Chapter 50: The Wind and Snow Shall Be Stained with Blood

“Even if they were being exiled, they shouldn't have left so abruptly. The decree was issued this morning, and by evening, the entire family had departed the Imperial City?”

Su Chen had returned from outside.

The commanders of the Three Guards had vanished as if they had evaporated from the face of the earth, leaving behind nothing but empty rooms along with their families.

He felt something was wrong.

He wandered through the palace again, looking for the Five Great Red Robes, but he couldn't find a single one, despite hearing they had appeared earlier that day.

The pharmacy.

Su Chen glanced at the door, which wasn't closed tightly, and felt a wave of confusion.

When he left, he had closed it firmly.

Perhaps someone had come to collect their medicine.

“Truly a picky eater.”

“Let's see how long you can go without food.”

Glancing at the ceramic jar, he saw the meat and milk remained untouched. Su Chen put the lid back on.

With nothing to do, he leaned against the stove on his lounge chair and drifted into a heavy sleep.

When he woke up, he began his cleansing of the five viscera. It was the same as always—slow progress; he hadn't even finished cleansing half of the first one, the "Heart."

Lately, for some unknown reason, many familiar faces had disappeared, and a new batch of eunuchs had been brought into the palace.

Perhaps because of Xu Han, no one had been shoved into the pharmacy this time.

“Not bad, I suppose.”

“I wonder... how is little Xuanzi doing?”

In the pharmacy, Su Chen leaned against the doorway, waiting for customers to arrive just as he had in the past.

“Hey!”

“Master Xu, sunbathing again?”

Xiao Yangzi, a handyman eunuch from the Imperial Kitchen, passed by the pharmacy pulling a cart of vegetables and greeted Su Chen.

However, the path from the palace gates to the Imperial Kitchen didn't pass by the pharmacy.

“The Great Liang has lost three of its nine prefectures, and the remaining six are teetering on the edge. Natural disasters and demons are constant; the land is frozen, and the people are displaced. Yet, he doesn't care at all. Instead, in the middle of this bitter winter, he’s busy eating vegetables.”

Su Chen clicked his tongue in wonder.

Internally, this little Emperor allowed the West Depot to grow powerful, acting arrogant and domineering to suppress the officials; externally, he ignored the crumbling state of the Great Liang empire, as if he were praying for its downfall.

As Su Chen was lamenting, seeing no one around, Xiao Yangzi approached him carrying a food box.

Upon opening it, Su Chen saw, besides freshly made roast chicken and fine meat, several exquisite vegetarian dishes and a heavy money pouch filled with silver fragments and copper coins.

“There's no rush to pay me back.”

“It wasn't easy for you to transfer from the lowly task of cleaning horse manure to a lucrative position like the Imperial Kitchen. You should show some respect to the supervisors to make your job easier...”

Su Chen took the food box and handed the money pouch back.

“Master Xu, I’m leaving the palace. His Majesty is merciful; he has granted a batch of eunuchs permission to leave early and gave us a sum of money to settle our affairs.”

“Xiao Fengzi and the others have all left.”

“I'm all alone, so there's no point. I might as well go home, use this money to adopt a child, and have someone to carry on my name...”

Xiao Yangzi left.

The next day, he was gone too, vanishing without a trace just like Su Chen's acquaintance, Xiao Fengzi.

When asked the palace supervisors, they simply said he had already left the palace.

Yet, all day, Su Chen stood outside the palace gates clutching his ceramic jar—containing the hundred taels of silver he had saved himself—waiting for a long time, but not a single eunuch carrying a bundle was seen leaving the Imperial City...

Dawn broke.

It grew bright, then dark again.

After two days and one night, Su Chen's arms, holding the ceramic jar, finally slumped. The hundred taels intended for Xiao Fengzi and the others remained undelivered.

“Is the Imperial Palace... eating people again?”

Su Chen stared intently at the palace gates. Those ten-丈 massive gates had withstood countless assaults from masters outside, but in his eyes, they now looked like a grim, gaping maw that swallowed people whole, never to let them out...

Without the Seed of Longevity, he feared he too would become one of these mysteriously vanished souls.

