“His Majesty?!”
Jiang Ye Xue’s calm words struck like a huge rock dropped into a pond, sending a thousand-foot wave crashing outward.
Yue Chen Qing was horrified. “H-How could that be…?”
Mo Xi was not as young and ignorant as he was, but precisely because of that, an even deeper chill instantly enveloped him.
His Majesty’s face, which was perpetually buried deep within fur, was pale, often carrying an inscrutable faint smile. There seemed to be affection in his eyes, yet he appeared to be a man with a thousand masks. When he was deeply affectionate, he looked so genuine. When he was high-spirited, he looked so genuine. When he hated evil with a vengeance, he looked so genuine. When he was grief-stricken beyond measure, he still looked so genuine.
Mo Xi had seen so many faces of His Majesty. His emotions were like the makeup on an actor’s face, capable of being painted to the extreme.
Even now, he could not determine which face was His Majesty’s true appearance, nor which emotions were the ones he truly felt in his heart.
And now Jiang Ye Xue was saying that His Majesty supported him in using black magic aura. Although Mo Xi felt a chill run through him, he discovered that he was not even the slightest bit surprised.
Chonghua’s His Majesty was a madman too.
He had known that for a long time.
Jiang Ye Xue stared at Yue Chen Qing. “Back then, I watched you grow little by little. I watched you begin taking the initiative to cling to Chu Yi and pester him endlessly. Even when he deliberately distanced himself from you, you never became angry or discouraged. I thought… this person really is like a slug, sticky to death. How irritating.”
“Ever since we were children, whatever you took a liking to, I would have to lose. I truly loathed you. That disgust only grew more intense until, in the end…” Jiang Ye Xue paused, a vicious gleam flashing in his narrow eyes. “I couldn’t help but want to cast a black magic curse on you.”
“!”
“Don’t look so surprised. In truth, I would have preferred to kill you outright. But if you died, Chu Yi would inevitably grieve.” Jiang Ye Xue spoke leisurely. “I care for him, so I had no choice but to spare your miserable life. That was why I wanted to curse you, to turn you into a muddle-headed fool who would never circle around Chu Yi again.”
“I was about to succeed, too. The spell had already been driven into your heart. As long as one full shichen passed, no one would have been able to save you.”
At this point, his expression gradually darkened.
“Unfortunately, that day… there was someone who chose neither to come early nor late, but happened to arrive at the estate to take care of some business at precisely that time. He happened to discover something wrong with you, and out of meddlesome concern, he sent you to Shennong Terrace for treatment.”
Yue Chen Qing asked, “…Who?”
“Who else could it be?” Jiang Ye Xue’s expression was filled with utter disgust. “Naturally, it was my good brother, that Marshal Gu of ours who was determined to die without regret, unchanging in his devotion, soaked from head to toe in black magic aura, yet still struggling desperately like a cornered beast.”
Mo Xi: “!”
When Jiang Ye Xue reached this point, he could not help looking over at Mo Xi, who could neither move nor speak. His voice became sinister.
“I truly detest him. So the more he doesn’t want to hurt someone, the more I want to hurt them. The more he cares about something, the more I want to destroy it… Lord Xihe, do you really think I didn’t know what you would see after repairing that jade slip? Do you think that when I restored those scrolls for you back then, I was trying to help you?”
A soft, cold laugh.
“I merely wanted to make you wish you were dead, and make him sink deeper and deeper into the path of black magic!”
“Who told him to interfere with my plans back then and ruin my good deed? He even nearly exposed what I had done right under the old His Majesty’s nose! How could I not hate him?”
Mo Xi: “…”
“It was him back then! He meddled in matters that weren’t his concern and sent Yue Chen Qing to Shennong Terrace, allowing the medicine cultivators to discover the black magic aura inside Yue Chen Qing and report the matter to the Golden Hall.” Jiang Ye Xue clicked his tongue. “It was too dangerous. If the old His Majesty had learned that I was cultivating black magic curses, I would have died without a doubt.”
“Fortunately, at that time, the old His Majesty was not in the capital. He was at Soul-Calling Abyss with Yue Jun Tian and the others, conducting a sacrificial rite. Thus, this case fell into the hands of the Crown Prince at the time—who was none other than the current His Majesty.”
Jiang Ye Xue paused. “I have to say, the current His Majesty is a rather capable man. He quickly traced the matter back to me and interrogated me using Guilty-Water. At the time, I thought everything would end there.”
“Who could have known that, in the end, it didn’t.”
A dark light shimmered in his eyes. “After the Crown Prince discovered that I could refine magical medicines, not only did he not expose me, he instead took me under his command and made an agreement with me.”
Yue Chen Qing: “…What agreement?”
