In the palace square, thousands of city residents had been driven there. They looked at the soldiers with muskets around them, their faces filled with anger, but they dared not utter a sound.

Between these onlookers and soldiers was a kilometer-long avenue that started at the main gate of the palace and stretched all the way to the throne in the main hall.

Along both sides of this avenue, hundreds of officials and dignitaries, of all ranks, knelt, dressed in tattered clothes, their faces covered in dust and wounds. Behind each of them stood an executioner wielding a curved sword.

"Supreme Judge of Islamic Law! Emperor of the World Empire! Supreme Caliph!"

With a loud shout, the heavy sound of horses' hooves echoed outside the main gate of the palace.

The sound of hooves was neither fast nor slow, but rather dull and oppressive.

Finally, Saladin, dressed in military attire, appeared at the main gate of the palace on a white steed.

The horses' eyes were covered with blinders that allowed them to see straight ahead, and they were also covered with a thick layer of iron armor.

An Abbasid nobleman kneeling beside the main gate raised his head, glaring angrily at Saladin on horseback with his only remaining eye. He spat at his warhorse and growled hoarsely, "You traitor who broke your oath! The fire of God will one day..."

Saladin stared straight ahead, showing no intention of paying any attention to the nobleman, and simply spurred his horse forward slowly.

The horse's hooves trampled in front of the nobleman, and the executioner raised his blade and brought it down. The flying head and splattering blood instantly stained the road red.

Another former official of the Abbasid Caliphate, trembling as he looked at the blood on the road, pleaded with Saladin in an almost begging voice, "Great Emperor, please show me a shred of mercy..."

Saladin's horse's hooves did not stop; the scimitar fell, and the man's head rolled to the side of the horse's hooves, spraying blood onto the horse's white mane.

As the warhorses' hooves rose and fell, the executioner's scimitar ended lives one by one. This long palace road became a veritable "road of blood."

The residents who were forced to watch the ceremony screamed in terror, and some of the more timid ones fainted on the spot.

Saladin rode his horse to the main entrance of the hall, the road behind him piled high with corpses. He looked at a man kneeling on the steps of the hall, his expression suddenly froze, and he reached out to grab the reins of his warhorse.

He was a boy of twelve or thirteen, still wearing the student uniform of Baghdad University.

Saladin's expression was uncertain. When he first entered the city, he had personally exchanged academic views with this bright young man at the university... However, the head of his family was the former prime minister of the Abbasid Caliphate...

Gripping the reins tightly, Saladin first looked at the child kneeling in front of him, then at the throne high in the main hall.

Finally, Saladin closed his eyes, loosened the reins, and gently kicked the horse's belly with his feet. The warhorse moved forward slowly and heavily.