Zhao Bing had a cultivation base of his own, yet against that deep-crimson battle qi rising up at him like an inverted torrent he could not react at all. His face went bloodless in an instant, and he froze where he stood.
Then a dragon-shaped golden light coiled abruptly around him, radiating an aura of noble majesty.
Li Fei stood there in a blood-red python robe, Dragon's Strength spilling from every lift of hand and foot, like some wicked, tyrannical blood-colored demon dragon. The dragon shielding Zhao Bing was its opposite: lithe and long, nine claws on its belly, its whole body blazing with holy golden radiance.
BOOM!
The demon dragon spat its breath and swallowed the Son of Heaven whole. The golden dragon caught the searing sword-light that came like a comet striking the moon, but it could not cancel the savage force behind the blow. Zhao Bing was hurled backward and smashed a deep crater into the stone wall.
"Fear not, Your Majesty. Your servant has come to save you."
Without a flicker of hesitation, Li Fei flung something out. It struck the wall, dropped to the floor, and began pouring out thick white smoke. She herself blurred into a phantom, crossing to Zhao Bing in a few strides, blood-red sword-light rolling out layer upon layer and falling on him like rain hammering banana leaves, never leaving him a moment to breathe.
The Great Song was, after all, a thousand-year imperial house that had produced more than one Saint Realm master. If Zhao Bing were given room to recover, heaven only knew what killing move he might bring out.
Under an assault like landslides and tidal waves, the golden dragon's shape dimmed fast.
"Protect the Emperor! Protect the Emperor!"
Chang Bin's eyes split wide with fury. Heaven Realm True Qi erupted from him, and he charged straight at Li Fei.
"Oh? So Lord Chang knows martial arts after all."
Li Fei sneered and slashed backward without turning her head. Furnace Battle-Qi swept out in every direction, a great blood-red river bursting up out of an abyss, rolling with demonic might, and swallowed Chang Bin whole.
They both stood at the level of Sequence 7, yet the gap between them was cloud and mud. A single stroke from Li Fei split his flesh open from head to foot and sent him tumbling back several yards, spewing blood.
He was still struggling to rise when an imperially bestowed demon-slaying sword came to rest against his neck, its cold edge glinting.
"Concealing your cultivation base on purpose, and plotting against His Majesty's life. Chang Bin, you have gall!"
Xu Yuzhong lowered his head, his smile cold.
"Chancellor Liu, take your hand out of your sleeve. We wouldn't want any rash movement to interfere with Lord Li's defense of His Majesty... The traitor has gone out of his mind, and blades have no eyes. Should any harm come to Chancellor Liu, the court would suffer a terrible loss."
"Minister Wen, what are you up to, edging toward the door? Do you mean to abandon the Son of Heaven and flee alone?"
The four remaining adopted sons laughed too, a low sinister sound, and closed in around Chancellor Liu and Minister Wen of the Ministry of Rites.
Perfected Ge gripped his horsetail whisk, expressions shifting across his face.
At last he understood what Li Fei had meant that morning.
The old Daoist with his air of immortal bearing was silent a moment, then sighed.
"Immortal Maiden, stop this. This old Daoist can plead on your behalf and beg His Majesty to spare your life."
Stop? Once the bow is drawn, the arrow does not turn back.
Li Fei still did not look around. Her Wealth Points poured away another hundred and ten thousand like water over a fall, two scroll-bound volumes appeared in her hand, and she flicked them toward the old Daoist.
"Reverend, a chance at immortality is hard to come by. Don't ruin yourself."
Perfected Ge caught the volumes. The pure magic power he had held drawn but unreleased slowly dispersed, and at last he nodded and let out a long sigh.
"To know what cannot be helped and to rest in it as though it were fate, that is the height of virtue..."
"Minister Li! We never treated you badly!"
Chang Bin and Perfected Ge had, in the end, cost Li Fei a heartbeat or two. Zhao Bing roared the words, tears glittering in his eyes.
"But your servant's heart belongs to the realm!"
Li Fei's face was all kindness and compassion. She let out a pitying sigh and struck harder.
Under the ceaseless scouring of that blood-red river, the golden dragon guarding him was already tottering, covered in fine cracks.
It takes longer to tell than it took to happen. From the moment Li Fei struck to the moment the Song Emperor hung by a thread, not ten breaths had passed.
The situation was very nearly under control. Very nearly, except for the line of temple keepers.
