Tantai Yan opened his eyes. The gaze that looked out from them was shadowed and packed with frost — utterly without trace of the original’s gentle simplicity or fragility. In the blink of an eye, it was as though an entirely different person now inhabited the face.

He held the jade dragon belt in his hand. A spark of yin lightning formed between his fingers and burned the belt to ash. He looked at the remains on the floor, his expression cold.

Then he looked toward the large dragon-head bronze mirror standing nearby — at the young emperor reflected within it — with not a trace of joy or pleasure. What filled him instead was a sky-scorching fury capable of burning everything to cinders.

“Lang Jiuchuan!” Tantai Yan slammed his fist into the bronze mirror, shattering the surface into pieces across the floor.

To call him Tantai Yan was inaccurate. He was, in truth, Tantai Wuji.

The National Preceptor’s body had exhausted every last thread of its life span. Tantai Princess, that traitor, was a discarded piece. Of all the vessels available, it was Tantai Yan — with his merit fortune intact — who was the most suitable. And more than that, he was the Emperor.

As long as he sat on the throne for a single day, he was the lord of the nation — the Son of Heaven — with the imperial aura shielding his body.

A body like that, in his hands, would serve him far better than it had in the hands of this pathetic wretch who had been about to take his own life over something so trivial. What kind of Tantai descendant was he?

Tantai Wuji felt a moment of something close to desolation. Could it be that because he had survived so long, drawing down the clan’s fortune through the generations, that the Tantai bloodline had grown weaker with each generation? That now not a single child of exceptional talent could be found among them?

Was this heaven’s punishment?

The thought was quickly banished. His expression returned to a cold and cutting edge. As long as he achieved the Great Dao, the Tantai clan would have nothing to fear — they would flourish and leave their name to eternity.

The path of emperors had always been built on ten thousand bones for every one who reached the summit. Using the whole clan to elevate a single person who could carry the family forward for ten thousand generations — how could that be a losing bargain?

He had done nothing wrong. And he had been drawing ever closer to the Great Dao. Success had been nearly within his grasp — yet now?

Tantai Wuji looked at his reflection fragmenting across the shards of the broken mirror and felt fury igniting within him. His entire body shook violently. His throat produced a ragged, rattling sound — he was so consumed by rage that he could not even form the screams and curses he wanted to unleash.

Every time he thought of his thousand years of scheming, ruined at Lang Jiuchuan’s hands, he wanted to tear her apart, grind her to dust, strip her to the bone and dissolve her soul.

How had she dared, and how had she managed it? She was only a child. However formidable her power — even if she had matched him blow for blow — she should not have been able to prevail against him. And yet she had done it.

Her mind was devious, and she had managed to collude with some rat creature right under his nose to steal the body he had spent years cultivating — to drain away the countless threads of fortune he had painstakingly pilfered — and he had not sensed a single thing.

Was she clever, or had he been too arrogant — had he underestimated her, not knowing that a wolf cub you raise will one day sink its teeth into you if you are not careful?

Complacency. His complacency had guaranteed that he would suffer this loss. The little wolf cub he had raised with his own hands had bitten out a chunk of his flesh — no, she had gone straight for his throat.

Thinking of that unknown creature now occupying his body, doing as it pleased with that mountain of fortune — Tantai Wuji’s blood surged and churned. The essence blood rose in his throat, and he vomited it out — mouthful after mouthful, staining the floor.

Such hatred.

Tantai Wuji clenched his fist and finally released a howl that seemed to tear something inside him apart. He drove his fist into the floor with a force that split a crack across the tiles of the hall.

To bear every indignity, to scheme across a thousand years — all for the sake of reclaiming the pinnacle, of becoming a sovereign who commanded all existence, who held the cosmos in his hands — and instead, in the end, to have clothed another in what he himself had sewn.

How could he not hate?

Every hope he had, every scheme — stolen from him by the most contemptible and petty of methods. That humiliation nearly broke his reason entirely.

