The mad princess forces love upon him, and the aloof imperial advisor trembles every night.

———————Western Suburbs of Beijing————————

At midnight, fifty li west of the capital, at the headquarters of the Blood Blade Sect.

Eighty assassins in black slipped in like ghosts, their blades reflecting the pale moonlight. They were not masked—the Ash Snow Pavilion never hid when they killed.

Although Bloodblade Sect was a second-rate assassin organization in the martial arts world, it was no match for these elites who had been tempered in the corpse mountains and blood seas of Beiming.

When the first watchman noticed something amiss, his throat had already been slit. He clutched his bleeding neck, his eyes wide, and saw a dark shadow flash by like smoke, a blade flashing in his hand—the second and third watchmen fell silently to the ground.

The carnage spread like a plague. When Blood Blade Sect Master Blood Fiend awoke from his dream, the main altar was filled with screams of agony.

He rushed out of the room with his knife, only to find the courtyard littered with corpses. His old brothers, who had followed him for many years, now lay like slaughtered animals, their blood flowing like streams through the cracks in the bluestone slabs.

"Who?!" he roared.

Under the moonlight, a figure in black slowly turned around.

Cangming. Master of Jinxue Pavilion.

Blood dripped from his long sword, his face expressionless, and he simply uttered three words: "By order of my lord."

Blood Fiend's pupils shrank sharply: "Jinxue Pavilion?! We have never interfered with you—" Before he could finish speaking, a blade flashed.

Two hours later, there were no survivors at the Bloodblade Sect's headquarters. Even the guard dog kept in the backyard had its throat severed with a single blow.

Cangming stood in the center of the pile of corpses, with blood-red, furious heads at his feet. He bent down, wrapped the heads in cloth, and placed them in a wooden box.

"Master, what about your two children..." the deputy asked in a low voice.

Cangming recalled Chu Qingyue's words, "Bury him three feet in front of the ancestral grave," and closed his eyes briefly.

"As per His Highness's new decree, none will remain."

The deputy nodded silently and turned to walk towards the back room.

There, a ten-year-old boy and a seven-year-old girl slept in each other's arms, unaware that hell lay just outside the door.

The deputy's hand holding the knife trembled slightly—he had killed countless people, yet he had never laid a hand on a child. But when he thought of the princess's bloodshot eyes and her words, "Crush them all to dust," he gritted his teeth.

A flash of light. The two small bodies would never wake up again.

As the rain poured down, Cangming looked up at the sky. The rain washed away the bloodstains on his face, but it could not wash away the frost in his eyes.

"Bury him three feet in front of the ancestral grave," he repeated in a low voice, his words carried away by the rain, "to ensure he has no descendants."

At the third quarter of the hour of Yin (3:45 AM), as dawn was breaking, a bloodied human head appeared atop the west gate tower of the capital. Beside the head was a dark black banner, the night wind whipping up eight blood-red characters on it:

"Those who offend the eldest princess shall have their entire family executed."

The people who were rushing to the early market at dawn were terrified when they saw it.

The old man selling tofu collapsed to the ground, spilling tofu everywhere; the peasant woman picking vegetables screamed and threw down her carrying pole; even the patrolling guards turned pale and dared not look directly at him.

The news spread like wildfire, instantly reaching every corner of the capital.

—————The next day—The First Prince's Residence————

Chu Xuanche woke up with a start, feeling a sense of suffocation.

He dreamt that he was being pressed down by three hundred heads, their empty eye sockets open, their lips moving silently as they called out, "Your Highness... Your Highness..."

When I opened my eyes, the dream had come true. Around the bed, human heads were neatly arranged.

It was the head of the three hundred assassins from Black Wind Gorge. The face was bluish-purple, the lips were sewn shut with thick thread, and the eyelids were stretched wide by golden needles—there were no eyeballs in the eye sockets, only dark blood holes, and several white maggots were wriggling inside.