Almost the instant Li Fei moved, the old temple keeper had slipped like a phantom to a corner of the hall, lifted a small cauldron brimming with murky red liquid, and drunk it down in wild gulps.
The old man's shriveled belly swelled at a rate the eye could follow, and a bizarre, frenzied, overbearing aura spread out across the grounds.
Thud!
The old temple keeper cast the cauldron aside. His white hair whipped about with no wind to move it, light burst from his clouded old eyes, and he loosed a long howl that sounded like weeping.
"This old servant comes late to his Emperor's aid!"
In that moment, from within the keeper's withered, twilight-heavy body came the sound of firewood burning, crackling and snapping, and a terrible pressure that came infinitely close to the Heaven-Man Realm swept outward, oppressive as a prison of judgment.
But he had barely swung his black stone staff at Li Fei when a vast white palm blotted out the light and pressed down from above.
It came from the Myriad Ghost Gourd Li Fei had thrown. The female ghosts had slipped out in silence and unleashed the secret art [Soul Gathering].
The ghost giant fused from more than five thousand female ghosts stood between earth and sky, larger even than on the night the Thousand-Year Tree Demon was destroyed. Not even the vast sacred temple could contain it; it had to hunch its bloated, corpse-pale body to keep from bursting through the roof. Boundless ghost qi billowed up to the heavens, and shrill wailing never stopped.
"You dare defile the ancestral temple! Death to you!"
The old temple keeper roared in grief and rage, raising the stone staff overhead with both hands. True Qi condensed into a solid dome around him, and by sheer stubborn strength he held off a palm that fell like a mountain of demons.
The ground shattered and caved in deep. Blood came from the old keeper's mouth, but he did not retreat, standing alone before that ghost-shrouded colossus without yielding an inch.
In that moment, the hunched, withered figure with its loose hanging hair looked magnificent beyond words.
A roar split the air.
Zhao Bing dragged a golden tablet from his robes. It blazed with brilliant light, and several streams of dragon qi surged out, bowling Li Fei over by main force.
He scrambled up and stumbled toward the door.
But he had not gone more than a few steps when a sweet laugh came from behind him, the kind that makes the scalp crawl.
"Your servant fights the traitor to the death for Your Majesty's sake. Why does Your Majesty run away first?"
Cold flooded Zhao Bing from head to foot. He ducked behind a stone pillar, as useless as a thief plugging his own ears, and looked wildly in every direction, shouting again and again.
"Guards! Protect the Emperor! Protect the Emperor!"
What met his eyes was no armored guardsman. It was a face smiling like a flower in bloom.
"Your servant is right here, isn't she? Stand where you are, Your Majesty. Don't move."
Zhao Bing shuddered and threw himself sideways, rolling and scrambling clear of the sword-light that came after him, dodging round and round the huge pillar until even his dragon crown fell off and he was a wretched sight.
In olden days, Jing Ke stabbed at the King of Qin: a white rainbow pierced the sun and the stones split with the shock of it.
Today, Fei-bao cut down the Song Emperor, cackling until she shook like a bough of blossoms.
A strange delight filled Li Fei. She was enjoying this so much she half wanted to sing "Little Bunny, Be Good," the nursery song. A few seconds later, though, the mercurial young traitoress's face darkened.
Who would have guessed this idle dog of an emperor could move so nimbly? She did not dare cut through the pillar in case it brought the ancestral temple down on them, and at so critical a moment, how could she afford to waste time like this?
"Dog emperor! Dodging back and forth, ruining my great work. Are you trying to start a rebellion?!"
She snapped the words out sweetly and fired off a burst of Bliss.
But that protective dragon qi was truly no ordinary thing. It blocked even mental attacks, and the spell-like ability failed to take hold. The price was that the already cracked dragon qi grew dimmer still.
Seeing that, Li Fei smiled again and threw out Bliss after Bliss, one on the heels of the last, since it had no cooldown, wearing the dragon qi steadily away.
A keening wail rose.
At last the golden guardian dragon gave a grieving cry, then broke apart into golden motes of light.
With that brittle sound, Zhao Bing went bone-white and slumped against the pillar as though his skeleton had been pulled out of him.
"Rebel. Traitor. Rising against your sovereign... We will have your nine kindred put to death..."
He mumbled it, his gaze drifting past Li Fei, who had rendered extraordinary service again and again and now stood over him with a sword in hand, then across Lu Qianfan's adopted sons, once as close to him as family and now cold and indifferent. He laughed a few wretched laughs.
