“You think a sheet of Heavenly Dao paper can strip ten thousand years of royal blood?!”
Black veins of corrupt qi slithered across the white marble like venomous leeches.
Emperor Ji Wudao did not wipe the blood dripping from his cracked lips. He stared up at Lin Mo’s floating pavilion, his pupils dilated until his eyes were almost entirely pitch-black. The dignified mask of the Son of Heaven had peeled away, revealing the raw, festering rot of a cornered tyrant.
“Paper,” Ji Wudao whispered. His voice was a dry rattle that scraped against the eardrums of everyone in the plaza. “You came into my city with contracts and warrants. You waved an ivory ledger and thought you had conquered ten thousand years of royal blood.”
On the steps, Shen Qiaoqiao took half a step back, her sandalwood gavel humming as her defensive talisman flared to life. “Former Emperor Ji Wudao. The Planetary Heavenly Dao has validated the debt. Any resistance against the court’s decree constitutes supreme treason against the order of the realm.”
“The realm?” Ji Wudao let out a dry, hacking laugh that ended in a spray of dark crimson foam. “I am the realm! The land is my private garden! The people are my cattle! What gives a herd of cattle the right to foreclose on their butcher?!”
