Ji’an swallowed her laughter, coughing to clear her throat. She looked past his ruined dress, noticing the heavy iron Null-Stone cuffs were no longer on his wrists.

They hung from his left hand, the thick iron links completely melted and warped by what looked to be extreme, concentrated heat.

"Where is Mad Dog?" Ji’an asked, her tone shifting to professional urgency.

Yichen reached up with his free hand, violently tearing the remaining linen padding out of his bodice and tossing it onto the wet stone floor with a look of profound disgust.

"The Vice-Chief," Yichen purred, a dark, blood-chilling smile stretching across his smeared, bloody lips, "attempted to discover what was beneath my skirts. I allowed him to get close enough to unfasten my cuffs."

Yichen raised his right hand. His pale fingers were completely coated in thick, viscous, drying blood.

"I then discovered what was beneath his ribcage," Yichen stated simply, his smile widening into something genuinely demonic. "He is currently decorating the walls of his bedchamber. He will not be joining us for the remainder of the evening."

Lin Xuan, standing behind Ji’an, let out a tiny, terrified whimper, clutching his brass candlestick tighter.

Ji’an didn’t flinch. She had known the Prince was a monster, but seeing the raw, bloody evidence of his wrath was entirely different.

Mad Dog had tried to assault him, and Yichen had ripped the man apart with his bare hands the second his Qi was restored.

"And the array?" Ji’an pressed, refusing to acknowledge the gore.

Yichen reached into the folds of his torn skirt, pulling out a charred, glowing piece of shattered jade. It was the core of the Nine-Palace Illusion Array, cracked cleanly down the middle.

"I retrieved the explosive talisman from the padding before he tore the dress," Yichen explained, tossing the shattered core to the ground. "The illusion is broken, and the fortress is exposed. My shadow guards are already breaching the main gates."

Right on cue, a massive, deafening explosion rocked the subterranean cavern.

The very foundations of the mountain shuddered, sending dust and small pebbles raining down from the ceiling.

The muffled sound of screaming, clashing steel, and the unmistakable, booming war cries of Commander Mo’s elite assassins echoed up from the main cavern below.

The siege had begun.

Yichen took a deep breath, his chest heaving.

The sheer, humiliating agony of the last hour, being ogled, groped, and forced to play the part of a helpless maiden, was burning in his veins like liquid fire.

He looked down at his torn peach dress, the fabric stained with the Vice-Chief’s blood.

He slowly looked up at Ji’an.

"Royal Uncle," Yichen murmured, his voice dropping into a register that was so dark, so heavy with impending violence that it made Ji’an take an instinctive half-step back. "Take your brother. Go to the lower dungeons and release the captives. Help me secure the perimeter."

"And you?" Ji’an asked, her grip tightening on her spatula.

Yichen turned his head toward the main corridor leading down to the grand hall, where the sounds of battle were growing louder.

"I," Xiao Yichen whispered, a terrifying, elegant grace returning to his posture despite the ruined dress, "am going to remind these subterranean rats why the Azure Empire’s banner is painted red. I am not going to spare a single one of them."

. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦

.

.

The main cavern of the Blood-Iron Syndicate was a scene of absolute, chaotic carnage.

Commander Mo and his two dozen elite shadow guards had breached the heavy iron gates the moment the illusion array fell.

They moved like ghosts, their black blades slicing through the panicked, disorganized rogue cultivators who were completely unprepared for an Imperial assault.

But the sheer numbers of the Syndicate were overwhelming.

There were hundreds of bandits, and they were beginning to rally, forming defensive formations and unleashing dark, chaotic spells that illuminated the cavern in flashes of toxic green and purple light.

"Hold the line!" a burly bandit captain roared, rallying a dozen spear-wielding mercenaries. "They are only a handful! Crush them!"

The bandits charged.

Commander Mo braced himself, preparing to unleash his power domain.

But before he could strike, the air in the cavern abruptly, violently shifted.

A suffocating gravity descended upon the battlefield.

The temperature didn’t drop like Xie Wangchen’s ice, but it grew incredibly, unnaturally heavy, as if the air itself had turned to lead.

From the elevated stone staircase leading down from the inner sanctum, a figure emerged.

The fighting stalled.

Bandits and shadow guards alike looked up.

Walking down the stairs, bathed in the flickering light of the chandeliers, was Xiao Yichen.

The peach and gold silk dress was torn, exposing his chest and legs.

His hair was wild, with his face smeared with blood and rouge. To any normal observer, he looked like a madman, a bizarre, cross-dressing apparition.

But there was nothing comical about the aura he radiated.

Yichen didn’t draw a sword. He didn’t shout a war cry. He raised both of his hands, his long, pale fingers spreading wide.

"Azure Sky Severing Threads," Yichen whispered.

From his fingertips, thousands of microscopic, nearly invisible threads of hyper-condensed, razor-sharp Qi erupted.

They shot across the vast cavern with the speed of light, weaving through the air in a complex, terrifyingly beautiful geometric web.

The threads didn’t just target a few men, it targeted the entire cavern.

The bandit captain who had ordered the charge suddenly stopped, his eyes going wide as a microscopic thread had wrapped silently around his throat.

Yichen reached the bottom of the stairs, and he didn’t look angry anymore.

The mask of polite, aristocratic serenity had returned, sitting flawlessly upon his blood-smeared face.

It was the smile of a prince who had just been unforgivably insulted and had decided to erase the offending kingdom from the map.

Yichen elegantly flicked his wrists as he pulled the threads tight.

The result was instantaneous and horrifying.

The razor-sharp Qi threads sliced through leather, steel, and bone with zero resistance.