Chapter 429 – Xue Ning at Death’s Door, Identity Exposed – Part 1

Before the blood red General’s Temple, Gao Kaiping wore a lacquered black helmet that gleamed like oil. A cold metal faceguard dropped from the bridge of his nose to his throat, leaving only a pair of vicious, wide-staring eyes exposed.

Those pupils bulged, veined with red, meaner than any beast prowling the wilds.

Clearly, in life this general had been a brutal hardcase.

The numbers beside him backed that up.

Li Yuan glanced at the 8,030~139,182 above the man’s head.

He was stronger than Lu Xuanxian by a good margin and even Li Yuan himself.

Look closer, though, and the total split in two. One part belonged to the general named Gao Kaiping, another for his horse.

The general alone had a combat power of 4,830~97,182.”

The horse hovered at 3,200~42,000.”

Without the mount, the general might rank near the bottom among heroic souls. Add the horse, and he was suddenly top tier.

Right now, the general held that horse’s reins and stood quietly behind Xie Wei. The shaft of his blood-red spear slammed into the ground with a thunderclap, as if declaring that from this moment on—the mistress, and the dragon heir in her belly—would be under his protection.

Li Yuan’s thoughts churned. He’d proven it to himself. Loyal souls were real. In that case...could he speak with this loyal soul and, through it, reach the Dragon Vein?

He was still weighing it when he saw Xie Wei beside him, eyes gone wide, a flash of astonishment leaking through no matter how she tried to hide it.

Time seemed to freeze.

In the next heartbeat, Xie Wei’s slightly parted lips snapped shut. She said, “Your Majesty, how did this loyal soul walk out of the temple? That spear strike nearly scared me to death.”

Li Yuan nodded. Anxiety chewed at him; he wanted to connect with the Dragon Vein as fast as possible.

When the world splits three ways, the weak always band together to strike the strong.

Since the Dragon Vein had lost, he needed to renew that alliance.

He had to hurry; he had no idea when the other side might arrive.

So Li Yuan followed Xie Wei’s lead and said, “You may leave. I’ll have a word with General Gao.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.” Xie Wei dipped in a graceful bow.

She stroked her belly and turned to leave.

She’d barely taken a few steps when Gao Kaiping simply took the horse and followed after her.

Hearing the clink of armor and the beat of hooves behind her, Xie Wei stopped dead.

She stopped; Gao Kaiping stopped.

The air turned strangely, inexplicably awkward.

A spark went off in Li Yuan’s mind. He’d just caught a discordant note. This loyal soul called Gao Kaiping had only addressed the mistress, but not the master.

Xie Wei’s earlier look of surprise wasn’t because Gao Kaiping frightened her. It was the greeting that sent a chill through her.

She covered it on purpose, too, with a touch of that famous scene where Liu Bei dropped his chopsticks while drinking with Cao Cao and then laughed it off.

But now things were awkward.

Xie Wei had turned to leave, and Gao Kaiping, ignoring the Son of Heaven entirely, followed her.

What was that supposed to be?

A live takedown?

Only a breath or two passed, yet it felt like days.

Because in that instant, anything they said or did would feel wrong.

One small movement had already left both of them with no graceful way off the stage.

Li Yuan realized this fully at last. He’d been in a rush over the Dragon Vein and had let his guard down around Xie Wei, which was why he’d missed it.

Xie Wei, for her part, had masked her emotions, but she hadn’t confirmed anything for certain. Flustered and eager to get away, she’d failed to consider what would happen if the most impossible possibility actually turned out to be true.

They said nothing. It was Gao Kaiping who broke the silence.

A low, droning voice came from behind that grim helmet.

“Mistress, he is not the Emperor.”

At the words, Xie Wei’s body trembled.

Li Yuan fell silent as well.

In the next instant, Xie Wei spun back, seized Li Yuan’s arm, and fixed Gao Kaiping with a stare. “Remember this, he is the Emperor.”

A vicious gleam flickered behind the metal mask. The hollow voice rumbled, “If that is the mistress’s order, this humble general obeys.”

Xie Wei felt her breath stop.

Li Yuan felt the warmth of her grip on his arm. He clenched his teeth and kept up the act. “Empress, return to the carriage first. Don’t agitate the child.”

Xie Wei let out a quiet breath, released him, and dipped a small curtsey. “Will Your Majesty be returning to Clear Ripple Cottage?”

When Li Yuan didn’t answer, she put on a touch of plaintive softness and murmured, syrupy-sweet, “I’m all alone, after all, pitiful and forlorn. I long for Your Majesty’s favor, for a man’s protection.”

“I will come back,” Li Yuan said. “But it may take some time.”

Her bright eyes fluttered. As the leader of Ocean Province’s shadow guard, she processed and analyzed information with frightening speed; in the span of a few blinks, she had sorted out quite a lot.

She softened, smiling gently. “When my elder brother returned with the army, he often praised Your Majesty for never losing your sense of righteousness.

“Your Majesty understands that men and ghosts walk different paths, and that ghosts bring harm to the living. So you bore the burden in silence, appearing to cooperate with the ghosts, but in truth waiting to strike them a crushing blow at the decisive moment.”

