Eight-year-old Nalan Ming’s voice rang out from the arena speakers like a clear bronze bell.
For three full seconds, nobody in the hundred-thousand-seat Imperial Colosseum made a sound. Even the wind flags on top of the stone walls seemed to stop flapping.
Then the stands exploded.
“He climbed through a five-year-old’s bedroom window at midnight?!”
“He pinched a sick child’s throat and dug the Ice-Marrow Lotus out of his chest box?!”
“Wait—three years ago, didn’t Xiao Huo claim the Nalan girl humiliated him because he was poor? If he nearly strangled her baby brother to steal his life-saving medicine, she let him off easy with just a divorce paper!”
Down by the crushed war-banner, Xiao Huo stumbled back half a step. His boot heel caught on a bruised cabbage leaf from Auntie Qin’s garden.
Cold sweat poured down his temples, stinging his eyes. Around him, the floating spirit-cameras zoomed in so close he could see his own pale reflection in their crystal lenses.
