With the Monarch’s command, everyone trembled in alarm. Only Gu Mang, whose mind had been damaged, did not understand exactly what was happening. But seeing the situation, he understood that it must have something to do with Mo Xi.
He instinctively feared that Mo Xi would be hurt, yet he did not know what to do. Acting purely on instinct, he threw himself in front of Mo Xi, shielding him from a danger whose source he could not even identify.
Everyone else scattered toward the edges, anxiously seeking only to protect themselves. It was no wonder they did so. Everyone knew how terrifying Mo Xi’s strength was. If the Monarch managed to control him, the consequences would be unimaginable. They had no deep bond with Mo Xi, so why would they rush forward for no reason to protect him and perform such a futile act?
Mo Xi had never imagined that the Monarch had already planted a puppet pill inside him. Amid the buzzing in his skull, he shoved Gu Mang away. Gu Mang merely stared at him with those clear blue eyes and refused to move no matter what. Mo Xi shouted sharply, “Murong Lian! Take him away!”
“I’m not leaving.”
Gu Mang broke free of Murong Lian’s grip. “I’ll protect you.”
“……”
Mo Xi’s eyes suddenly grew moist. He no longer looked at him, but said to Murong Lian, “Take him away.”
The Monarch merely sneered at the sight. The demonic fire controlling the puppet pill at his fingertips had already reached a boiling heat. He silently recited the incantation, and at the very end suddenly brought his fingers together—
Mo Xi pushed Gu Mang away. “Go!”
In an instant, dazzling radiance illuminated the Monarch’s confident face.
“Enter the heart.”
The brilliant light suddenly exploded, scattering into countless points of light that flew through the air before surging toward Mo Xi’s chest.
Gu Mang was frantic. He clumsily tried to brush them away as though swatting at insects, but how could that possibly work? The points of light passed straight through his palms, unable to be stopped, converging inexorably toward Mo Xi.
Gu Mang was almost crying from panic. “Mo Xi……”
Seeing the situation grow increasingly dire, Murong Lian feared that the puppet pill inside Mo Xi would soon take effect. He grabbed Gu Mang tightly by the sleeve and pulled him away, shouting, “Nothing you do will help! The puppet pill uses the Eight Sufferings Everlasting Hatred Flower of the demon seed as its medicinal catalyst. Unless someone offers up the power of their spirit core and spends several hours on it, no one can remove it! Hurry and go!”
Mockery filled Murong Chen’s eyes as he said calmly, “If you want to leave, it’s already too late.”
Those fire-seed-like points of light had already completely gathered inside Mo Xi. Gritting his teeth, Mo Xi took one last look at Gu Mang, closed his eyes, and whispered to Tun Tian, “…Kill the master.”
Murong Lian was suddenly shocked. He jerked his head up to look at him. He knew that Mo Xi was giving Tun Tian an order: once he lost his reason, Tun Tian was to immediately kill its host!
“Fireball……”
Mo Xi looked toward Murong Lian. “Take Gu Mang away.”
At the same time, Murong Chen flicked his fingertip and said, “Obey the command!”
The white light instantly became brilliant to the extreme. Tun Tian drifted restlessly through the night sky above the ninth heaven, seemingly prepared to dive down at any moment. The rolling spiritual current it stirred up made it nearly impossible to open one’s eyes. The light grew stronger and fiercer by the second.
Gu Mang stared at Mo Xi wrapped in the beam of light, staring at the expression on Mo Xi’s pale face, and almost completely lost control.
“Mo Xi!!”
“Don’t go over—!”
But in the midst of this struggle, the mass of white light suddenly seemed to lose control and exploded apart with a bang, once again transforming into countless specks of radiance that drifted through the air.
Murong Chen suddenly widened his eyes.
The others were equally stunned.
“What… what happened?”
The white light that was supposed to sweep through Mo Xi’s consciousness drifted like fireflies, and in the end……
Bit by bit, drop by drop, it suddenly went out.
Everyone in the Golden Hall fell silent. The candlelight swayed gently. Mo Xi himself, completely bewildered, raised his eyes again and touched his chest.
He had not lost his reason as expected. He had not become Murong Chen’s puppet?
Had the medicine Murong Chen refined all those years ago lost its efficacy?
Or……
Murong Chen abruptly rose to his feet. Cups and vessels beside the table were knocked over and shattered. His expression changed completely, his composure gone. His eyes were filled with shock, fury, and disbelief. He gritted his silver teeth so hard they seemed about to break, his voice sounding as though it had been torn into fragments between his teeth before turning to ash:
“How is this possible? Back then—I clearly watched you take it with my own eyes—Impossible…… Impossible!!”
Amid his thunderous rage, a soft sigh suddenly sounded.
But that sigh had not come from anyone inside the hall.
Everyone followed the sound and looked over. Outside the ruined vermilion-lacquered doors, someone was standing there at some unknown point.
