In the pitch-black underground vault beneath the Eastern Palace, a single tallow candle guttered in the cold draft.
Second Prince Qian Ye sat hunched on the stone steps in a torn, food-stained dragon robe, his right cheek still swollen where Gu Changsheng’s iron spatula had knocked out his tooth. His left hand pressing a cold iron ingot against his temple to stop the violent spasms of static tearing through his brain.
Above his disheveled hair, the once-blinding crimson ring of his 100-Year Regressor Halo was now reduced to a tiny, sputtering 10% spark that buzzed like a dying hornet every three seconds:.
Bzzzzt—pop!
Every time the 10% Halo glitched, Qian Ye’s eyes twitched wildly as another decade of his hundred-year future knowledge dissolved into meaningless gibberish.
He couldn’t remember which stock would rise next spring because Grandpa Fu already owned the entire grain and herb market. He couldn’t remember which general would win the northern campaign because Old Marshal Tie and all three hundred and fifty thousand soldiers were outside the South Wall eating Gu Changsheng’s beef jerky. He couldn’t even remember how he had stolen ten-year-old Ye Xiao’s Innate Sword Eyes or nine-year-old Gu Nian’s Chaos Demon Bone in his previous life—because today.
