Chapter 38: Undercurrents

The young emperor was furious.

The Imperial Guards searched for the assassins, and the following day, several dead bodies of the guards were discovered in a corner of the palace. Beside them lay a dead young eunuch named Ji Yun.

They had not even bothered to disguise the traces left at the scene.

Such sheer audacity!

"Bastards!"

"They have no respect for me at all."

"Investigate!"

"You must catch the assassins! This is my Imperial Palace, not an assassin's den! Are you secret guards and Imperial Guards nothing but useless fools when it comes to killing martial protectors?"

The young emperor's furious roars echoed through the Imperial Study.

On this day.

The young emperor walked into the secret chamber beneath the Imperial Study.

There, a mysterious figure in white robes was meditating on a bed of white jade.

"Master Chu!"

"Let the plan begin."

"I need experts! A massive number of experts! First-rank experts, and even second-rank experts! Without enough strength to support my foundation, the palace will be sifted like a sieve by rebels and filled with flying assassins. It won't be safe at all. Without powerful subordinates, I will eventually die at the hands of a palace assassin."

"If I die prematurely, won't your grand scheme also go down the drain, Master Chu?"

The young emperor was ambitious.

...

None of this had anything to do with Su Chen.

In the pharmacy.

Su Chen wiped the blood from his hands while checking the pulse of a frail woman. Although he was keeping vigil, he did not let anyone's medical needs interfere.

In the Imperial Palace, everything was lacking except for people with miserable fates; he saved whoever he could.

"Brother Xu, are you injured somewhere?"

Standing behind the veiled, frail woman was a seventeen-year-old maid named Linglong. She had a lovely, curvaceous figure and spoke softly with a worried tone, her concern in her eyes clearly genuine.

"It's nothing."

"Just killed a few pigs and dogs."

After a long period of pulse-reading.

Su Chen looked deeply at the frail woman, falling into silence.

"Cough, cough..."

"Doctor Xu... what exactly is wrong with me... please, tell me..."

The woman's violent coughing made her already weak complexion turn even paler, devoid of any color.

She was not a maid, but a Consort from the Cold Palace.

A concubine of Emperor Tianwu, her entire clan had been executed in the twenty-third year of Tianwu due to their involvement in the First Prince's assassination case, and she had been banished to the Cold Palace.

Now.

It was the tenth year of Jianwu.

It had been nearly twelve years.

"Brother Xu, what is wrong with Consort Luo? Please, tell me! I'm worried sick. Is it some kind of incurable disease?"

Linglong was so anxious she was on the verge of tears.

"Doctor Xu, I am in the Cold Palace; I cannot stay out too long. If you cannot diagnose it, perhaps just prepare some herbs to dispel the wind and cold..."

"I heard the Imperial Guards seized your savings. If you need money to bury Old Man Chen, this gold hairpin of mine is worth about three to five hundred taels of silver..."

As she spoke, Luo Yu removed the gold hairpin from her head and handed it to Su Chen.

"Your Ladyship, you are... pregnant..."

Su Chen spoke silenty.

In the next moment.

The gold hairpin fell to the ground.

Luo Yu's face flushed with rage. She pointed at Su Chen's face, about to launch into a tirade.

"I am pure and innocent! Xu Ge, how dare you insult me like this? Twelve years in the Cold Palace, and you dare claim I have been seeing men here? You..."

"Linglong, let's go!"

With that.

She took the hairpin back from Linglong and left in a fit of fury, her sleeves fluttering.

Regarding this.

Su Chen fell into even deeper silence.

Consort Luo had not seen anyone. Su Chen's eyes saw clearly: the light of the lifespan burning within the fetus in Consort Luo's womb, though faint, was essentially identical to that of Emperor Jianwu—the Great Ancestor of Liang.

"With such demonic methods, it seems that since Emperor Jianwu failed to successfully 'pass on his throne' and was sealed in his coffin, he has begun seeking other ways."

"The position of the young emperor may be in jeopardy once again..."

Three days later.

Su Chen finished his vigil, nailed the coffin shut, put on his prepared pass, and left the palace to bury Old Man Chen.

"Another friend sent into the earth..."

"Sigh..."

With a faint sigh.

Su Chen drove the carriage, pulling the coffin without hindrance. Soon, under the arrangements of the funeral hall, he witnessed with his own eyes the burial of Chen Ge, the sealing of the tomb, and the erecting of the tombstone.

From then on, he was the only one left in the pharmacy.

Late at night.

Su Chen returned and was preparing to sleep.

The door to the pharmacy was knocked upon urgently. Linglong's anxious, yet deliberately hushed voice rang out from outside.

"Brother Xu, please open the door!"

The door opened.

Linglong grabbed Su Chen and ran toward the Cold Palace.

"So soon?"

Su Chen had a suspicion.

Soon.

He was brought into the Cold Palace. The eunuch guarding the Cold Palace was pacing frantically; his name was Gao Yao, and he had once received great kindness from Consort Luo's clan. Even after her clan was wiped out and she lost power, he remained fiercely loyal.

