Chapter 99 Death Escape II
What followed happened in an instant.
The King of the Poisonous Beast lifted Shinju's back and pulled him into his arms. Then, with a spinning kick, he sent the stunned Kotori flying like a stone bullet, slamming him heavily against the wall. Spiderweb-like cracks immediately appeared on his back.
The guards, realizing what had happened only afterward, rushed forward, dislocated the assassin's limbs and jaw, and detained him aside.
With the crisis temporarily averted, the King of Poison immediately knelt down and let the True Monk lean his body against his legs.
"Qing'er, Qing'er!" The King of Zhen's hands trembled as he touched Zhen Su's face in disbelief, gently cupping it as if he were touching fragile glass.
The severed spear shaft on his chest was a shocking sight. Just as the King of Poison placed his hand on it, a jade-white hand preemptively covered the shaft, stopping the King of Poison's movement.
Shinjuku's head tilted weakly to the side, his golden eyes more dim than ever before, his eyelids so heavy he could barely lift them. In the final moment, his golden eyes struggled to turn, his gaze settling on the face of the Poison King—
"Don't... be sad."
With only this one sentence left, Shinju closed his eyes, the trickling black blood from the corner of his mouth flowing down his chin and disappearing into the black cloak of the King of Poison.
The King of Poison suddenly opened his eyes wide, then shook his head, his gaze fixed on Shinju's face, as if trying to find a flaw in it.
"No, it won't..."
The heat that his fingertips could feel quickly subsided, and horrifying ink spots gradually appeared on Shinjuku's lips and under his eyes.
The gun barrel is highly poisonous?!
The King of Poison noticed something amiss, but the guards reacted even faster. Fearing that the spear shaft might also be coated with poison, they rushed forward and pulled out the spearhead before the King of Poison could act.
The King of Poison hurriedly pressed on the wound on Shinju's chest, but soon the lower garment he had placed under Shinju was still damp, and the smell of blood spread rapidly.
"No, it's impossible... Tell me you're just lying to me. I won't blame you. Just open Qing'er's eyes, okay?" By the end, the King of Zhen had choked up involuntarily.
However, no matter how he called out, threatened, or begged, the person in his arms did not respond, nor did she ever open her beautiful golden eyes again.
.
The man with a boy tied behind his back walked into a dry alley, put the boy down, took off his short-sleeved shirt, wrapped it around the head of the still unconscious boy, and then dragged him toward the stronghold at the end of the alley.
It took him nearly half an hour to enter the stronghold. Every time he returned after infiltrating, he had to go through an extremely complicated authentication process. Although he understood that this was to prevent these people, the ones holding the Emperor's sword, from turning against the Emperor, and this system had never failed him, he couldn't help but feel annoyed by it every time.
After finally getting inside, they found the stronghold completely empty. All that could be seen in the roll call log were people on duty and those not on duty.
"..." What happened? Why did the Silver Scorpions come out in full force?
Sensing something amiss, the man immediately locked the boy in the torture chamber, left him with a bowl of water, and rushed towards the nearby palace.
When he reached the outside of the palace walls, he saw the East Palace ablaze in the distance. His heart tightened, and he scaled the walls and leaped across the eaves. However, before he had gone half a mile, a light rain began to fall.
"It's a timely rain!!" came the shouts of many palace servants from the ground.
The man remembered the top-secret intelligence he possessed, and the person who had been lurking beside the Prince of Zhen, secretly plotting such unorthodox schemes. Seeing that the fire in the Eastern Palace was subsiding, he turned around and rushed towards the Zhengren Hall.
But he didn't expect that he was too late.
The greatest "threat" to the Poison King now lay peacefully in his arms, his face serene, as if he were merely asleep. Yet, poisonous spots spread across his handsome face, and the area around his collarbone was corroded, revealing holes to the bone, showing no sign of life. All of this was shrouded in the emperor's broad, majestic, yet lonely figure, as he carried the emperor step by step into the Zhengren Hall, past the torrential rain, past the rebel and imperial guards fighting in the mud, past the palace servants huddled to the side.
Soon, the commotion behind them subsided, leaving only a ground covered with fallen petals.
"..." Even though the man was already used to death, he could not remain calm after witnessing this scene.
He later contacted the other guards and finally found out what had happened that night.
Following the clues, the Silver Scorpion Guards found the whereabouts of the Prince of Guangli. They discovered that he had been given a drug to make him mute and had his eyes gouged out. He was left in a pigsty in a farmhouse, half-dead and making "ya ya" sounds, but no one could hear him clearly.
Bring Prince Guangli back for interrogation, make him write down his confession, and find out if he plotted a rebellion and sent someone to assassinate the emperor.
"Ahhh—" King Guangli shook his head desperately, and tears mixed with blood fell and soaked into the paper.
