The damp, suffocating air of the Deep Imperial Vault seemed to freeze solid as Zhang Tian's calm command echoed off the dark star-iron walls.
In the first three cages, Duke Zhu Zhenhong, Dai Weisi, and Dai Mubai lay slumped against the cold stone floor and the iron bars like boneless heaps of flesh, their minds still reeling from the catastrophic revelation that Duchess Zhu Wanyue and Empress Zhu Leihua were kneeling side by side with Zhu Zhuyun as Zhang Tian's devoted, obedient slaves. Dark blood dripped slowly from Duke Zhu Zhenhong's chin onto his torn ducal robes, his bloodshot eyes staring blankly into space as his chest heaved with shallow, rattling breaths.
Over in the fourth cage on the far right, however, Yu Xiaogang was clinging to the cold iron bars with both palsied hands as if his life depended on it.
His mud-caked scholar's robes hung loosely around his thin frame, and sweat poured down his pale, twitching forehead despite the freezing chill of the subterranean chamber. His eyes were locked with fanatical, desperate intensity onto the fifth veiled woman standing quietly at the right edge of the raised stone platform.
On the platform, hearing her Master's command, Liu Erlong slowly raised her hands.
She wore a high-collared, floor-length gown of deep crimson brocade that completely covered her skin from neck to toe, keeping her voluptuous curves concealed from the prisoners' eyes while outlining her tall, fierce silhouette. With a smooth, unhurried motion, Liu Erlong unpinned the dark red silk veil from her headdress and let it flutter down to the stone floor.
The warm glow of the wall torches illuminated her striking, fiercely beautiful face, her fiery red hair coiled neatly atop her head, and her dark eyes—which were currently looking straight at Yu Xiaogang's cage.
"Erlong! It really is you!"
A choked cry of sheer relief tore from Yu Xiaogang's throat. Seeing her familiar, breathtaking face unharmed, the terrified Grandmaster immediately convinced himself that his earlier deduction had been completely right!
"Erlong, don't be afraid!" Yu Xiaogang shouted hurriedly through the bars, puffing out his chest and trying to put on the authoritative, guiding tone he had used on her for twenty years. "Even though we are in Zhang Tian's dungeon right now, you are a Titled Douluo possessing the mutated Sacred Fire Dragon martial spirit! Those four bronze suppression pillars are only connected to our cages—they haven't sealed your spirit power! You don't need to pretend to submit to this demon anymore! Strike down the pillars, break open my cage, and take me out of here! Once we escape Star Luo City and find Flender, we can sail to Sea God Island and join Xiao San!"
In the neighboring cages, Dai Mubai and Dai Weisi sluggishly lifted their bruised heads at Yu Xiaogang's shout, a tiny, pathetic spark of hope flickering in their dull eyes. That was right—Liu Erlong was a member of the Golden Iron Triangle and Yu Xiaogang's devoted lover of twenty years! If a Titled Douluo suddenly rebelled at point-blank range inside this enclosed dungeon...
Yet, standing upon the stone platform, Liu Erlong did not summon her martial spirit, nor did she make a single move toward the bronze pillars.
Instead, as she looked at Yu Xiaogang's dirty, self-important face pressed against the iron bars, her red lips curled into a look of such profound, bone-deep revulsion and mockery that Yu Xiaogang's voice died right in his throat.
Without sparing him another glance, Liu Erlong turned toward Zhang Tian.
Just as Zhu Zhuyun, Duchess Zhu Wanyue, and Empress Zhu Leihua had done moments prior, the proud, fiery dragon of the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Clan lifted the hem of her crimson brocade gown, dropped gracefully to both knees beside Zhang Tian's right boot, and bowed her head until her forehead rested reverently against the stone at his feet.
"Master," Liu Erlong spoke, her sultry, resonant voice trembling with passionate devotion and complete submission. "Listening to this shameless, delusional fraud order This Servant around makes my stomach turn. Thank you for allowing This Servant to tear open his pathetic eyes before sending him to hell."
