Chapter 516 – A Crimson Ribbon Stays Its Hand, The Jade Palace Burns, An Empress Walking Away - Part 2

Meanwhile, in the Jade Palace, panic consumed Xie Wei.

Never had she imagined the fire would start within her own walls.

Layer by layer, the defenses outside were collapsing. The imperial guards and her shadow agents were falling at a terrifying pace.

But her greatest reliance, Ocean Province’s 30,000 armored cavalry, she had sent away in the dead of night.

Her plan had been clear. First swallow the lands of Yan and Zhao, unify the rivers and mountains, and only then turn her hand against the southern territories.

In her eyes, the four great Kingdoms of Qi, Chu, Han, and Wei were no paper tigers. Even the western barbarians would not crush them with a single blow.

When that time came, if she could not swoop in as the fisherman profiting from others’ struggle, she would at least see the tides clearly and strike where it mattered most.

“Damn it! Damn it!” she cursed, pacing like a caged beast. “Which fool told Hu’er to act like this?! The war begins, and the boy rushes to throw armies together, what comes of it? Nothing but a rabble, scattered like sand. Every commander waiting for the other to step forward first, every force diminished before the battle even begins. The chance to swallow Yan and Zhao was right there, right in front of me! And yet someone chose this moment, when I sent my troops out, to seize power from my hands?!”

Her rage boiled over.

From afar came the crash of a great beam collapsing. She rushed to the window. Flames were devouring another wing of the palace.

Beneath the blaze, the Flying Bear Army clashed with the imperial guard.

At their head rode a white-horsed general with a silver spear, cutting through the battlefield like thunder, unstoppable wherever he turned.

Xie Wei narrowed her eyes, recognizing the man who had once stood as her protector. She drew in a deep breath. The time had come. She would leave this hall and speak directly with the Dragon Vein.

If Ji Hu wished to claim the throne, then let him claim it. Was this not, in its own way, his path of growth? Reckless, shortsighted, yes. But this time, he had seized the moment.

She straightened her dark-gold phoenix robe, adjusted her hairpiece until it sat firmly in place, and prepared to step outside.

But then, a voice came from the shadows.

“Sister-in-law, don’t go out.”

Startled, she spun around.

There, smiling faintly in the gloom, stood a man in gray with a blade at his side.

It was Li Yuan.

“You, how are you here?” she demanded.

“I came long ago,” he replied lightly. “Watched a fine play all through the night. Only now did I come to you.”

“You—!” Her expression twisted with disbelief. “So you’ve been watching this whole time. Then you’ve seen clearly what’s happening. Why wait until now to appear? Don’t tell me...this too is under your control?”

Li Yuan shook his head. “I came only to take you away. I never planned to act.”

Shock widened her eyes. “What? Why?!”

“Leave first,” he said. “We’ll speak later.”

“I won’t leave! I—” Before she could finish, he stepped forward, voice low and urgent. “The one moving against you is not the Dragon Vein, not even Hu’er, and perhaps not the Eastern Sea’s Immortal Domain either. It is a power deeper, hidden still. Even I have yet to see its true shape. Jump out of the game first. Then we’ll study the board. Will you not?”

A hidden power? Stronger than all she had feared?

Xie Wei shook her head in disbelief. “Nonsense. There’s no such—”

She never finished.

Li Yuan’s hand flashed up.

Thwack!

The sound was crisp, almost gentle.

Xie Wei crumpled, unconscious, before she could resist.

Li Yuan bent down, hooked his arm beneath her legs, and hoisted Xie Wei over his shoulder.

He could see it clearly now; the Empress Dowager was fraying at the edges. Weeks of pressure had driven her to the brink. She was fevered with anger, no longer thinking clearly, tottering at the edge of madness.

And that was the state of the losing side.

Had he not come, her fate would already be sealed. In a battlefield like this, no matter what the Emperor had ordered, accidents were inevitable. In the chaos, a stray blade, a falling beam, a panicked soldier...one dead Dowager was all too easy to explain away.

Xie Wei would never have lived to face Ji Hu. Nor did it matter if he stayed behind to shield her. What could it achieve?

Soon, he would be crushed beneath endless tides, hidden currents in the palace, the pressure of foreign states, raids from the western tribes, the scheming of the Dragon Vein, the hidden hand of that mysterious force, even interference from the Eastern Sea’s Immortal Domain.

