Facing Jun Beiyue and Ziqing’s fury, Jun Buli dropped to his knees with a heavy, resounding thud—a sound loud enough to send a chill through everyone present.

Situ Haonan couldn’t help stepping forward to help him up, wanting to check whether his knees had been hurt.

“All right, all right, what’s done is done. If there’s something to say, say it properly—get up first, let’s go inside and talk.” Situ Haonan urged, reaching to pull Jun Buli up.

But Jun Buli refused to rise. “I do have something to say. I’ll say it now.”

In truth, no one there was foolish—they had all suspected to some degree that something must be wrong. What no one knew was just how serious it was.

But seeing Jun Buli like this now, everyone’s hearts sank with dread. Whatever this was, it clearly wasn’t small.

Was it really wise to let Jun Buli say it in front of everyone?

Ziqing was furious, yes, but in the end, Jun Buli was still the son she loved most dearly. She clenched her fists tight and said coldly, “Let’s go inside and talk.”

But to everyone’s surprise, the moment she spoke, Jun Beiyue cut in. “Say it right here!”

It had to be admitted—Jun Beiyue had never once been disappointed in this son of his. He trusted him even more than Ziqing did. That was why, from the very start of the whole matter with Consort Li, he had kept urging Ziqing not to interfere too much—children had their own fortunes to work out, and he’d believed their son could handle it.

Yet as it turned out, he couldn’t handle it at all. He hadn’t been able to manage it—and now he’d even dragged Yaotiao into it!

If he couldn’t handle it, why had he concealed it so thoroughly?

If he couldn’t clean up his own mess, then he had to answer for the consequences. A man ought to stand tall and face things head-on—so long as he’d done nothing to be ashamed of, what was there that couldn’t be told to others?

No matter how big or small the matter, if he didn’t even have the courage to let others know, how could he possibly have the nerve to actually resolve it?

“Speak,” Jun Beiyue said coldly, his tone stern and commanding.

Seeing Jun Beiyue so resolute, Ziqing fell silent as well.

Only then did Jun Buli slowly lift his head, meeting his father’s icy gaze. After holding that look for just a moment, he raised his hand.

At his gesture, a massive pile of bones suddenly appeared out of thin air beside him—every single bone blackened and grim, utterly horrifying. Scattered among the bones were several large ingots of gold. For all these years, he had kept these things hidden away in a small compartment within his Qiankun poison pouch.

Everyone recognized at a glance that these were human bones, and gasped sharply in unison.

“What is going on!” Ziqing cried out, a terrible foreboding rising in her chest.

A flicker of complicated emotion crossed Jun Beiyue’s eyes, but he didn’t soften. He watched in stern, silent stillness.

Most of those present were shaken by Jun Beiyue’s grim severity—the only one who dared to speak was Situ Haonan.

“This… that’s quite a lot of people, isn’t it! Xiong Bao, what exactly is going on here—why do you have human bones hidden away like this?”

Jun Buli said nothing, kneeling in silence, carefully separating the skeletons one by one, placing the gold ingots beside the smallest set of bones.

Only once he’d finished sorting them did everyone see clearly—there were ten sets of remains in total.

Judging by the size of the bones, there were both men and women, some young adults, some children. And judging by their coloring, they had all died of poisoning.

Who were these people?

In the silence, Jun Buli spoke without warning. “Among them are shadow guards, maidservants, a young eunuch who followed me around for years…”

As he spoke, he kept taking deep breaths. Everyone present held their own breath just listening.

Not just Ziqing—everyone felt the same terrible premonition.

“They… they were all killed by me. Bitten to death.”

The moment Jun Buli said this, Ziqing nearly collapsed. She couldn’t believe her own ears—surely this was all a dream. Yaotiao was still here, safe and sound; Xiong Bao was fine too, they were all still in the Prince Yao residence in Da Zhou; surely all of this was just some nightmare!

But very soon, Jun Buli shattered every last one of her illusions.

Before everyone’s stunned eyes, Jun Buli suddenly threw his head back and let out a roar toward the sky, baring two blood-red fangs—fangs of a strange, garish crimson that stood in stark, horrifying contrast against his otherwise neat row of white teeth. The sight sent chills through everyone watching.

Ziqing covered her mouth, still unable to believe what she was seeing.

Those fangs—she had seen them before!

When Jun Buli was a child, back among the Meng Clan, he had bitten Meng Lao Wu—but that had only happened when he was extremely angry! And afterward, once his anger passed, it had always been fine!

As a child, he hadn’t been able to control his emotions—but as he grew up, at least these past years, he had seemed perfectly fine!

Ziqing remembered that after she and Jun Beiyue had returned from the illusion realm of Lishang, she had asked Jun Buli several times whether he still felt the urge to bite people when angry, the way he had as a child.

Jun Buli had laughed it off, saying he wasn’t a child anymore—did she really think he couldn’t even control his own emotions?

But now, faced with all of this!

“I can’t control myself. Even when I’m perfectly calm, my teeth start to itch. Normally I can endure it, but… on the night of the full moon, I can’t hold back anymore…”

Jun Buli kept his head lowered the whole time, not looking at anyone. When he reached this point, he stopped.

And everyone’s hearts seemed to stop along with him—no one dared make a sound, afraid that any noise might make the boy unable to continue.

After a long moment, he took several deep breaths and continued flatly, “Father, Mother… not long after you two left, one night, it just happened, out of nowhere. I went half-mad, wanting to bite someone.”

As he spoke, he looked up at the smallest set of bones, and suddenly his voice broke. “Zhuo Guizi, the young eunuch who stayed by my side… only nine years old. His hometown was ravaged by floods and he became an orphan, tricked into the palace at age seven. When I first met him, he told me he wanted to become a corrupt official—wanted to embezzle huge sums from the national treasury and hand them out to every orphan in the realm, so they could build homes, buy land…”

By this point, Jun Buli could barely speak through his tears. “So I told him, fine, then take bribes right here beside me—I’ll make sure you have plenty to pocket. These are the ingots he collected. He hid every single one of them carefully, kept them close on his person at all times… but… I bit him to death. Tore him apart until nothing was left but bones.”

Ziqing covered her mouth, her eyes red-rimmed. If she hadn’t been leaning against the wall, she wouldn’t have been able to stand at all.

Beside her, Situ Jing’er, Meng Duo’er, and Baili Xiaosheng, who had just arrived, were all crying, silent tears streaming down their faces. This hateful boy—why did he have to go through something like this? Why?

He sniffed, then looked toward the second, third, and fourth sets of bones, before suddenly lifting his head toward Jun Beiyue. “Father, these were your shadow guards. From the moment you left, aside from Yingzi, these three brothers never left my side, not for a single step.”

“That night, they witnessed me bite Zhuo Guizi to death. They couldn’t stop me… I told them to leave, to get far away. They wouldn’t go… one by one, I bit them to death too, even after watching me kill their own brothers before their eyes, they still guarded me with unwavering loyalty!”

Jun Buli didn’t say anything more, but he would remember forever what those three shadow guards had said to him.

They had said: Young Master, with the Master away, we must guard you in his place.

Jun Beiyue was moved to the point of tears. Just as Jun Buli’s gaze fell on the fifth set of bones, Jun Beiyue rushed forward and pulled his son into his arms. “Enough. Say no more!”

It was he who had failed as a father—he was the one who had been negligent.