Inside the fourth cage, Yu Xiaogang froze as if struck by a bolt of lightning from a clear sky.
His mouth hung wide open, his palsied hands slipping halfway down the iron bars as he stared at the proud, untamable woman who had chased after him for two decades now kneeling like a docile dog at Zhang Tian's boots and calling herself This Servant!
"Er... Erlong?" Yu Xiaogang stammered, his voice shaking uncontrollably as cold sweat soaked the back of his robes. "What... what did you just call him? Master?! Why are you kneeling to Zhang Tian?! He is the mortal enemy of our Shrek Academy! He stole Xiao San's mother, crippled Xiao San in Heaven Dou City, and destroyed our clan! Get up at once! Are you under some kind of mental illusion?!"
"Mental illusion?"
Liu Erlong slowly raised her head from the stone floor, resting her chin lightly near Zhang Tian's knee as she looked through the bars at Yu Xiaogang with eyes full of icy derision.
"Yu Xiaogang, the only illusion I was ever trapped under was the twenty years I wasted believing you were a noble, tragic man worthy of my love," Liu Erlong said coldly, every word echoing like a slap across the quiet vault. "Looking at you now, caked in mud and still acting like a grand strategist who holds me in the palm of his hand, I only wonder how I could have been so blind for half my life."
"What are you talking about, Erlong?!" Yu Xiaogang cried out frantically, panic gripping his heart as he saw the genuine, unfeigned disgust in her eyes. "Did Zhang Tian feed you some poison to twist your memories?! I have always cared for you! The only reason I fled on our wedding day twenty years ago and kept my distance from you was because you are the daughter of my Second Uncle, Yu Luomian! I couldn't bear to let you suffer the ridicule of the world for marrying your own cousin! Even when I found you again at the Heaven Dou Academy, I swore to remain your spiritual companion for life!"
Standing above the kneeling Liu Erlong, Zhang Tian let out a soft, amused chuckle, shaking his head as he looked down at Yu Xiaogang.
"A spiritual companion for life?" Zhang Tian repeated mockingly, resting a hand atop Liu Erlong's fiery red hair and stroking it casually like a favored pet. "Yu Xiaogang, you really are the most shameless hypocrite walking the Douluo Continent. When you wanted to keep Erlong on a leash without taking responsibility for her, you cried about the bloodline taboo and called yourself a pure spiritual companion. Yet the moment you needed someone to risk their neck and sell their body to steal cultivation pills from me for your precious disciple Tang San and your nephew Yu Tianheng... you didn't hesitate to pimp her out to my doorstep."
Yu Xiaogang's pale face instantly drained of every last drop of blood, turning as white as chalk!
"I... I didn't—!" Yu Xiaogang choked out, his eyes darting wildly in terror as his darkest, most cowardly secret was dragged out into the torchlight. "Erlong, don't listen to his slander! Back at Shrek Academy, when I asked you to approach Zhang Tian disguised as a solo mercenary, it was purely to trade for his miraculous pills! I told you clearly to use your Spirit Saint strength to subdue him if he tried anything! I never asked you to give yourself to him!"
In the neighboring cages, even the half-conscious Dai Mubai and Dai Weisi looked over at Yu Xiaogang in stunned disbelief. Back when they were at Shrek Academy, they had respected the Grandmaster as a stern, righteous teacher—none of the students had ever known that Yu Xiaogang had secretly sent his own lover to seduce Zhang Tian for spirit pills!
Kneeling at Zhang Tian's boots, Liu Erlong let out a harsh, biting laugh that made Yu Xiaogang flinch backward.
"Use my Spirit Saint strength to subdue him? Only trade for pills?" Liu Erlong sneered, her dark eyes blazing with contempt as she stared at her former lover. "Yu Xiaogang, do you want to know when I truly woke up and saw what a repulsive, selfish parasite you are? It was the very first night you sent me to Master to beg for those four pills!"
Liu Erlong leaned her cheek affectionately against Zhang Tian's leg, a deep, sensual flush rising to her cheeks as she recounted the memory without holding anything back.