“Perhaps... they really did go home.”

The vast palace was as loose and unguarded as a crumbling structure, with no clear military discipline.

The newly appointed commanders of the Three Guards never managed anything; they merely held titles and followed the little Emperor around every day, plotting something unknown.

Soon, walking through the depths of the palace, Su Chen arrived at a remote location. This place was even more desolate than the Library; no one wanted to come here, and it was unknown to most—even many in Blue Robes didn't know of its existence.

Had Su Chen not lived through the eras of Tianwu, Tianluan, and two reigns of Jianwu, he might not have known about this place either.

This place was a dumping ground.

Also known as the mass grave of the palace.

Not a single blade of grass grew here. The earth was pitch black and viscous. Shallowly buried corpses left remnants of their bodies exposed, stretching as far as the eye could see.

Hundreds?

Thousands?

Tens of thousands, surely.

And these were fresh corpses, recently thrown here and not yet decayed by the winter. The stench of blood mingled with the smell of rot, a pungent odor that pierced straight to the skull.

One could vaguely see the remains of bodies buried haphazardly, and on their faces—gnawed beyond recognition—remained traces of terror and despair.

The wounds on their bodies were all from the tearing of massive beasts. Many corpses were twisted and deformed; only demons, and extremely powerful ones, could achieve such a thing.

“There are none.”

“That's good.”

“They must have all gone home.”

Su Chen forced a strained smile.

He fell silent.

He could no longer lie to himself.

He didn't recognize the vast majority of the remains here.

They were refugees.

Clad in coarse cloth, disheveled and filthy, with dry, cracked nails and palms covered in calluses and unwashable grime...

They were refugees who had fled to the Imperial City seeking survival, but how could they have imagined that they wouldn't die from natural disasters, but in the very place they believed was their path to life...

“It's not just the palace eating people; this entire Imperial City is eating people.”

Su Chen walked deeper. The deeper he went, the more silent he became. He saw many familiar faces.

The palace maid Chun Yan, who loved to pester him to bring her a stick of candied haws whenever he went out to shop.

Xiao Lizi.

Xiao Huzi.

Those two were honest children; because they owed debts, they had tried to work in the pharmacy to pay it off through labor, but he had chased them away.

...

...

There were too many.

Su Chen found himself unable to recall them all.

“So... not a single one... made it home...”

Su Chen grew increasingly silent.

He never thought it would be like this.

The little Emperor, who was more demonic than actual demons, was someone he had personally rescued in the Library.

Finally, in front of the disemboweled corpse of a young eunuch, Su Chen stopped. His round, bun-like face was etched with anger, resentment, and deep despair.

“Xiao Fengzi...”

Su Chen reached out his hand, wanting to close those eyes that glared at the heavens in resentment and despair, but time and again, he could not close them.

The corpse was frozen stiff.

Perhaps.

Even in death, he refused to close his eyes.

“Why?”

Su Chen felt dazed.

“Are you Master Xu? Please save me, I'm dying of sickness...” That night, the frail young eunuch had collapsed at the pharmacy door, burning with fever.

“Master Xu, save me again, I'm dying...” Another night, he had collapsed in the pharmacy again, dragging a body covered in wounds.

Time and again, every time he was saved, the boy would never pay, instead grinning as he clung to Su Chen's leg.

“I will!”

“I'll definitely pay next time!”

“Hehe, I knew it, Master Xu is kind-hearted; he wouldn't let Xiao Fengzi die of sickness.”

Xiao Fengzi owed the pharmacy a lot of money.

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

Many eunuchs whispered behind his back, calling him a scoundrel, but Su Chen knew he had a young sister back in the Imperial City, and he sent all his money to her through others.

To support his sister, he accumulated debt, borrowed money, resorted to petty theft, and because he didn't bribe the right people, he was often beaten by supervisors until he was half-dead.

He could not close those eyes.

In silence.

Su Chen sat beside him, narrating mundane stories just as he had in the past.

“Speaking of which, the last time I saw you, you had become a Cultivating Eunuch and came to find me, taking quite a bit of my good medicine, saying you'd pay me back twofold once you 'took flight'...”

