Chapter 50: Chapter 49: The Snow Will Be Stained with Blood

’Even if they were exiled, they shouldn’t have left in such a hurry, right? The decree was issued this morning, and by night, the entire family had already left the Imperial City?’

Su Chen returned from his walk.

The Commander of the Three Guards had vanished into thin air, and his home was completely empty, his family gone with him.

He felt something was wrong.

He wandered around the Imperial Palace again, looking for the Five Great Red Robes, but couldn’t find a single one, even though he had heard they’d made an appearance during the day.

「The Pharmacy」

Su Chen glanced at the door, which wasn’t shut tight, a flicker of confusion in his eyes.

He had closed it securely when he left.

’Perhaps someone came to grab their own medicine.’

"Still a picky eater."

"Let’s see how long you can starve yourself."

Glancing at the ceramic pot, he saw the meat and milk were untouched. Su Chen closed the lid again.

With nothing else to do, he leaned against the stove in his lounge chair and drowsily fell asleep.

When he awoke, his progress in Washing the Five Viscera was as slow as ever. He hadn’t even finished refining half of the first viscera, the heart.

Lately, for some unknown reason, many more familiar faces had disappeared. The Imperial Palace had brought in a new batch of eunuchs.

Perhaps because of Xu Han, no one new had been assigned to the pharmacy this time.

’That’s not so bad.’

’I wonder how Xuan is doing now.’

At the pharmacy, Su Chen leaned against the doorway, waiting for customers as he always did.

"Hey."

"Master Xu, basking in the sun again, are we?"

Yang, an odd-job eunuch from the Imperial Kitchen, was pulling a cart of vegetables past the pharmacy and greeted Su Chen.

’But the path from the Palace Gate to the Imperial Kitchen doesn’t go past the pharmacy.’

’Great Liang has lost three of its Nine Commanderies, and the remaining six are on the brink of collapse. Natural disasters and Demon Fiends run rampant, the land is frozen over, and the common people are displaced. Yet he couldn’t care less. Instead, he’s eating fresh vegetables in the dead of winter.’

Su Chen clicked his tongue in amazement.

This Little Emperor had allowed the Western Depot to grow powerful, becoming arrogant and domineering, pressuring all the officials. Externally, he ignored the fact that Great Liang was on the verge of ruin, as if he couldn’t wait for it to be destroyed.

Just as Su Chen was lost in these thoughts, seeing no one else around, Yang walked over carrying a food box.

He opened it.

Inside, besides a freshly cooked roast chicken and other fine meats, along with a few exquisite vegetable dishes, there was a heavy money pouch filled with broken silver and copper coins.

"There’s no rush to pay me back."

"You worked hard to get transferred from an Imperial Horse-keeping Eunuch shoveling manure to a lucrative post like the Imperial Kitchen. You should use this to bribe the Steward more. It’ll make your work easier..."

Su Chen accepted the food box but pushed the money pouch back.

"Master Xu, I’m leaving the palace. His Majesty is merciful and has granted a group of us eunuchs special permission to leave early. He even gave us some relocation silver."

"Feng and the others have all left."

"I’m all alone here now, so there’s not much point in staying. I might as well go home, use this money to adopt a child, and have someone to carry on the family name..."

Yang left.

「The next day.」

He was gone, too, vanishing without a trace, just like Feng and the others Su Chen knew.

When he asked the Stewards in the palace, they just said he had already left the palace.

But that day, Su Chen stood outside the Palace Gate, holding a ceramic pot containing one hundred silver taels he had saved up. He waited for a long, long time, but never saw any eunuchs leaving the Imperial Palace with their belongings...

Day broke.

The light brightened, then dimmed again.

After two days and a night, Su Chen’s arms, which had been holding the ceramic pot, finally dropped. The hundred taels of silver he had prepared for Feng and the others to share could not be given away.

’Is the Imperial Palace... eating people again?’

Su Chen stared intently at the Palace Gate. The hundred-foot-tall gate had repelled countless assaults from masters outside the palace, but in his eyes, it now looked like a grim, gaping maw that devoured these poor souls, letting them in but never out...

Without the Seed of Longevity, he feared he would have been one of these poor souls who had mysteriously disappeared.

’Perhaps... they really did go home.’

The vast Imperial Palace was like an undefended fortress—loose, disorganized, and with no military discipline to speak of.