"That night, Master saw right through your pathetic little mercenary scheme before I even opened my mouth," Liu Erlong said clearly, her voice carrying into every cage in the rotunda. "And do you know where Master took me, Xiaogang? Right back to the grounds of Shrek Academy! In the dead of night, Master carried me straight to the wall right outside your brightly lit office window!"
Yu Xiaogang's pupils shrank to pinpricks, a cold, suffocating dread seizing his throat. "Outside... outside my office window?!"
"Yes, right outside your window,less than five paces from where you were pacing back and forth after Tang San left your room!" Liu Erlong smiled cruelly, relishing the horror dawning on Yu Xiaogang's face. "While I was standing outside in the dark, listening to you mutter to yourself, do you remember what you said aloud in your office that night? Because I remember every single word!"
Liu Erlong imitated Yu Xiaogang's cold, calculating voice with biting accuracy:
"'That foolish woman Erlong... I will have to find a way to make her go back. Perhaps I will hold her hand. That will be enough to satisfy her pathetic, childish craving for my affection. And then, when she is happy and compliant, I can shout at her again and force her to go back to get more pills from Zhang Tian for Xiao San!'"
Inside the fourth cage, Yu Xiaogang staggered backward as if he had been stabbed through the stomach, his back slamming hard against the cold iron bars at the rear of the cell!
"You... you were outside the window when I said that?!" Yu Xiaogang whispered in sheer, mind-numbing horror, his legs giving out beneath him as he slid down to sit on the dirty stone floor.
"I heard every word, Xiaogang," Liu Erlong purred, her eyes gleaming with vindictive pleasure. "And right at that very moment, while I was listening to you call my twenty years of love a 'pathetic, childish craving' that you could buy off by holding my hand... Master tore my virgin body open right against the outside wall of your office!"
BOOM!
Yu Xiaogang's head buzzed as if a thunderbolt had detonated between his ears!
"What... what did you say?!" Yu Xiaogang shrieked, scrambling forward on his hands and knees to grab the front bars of the cage, his eyes bulging with madness and jealousy. "Your virgin body... outside my office window?! While I was inside?!"
"That is right!" Liu Erlong laughed aloud, lifting her chin proudly as she looked up at Zhang Tian with worshipful heat before looking back at the broken man in the cage. "The purity I had guarded for twenty years for a spineless coward like you—Master claimed it right outside your window! Master turned me around in his arms and held me facing the glass so I could look directly at your pathetic, pacing face while his magnificent manhood pounded into me from behind! I climaxed three times watching you pace around your desk like an oblivious idiot while Master filled my womb with his hot seed!"
"No... NO!! You are lying!! That never happened!!" Yu Xiaogang howled like a wounded stray dog, slamming his forehead against the cold iron bars until blood trickled down his nose.
"Oh, that was only the beginning, Grandmaster," Zhang Tian spoke up leisurely from above, looking down at Yu Xiaogang with a faint, merciless smile as his fingers gently stroked Liu Erlong's chin. "Have you forgotten the afternoon right after that, when you came knocking on the door of Erlong's wooden cabin to demand the four pills? The two Heavenly Water Pills for Yu Tianheng and Oscar, and the two Stormbolt Spirit Pills for yourself and your nephew?"
Hearing Zhang Tian accurately name the exact four pills and how he had divided them inside Liu Erlong's cabin, Yu Xiaogang stopped slamming his head against the bars, freezing completely in place as cold terror paralyzed his spine!
"How... how do you know what I said inside her cabin that day?!" Yu Xiaogang's voice was barely a squeak. "The bedroom door was closed! Erlong told me she was resting inside because of training injuries!"
"Training injuries?" Liu Erlong giggled darkly, running her tongue lightly over her lips as she looked at Yu Xiaogang's petrified face. "You pathetic fool! While you were sitting comfortably on the sofa in my living room, lecturing me through the wooden bedroom door about how I wasn't allowed to give up and how I had to get those pills for Tang San... Master had me bent over with my hands pressed flat against the inside of that very bedroom door! Every time you heard the wooden door vibrating, and every time you heard me gasping for breath and thought I was in pain from training—it was because Master was ruthlessly fucking me from behind against the wood less than two inches away from your face!"