“Since I hadn't seen you, I thought you had run off to avoid your debts. At the time, I wondered why you hadn't come to say goodbye; you were stingy, but you were loyal...”

“You had become a Cultivating Eunuch; your good days were almost over. You escaped the Lifespan-Stealing Demonic Art turmoil two years ago, but you couldn't escape this true demonic chaos.”

“Dead.”

“It's better this way.”

“Life in this palace was too bitter for you...”

Su Chen paused, silent, staring at those angry eyes, and began to speak again.

“Perhaps you didn't know, but back when you entered the palace, your sister had already been kicked out of the house by your foster parents and froze to death on that snowy night...”

“All these years, they have been using the money you sent with a clear conscience. I had thought of having Xu Han arrange a task for you to leave the palace, so you could personally...”

“Sigh!”

Su Chen continued walking.

Even the commanders of the Three Guards, who were now nothing but bones along with their families, had been unearthed by Su Chen, though he did not find the Five Great Red Robes.

“Had I known back then, I wouldn't have detoxified you and your sister in the Library. There wouldn't be all this today...”

“Little Emperor, I still owe you a sword strike. That strike should have fallen upon your head two years ago!”

Gazing at the palace, Su Chen waited in silence; Xiao Yangzi's body had not appeared.

The trees rustled.

He returned to his original form: skin like white jade, eyes like stars, hair as black as ink. Standing with his hands behind his back, dressed in profound black, he looked like a celestial immortal from the heavens, yet also like a demon descended to earth.

Killing intent surged within him, and his gaze grew increasingly cold.

He waited and waited!

He waited until the sky brightened and dimmed again.

He waited until nightfall descended.

Sparse snowflakes began to fall from the sky, growing heavier. The pure white snow stained the filthy black blood of this mass grave.

“Perhaps, only by severing my seven emotions and washing away my six desires can I become a carefree immortal of longevity?”

“But I am a human.”

The wind howled like a demon, and the gale roared; the countless souls who had died unjustly here seemed to be crying out their grievances.

But no matter how heavy or vast this wind and snow were, they could never blow away the injustice and darkness of this world.

“I want to kill someone.”

A snowflake landed on Su Chen's hand; it was stained with something that was unmistakably the color of fresh blood.

The demons had arrived.

In the distance.

A carriage, reeking of blood, sped through the darkness. The Second-Rank Red Robe driving it was trembling with terror.

Inside the carriage, there was a rustling sound of eating.

“I'm starving to death!”

“Eating this leftover scraps every day is pointless! When will I finally get to eat the flesh of a Second-Rank or even a First-Rank cultivator?!”

A demon was cursing.

*Bang!*

The carriage came to a sudden halt.

“Someone! There's someone in the mass grave!”

The Red Robe cried out in terror, his voice shrill.

*Boom!*

The carriage was blown to pieces.

Two ten-丈 non-human shadows leaped out, laughing ferociously. The bright snowy night illuminated their hideous faces, which were still clad in the Golden Armor representing the Emperor's personal guards.

“Hahaha!”

“Look at you, you coward! You're a Second-Rank cultivator, how can you be so afraid of an ordinary person? If there's someone there, just eat them!”

“Jie jie jie, just in time, I haven't had my fill yet!”

The two demons burst out of the Golden Armor, laughing wildly. One had blood-red hair and golden eyes like a lion; the other had skin as green as iron and the ferocity of a wild bull.

They rose onto two legs, and the two Second-Rank demons lunged toward Su Chen.

“He is... he is...”

*Thud!*

When the white-haired Second-Rank Red Robe saw clearly the figure in black under the moonlight in the snowy night, his vision went dark. He felt the world spinning and collapsed to his knees, nearly fainting from terror.

“The Black-Clad Traveler under the Moon... the Little Grandmaster of Wind and Snow...”

“Lord Su?!”

“How could Lord Su be here? How could Lord Su be here!!”

He screamed hoarsely, his face as pale as death, his body swaying like soft mud.

He knew.

Whether the little Emperor lived or died tonight, he didn't know—but he was finished.