She suddenly took Li Yuan’s hand again. “The day Your Majesty issued the edict proclaiming me Empress, my heart was filled with joy.

“That night, when you bestowed your favor, you were especially gentle. Of course I truly see Your Majesty as my husband. I wonder...can Your Majesty also, truly, see me as your wife?”

“...” Li Yuan fell silent.

Every word hit dead center. In that instant, he understood. This sister-in-law was an absolute enchantress.

Back in that clash of powerhouses, she didn't seem to have anything to contribute, but from her point of view—or the Xie Clan’s—she hadn’t put a single foot wrong.

Li Yuan said, “I naturally regard the Empress as my wife. Why ask so much?”

Xie Wei smiled, then said, “Does Your Majesty like peach-blossom pastries?”

“Mhm...?” Li Yuan raised an eyebrow.

“I happen to be good with sweets,” she went on. “Things were so rushed before that I never got the chance to make you a proper signature dish.”

She tipped her chin up, smiled like spring sunshine, and lifted a hand with a flirtatious little wave—catlike. “Come along, Your Majesty. I’ll make you something delicious.”

They stared at each other in silence.

She kept smiling. His quiet made her suddenly square her shoulders, step in a half-step—close enough to breach the usual distance of polite conversation, close enough to almost brush his chest.

Then she drew back, polite again, and offered a respectful curtsey. “I shall take my leave.”

She looked to the helmeted, ironclad loyal soul. “General Gao, speak well with His Majesty.”

“Yes, Mistress,” Gao Kaiping replied.

Xie Wei withdrew.

At first, she’d been terrified. Now she walked away almost cheerful. Her test had worked. She’d tentatively confirmed that this

Emperor

had no ill will toward her. If he had, he wouldn’t have gone silent when she offered to cook. If he had, he wouldn’t have stayed still when she stepped in that half-step. So she advanced half a step, then retreated a full one.

Even so, she had a tangle of threads to sort out. If the Emperor...was fake, then it had to connect to the earlier assassination; to the later edict declaring her Empress; to that night when he did not summon her to his bed; and to the last-minute betrayal of the Lotus Cult—the sudden reversal, and the strike against the ghosts.

All of these actions were abnormal, things the Emperor she knew would never do.

Xie Wei thought back to the day of the assassination...

If the assassin couldn’t possibly break through the security...And if he could, why bother resorting to assassination at all... So, where did the assassin come from? Could he have been inside the Xie residence itself? Or arrived early to make preparations? During that stretch of time, did anyone...unusual suddenly appear in the Xie residence?

Badump. Badump! Badump-badump-badum!

Xie Wei’s heartbeat kicked into a gallop.

From the depths of her chest rose a strange emotion...and with it, a wild, terrifying suspicion. Still, she needed a chance to verify it.

Whatever the truth turned out to be, though, it couldn’t be worse than the real Emperor being alive.

Only when Xie Wei’s presence faded did Li Yuan look squarely at Gao Kaiping. “General Gao, I’ll be blunt. You recognize this, don’t you?”

He whipped out the Nine Provinces Provisional Patrol Token.

“No.” Gao Kaiping stared at the pitch-black token, then shook his head.

“Do you know the Dragon Vein?” Li Yuan asked, voice low.

The savage glint in those eyes went knife-cold. From behind the helm came that hollow rumble, “How do you know about the Dragon Vein?”

“The Dragon Vein allied with me,” Li Yuan said. “It gave me this token. You didn’t know?”

Gao Kaiping shook his head. “I have never heard of such a thing. If you have nothing else, I will go and follow the mistress.”

Li Yuan held his tongue. Gao Kaiping didn’t wait. He gripped the blood-red spear, swung into the saddle of the heavily armored skeletal horse, and started away.

“Hold it,” Li Yuan said without turning.

The bone-plated hooves halted.

“Do you know Lu Xuanxian?” Li Yuan called out. “And your mistress told you to speak properly with me. Gao Kaiping, are you defying orders?!”

His tone sharpened with each word.

There was a pause, then Gao Kaiping replied curtly, “I do not.”

With that, he spurred the horse and caught up to the distant carriage.

As the horse left the temple grounds, Gao Kaiping’s form began to change.

The steed shed its bone armor and became a sleek black charger; Gao Kaiping himself blurred from a red-spear, black-armor ghost retainer into a broad-shouldered, silver-spear man in heavy armor.

From the outside...everything looked normal. No corpse-stench, no chill of the grave—just a human being.

And his combat power shifted too, from 8,030~139,182 to 8,030~69,591 (???~139,182).

Li Yuan had been rattled by the reply. But when he saw Gao Kaiping’s combat power change, a smile tugged at his mouth. It faded into something heavier.

It was confirmed, then. Lu Xuanxian was a loyal soul. The Dragon Vein was real. But the Dragon Vein had clearly gone through a string of events he knew nothing about, and those events had produced this bizarre situation.

Like a loyal soul stepping out of the ghost domain to protect the dragon heir before the child was even born. Like Gao Kaiping not recognizing the Nine Provinces Provisional Patrol Token.

What exactly had happened, Li Yuan couldn’t yet say. If he couldn’t know and couldn’t be sure, then he’d just have to watch and see. If he couldn’t ally with the Dragon Vein, he had other priorities.