"And when you scolded me through the door," Liu Erlong continued, her voice dripping with cruel ecstasy, "the sheer rage I felt at your shameless arrogance made me climax right on Master's cock while he poured his seed inside me! Those four pills you happily took home to feed yourself and your disciples? They were the pocket change Master tossed on the floor after turning me into his obedient whore right in front of your nose!"
"Urgh—!"
Yu Xiaogang clutched his chest with both hands, his face twisting into a hideous purple mask as a mouthful of sour bile and dark red blood spurted from his lips onto the stone floor!
He remembered that afternoon in the cabin! He remembered sitting on that sofa, feeling so smug and superior about how easily he could manipulate Liu Erlong's emotions, listening to her heavy, ragged breathing through the wooden door! And all along... all along, Zhang Tian had been standing right on the other side of that thin wooden plank, rutting into the woman he considered his personal property while laughing at him!
"Wait... there is more, isn't there, Master?" Liu Erlong asked softly, looking up at Zhang Tian with eager, shining eyes, wanting to crush every last fragment of Yu Xiaogang's sanity into powder.
"Tell him about the Communication Jade Slab, Erlong," Zhang Tian chuckled lightly. "And don't forget to tell him about his dear Second Uncle, Yu Luomian."
Liu Erlong nodded obediently and looked back at the trembling, blood-vomiting Yu Xiaogang.
"Do you remember a few months ago, after you and Flender fled to the Star Luo Empire like cowards, when the two of you used a Communication Jade Slab to call my Dean's office in Heaven Dou City?" Liu Erlong asked sweetly. "When you finally confessed that you 'loved' me and begged me to come back to you, and you heard loud slapping sounds and heard me screaming in pleasure, so you asked if a strange male masseuse was taking advantage of me?"
Yu Xiaogang's eyes widened to the point of tearing, his whole body convulsing on the floor of the cage. "That... that massage..."
"There was no masseuse, you idiot!" Liu Erlong laughed scornfully. "While you and Flender were pouring your hearts out over the jade slab, Master was sitting on my office chair while I was on my knees sucking his massive cock and swallowing his load! And while you were crying and telling me how much you missed me and loved me, Master had me bent over my office desk, fucking me so hard from behind that I couldn't even hold the jade slab straight! Every single moan you heard over that call was me begging Master to ruin me!"
"And as for our Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Clan that you just mentioned..." Liu Erlong's smile turned into a mask of glacial, bone-chilling hatred. "When my deadbeat biological father, Yu Luomian, attacked Seven Treasure City during the war, Master captured him alive and brought him to me. When Yu Luomian woke up and saw me standing beside Master, he was just as delusional as you—he actually thought I was going to save him because of our bloodline! Do you know what I did, Xiaogang? Right after Master finished using my body on the bed in front of him, I walked over and drove an obsidian dagger straight into Yu Luomian's heart with my own hand!"
"You... you killed Second Uncle yourself?!" Yu Xiaogang gasped, his vision spinning wildly as the room seemed to tilt around him.
"I killed him for abandoning my mother, and I killed him because he dared to raise his hand against my Master!" Liu Erlong declared coldly. "And on the eastern battlefield three weeks ago, when Flender abandoned you in the mud and fled into the clouds like a frightened bird, I didn't capture you to save your pathetic life! I dragged you out of the mud like a dead dog because Master promised to reward me with a night of intense punishment if I brought you back alive so he could toy with you before you die!"
Silence returned to the dungeon, broken only by the ragged, wheezing gasps of the four completely shattered men inside the cages.
Yu Xiaogang lay curled up in the dirt of the fourth cage, his scholar's robes soaked in his own blood and spit, his palsied hands clawing weakly at his throat as tears of utter humiliation, regret, and despair poured down his hollow cheeks.