The newly appointed Commander of the Three Guards never managed anything. He was just a figurehead who followed the Little Emperor around all day, plotting who-knows-what.

Soon, walking deep into the palace, Su Chen arrived at a remote location. This place was even more desolate than the Library Pavilion. No one was willing to come here, and most people didn’t even know it existed—not even many of the Blue Robes.

If Su Chen hadn’t lived through the eras of Tianwu, Celestial Chaos, and two Jianwu emperors, he might not have known about this place either.

This place was a garbage dump.

Also known as the palace’s Chaotic Burial Mound.

Not a blade of grass grew on this land. It was dark and viscous. Shallowly buried corpses lay with their mangled bodies exposed, stretching as far as the eye could see.

Hundreds?

Thousands?

There could have been tens of thousands.

And these were just the fresh corpses, tossed here recently and not yet rotted in the cold winter. The stench of blood, mixed with the smell of decaying flesh, was a pungent odor that assaulted his senses.

He could vaguely make out countless remains, carelessly buried, and on their faces, which had been gnawed beyond recognition, lingered expressions of terror and Despair.

The wounds on their bodies all looked as if they had been mauled by massive beasts. Many of the corpses were twisted and deformed. Only a Demon Fiend—and an extremely powerful one—could have done this.

’None.’

’That’s great.’

’They must have all gone home.’

A strained smile appeared on Su Chen’s face.

He fell silent.

He couldn’t lie to himself any longer.

Su Chen didn’t recognize the vast majority of the corpses here.

They were refugees.

They wore coarse sackcloth, their hair was disheveled, their fingernails dry and cracked. On their palms, you could still see calluses and grime that could never be washed clean...

They were refugees who had fled to the Imperial City, hoping to survive. But how could they have imagined that they wouldn’t die in a natural disaster, but in the very place they believed was their path to survival...

’It’s not just the Imperial Palace that eats people; this entire Imperial City is eating people.’

Su Chen walked deeper into the grounds, his steps taking him further in, his silence growing heavier. He saw many familiar people.

The Palace Maid Chunyan, who loved to pester him to bring back a stick of candied haws whenever he went out of the palace on errands.

Li.

Huzi.

Those two were honest boys. Because they were in debt, after finishing their chores, they would run over and offer to work at the pharmacy to pay off the interest. He had to shoo them away.

...

...

There were too many.

Su Chen couldn’t recall them all.

"So... not a single one... made it home..."

Su Chen grew more and more silent.

He had never imagined it would be like this.

To think that this Little Emperor, more demonic than any Demon Fiend, was the very person he had personally saved in the Library Pavilion.

Finally, Su Chen stopped in front of the disemboweled corpse of a young eunuch. The boy’s round, chubby face was frozen with anger, indignation, and profound Despair.

"Feng..."

Su Chen reached out a hand, wanting to close the eyes that stared furiously at the heavens, filled with unwillingness and Despair. But try as he might, again and again, they would not shut.

The body was frozen stiff.

Perhaps... he was unwilling to close his eyes even in death.

’Why.’

Su Chen was in a daze.

"Are you Master Xu? Help me, I’m about to die from sickness..." That night, the frail young eunuch, burning with a high fever, had collapsed at the pharmacy’s entrance.

"Master Xu, help me again, I’m dying..." On another night, he had dragged his bruised and battered body back, collapsing inside the pharmacy once more.

Time and time again, after being saved, he never paid, just grinned and hugged Su Chen’s leg.

"I’ll pay!"

"I’ll definitely pay next time!"

"Hehe, I knew it. Master Xu is too kind-hearted to let little Feng die of sickness."

Feng owed the pharmacy a lot of money.

Even when he had money, he wouldn’t pay.

Many eunuchs badmouthed him behind his back, calling him a good-for-nothing. But Su Chen knew he had a young sister in the Imperial City, and he sent all his money to her through others.

To support his sister, he ran up debts, borrowed money, and resorted to petty theft. He never paid bribes, so he was often beaten half to death by the Stewards.

He couldn’t close those eyes.

Silently, Su Chen sat down beside him and spoke casually, just as he had in the past.

"Come to think of it, the last time I saw you was after you became a Cultivating Eunuch. You came looking for me and walked off with a lot of my good medicine, saying you’d pay me back double once you made it big..."