"Traitors. All of you..."
"Since Your Majesty treated your servant well, your servant will look after the Empress and her daughter."
Li Fei's eyes were dark and unreadable. After a brief hesitation she gave up the idea of killing his heart along with his body, and bestowed one shot of Bliss on the emperor.
Zhao Bing's gaze went hazy, and he sank into a beautiful dream.
He saw a land of brocade rivers and mountains, humans and demons living side by side in harmony, song and dance in every street. He saw ten thousand acres of good fields where the Dragon Blood Rice stood in flourishing growth, the farmers' faces full of harvest smiles. He saw the Performance Law carried out across the realm, the court crowded with talent, the seas calm and the rivers clear. He saw the Empress smiling as she took her leave of him, and the inner palace empty of everyone thereafter. He saw the Hall of Golden Chimes, and Li Fei in a great scarlet python robe singing the praises of His Majesty, who had swept the eight wastes and united all beneath the sky.
In the end, Zhao Bing's dream came to rest inside Qianqing Palace.
The elixir of immortality had flowered and borne fruit. He breathed in the fragrance and let his children and grandchildren romp through the halls.
Beside him, that beauty whose sex no one could tell smiled and reached out a hand to him.
Snick!
When the dragon head rolled to a stop at Li Fei's feet, the smile was still frozen on its face.
"Never telling you the imperial daughter is mine by blood, I suppose that counts as repaying a kindness."
Tossing out that line for a farewell, Li Fei did not bother to wipe the blood from her face. Sword in hand, she walked toward the old temple keeper.
"Traitor! Your crime is monstrous. You will fall forever into the Avici Hell!"
The ground shook again and again. Locked in a fierce battle with the ghost giant, the old temple keeper wept old man's tears and roared until his voice cracked.
"From your lips to Heaven's ear."
The spell-like ability activated. The Charm Marks on her belly shifted, Li Fei's eyes became abysses, and in one stroke the old keeper, already on the edge of emotional collapse, lost hold of his mind.
Then Li Fei kicked him clear before the ghost giant could steal the kill. The price was a graze from that ghost-chilled giant palm, and the blood in her body nearly froze solid.
"Disperse."
Li Fei gave the order, then walked up to the old keeper, whose heart had gone to dead ashes, and took his head off with a single stroke.
The towering pale giant, realizing it had struck its own mistress by accident, gave a shiver and made a strangely human gesture of embarrassment before dissolving into white smoke that filled the hall. The female ghosts, their auras a little weakened, filed back into the Myriad Ghost Gourd one after another.
"Sister Zhenzhen, little sister Xiao'e can rest in peace now."
Li Fei's voice was low and grave.
What she had told the female ghosts, naturally, was that she had brought Xiao'e to lay her grievance before the throne, and the dog emperor had deliberately shielded the guilty and silenced the girl. And so a woman's fury had spilled blood within five paces.
Huang Zhenzhen nodded slightly, spared the emperor's head one cold glance, and slipped back into the Myriad Ghost Gourd.
Just then several more temple keepers took up weapons and charged Li Fei in a rush there was no returning from, determined to follow the Son of Heaven into death. Li Fei obliged them.
As for the ones still alive, she meant to hand them over to Lu Qianfan. The sacrificial rite worked well, and it would be a pity to let it be lost. Keep them, study them properly, and perhaps "Saints" could be mass-produced.
Her official's boots stepped over corpses whose eyes would not close and came down hard in a pool of blood. Expressionless, Li Fei walked to Chang Bin and gave this grief-stricken old subordinate of Nie Yunyi no chance at last words, simply raising the sword and opening his throat.
"Your Majesty, the traitor is dead. Your servant has avenged you."
In the deathly silence, Su Wen moved.
She went to the blood-stained pillar, lowered her eyes and sighed, then bent down, heedless of the gore, laid his body out flat, set the head straight, and quietly recited from the Daoist canon to see him off on his last road.
"By decree of the Most High, we deliver you, lonely soul. All ghosts and specters, all four kinds of birth, receive this grace. Those with heads are delivered, those without heads ascend. Slain by spear or blade, drowned in water or hanged by the rope..."
Li Fei, meanwhile, walked over to the Minister of Rites and studied him in silence.
"The ruler is no ruler, the minister no minister, the state no state... Your Majesty, this old servant comes to join you."