For his entire life, Yu Xiaogang had suffered from an intense inferiority complex because of his mutated, low-level martial spirit that couldn't break past the twenty-ninth rank. To compensate for his weakness, he had built an entire persona around his "unrivaled wisdom," his plagiarized "Ten Core Competencies," and the undying devotion of two powerful women—Bibi Dong and Liu Erlong.
Earlier in the war, he had already learned that Supreme Pontiff Bibi Dong despised him to the bone and belonged to Zhang Tian. And now, his very last emotional anchor—the fierce, devoted Liu Erlong whom he had treated as his fallback option and manipulated for twenty years—had just revealed that she had been Zhang Tian's willing, enthusiastic sex slave from the very first day he sent her to Zhang Tian's door!
Not only had he personally delivered his own woman into his greatest enemy's bed with his own selfish orders, he had stood outside the door and listened to them coupling while thinking he was a brilliant mastermind!
"No... I still have Xiao San..." Yu Xiaogang whimpered deliriously into the cold stone floor, his mind fracturing under the unbearable weight of his humiliation as he grasped at the only straw left in the universe. "I am still the teacher of a future God! Xiao San... Xiao San is on Sea God Island! Your tricks only work on women and mortal armies, Zhang Tian! My disciple Xiao San has twin martial spirits and my lifelong teachings! Once he becomes the Sea God, he will avenge me! He will prove that my theories and my guidance created the strongest God in history!"
Standing on the central stone platform, Zhang Tian looked down at the babbling, half-mad Yu Xiaogang.
"Your theories and your guidance?" Zhang Tian asked, tilting his head with a look of genuine, almost pitying amusement. "Yu Xiaogang, since you are about to leave this world today, let this Marquis take away that last pathetic scrap of pride you are clinging to as well."
Zhang Tian strolled slowly across the stone platform, stopping right in front of Yu Xiaogang's cage as his icy blue eyes bored down into the cowering man.
"First of all, the 'Ten Core Competencies of Martial Spirits' that earned you the title of Grandmaster were copied almost word for word from the internal library archives of the Spirit Hall after you seduced a young, naive Bibi Dong decades ago," Zhang Tian said calmly, stripping away Yu Xiaogang's lifelong scholarly fraud with surgical precision. "Every high-ranking elder in the Spirit Hall knows it, and the only reason they didn't expose or execute you back then was because Qian Daoliu wanted to spare Bibi Dong's reputation."
Yu Xiaogang flinched violently, his lips trembling, unable to utter a single word of denial because it was the absolute truth!
"Second, you truly believe that Tang San became strong because of your 'lifelong guidance'?" Zhang Tian laughed softly, shaking his head. "Tell me, Grandmaster: did you teach Tang San the Mysterious Heaven Skill? Did you teach him the Purple Demon Eye, the Ghost Shadow Perplexing Track, the Mysterious Jade Hand, or how to forge hidden mechanical weapons like the Buddha Fury Tang Lotus?"
Yu Xiaogang stared blankly up at Zhang Tian, his mind freezing. "Those... those are the secret arts of an ancient, destroyed sect that Xiao San found in a manual..."
"There was no ancient manual on this continent, you blind fool," Zhang Tian sneered condescendingly. "Tang San possessed those supreme cultivation techniques, poison arts, and hidden weapon blueprints from the day he was six years old! While you were busy patting yourself on the back for telling a boy with innate full spirit power to absorb a four-hundred-year poisonous snake ring and a six-hundred-year vine ring—weak, pathetic yellow rings that Tang San is right now desperately shattering and purging on Sea God Island because your 'brilliant' early ring choices ruined his divine foundation!—Tang San was only using your pathetic name as a shield to hide the true origin of his own martial arts!"
Crack!
Something inside Yu Xiaogang's brain audibly snapped!
Wait... Tang San was shattering and purging the Datura Snake and Ghost Vine rings that he had painstakingly selected for him during his youth?! The very Spirit Ring choices that Yu Xiaogang had considered the proudest practical proof of his theoretical genius were actually garbage flaws that had ruined Tang San's foundation?!