Jiang Ye Xue said, “He wanted me to use my own black magic aura to conduct the trials he required. In exchange, he would conceal the matter from the court for me. He also promised that once the time was right, he would help me legitimately reclaim my position in the Yue family and make me the head of the Yue family.”
Yue Chen Qing: “…”
“So during those years, he and I researched many black magical objects and forbidden techniques.” Jiang Ye Xue flicked his sleeve. “I had practically seen all the darkness of the empire. I knew about Gu Mang being a spy long ago as well. Of His Majesty’s secret schemes, how many do you think I did not offer advice on from the sidelines?”
At this point, Jiang Ye Xue looked at Mo Xi with a faint, enigmatic smile.
“Oh, right. Let me tell you another interesting thing. Actually… that Zhenlong chess piece that Lu Zhan Xing was struck with back then was not placed inside his body by the people of Liao at all.”
Mo Xi: “!”
Jiang Ye Xue smiled pleasantly. “I refined the chess piece. His Majesty came up with the idea.”
For a moment, there was silence.
Then an intense shudder surged together with a violent wave of nausea!
If Mo Xi had previously only felt disappointed, then after he understood the meaning behind Jiang Ye Xue’s words, his face actually turned deathly pale, and he nearly vomited.
On the Golden Terrace, the Venerable King’s bold declaration.
Within the Vermilion Bird Hall, His Majesty’s sorrowful words.
—
“Marshal Gu, you and your army are the most precious treasures I cannot bear to part with.”
“Do you think I can feel at ease when I frame loyal and righteous subjects?!”
“Huo Qiu, I am not made of stone. It is merely that a person at the Ninth Heavens is trapped within a cage.”
“Could I ever feel at ease?”
The sorrowful, solemn face of His Majesty in his memories slowly twisted, becoming the face of an evil ghost.
All lies!
Jiang Ye Xue said flatly, “His Majesty had planned long ago to send people to Liao to collect more black magic techniques. He had also long believed that Gu Mang’s power should be stripped away as soon as possible. Lu Zhan Xing being afflicted by the curse, the defeat at Phoenix Cry Mountain, the agreement at the Golden Terrace—His Majesty calculated every step with absolute clarity. His purpose was to strip away Gu Mang’s wings and turn him into a puppet on a string. And in the end, he accomplished all of it.”
At this point, Jiang Ye Xue laughed coldly again, as though mocking Gu Mang’s innocence, or perhaps mocking himself.
“So, who isn’t a chess piece on His Majesty’s board? I am the same. It’s only that I can see through it.”
“And then there was my fiancée, Qin Mu Jin… In the past, she had always been dissatisfied about having to marry a low-status illegitimate son. Yet after His Majesty took me under his command, she gradually became more proactive and affectionate toward me. Later, when her family was convicted of the serious crime of privately minting counterfeit silver, she became increasingly entangled with me while she was left without support.”
Jiang Ye Xue’s face showed contempt as he said indifferently, “How could I not understand the reason behind it?”
“His Majesty did not know about my feelings for Murong Chu Yi and assumed that I had some affection for Qin Mu Jin. In truth, this woman was nothing more than a spy he had planted beside me. I knew it perfectly well, but since I wanted him to help me openly reclaim the Yue family, I did not want to offend him either. So I cooperated and insisted on marrying her despite Yue Jun Tian’s opposition.”
The smile at his lips was faint, yet soaked in ridicule.
“And the result His Majesty wanted to see was precisely this. As long as I had a wife arranged by him beside me, once I became head of the Yue family, the Yue family would be under his control day and night. That was his calculation.”
“Unfortunately… Qin Mu Jin herself was useless and died in a battle against Liao.”
In the past, everyone had said that Jiang Ye Xue and his wife were deeply devoted to each other. It turned out that it had merely been an illusion. Their affection had been an act, their marriage a scheme. The only thing about her death that genuinely pleased him was that she was dead.
“Our His Majesty has always been suspicious by nature, so naturally he attributed her death in battle to the idea that I had discovered his intentions and deliberately plotted her death.” When Jiang Ye Xue said this, he paused slightly, and the contemptuous, wild air between his brows became even more pronounced.
“How ridiculous. She was simply incompetent herself. How could that be my fault?”
“But regardless, from then on, His Majesty gradually lost his trust in me. At that time, Gu Mang had already successfully infiltrated Liao and become the new link connecting him to black magic. Thus, he began gradually isolating me from his faction, while the Yue family power he had promised me remained nowhere in sight.”
Jiang Ye Xue spoke in a dark, eerie voice. “Later, I injured my legs in battle and became crippled. His cold treatment toward me became even more obvious. I asked him when he intended to fulfill his promise, but he always brushed me off, and his expression had already begun to show extreme impatience.”
