah, that's probably it."
"It's almost our turn. Once those rare races take the stage, we'll use them as the excuse to pull her off that throne."
"Relax, everything's ready."
After that brief exchange, they turned back toward the stage, pretending to watch the show.
The closer it got to the tenth performance, the heavier the air became. At first, there were still murmurs and laughter. But as it neared Yun Jin's group's turn, even those vanished. When the ninth act ended, every gaze turned to the still-empty stage. The silence was eerie.
Finally.
All their years of scheming were about to pay off.
"Let's go," Yun Jin said, rising to her feet.
The others quickly followed.
Onstage, the first to appear was a white-haired woman.
Over in the Yu Tribe's seating area, Yu Shiyi had been lounging comfortably, waiting for the show to start.
Then he saw her.
His pupils shrank, and he shot to his feet.
What the—
That woman was…
Yun Jin noticed his gaze and turned toward him with a bright smile.
Well, well.
Yu Shiyi.
It'd been a while.
She waved cheerfully at him, as if greeting an old acquaintance.
Every movement onstage was being watched closely. When she raised her hand in greeting, everyone turned in that direction.
Even Zhi Yue frowned, glancing toward Yu Shiyi's section. A white-haired woman from some rare race knew Yu Shiyi from the Yu Tribe?
"Shiyi, you know her?" Yu Wushisan asked quietly.
Yu Shiyi's lips trembled. He didn't even know what to say.
That woman was Yun Jin, no doubt about it.
During that trial, he'd been eliminated early, so he never found out who won in the end. But one thing he knew for sure—Yun Jin was human, and her strength was nothing to scoff at. And now, she was here, disguised among the rare races, about to perform for the king?
What kind of crazy development was this?!
"She's human," Yu Shiyi finally sent through voice transmission.
Yu Wushisan's expression shifted instantly.
Human?! What was a human doing here?
Everyone knew that any human capable of crossing the Ferocious Beast Mountain Range into Nanlan Continent wasn't ordinary.
A while back, there'd been someone calling himself the Wandao Saint who came here too.
That man's strength had lived up to his arrogant title.
And this one…
What kind of power did she possess?
Could she be another Wandao Saint?
"Don't worry too much," Yu Shiyi said through transmission again. "I can't see through her cultivation right now, so she's probably hiding it with some kind of treasure. But a year ago, she was still in the Tribulation stage."
Tribulation stage a year ago?
Then she probably hadn't advanced much since.
Yu Wushisan finally exhaled in relief.