She wore a thin black shawl trimmed in gold. Her long ink-jade hair was gathered into a bun behind her head. She wore no elaborate makeup, only a golden hair clasp as adornment.
Murong Chen narrowed his eyes in disbelief.
“…You?”
The newcomer was none other than Murong Mengze, one of Chonghua’s Three Gentlemen of Jie, Ding, and Hui, and also Chonghua’s princess.
A surge of fury swept through Murong Chen’s entire body. He suddenly understood. He trembled with rage, his eyes nearly splitting with fury, the whites threaded with blood-red veins, and shouted:
“How dare you—you actually betrayed me!!”
Mengze’s expression was calm and austere, impossible to tell whether it was pity or sorrow. She shook her head.
“You went too far, Brother Wang.”
She walked slowly into the hall, frowning as she looked at Murong Chen.
“I advised you to stop long ago. You were the one who refused to listen—even going so far as to become this ruthless. Murong Chen, Chonghua does not belong to you alone. How can you still not understand this even now?”
As she spoke, she walked to Murong Lian’s side and stood there.
This clearly meant that Mengze had chosen to stand with Murong Lian in this struggle rather than beside her other elder brother, Murong Chen.
Murong Chen stared fixedly at the two of them. The old divination about “the Ziwei Star in turmoil, brothers turning against one another, and kin slaughtering kin” thundered louder and louder in his ears.
Murong Lian…… Murong Lian……
First he had pretended to be an ostentatious wastrel, and then he had pretended to be degenerate and debauched. He really had underestimated this collateral-line brother of his!
Murong Lian glanced at Mengze twice.
“Weren’t you at the Hot Spring Palace? I thought you wouldn’t make it back.”
Mengze smiled faintly but did not answer.
The familiar, natural exchange between her and Murong Lian made Murong Chen’s hair stand on end, his rage blazing even higher.
He suddenly realized something and narrowed his eyes dangerously.
“Murong Mengze…… How long have you been secretly helping him?”
Before Mengze could answer, Murong Lian said lazily, “Not that long, I guess. She wasn’t planning on taking my side in the first place. You are, after all, the ruler of Chonghua. She’s a well-behaved and sensible girl, so she followed your orders and secretly kept watch over me.
“Later, you discovered that I intended to tell Gu Mang some secrets, and you panicked. So you sent people to assassinate me by the riverbank—Murong Chen, that was truly the worst move you could have made.”
“Did you really think Mengze would be happy to see you kill me? She would only blame herself for having reported to you. So after that, when the patrolling cultivators rescued me, you had the elders of Shennong Terrace use medicine to slowly kill me instead of properly treating me. But she kept secretly switching my medicinal catalysts, keeping me alive.”
As Murong Lian spoke, he smiled faintly.
“Otherwise, I might have already died ‘without treatment,’ just as you wished. And I wouldn’t be standing here today saying all this to you.”
“…Good…… Good!”
Murong Chen’s gaze moved between the two of them. After a long moment, he gritted his teeth and said, “Murong Mengze, I truly…… trusted you for nothing! Doted on you for nothing! In the end, you actually helped him like this?!”
“I never intended to help anyone,” Murong Mengze said. “I only did what I could answer to myself for, and what I could answer to Chonghua for.”
Murong Chen threw his head back and gave a mocking laugh.
“Answer to yourself? Answer to Chonghua?”
His gaze suddenly became as vicious as a vulture feeding on carrion.
“Murong Mengze, you helped a collateral relative oppose your own elder brother. You can answer to yourself for that? You eat the ruler’s salary and receive the ruler’s favor, yet you joined outsiders to force your own sovereign from the throne. You can answer to Chonghua for that?”
He swept his sleeve, his black-and-gold robes billowing dramatically.
“What a colossal joke!”
Mengze said calmly, “Brother Chen, if you had not been so ruthless, why would I have been driven to this? Ever since you ascended the throne, you have constantly wanted to eliminate those who disagree with you, to eradicate cowards and petty men. But how could that possibly work? As long as something has a life—even an animal—it will have its own selfish desires, its own countless thoughts……”
Murong Chen angrily said, “But that is wrong!!”
“I never said it was right.”
Mengze looked at him solemnly.
“Weakness, conflict, greed, jealousy—how could any of those things possibly be right? But neither you nor I can ever change another person’s thoughts, nor can we ever eradicate human nature. Rather than thinking about how to make all those ministers with their own selfish desires bow their heads and obey you, you should think about how to become a wise and benevolent ruler yourself, and lead them toward a brighter path. You should not expect everyone to become puppet statues of clay, feeding them a pill whenever they refuse to listen to you.
“Brother Chen, there was something Brother Lian once told me that was not wrong. When all that remains in the entirety of Chonghua is a single voice, that is when this nation has reached its end.”
“Once upon a time?”
Murong Chen sneered.