"When I didn’t see you, I thought you’d skipped out on your debt. I even wondered why you didn’t come to say goodbye. You were stingy, but you were loyal..."

"You had finally become a Cultivating Eunuch. It seems your good days were over before they could even begin. You survived the Life-Stealing Demon Technique incident two years ago, but you couldn’t escape this true Demon Fiend disaster."

"You’re dead."

"It’s better that you’re dead."

"You suffered too much in this Imperial Palace..."

Su Chen paused, silently gazing at those furious eyes before speaking again.

"Perhaps you never knew, but shortly after you entered the palace, your sister was kicked out of the house by your adoptive parents. She froze to death on a snowy night..."

"All these years, they’ve been using the money you sent with a clear conscience. I was planning to have Xu Han arrange an errand for you outside the palace, so you could... personally..."

"Sigh!"

Su Chen continued walking.

He even found the skeletal remains of the Commander of the Three Guards and his family, but he didn’t see the Five Great Red Robes.

’If I had known back then, I wouldn’t have cured you and your sister of the poison in the Library Pavilion. None of this would have happened...’

"Little Emperor, I still owe you One Sword. A sword that should have fallen on your head two years ago!"

Gazing toward the Imperial Palace, Su Chen waited in silence. Yang’s body hadn’t appeared yet.

The Tree Whiskers stirred.

He returned to his original form: skin of white jade, eyes like stars, and jet-black hair. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, dressed in a Profound Robe, like a Direct Immortal from the heavens, or perhaps an Evil Demon descended upon the world.

Killing Intent surged from his body, and the light in his eyes grew colder.

He waited and waited!

He waited until the sky brightened and then dimmed again.

He waited until night fell.

Scattered snowflakes began to fall from the sky, growing larger and larger. The pure white Snow was stained by the filthy black blood of this burial ground.

’Perhaps I must sever my seven emotions and wash away my six desires to become a free and unfettered Longevity Immortal?’

’But I am human.’

A mournful wind howled, and gales whipped through the air. It was as if the countless creatures who had died unjustly here were crying out their grievances.

But no matter how heavy the wind and Snow, no matter how powerful, they could not blow away the injustice and darkness of this Human World.

’I want to kill someone.’

A snowflake drifted onto Su Chen’s hand. Stained from who-knows-where, it was the color of fresh blood.

The Demon Fiends had arrived.

「In the distance.」

A carriage, reeking of blood, came speeding through the night. The driver, a Second-Grade Red Robe, was terrified, trembling uncontrollably.

From inside the carriage came the rustling sounds of eating.

"Starving!"

"Eating these leftovers every day is for the birds! When will we finally get to eat the flesh and blood of a Second-Grade, or even a First-Grade Cultivation expert!"

A Demon Fiend cursed.

BANG!

The carriage screeched to a halt.

"Someone’s here! There’s someone in the Chaotic Burial Mound!"

The red-robed eunuch shrieked in terror, his voice high and sharp.

BOOM!

The carriage exploded into pieces.

Two ten-foot-tall, inhuman black figures leaped out, laughing ferociously. The bright, snowy night illuminated their hideous faces. They were still wearing the Golden Armor of the Emperor’s personal guard.

"Hahaha!"

"Look at you, you coward! You’re a Second-Grade cultivator. Why are you so scared of a normal person? If someone’s here, we’ll just eat them!"

"Jie jie jie, perfect! I’m not full yet!"

The two Demon Fiends burst out of their Golden Armor with savage laughter. One was a blood-red-furred, red-eyed Golden Lion; the other was a ferocious, wild ox with skin as green as iron.

They rose up on their hind legs, two Second-Grade Demon Fiends, and charged toward Su Chen to kill him.

"He’s... He’s..."

THUMP!

When the graying, Second-Grade Red Robe saw the figure in the Profound Robe clearly in the moonlit snow, his vision went dark. The world spun around him, and he collapsed to his knees, nearly fainting from sheer terror.

"The Moonlit Guest in Mysterious Clothes... the Wind Snow Little Grandmaster..."

"Lord Su?!"

"Why is Lord Su here? Why is Lord Su here?!"

He roared himself hoarse, his face ashen. His body swayed, and he slumped like boneless mud.

He knew.

He didn’t know if the Little Emperor would die tonight, but he himself was finished.

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