And all of Tang San's true strength came from Tang San's own secret arts, meaning that from beginning to end, Yu Xiaogang had contributed nothing to his disciple except dragging him down and handing his enemies leverage?!
"Impossible... my theories cannot be wrong... there are no waste martial spirits, only waste Spirit Masters..." Yu Xiaogang muttered blankly, his eyes losing all focus as drool mixed with blood trickled down his chin.
"Your theories are a joke, and your entire life has been a parasite's delusion," Zhang Tian delivered the final blow with cold indifference. "You failed your clan, you betrayed Bibi Dong's youth, you pimped out Liu Erlong, and you ruined your disciple's early foundation. And as for your hope that Tang San will avenge you... don't worry. Very soon, after I finish cleaning up this dungeon, I have a special gift prepared for your precious disciple on Sea God Island that will break his mind just as thoroughly as yours."
Looking at the four cages before him, Zhang Tian saw that his work was completely done.
In the first cage, Duke Zhu Zhenhong lay slumped on his side in a pool of his own blood, staring vacantly at his wife Zhu Wanyue and his sister-in-law Empress Zhu Leihua kneeling at Zhang Tian's boots, his ducal pride and sanity completely obliterated.
In the second and third cages, Dai Weisi and Dai Mubai were broken shells, weeping silently in the dirt as the women who had once been their fiancées and their Imperial Mother looked down on them like vermin.
And in the fourth cage, Yu Xiaogang sat in a catatonic stupor, muttering broken fragments of his plagiarized theories into the empty air, his heart, his love, and his lifelong scholarly legacy reduced to dust.
Keeping these four men alive any longer held zero value for Zhang Tian. Unlike Emperor Dai Tianxiong and the Titled Douluo elders of the Clear Sky Sect and Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Clan—whose massive resentment in Rakshasa City could generate substantial dark faith energy for the Rakshasa Goddess over decades—these four had personal grudges with his women, and leaving them breathing would only clutter up his dungeons.
More importantly, letting his women personally sever the final karmic threads tying them to their pasts was the ultimate ritual of absolute loyalty.
Zhang Tian stepped back half a pace on the stone platform. With a wave of his right hand, four sleek, razor-sharp daggers forged from dark star-iron materialized out of his spatial ring, floating gently in the air before the four women.
"Their minds are broken, and their use has come to an end," Zhang Tian spoke, his calm, sovereign voice echoing through the quiet vault. "Zhuqing, Zhuyun, Wanyue, Erlong. Take these blades and end the lives of the men who once thought they owned your fates."
At his side, Zhu Zhuqing did not hesitate for a single fraction of a second.
Her cat-like eyes were calm, clear, and completely free of any burden as she reached out, grasped the hilt of the first star-iron dagger, and walked down the steps toward the third cage.
With a flick of Zhang Tian's finger, the locks on all four cold-iron cage doors clicked open simultaneously.
Seeing Zhu Zhuqing walk into his open cage with a gleaming black dagger in her hand, Dai Mubai scrambled backward on his hands and knees in the dirt, the instinct for survival suddenly piercing through his despair as his mismatched eyes widened in sheer terror!
"Zhuqing! Wait! Don't kill me!" Dai Mubai cried out hoarsely, pressing his back against the cold stone wall as tears and snot smeared his bruised face. "We grew up together! Even if I fled to Soto City back then, I never actually tried to kill you! Look at me—my spirit power is sealed, my father is gone, and my empire belongs to your husband! Let me live as a beggar! Please, for the sake of our childhood engagement, spare my life!"
Zhu Zhuqing stopped right in front of the groveling former prince, looking down at him without a ripple of emotion on her stunning face.
"When you left me behind in the capital to face the succession trials alone while you enjoyed yourself in Soto City, the girl who was engaged to you already died, Dai Mubai," Zhu Zhuqing said softly. "Today, I am only clearing away a stain from my Husband's sight."
Before Dai Mubai could scream again, Zhu Zhuqing's figure blurred with phantom-like speed.
SHING!
The black star-iron dagger flashed across Dai Mubai's throat in a clean, mercifully swift arc, severing his carotid artery and windpipe in a single stroke.