“So you really were playing both sides, then. On one hand, you were working for me, while on the other, you were plotting with Murong Lian…… Murong Mengze, as one of Chonghua’s Three Gentlemen, is this how you can claim to have a clear conscience?”
Mengze fell silent for a while. She seemed tired of arguing and unwilling to argue this matter with Murong Chen in detail. But under his relentless pressure, she eventually raised her eyes.
“As a person of Chonghua, I cannot keep watching you make one mistake after another. Nor can I bear to watch you repeatedly use and harm your own siblings and comrades, your loyal ministers and battle commanders.”
“Many years ago, you put a puppet pill into Brother Mo’s cup, turning him into a killing weapon waiting for you to awaken at any moment. Later, you also schemed to make Gu Mang walk the path of treason and become your spy. You found a grand and righteous reason that he could not refuse, leaving him with no choice but to gather intelligence for you and pave the way for you.”
Murong Mengze’s voice was not loud, but every person in the Golden Hall listened intently.
Someone could not help exclaiming when they heard this.
“Gu Mang was a spy? He—he wasn’t a traitor……”
“He was not,” Murong Mengze said.
“This……”
“The Fengming Mountain battle was merely the Monarch’s method of selecting for himself a spy capable of enduring humiliation and hardship. In order to obtain such a spy, the Monarch used Jiang Yexue’s secret technique to temporarily control Lu Zhanxing, causing him to commit the grave mistake of killing an envoy and disgracing himself before the enemy lines.”
“Lu Zhanxing was controlled back then?!”
“That’s right.”
Mengze continued, “He was controlled by an incompletely refined Zhenlong Chess Piece. After Lu Zhanxing was unjustly imprisoned, Gu Mang was forced into a desperate situation. It was at that moment that the Monarch gave him a secret order, telling him to defect to Liao under false pretenses and become a spy embedded in Liao, continuously providing Chonghua with intelligence and black magic techniques.”
This was simply too shocking.
Under normal circumstances, if anyone had said such things to the nobles of the entire court, they would only have been mocked as a madman. But the Golden Hall had just endured a calamity. People had died, people had been wounded, and the demonic beast Jingchen was still circling and howling above the roof. It merely did not dare approach for the moment because of the protection of the whale spirit of Tun Tian.
Thus, although Mengze’s words were utterly unbelievable, no one could bring themselves to disbelieve them.
Murong Chen stood upon the throne. His martial strength was inferior to that of many people present, while Jingchen was isolated outside the hall and could not stop Mengze’s words for the moment. He could only stare coldly at her, as though considering how to make her words fall apart completely, or perhaps simply thinking about how to tear her to pieces and reduce her to scraps.
He had once trusted her so deeply……
The only family member he believed he could trust without reservation—his own younger sister……
The person who had ultimately gathered all his crimes and exposed them in their entirety was someone he had never imagined it would be!!!
Murong Chen could not help laughing coldly.
Someone raised his voice.
“But if that is the case, then Gu Mang was also helping a tyrant do evil! He helped the Monarch—helped Murong Chen gather black magic forbidden arts. What benefit did he get from it? Did he promise to let him return and rise through the ranks and become wealthy, or promise him countless riches?”
Mo Xi was enraged by this and shouted sharply, “He did it for seventy thousand memorial tablets and a peaceful world. What rise in rank, what riches and treasures? Gu Mang has been back for so long now. Do you even know what kind of life he has been living?!”
“……”
Seeing Mo Xi’s fury, Mengze raised a hand to stop him and gently shook her head.
“Back then, when the Monarch persuaded Gu Mang to enter Liao, he did not tell Gu Mang his true purpose. After Gu Mang accepted the order, he believed that the Monarch was wholeheartedly trying to deal with Liao, to understand the enemy and develop methods to counter them. That was why he continued to transmit intelligence to Chonghua.
“Of course, he knew that he was being used, but at that time he had never imagined that the Monarch’s selfish motives had gone this far.”
That person asked, “So…… Gu Mang had no idea that Murong Chen intended to seize the black magic curses for himself, and even use those black magic curses to control the minds of the court officials?”
“That’s right. He did not know.”
Yet at this moment, Murong Lian suddenly spoke.
“No. Mengze, you are wrong about this part. The matter of the Monarch wanting to use black magic techniques to harm his own people…… Gu Mang only didn’t know at first. Later, he actually knew everything.”
Mo Xi’s long brows drew together.
“How could that be? If he knew, he would have sent word to Chonghua long ago.”
Murong Lian shook his head.
“He had no way to send word. Even if he did, he could not have stopped anything. Instead, he would only have thrown away the Monarch’s trust in him for nothing. But he truly knew about it very early on.”
He paused. Amid the astonished gazes of everyone present, he slowly said to Mo Xi:
“Fireball, as early as the Battle of Dongting Waters, before Gu Mang assassinated you, he had already discovered the true ambition of our Monarch. The empire’s divine altar beast was not some fool who had simply been used all along.”