Hot crimson blood dripped down Second Prince Qian Ye’s split forehead where his own father’s twenty-pound solid-gold dragon inkstone had struck him.
Pinned by both boots to the center of the white-jade stage by Gu Changsheng’s single wooden chopstick. The twenty-year-old prince housing a hundred-year-old butcher’s soul felt the murderous glare of five million people pressing down on his spine like a collapsing mountain range.
Yet even now, cornered in front of the entire kingdom, Qian Ye’s cowardly, scheming instincts refused to accept defeat.
Wiping the blood from his eyes with a torn golden sleeve, Qian Ye twisted his neck frantically toward the front noble tables. The conservative aristocrats of the Eastern Palace faction—led by his maternal uncle, Duke Wei—were sitting in stunned disbelief.
“It’s a lie! An optical illusion conjured by a demonic mirror!” Qian Ye shrieked hoarsely across the boiling plaza, his voice cracking with desperate hysteria.
“Uncle Wei!
Royal Clan Uncles! Use your common sense—how can a mirror show something that happens eighty years in the future?! Gu Changsheng used a magic lantern inside that birthday cake to fabricate a fake nightmare and turn Father Emperor against me!”
Gasping for breath as the Truth-Serum Peppermint Cider gradually wore thin in his dry throat, Qian Ye pointed wildly at his own chest.