The secret guards, in conjunction with the Ministry of Justice, investigated further. After rounds of searches and rigorous interrogations, they discovered that the rebels and Xiao Hengzi were not something that Prince Guangli and the aristocratic families could have driven; behind it all was a massive conspiracy that had been planned for twenty years.
.
When Shinju regained consciousness, he was in a daze for a while before slowly sitting up. He found himself in a small space, about the size of a carriage. He could barely stretch out his limbs, but after groping around for a while, he could feel four invisible walls, which he could not budge an inch, and there was no exit.
He opened his divine sense and found that there were no colored lines in front of him, and all around was still darkness.
Shinjuku's golden eyes immediately brightened.
It seems he succeeded!
Because his Purple Mansion was functioning normally, he couldn't perceive anything further with his divine sense. If he were still within the small world, this wouldn't have happened. Clearly, he had successfully escaped the small world of history!
His efforts and planning over these past few days were not in vain.
After killing the two juniors who had been chasing him from the cultivation world, he began to look for a way to escape the small world.
In the small world created by the magic array, after life perishes, it is reincarnated only through the magic array, without passing through the underworld. However, he is not a historical figure from the small world's creation, but an outsider cultivator. As long as he dies, he can communicate with the underworld.
However, while true death is impossible, and even a true immortal cannot die easily, to achieve obliteration in historical records and trigger the death mechanism, one only needs to deceive the array's core. This means he must "die" before the King of Poison, a truly "complete" death. Therefore, he devised a scheme. He remembered that the greatest threat to Emperor Yu Hu in historical records was the former dynasty's faction represented by Pan Chengfang. So he went and kidnapped their only heir to the throne, forcing them to rebel prematurely.
He just didn't expect their counterattack to come so quickly, leaving him no time to say goodbye to everyone.
To make his "death" more realistic, he coated the spearhead that Xiao Hengzi was attacking with extremely poison, and even used an amplification technique, all in order to corrode his true immortal body.
Even a fatal blow to the heart might offer a chance of survival, since the King of Poison might not truly believe his claim of being utterly reduced to a mortal. But with such a gruesome death, the King of Poison would likely believe he was beyond saving.
Next, one only needs to follow the instructions in the initial stage of the Supreme Yin in the *Five Supreme Scriptures*—open the Yin meridians, close the Yang meridians, and disguise oneself as a Supreme Yin body. A person with a Supreme Yin body, like someone whose birth chart is entirely Yin or who is born with "yin-yang eyes," possesses psychic abilities. Even if they are not truly dead, they may be perceived as a wandering spirit and thus be able to enter the underworld. He had heard stories of such people being mistakenly captured and taken to the underworld by the underworld officials.
Shinju plans to take his true immortal body with him into the underworld.
But as he sat cross-legged, preparing to change his pulse, he discovered that his current body was not a physical entity, but rather the opposite of that invisible wall—visible but not perceptible.
"Oh no... has my soul left my body?!"
His physical body didn't come along?!
Majutsu was dumbfounded; he had never expected things to turn out this way.
If he's not mistaken, the place he's in now is the rift between the small world of history and the underworld. The underworld officials will come to pick him up within seven days, but he absolutely must bring his physical body with him!
Why is this happening?
After Zhen Su fully opened his Purple Mansion, he actually thought of a possibility, so he suddenly gasped and his eyes widened like golden bells.
—Could it be that the King of Poison doesn't believe he's dead?!
Scorpion Shadow Palace.
Zhixi, Tang Quan, and Qing'e were waiting by the main hall door. As soon as it was dawn, they stepped forward and asked, "Your Majesty, it's time for the morning court session."
The layers of gauze curtains in the hall swayed gently in the breeze, and the sound entered clearly into the center, but it took a long time for a response to come.
"We shall depart shortly."
The three women all showed surprise, exchanged glances, and then quickly agreed, instructing the eunuch to inform the ministers waiting outside the Golden Palace that the morning court would proceed as usual.
Before long, a very tall and upright figure, holding a person wrapped in a red cloak with their face lowered, slowly passed through the hazy gauze curtain and arrived at the palace gate.
"Why aren't you moving your legs? Do you want me to carry you?" The Prince of Zhen revealed a helpless and doting smile. "You're so lazy, Qing'er."
Then the King of Poison picked up Shinju horizontally, and the head of the person in his arms naturally drooped over his arm, his neck bent at an odd angle, revealing the face that had been half-eaten by the poison, with only half of its once beautiful outline still faintly visible. It just so happened to be in front of the faces of Zhixi and the other two who were waiting by the door.
The three palace maids were instantly dumbfounded, a bone-chilling cold creeping up their backs, and they didn't know how to stop it.
The King of Poison seemed not to notice their reaction. He shook his arm, causing Masakuni's head to turn back to him.
King Zhen lowered his eyes and stared for a while, then smiled with satisfaction before stepping over the threshold.
"We're going to court."
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