Dai Mubai's hands flew to his spurting neck, his mismatched eyes bulging in final, helpless terror as he choked on his own blood, convulsed twice on the cold stone floor, and went completely still.
Zhu Zhuqing did not let a single drop of blood touch her silk gown. Stepping calmly out of the third cage, she tossed the bloodied dagger onto the floor, walked back up the stone steps to Zhang Tian's side, and gently took his hand once more, her heart feeling lighter and freer than it had ever felt since the day she was born.
Meanwhile, in the second cage, Zhu Zhuyun had risen from her knees, picked up the second dagger with a cruel, seductive smile on her lips, and strolled gracefully into Dai Weisi's cell.
Having just watched his younger brother get his throat slit right next door, Dai Weisi was trembling uncontrollably, his back pressed into the corner of the cage as he stared at the voluptuous, gorgeous woman he had once held in his arms.
"Zhuyun... my love, please..." Dai Weisi begged, every ounce of his crown-princely dignity gone as he kowtowed frantically on the stone floor, banging his forehead at her embroidered shoes. "I won't hate you! I won't say another word about you serving Zhang Tian! You can be his slave, and I can be his dog in the northern mines! Just ask your Master to spare my life!"
"Keep you alive in the mines?" Zhu Zhuyun chuckled softly, crouching down in front of the groveling prince and using the flat of the cold star-iron blade to lift Dai Weisi's trembling chin. "Dai Weisi, every second a weakling who once touched my hand remains breathing in this world, I feel dirty in front of Master. Only when your blood is cold will my body be completely clean for him."
"No! Zhuyun, you venomous bitch, don't—!"
STAB!
Zhu Zhuyun did not cut his throat cleanly like her sister had done. With a cold, ruthless thrust of her wrist, she drove the star-iron dagger straight through the center of Dai Weisi's chest, twisting the blade sharply inside his heart!
Dai Weisi let out a strangled, agonizing shriek, blood pouring from his mouth as his shackled hands clawed weakly at the air before dropping limply to the floor, his eyes wide open in eternal regret.
At the same time, in the leftmost cage, Duchess Zhu Wanyue walked slowly up to her collapsed husband, Duke Zhu Zhenhong, while Empress Zhu Leihua watched coldly from just outside the cage door.
Duke Zhu Zhenhong was barely conscious from coughing up blood twice, his breathing a ragged wheeze as he looked up through blurry, red-webbed eyes at the woman who had been his wife for twenty-five years.
"Wan... Wanyue..." Duke Zhu Zhenhong rasped weakly, a bloody bubble forming at the corner of his mouth as he saw the black dagger in his wife's soft hand. "Twenty-five years... husband and wife... you would really... kill me for that boy...?"
Duchess Zhu Wanyue looked down at the dying Duke, her mature, radiant face calm and cold.
"For twenty-five years, Zhu Zhenhong, you treated me and our daughters as tools to maintain your ducal throne, bowing and scraping before the Imperial Family while forcing our own flesh and blood to slaughter each other," Zhu Wanyue said quietly, positioning the sharp tip of the dagger directly over his throat. "Master gave me a second life, true power, and the joy of being a real woman. Go down to the Yellow Springs and apologize to our ancestors yourself."
With a firm, decisive press of her two hands, Duchess Zhu Wanyue plunged the dagger through Duke Zhu Zhenhong's throat, pinning him to the stone floor until the last twitch faded from his limbs.
Now, only the fourth cage on the far right remained.
Inside the fourth cage, Yu Xiaogang smelled the thick, metallic stench of fresh blood drifting over from the other three cages and heard the dying gurgles of the Duke and the two princes.
When the tall, crimson-gowned figure of Liu Erlong stepped across the open threshold of his cage with the fourth black dagger gleaming in her hand, Yu Xiaogang snapped out of his catatonic stupor in a burst of sheer, primal terror!