“Fortunately, I had already learned the meaning of coldness and ingratitude thoroughly from Yue Jun Tian.” Jiang Ye Xue sneered. “When conspiring with a tiger, how could I fail to make comprehensive preparations? I knew very well that he might very well cross the river and tear down the bridge, and once I was no longer useful to him, he would kill me to silence me. So one day, I secretly told him that I had already created more than a hundred magical artifacts. If I died in any scheme related to him, those artifacts would immediately activate…”
He licked his lips, his manner like a jackal.
“…and expose all of his dark scandals from these years to the entire Chonghua.”
Jiang Ye Xue sneered aloud, as though he had achieved a great victory. “Only then did he panic after hearing my arrangement. He put on that hypocritical expression again and coaxed me, saying that the Yue family would belong to me sooner or later and that I should wait a little longer. He even personally went to the Cultivation Academy and found me a comfortable place to stay.”
His smile disappeared, leaving behind nothing but gloom.
Jiang Ye Xue said darkly, “Unfortunately, how could I ever trust him again?”
“The person on that throne did not dare touch me, and I no longer associated myself with him. We simply each held secrets over the other. There were some things we saw through but did not say aloud, each of us preserving a little bit of face for the other. In truth, I knew everything he had done, including why he was so determined to obtain the remnant soul of the Blood Demon Beast.”
Mo Xi felt another chill run through his teeth.
The remnant soul of the Blood Demon Beast…?
The sound of blood rushing thundered in his ears.
Mo Xi’s heart turned ice-cold—the remnant soul of the Blood Demon Beast was something Gu Mang had risked his life to retrieve in order to stop Liao from summoning the demon beast again.
Could it be that His Majesty had obtained it for…
As though he could see straight through Mo Xi’s thoughts, Jiang Ye Xue said, “His Majesty naturally did not lie to you. If Liao obtained the final wisp of the Blood Demon Beast’s soul, war would inevitably erupt once more, and Chonghua would be finished. However, he did not seize the Blood Demon Beast’s remnant soul for the sake of peace throughout the Nine Provinces. He did it for his own eternal imperial ambitions.”
“His Majesty is no ordinary person, nor is he someone who hates war. In truth, what you should have done was find a way to reseal that soul yourselves instead of handing it over to him.”
He almost laughed mockingly.
“The war Gu Mang wanted to prevent may not only have failed to be prevented, but may instead have accelerated its birth. Just watch. Liao will soon launch endless attacks against Chonghua again for the sake of that wisp of soul. And our His Majesty… he will naturally use your blood and lives to counterattack in this battle he has awaited for so long, and from it achieve his glory.”
Mo Xi: “…”
Jiang Ye Xue spoke with an elegant yet terrifying calmness.
“Now that he has his new dog, Gu Mang, I will heal my legs and seize my power. No one can do anything to me.”
Tears and blood stained Yue Chen Qing’s face. He murmured in disbelief, “Heal your legs?”
He finally reacted, his voice trembling.
“…So approaching Xiao Lan’er was never to take care of her. You had your eyes on her spirit core…”
“Yes.” Jiang Ye Xue openly admitted it. “Her spirit core is a dangerous thing while it remains inside her, but once I take it from her, it can provide me with spiritual power, and it can continuously supply spiritual energy to the prosthetic frame embedded in my leg. What’s wrong with that?”
“You… In order to restore your own health, you turned her into a puppet… For the sake of a Yue family… you plotted the disaster at Hunyuan Cave… You killed so many people…” Yue Chen Qing’s eyes were filled with blood and tears as he raged. “Jiang Ye Xue!! Who could acknowledge you?! Who could tolerate you?!”
Jiang Ye Xue sneered. “Are you a pig? Once we leave this cavern, who will know that I killed these people? I used all my magical breath to activate the demonic seed in Chu Yi’s heart. Even if a hundred forensic examiners were sent here, the result would still be the same—they all died at Murong Chu Yi’s hands.”
Yue Chen Qing lost control. “You even want to destroy his reputation! You want him to take the blame for you?!”
“He has no reputation left to destroy anyway.” Jiang Ye Xue said flatly. “As for taking the blame… that won’t be necessary. I can simply threaten His Majesty and make him secretly replace the person in the Heavenly Prison. From then on, Murong Chu Yi will no longer exist in this world. I will lock him deep inside the Yue estate, and he will still belong to me, safe and sound. Don’t worry. Even if I kill every person in the Yue residence, I will definitely let him go.”
As he spoke, a radiant light gathered in his hand. Jiang Ye Xue summoned his sword and pointed its tip directly at Yue Chen Qing’s throat.
“Yue Chen Qing, I let you live these additional twenty years in this world. That can be considered my way of fulfilling our brotherhood.” Jiang Ye Xue smiled. “When you reach the Underworld, don’t hate me.”
With that, he raised his hand and swung it down, thrusting the sword straight through!