Knowing he was to be silenced, Minister Wen straightened his robe and cap and closed his eyes tightly, without a struggle or a plea.
"This official has no wish to slaughter the innocent, or to destroy the pillars of the state."
Li Fei shook her head lightly.
"What is this? Does Lord Li mean to buy me off?"
Minister Wen opened his eyes, and a great upright spirit shone in them. "I am the Minister of Rites, keeper of the rites of the realm, charged with the moral instruction of the people. I would sooner die than stand beside a minister who murdered her sovereign and leave behind that infamy for the ages!"
He straightened his back as he spoke, every word ringing with a scholar's iron backbone.
"Lord Li. Do it!"
Seeing her father-in-law so determined not to weep until he saw the coffin, Li Fei only glanced sidelong, without expression, at Her Majesty the Empress, who stood staring at Zhao Bing's corpse. Then she quietly drew a phone from her robes and opened an album titled "Her Majesty the Empress Meets an Old Friend."
In the photograph, the young traitoress lay flushed against the side of a bed, two lovely women pressed cheek to cheek with her, one to the left and one to the right, one serene and dignified, the other bewitching and playful, tenderness like water in their eyes, the whole scene sensual and full of unspoken things.
Everything below the neck had been blurred out, but how could the Minister of Rites fail to recognize the face of his own daughter, Consort Hui?
Looking at the daughter who had been well-read and well-mannered since childhood, famed for her gentleness and virtue, and who had defiled the palace with conduct so heretical, so damnable in every eye, his vision went black, his heart stopped for a beat, and the sky seemed to fall on him.
Li Fei caught Minister Wen as he staggered and nearly went down, drew him aside, and whispered in the pleasantest tone.
"Minister Wen's loyalty is plain as sun and moon. Of course you have no fear of death."
"Only... the Wen family has always been a house of letters, and a name built up generation after generation does not come cheaply... Surely you don't want centuries of careful work destroyed overnight, and the whole realm deciding that the so-called pure-stream gentry are nothing but frauds trading on a stolen reputation?"
The world spun around Minister Wen. Li Fei kept a firm grip on his arm and went on persuading him in a weighty, earnest tone.
"Minister Wen, to die is a small matter, but to lose one's virtue is a great one! If it comes out that the Wen family's legitimate daughter was entangled with the traitor who killed the sovereign, then quite apart from the nine kindred being dragged down with you, the name will be cursed and the stench will linger a thousand years... Even in the Nine Springs, Minister Wen, with what face would you meet your ancestors?"
"Whereas if Minister Wen could be just a little flexible... given the relationship between this official and Consort Hui, the Ministry of Rites will belong to the Wen family forever."
"Do think it over carefully, my lord."
Minister Wen glared at Li Fei, grief and fury plain in his eyes; but under that dark, unfathomable gaze, the rebuke almost out of his mouth turned instead into a tactful sigh.
"Lord Li saved His Majesty and put the traitor to death, a service of high merit. This official will bear witness to it himself, and will never allow petty men to turn black into white."
"Good. This official only worries that some ill-intentioned sort might seize the chance to stir up trouble and throw the court into disorder."
Li Fei patted Minister Wen's shoulder, well pleased, threw a guilty glance at Her Majesty the Empress, who was still delivering the late emperor's soul, and finally walked over to Chancellor Liu.
Facing the calm-faced old man, she spread her hands.
"If the Great Song becomes unlivable, I will simply go to the immortal realm. Let the floodwaters rise to the sky, they still won't touch me. Do as you think best."
The old man said nothing, but Li Fei knew perfectly well: the dragon fetus in the Empress's belly would soon be the only choice left to him, and to the Great Song.
And last of all, that left only...
Li Fei narrowed her eyes. The travel-worn figure with the sword had barely risen in her mind when the stone temple's doors blew open with a crash.
Blazing noon sunlight poured through the doorway, lighting the appalling blood that covered the floor and stinging Li Fei's deep black eyes.
"Nie Yunyi, have you lost your mind?! This is the ancestral temple!"
"Imperial Guards! Seize him at once!"
"Rebellion! Rebellion! Nie Yunyi means to rebel! He dares to run riot in the ancestral temple!"
Outside, the uproar went on and on, but the man with the sword stood at the threshold with his back to them.
His eyes were ice. Silhouetted against the light, utterly resolute, he looked like a sword immortal come down into the mortal dust, keen and merciless, ready to sweep away the sins of this world with a single immortal blade.
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