Beside his pillow lay the head of the Blood Demon. Its empty eye sockets, devoid of pupils, stared directly at his face.

"ah--!!!"

Chu Xuanche let out a scream that sounded inhuman, tumbling off the bed in a panic. Bile mixed with saliva dripped down his back, soaking his crotch. His legs were too weak to stand, and he could only lie sprawled on the floor, staring helplessly at the bed full of heads. Saliva mixed with bile dripped from the corners of his mouth, wetting the front of his brocade undergarment.

"Your Highness!" Guard Qingfeng rushed in and was terrified when he saw the scene.

He suppressed his fear and stepped forward to help Chu Xuanche up: "Your Highness! Are you alright?!"

"Witch...Chu Qingyue...she is a witch...she is not human...she is a demon crawled out of hell..."

Chu Xuanche roared, grabbing a porcelain pillow and smashing it against the bed. "How dare she! How dare she!!!"

The porcelain pillow struck the bloodthirsty head, which rolled to the ground and stopped right at his feet, its empty eye sockets "staring" at him. Chu Xuanche let out another scream and scrambled out of the bedchamber.

Half an hour later, Chu Xuanche, who had washed up and changed his clothes, finally managed to regain his composure, but his fingers were still trembling.

He angrily smashed all the porcelain in the room. The shards flew and cut his cheeks, causing blood to seep out, but he felt no pain—compared to the heads on the bed, what was this little pain?

"Useless! All of you are useless!" His eyes were bloodshot as he pointed at the kneeling staff members.

"The Blood Blade Sect was wiped out overnight! Blood Fiend's head is hanging on the city wall! Didn't you say it was foolproof?! Now that vile woman's warning is hanging on the city wall, and the whole capital is laughing at me!"

"Your Highness, please calm down..." a slightly bolder voice said in a trembling voice.

"The eldest princess has just returned to the capital and is already so arrogant; this will surely arouse His Majesty's suspicion. We just need to wait and see, until she angers the Emperor... wait and see?!" Chu Xuanche kicked him to the ground.

"Last night, on her first day back, she slaughtered the Bloodblade Sect. What about tonight? What about tomorrow night?! Are you going to wait until she holds a knife to my throat before you start thinking of a solution?!"

He was breathing heavily, a mad light flashing in his eyes:

"Send the order to mobilize the assassins... No, I must go see the Imperial Advisor myself!"

"Your Highness, the Imperial Advisor has never been involved in court affairs; I'm afraid he..."

"Shut up!" Chu Xuanche sneered. "Isn't the Grand Preceptor going to establish a crown prince for Great Chu? I'd like to ask you, even if a woman has great military achievements, can she really ascend the throne?! As long as the Grand Preceptor stands on my side, that bitch, no matter how arrogant, is nothing more than a grasshopper in autumn—"

Before he could finish speaking, hurried footsteps came from outside the door.

"Your Highness! Something terrible has happened!" A guard rushed in, his face ashen. "The Fifth Princess...the Fifth Princess is in trouble!"

Chu Xuanche's pupils contracted. That was his younger sister. He asked, "What happened to Qingyao?!"

———————Qingyao Pavilion——————

Since the death of her husband Shen Yue three years ago, the Fifth Princess Chu Qingyao has been living in Qingyao Pavilion in the palace.

She woke up to a sticky sensation; her neck felt cool, as if something was hanging there. She groggily reached out and touched it—round, slippery, and strung together.

She brought it close to her eyes, examining it closely in the morning light. Then, she let out a heart-wrenching scream. Those were eyeballs. Human eyeballs. More than a hundred eyeballs were strung together with thin thread into a necklace, wrapped several times around her neck. Some were shriveled and blackened, some still bloodshot, their pupils staring blankly at her.

"Aaaaaahh ...

Chu Qingyao frantically tried to pull at it, but the string was tied very tightly, and the more she pulled, the more tangled it became. She stumbled and jumped off the bed, wanting to find scissors, but felt a chill behind her.