"Quick! Master Xu, please, look!"

On the bed.

Consort Luo's belly was distended, and she let out muffled groans of pain, not daring to cry out loudly.

One could vaguely see.

The infant in her womb was impatient to burst out.

As if it were going to tear through her skin!

How could her belly grow this much in a single day?

Truly, demonic methods.

"Forgive me."

Su Chen pulled out a dagger and began a cesarean section.

Of course.

A cesarean section performed without any experience was nothing short of playing with lives, but fortunately, he possessed the True Qi of Longevity. Even if he stabbed the wrong place, it could be healed rapidly...

Before long.

Consort Luo fainted from the pain.

A blood-covered infant was delivered and placed in swaddling clothes.

To this.

The weakened Consort Luo looked on with utter disbelief.

In the Cold Palace, Gao Yao and Linglong exchanged glances, not knowing what to say.

A child had actually been born.

"Demons and cultivation methods exist in this world; it is not strange for a woman to give birth without pregnancy."

"Perhaps."

"An immortal sent a child in a dream."

Su Chen departed.

A few more days passed.

During this time, Su Chen continued his normal routine in the pharmacy, treating maids and eunuchs. In his spare time, he finally found an opportunity to examine the remnant of the Heaven-Swallowing Demonic Art he had obtained from Mu Xuan, as well as that life-stealing secret technique.

"The Heaven-Swallowing Demonic Art... Zhang Gui's cultivation method allowed him to go from a normal third-rank to second-rank, and then to the world's peak first-rank in just three to five years..."

"Burning lifespan is indeed domineering. No wonder even my True Qi of Longevity cannot replenish the lost years..."

Su Chen put down the remnant of the demonic art and rubbed his temples.

Without a doubt.

Like the "Sixteen-Foot Golden Body Art," this was a master-level technique lost to the world, and only such a method could be so terrifying.

He did not know.

What kind of fortuitous encounter Zhang Gui had during his years of disappearance to obtain this Heaven-Swallowing Demonic Art.

"And this life-stealing secret technique, which seems to be practiced in tandem with the Heaven-Swallowing Demonic Art—borrowing the lifespan of others to aid one's own cultivation, complementing each other. Where did this come from?"

Su Chen put away the remnant art and the secret technique.

He had a vague feeling.

Mu Xuan's possession of these two things was likely connected to the young emperor. After all, this ten-year-old boy had successfully resisted the "succession" of a Grandmaster-level Great Demon.

In his hands, there must be unknown leverage or a powerful protector.

He even.

Su Chen suspected.

Perhaps every Chief Eunuch possessed a copy of this demonic remnant and the life-stealing technique.

During this period, Su Chen had deliberately made inquiries in the pharmacy.

As expected.

After the deaths of Li Xi and Mu Xuan, the deaths of old eunuchs from old age had not decreased; instead, they were increasing exponentially. There were even several cases of young eunuchs suddenly dying of old age.

The low-level eunuchs and maids were in a state of panic.

There were even rumors.

That demons who suck the lifespan of humans had secretly infiltrated the palace, and that all these incidents were the work of demons.

Regarding this.

The high-ranking officials of the Imperial Palace—whether the Chief Eunuchs, the leaders of the Three Guards, or the young emperor—acted as if they were blind and deaf, neither listening, seeing, nor caring.

The last day of the twelfth month, the tenth year of Jianwu.

It snowed again that night.

The next day.

Su Chen opened the pharmacy door, preparing to sweep the fallen snow in front of it, when a corpse of a white-haired, withered young eunuch tumbled into the room.

He was dead!

Su Chen was quite familiar with him; he was Xiao Li.

Fifteen or sixteen years old, yet he had been frequently ill over the past three years. Even now, he still owed Su Chen over thirty taels for medicinal decoctions.

Before dying, Xiao Li had maintained the motion of knocking. A look of joy still lingered on his face, and one hand was tucked into his robe, where a heavy money pouch lay.

Su Chen glanced at it; it was exactly thirty-odd taels, the amount owed for the medicine.

Xiao Li had come to pay his debt.

It was just that, he had died.

Su Chen stood still for a long time, falling into a long silence, as he watched a squad of Imperial Guards wordlessly toss Xiao Li's body onto a carriage like trash to be hauled away.

"Where are you taking the body?"

Su Chen asked.

"Where else could they take it? Naturally, to the mass graves. I advise you, little eunuch, not to wander around at night, otherwise, you'll end up like him—meeting an uncaptured demon, having your lifespan sucked dry, and turning into a dried corpse."

Watching Xiao Li being hauled away, and seeing the thirty-odd taels of silver brutally seized by the Imperial Guards, Su Chen fell into silence.

Was it truly demons?

"Forget it."

"There is too much injustice in this world; endure it, and it will pass."

Su Chen comforted himself thus, silently tidying up the pharmacy, which was already clean and did not need tidying.

(End of Chapter)