Chapter 2763: Demon Infestation

Date: Unspecified

Time: Unspecified

Location: Zhongguo (China), Liaodong Province, Shuntian Prefecture, Shenyang City, Imperial Palace, Inner Court

"You always had a sharp nose for these kinds of things," the Emperor remarked, shaking his head at Corey’s remark.

As he spoke, he stepped away from his throne and slowly descended the marble steps of the dais. While walking, he casually loosened the tight layers of his imperial attire and rolled up his sleeves, as if preparing to fight with his own hands.

The movement alone was enough to unsettle the entire hall. What shocked everyone even more was what he didn’t say. He never denied Corey’s accusation. The imperial descendants and their noble relatives exchanged uneasy glances. The imperial guards and shadow guards stood rigid in place, their training keeping them silent, but the tension in their posture was obvious.

As the Emperor continued to walk forward, an ominous feeling spread through the chamber. Their gut was screaming at them that something was wrong. They could feel it in the way he moved, in the quiet confidence of his stride, in the strange calm on his face. Their instincts screamed that the situation had crossed into dangerous territory. But their minds struggled to accept it.

All their lives, they had been raised to believe that the Emperor was the Mandate of Heaven itself. His words were the will of heaven. His rule was unquestionable. And heaven... was never supposed to be wrong.

"Humph," Corey snorted. Without taking her eyes off the Emperor, she used her mental field to get small fragments from the debris scattered across the floor. With a quick series of Dicing and Conjoining on the pieces, she turned them into a slender hairpin.

She lifted it behind her head and gathered her loose red hair, twisting it into a tight, neat, eastern style hair bun. It was a simple style she had learned from her personal maids after moving into the Imperial Palace years ago.

Seeing Corey with her hair tied into a neat bun and the pale line of her neck exposed, the Emperor’s expression changed. A strange excitement flickered across his face. The sight pulled him back into memories he had never been able to escape. The nights he had spent with Corey.

They had been the one true joy of his life, the only moments that had ever made him feel complete. In those nights he had experienced pleasures and emotions he could never quite describe, sensations so intoxicating that they had reshaped his entire existence.

At the time, he had been willing to do anything to keep that joy. He had even considered changing the imperial laws, defying the laws of his ancestors and the will of the court, just to allow Corey and her children to remain safely within the palace.

But Corey had refused. She insisted on following the imperial rules herself, refusing to become the reason he stained his reign with sin. She had walked away from the protection he was willing to give. Since then, he had spent years chasing the memory of what she had given him.

He sought it in the Empress, in his consorts, in the concubines of the palace. When that failed, he searched further, among their attendants, and eventually even beyond the palace walls in the pleasure houses of the capital. Yet none of them could recreate what Corey had done to him.

Desperation eventually drove him to the Empire’s most carefully guarded secret: its hidden battalion of witches. Through them, he finally learned the truth.

His relationship with Corey had never been what he believed it to be. Every moment he treasured had been false and part of her design. He had been nothing more than a pawn in her long and intricate plan to defeat death.

He laughed and thought she overestimated herself and died. But the witches prophesied to him that Corey’s battle with Death was not over, that one day... she would return.

And so he waited for his revenge. For years, he quietly gathered power and prepared himself, strengthening his position and his abilities. All so that when that day finally arrived, he would be ready to face her.

However, no matter how relentlessly he trained his martial spirit, he could never reach the level of power Corey had shown him on the day of their marriage. He still remembered it clearly.

That day, she had demonstrated a glimpse of her true strength and warned him not to overstep the boundaries she had set. Yet he had ignored that warning and entered her boudoir anyway, convinced that as Emperor he could claim whatever he wished.

Instead, she had turned him into a fool, and he realized it only now. The humiliation had burned into his memory ever since. For years he swore he would make her pay for it. He trained obsessively, pushing his martial spirit to its limits in the hope of surpassing her. But time was merciless. No matter how hard he tried, the results never matched his ambition.

With every passing year, his body aged. His strength plateaued. And the shadow of mortality grew heavier over him. Eventually, he was forced to face the truth he hated most. He would never match Corey’s strength through ordinary means.

So the Emperor turned to desperate measures. If human limits could not take him beyond her, then he would borrow power from something beyond humanity itself. In secret, he reached out to a devil, seeking their strength to push his martial spirit beyond the level Corey had once shown him.

"Come on, Liao Long, show me what kind of power you gained by selling your soul," Corey declared, having already made her decision. The Emperor would die here Once he was gone, she would choose a new ruler herself and ensure the transfer of power happened smoothly. The empire could not afford chaos, not now. Before that could happen, however, the palace needed to be cleansed.

Any demon or devil worshippers hiding within the imperial court would be rooted out. Corey had no intention of allowing demons and devils to exploit the instability of Zhong Guo and spread their influence across the empire.

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