The Empress Dowager was like a chess piece already surrounded. In chess, a surrounded piece was doomed, captured, discarded, gone. To stubbornly keep it alive was to fight against the board itself, and that meant inviting chaos without end.

And in chess, one must follow the rules. Especially someone like Li Yuan, who considered himself unworthy even to sit at the table; he could only obey the flow of the game.

But he had no wish to see her truly dead.

So he came early, before the board had settled, to do the hidden opponent’s work for them, lifting the piece from the board in his own way.

With his left arm bracing her legs, he smoothed down the hem of her dark-golden phoenix robe, making sure it draped properly over her hips. Then, from his robe, he drew a cheap little mask and slipped it over his face.

He tapped the table lightly.

From the shadows of the hall emerged two women in black, tall hats upon their heads—agents of the Court of Judges, the faceless

Unseen Ones

.

Each carried a body slung over her shoulder. The moment they entered, they bowed respectfully to Li Yuan. Their orders were clear. Obey this mysterious patron in all things.

Years ago, it was he who had led them into the Jade Palace, from where they had stepped into the ancient ghost street, and since then, they had lingered there.

Yan Yu had perfected a new power in those years. It was the ability to enter and leave the ancient ghost street at will, no long detours, no winding paths as the old undying husks required.

“Make it ready,” Li Yuan said coolly.

The two women bowed again, then swiftly laid the bodies on the bed, arranging them together in an intimate tangle. With practiced speed, they added the necessary signs, the telltale traces.

Li Yuan cast a glance. The corpses now bore the faces of Xie Wei and Chang Xin. In truth, they were merely condemned prisoners of similar build, their features altered by Yin makeup.

In the ancient ghost street, bodies could be moved in secretly and carried out again with ease.

The women finished their work. They poured oil across the floor, struck a flame, and set the palace chamber ablaze. Fire roared up instantly, swallowing the scene in smoke and heat.

Bowing once more toward their unseen master, the black-clad envoys turned and slipped away, vanishing into the narrow passage that led back into Ghost Street.

Li Yuan set Xie Wei gently down, intending to slip away first and then use ghostly means to draw her out later.

But just as he moved, a chill pricked his senses.

The Jade Palace was a secret ground, its defenses layered with decoys and illusions. That was the only reason no master had found this place yet.

But now, the fire. The blaze had laid it bare in an instant.

And for the truly powerful, fire and smoke were no hindrance at all. If anything, anomalies stood out sharper through the flames.

Sure enough, someone was coming.

The sound of footsteps. Quiet, soft, unnervingly precise. More refined than anyone Li Yuan had ever encountered, even from the likes of Lu Xuanxian and Qing Hancheng, even the envoys from the Eastern Sea’s Immortal Domain he had once faced.

But so what?

He raised his hand, flicked his wrist.

A brilliant red ribbon spilled from his sleeve, slithering through a crack in the burning doorway like a living serpent before drifting outside the entrance.

It shimmered with dazzling light, floating lazily in the air as though it were no more than a thread caught on the wind. Yet within its graceful ripples surged a vast, suffocating power.

An ordinary man would have dismissed it as a stray scrap of cloth, but not the one who had come.

The red-robed ghost, Fish Guts, his hair bound high, knife in hand, tongue licking along its bloody edge. The fresh heart-blood of his victims still gleamed there—shadow guards, assassins, martial artists, none had lasted a breath against him.

He moved like ripples through darkness, a distortion gliding swiftly toward the burning hall. His eyes were cold, his lips curved in mockery. In this palace, he could kill whomever he wished.

As for the Empress Dowager, her time had come.

She had raised the Son of Heaven, yes, but now she was an obstacle. Obstacles were meant to be removed.

That thought barely formed before his pupils constricted. His advancing body stopped dead.

He had seen it. The red ribbon. Floating there, light as mist. And with that sight, a shudder ripped through him.

Not only did he halt, he stepped back. Retreating, unwilling, unable to cross that threshold.

He didn’t know what it was. He couldn’t begin to understand.

But he knew one thing; the ribbon could kill him as easily as crushing an ant.

Moments later, hooves thundered. A white horse charged through the smoke—atop it, General Gao Kaiping, silver spear in hand, the Flying Bear Army following close behind.

