The underground vault beneath the Cold Palace smelled of stale incense, clotted blood, and desperate treachery.
Lit only by sputtering torches of black demon-animal fat, the secret chamber sat beneath three layers of sound-dampening warding stones. At the center of a blood-stained dark rock table sat Crown Prince Yan Wuji. His jaw was still swollen from his father’s slap, two teeth missing from his sneering mouth. His golden dragon robes were torn at the shoulder, revealing dark, pulsing veins that crept up his neck like black spiderwebs.
Flanking him were Chief Arbiter Han, his white robes drenched in anxious sweat. Judge Zong, who sat shivering in a ragged wool tunic, his dantian still aching from Grandmaster Bai’s punishment strike.
Yan Wuji slammed his fist onto the table, shattering a stone cup.
“We can’t allow them onto the podium,” Yan Wuji hissed, his voice rattling with murderous, unhinged delirium. “Five to zero! In three hundred years of the Teacher-Disciple Great War, no frontier principality has ever swept the preliminary rounds! Tomorrow morning, that carpenter will walk up the Golden Dragon Steps, receive the champion’s laurel. My father will hand him the sovereign power of the capital!”
“Your Highness,” Chief Arbiter Han whispered, glancing nervously at the shadowy corners of the vault. “The Emperor personally ratified their preliminary victories. Grandmaster Bai bestowed the 5-Star Sovereign Token upon him! If we try to assassinate Lu Zhen in public, the Master Teacher Pavilion will intervene!”