"Erlong!! Don't come near me!!" Yu Xiaogang shrieked in a high, shrill voice, scrambling backward into the corner of the cell and kicking his legs wildly as warm urine soaked the front of his muddy scholar's robes. "You can't kill me! I am Xiao San's teacher! If you kill me, Xiao San will never forgive you when he becomes a God! Erlong, think of the twenty years you loved me! Think of our cabin in the woods! Spare me! I won't tell Xiao San what you did with Zhang Tian! I swear I won't tell him!"
Liu Erlong walked right up to the corner where the pathetic, urine-soaked man was cowering.
Looking down at the trembling wretch who had occupied her heart for twenty years—seeing him wet himself in terror and try to use Tang San's name to threaten her while begging for his life—Liu Erlong felt the very last vestige of her past completely vanish into thin air, replaced by a liberating sense of disgust and relief.
"You think I am afraid of Tang San?" Liu Erlong sneered, her dark eyes glowing with a faint spark of sacred dragon fire as she raised the star-iron dagger. "Whether Tang San becomes a God or a ghost, my life and death belong solely to my Master, Zhang Tian. As for the twenty years I wasted on a cowardly fraud like you... consider this blade my repayment in full!"
"No! Erlong, spare— gck!"
THUD!
Liu Erlong struck with the ferocious strength of a Titled Douluo. The black dagger pierced straight through the center of Yu Xiaogang's chest and punched three inches deep into the star-iron stone wall behind him, nailing the self-proclaimed Grandmaster upright against the corner of the cage like a pinned insect!
Yu Xiaogang's body jerked violently three times. He stared at Liu Erlong's cold, merciless face inches away from his own, a stream of dark blood pouring down his chin as his palsied hands twitched once, twice, and then fell limp at his sides, his eyes glazing over in death.
The self-proclaimed Grandmaster, the two princes of the White Tiger lineage, and the Duke of the Zhu Family were all dead.
Walking calmly out of the cages, Zhu Zhuyun, Duchess Zhu Wanyue, and Liu Erlong returned to the raised stone platform and knelt gracefully alongside Empress Zhu Leihua at Zhang Tian's feet, while Zhu Zhuqing stood quietly holding Zhang Tian's arm.
Zhang Tian swept his icy blue gaze over the four silent corpses in the cages, nodding slightly as the last loose ends of the Star Luo Imperial Palace were cleanly severed.
Just as he turned to lead his women back up the stone stairs to the surface, a small, specialized jade slab tucked inside the inner pocket of his dark-gold robe suddenly vibrated with three distinct, rapid pulses.
Zhang Tian paused on the bottom step and reached into his pocket, drawing out the jade slab.
The runic pattern glowing on the surface of the jade was not an administrative report from Star Luo City—it was a direct, long-distance spiritual transmission from his Blood Silver Mirage Clone stationed thousands of miles away in the research foundries of Crimson Zenith City in the Frostfall Province!
Closing his eyes for a brief second to read the message transmitted by his clone, a slow, wicked, and thoroughly delighted smile spread across Zhang Tian's handsome face.
"Husband?" Zhu Zhuqing asked softly beside him, noticing the sudden glint of dark amusement in his icy blue eyes. "Did good news arrive from Crimson Zenith City?"
"Better than good news, Wife," Zhang Tian chuckled, slipping the jade slab back into his robe as he looked up toward the sunlit corridor at the top of the dungeon stairs. "My clone in the Frostfall Province has just finished perfecting the optical-projection runes for our long-distance Communication Spirit Tools. We can now transmit live, real-time visual images and sound simultaneously across thousands of miles."
Zhang Tian wrapped his arm warmly around Zhu Zhuqing's waist, glancing down at the four obedient women rising behind him as his thoughts turned toward a certain hundred-thousand-year rabbit girl waiting in his private chambers—and a certain vengeful Sea God Inheritor meditating on a distant island in the southern ocean.
"It seems the timing couldn't be more perfect," Zhang Tian murmured, his eyes gleaming with cold anticipation. "Come. Let us return to the upper palace. It is time to send a live broadcast to Sea God Island and let our great Sea God Inheritor watch his beloved Sister Xiao Wu finally become a woman under me."