Yet before Gao Kaiping could even cry an order, the ghost horse beneath him faltered. The proud steed froze, eyes glowing with eerie green fear. It fixed its gaze on the ribbon and refused another step.

Gao Kaiping lifted his eyes to the red strand. For a long while, he said nothing.

“General, we—” a soldier began.

A raised hand silenced him. Gao Kaiping’s expression hardened. He looked at the ribbon, then at the red-robed assassin not far away.

And what he saw in Fish Guts’s eyes, eyes that belonged to a nightmare assassin from two thousand years past, was fear.

Pure, unfeigned fear.

Time dragged on.

At last, the mysterious ribbon vanished into nothing.

Only then did Gao Kaiping lower his hand, giving the signal.

Two Flying Bear riders spurred forward, spears ready, charging into the burning hall. Moments later they returned.

With a crash, the fire-eaten doors gave way, collapsing inward. Through the smoke, all could see it clearly. Upon the bed lay a man and woman locked in an embrace.

The woman wore the dark-gold phoenix robe of the Empress Dowager.

The man, the patterned robe of a prince consort.

The two figures clung to each other shamelessly, their bodies consumed in the fire, dissolving into ash together.

Gao Kaiping watched in silence. Only when the hall was nearly reduced to cinders did he finally give the order, “Put out the fire!”

˙·٠✧🐗➶➴🏹✧٠·˙

The rumble of wheels woke Xie Wei.

She rubbed her forehead, muttering faintly, “I... I...” Then her eyes snapped open, memory flooding back. She flung aside the curtain.

Outside stretched open wilderness, lush grass like a green carpet, forests heavy with leaves, distant mountains rolling beneath the horizon.

She turned to the front curtain. A man in gray sat at the driver’s seat. She knew that silhouette.

It was her brother-in-law, Ximen Gucheng.

“Sister-in-law, you’re awake,” Li Yuan’s voice came from beside him.

Xie Wei stayed silent for a long while before asking, “What of the Jade Capital?”

Li Yuan replied lightly, “The Empress Dowager and the Marquis of Freedom, seeing the tide turn against them, burned together in the flames.”

Xie Wei shot out of the carriage, landing on the ground.

Li Yuan reined in the horses, looking down at her. “You still want to go back? Your people have been riddled through with holes, like a sieve.”

“Impossible!” she cried.

“There’s nothing impossible about it.”

“Then who?”

“A force that’s only now revealing itself. Likely they’ve been here all along, lurking in the dark.”

“And what drove them out?”

“The western invasion,” Li Yuan said offhandedly. “You probably don’t know yet. Their true purpose isn’t these lands, but the destruction of meat fields and ghost domains. Now that the Eastern Sea’s Immortal Domain has vanished, others have grown restless. They’ve stepped out of the shadows, eager to block the western tribes.”

“Then why would the Dragon Vein do this?”

“The Dragon Vein guards the Son of Heaven’s realm. Of course it would resist the western threat. But perhaps it hasn’t seen clearly who this hidden force really is.” He shrugged. “All just my wild guesses. Still, right now, the Empress Dowager needed to die. So I helped you die in the Jade Palace.”

“...” Xie Wei said nothing. She stood frozen, fists clenched, her dark-gold phoenix robe whipped by the wind, its hem lifting to reveal the pale white of her embroidered shoes.

“Sister-in-law,” Li Yuan called, smiling faintly, “you’re no longer the Empress Dowager. Come back south with me. Live next door to me and Yu’er.”

Xie Wei lowered her gaze, whispering, “I...I...perhaps I shouldn’t.”

Li Yuan waved her off. “Oh, come now. All that mess belonged to the Emperor and Empress, to the Marquis of Freedom and the Empress Dowager. You’re still my sister-in-law. Yu’er has missed you all this time.”

Xie Wei bit her lip, then raised her eyes to the man on the driver’s bench. Quietly, she asked, “Truly...there’s no chance of turning things around?”

Li Yuan countered, “Why must you turn things around here?”

Xie Wei let out a long sigh. Then, softly, almost to herself, “Then...then promise me, never let anyone know about us. What we had...it should never have been.”

“It was the Emperor and Empress. It was the Marquis of Freedom and Empress Dowager,” Li Yuan corrected firmly.

“Mhm...” She nodded, then she climbed back into the carriage.

For the first time in years, she felt a deep, quiet release, an unshackling from the chains she had carried too long.

Perhaps...it was time for a new life.