Chen Shiyu and dozens of assassins hurriedly moved forward, checking each stone chamber one by one, only to find that all the chambers contained nothing but rows of empty shelves, a mess of empty boxes, and a few scattered valuables that seemed to have been deliberately left behind.

Even if Chen Shiyu was extremely arrogant and disdainful, seeing such a tragic scene made him turn pale, his mind reeling, and his brain go blank.

This is all the wealth accumulated by the Chen family over generations!

Even though he had never seen them before, so many stone chambers and so many empty boxes;

Just by imagining it, you can tell how enormous this sum of money must be!

All gone!

“Father…” Chen Shiyu stood blankly at the end of the passageway, gazing at the entrance where the hunched-over Duke Chen stood, his voice hollow and ethereal: “It’s…it’s all empty…”

"Bang!"

As Chen Shiyu finished speaking, the old body of Duke Chen, who was about 1.78 meters tall, collapsed to the ground with a thud.

"father!"

Chen Shiyu shouted and rushed back to Duke Chen's side with dozens of elite soldiers.

Duke Chen was coughing up blood and foam, his limbs were convulsing, and his eyes were rolling back; he was clearly on the verge of death.

An experienced assassin quickly pinched Chen Guogong's philtrum, managing to snatch him back from the brink of death.

The group dared not linger there any longer, lest the Duke of Chen be overcome with grief at the sight of the place and faint again.

The Chen family members saw that Duke Chen had gone in perfectly fine, standing upright, but was carried out on his back. They had no idea what had happened.

They assumed that the old Duke was simply too old and had just returned from the battlefield, so he couldn't stay up all night and was too tired.

In early spring, the nights in Kyoto are increasingly turbulent, with rumbling thunder sounding particularly powerful in the pitch-black night sky.

On such a damp night, Granny Chang's hands itched and ached so much that she couldn't sit or lie down comfortably.

For the nth time, she got up and rinsed her festering, oozing hands with cold water, cursing and wailing through gritted teeth as she did so: "Damn it, who did this to me? I curse her..."

"boom!"

"Crack!"

A dull clap of thunder and the sharp crack of a window being violently smashed interrupted Granny Chang's cursing.

A masked man dressed in black, wielding a long silver knife, burst in through the window, bringing with him a gust of cold air.

"What are you... ah!"

Before Granny Chang could finish her terrified question, the man swiftly raised the knife in his hand and brought it down.

Granny Chang felt a chill on her wrists. Looking down, she saw that her claws, which had caused her so much pain, were now flying through the air with two bloody lines. They were caught by the man with a black cloth, leaving only two bare stumps.

A bloodcurdling scream pierced the long night, but it was quickly drowned out by the rumbling thunder.

Overwhelmed by the shock and weakness caused by blood loss, Granny Chang fainted on the ground.

The black-clad guard, with Chang Mama's disgusting hands wrapped around his hand, sneaked into the palace under cover of night and headed straight for Cixi Palace.

The Cixi Palace had increased its security, but the black-clad guards were very familiar with the palace's patrols and defenses, and they easily sneaked into the Empress Dowager's bedroom.

He swiftly and decisively knocked out the two palace maids on night duty in the bedchamber with two karate chopes, and hung their two stinking, rotting hands on the headboard of the bed where the Empress Dowager could see them as soon as she opened her eyes.

When the black-clad guards left the palace.

From afar, they saw another man in black sneaking into the palace.

He felt something was amiss, so he followed the man all the way to the vicinity of the Cold Palace, where he saw the man standing at the palace gate of the Third Prince, Shang Beiyu.