Tantai Wuji looked out through blood-red eyes toward the hall entrance, forced down the drilling pain in his core and the agony of his heavily wounded soul, and shouted for his servants.

A young eunuch hurried in, saw the scene before him, and dropped to his knees — not daring to raise his head: “Your Majesty.”

“Send word to the Commander of the Imperial Guards. The Marquis of Kaiping’s household has colluded with a demon practitioner and dispatched assassins to attack Us. Convey Our decree — have the entire Lang Family cast into prison!” Tantai Wuji’s voice came out cold as ice.

The little wolf cub had made him suffer greatly. He would show the entire Lang Family that he intended to leave not one of them standing — and see whether she truly did not care.

The young eunuch started, then immediately complied — but before he had fully left the room, Tantai Wuji spoke again: “Forget it. Perhaps We were mistaken. There is no need to send the order.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.” The young eunuch glanced once more at the new Emperor. There was something deeply strange about His Majesty today — nothing like usual — but this presence, this bearing, was far more fitting for an emperor.

Tantai Wuji dismissed him and settled onto the imperial bed, legs crossed, hands forming seals.

He was not letting the Lang Family go. He simply could not act in haste. To move against the Lang Family the moment the imperial tombs were thrown into chaos would be a signal too obvious to miss — Lang Jiuchuan would realize the Emperor had been replaced by someone else. And then that little madwoman would never stop hounding him, added to which there was still the creature occupying his original body. His own vital energy and soul were already severely damaged. He was in no position to take them on directly.

He needed to think carefully — consider every angle — and determine what approach would most benefit him.

If he could not recover his corporeal form — what then?

Do not rush. Take it slowly.

Tantai Wuji had barely settled into stillness when his skin prickled. A bone-deep terror rose from somewhere inside him.

He jerked his head up.

A thunderclap that shook the heavens — the entire palace seemed to shudder from it. Everyone inside the palace walls cowered and ducked, clutching their heads. Those who looked toward the direction of the strike saw that it was the Qiantian Hall, with tongues of fire already rising from the roof of the hall, and their faces went pale.

That was the Emperor’s bedchamber — and it had just been struck by lightning. They had already heard that the imperial tombs had suffered heavenly fire. Was this now a similar divine punishment falling on the palace?

Everyone’s face went white with fear, and they rushed toward the hall to protect the Emperor.

Tantai Wuji watched the lightning — the force of a thousand mighty weights — pierce through the roof and drive straight toward him. He did not even have time to react. The thunder was already upon him.

Tantai Wuji: “!”

The powerful force of the lightning struck him. His soul, already depleted of vital energy, was deeply unstable — and he had barely integrated with this new body — and in an instant he was blasted out of the physical form.

The shattered roof came crashing down, and countless glazed tiles rained onto Tantai Yan’s near-scorched body.

Tantai Wuji had no choice but to force his way back inside. But whether because his soul was too severely damaged and weak, or because the body’s own remaining will was resisting, he could not reenter.

He urgently chanted the incantation to force a possession. He bit his finger open, condensed essence blood, and drew a Soul-Anchoring Talisman on the chest to prevent himself from being expelled from the body again. Then, hearing footsteps approaching in the distance, he looked down at his own wretched state, applied a Daoist art, and cast a glamour over himself — so that no one would see the scorched ruin beneath.

Tantai Wuji needed a physical body to shelter his soul, and nothing was more fitting for him than the identity of the Son of Heaven.

He simply had not expected that this hasty possession would draw down divine punishment upon him.

Was it because he had moved too quickly, or because the fortune that belonged to him had scattered and the Way of Heaven had found its opportunity to deliver karmic retribution?

“Your Majesty?” Someone came rushing in.

“Get out!” Tantai Wuji could not contain himself. He roared, bringing the intruder to a dead stop.

Setback after setback — and the wounds he had sustained this time were the worst he had suffered in all his thousand years of survival. The sheer enormity of these losses was too great for him to remain composed.

“Lang Jiuchuan!” Tantai Wuji ground out the name through clenched teeth, his eyes filled with glacial killing intent.