“Xiaoxue…”
Sun Nian’s hand tightened slightly, grasping Ling Muxue’s cold fingers, her eyes filled with a final plea.
“Sun Nian only asks one last thing of you… is that alright?”
“Please, say it! Whatever it is, I’ll agree to anything!” Ling Muxue’s voice was choked with sobs.
When Sun Nian is gone, you…Help look after Zhuzi and Xiaoshan a bit more… can you do that?
In Sun Nian’s clouded eyes, love and reluctance for her two sons shimmered.
“In this life, I haven’t done anything extraordinary.”
“The thing I’m proudest of is raising my Zhuzi, Xiaoshan, and you, Xiaoxue, into adults.”
“Zhuzi and Xiaoshan are only just over twenty, already working as guards in the palace prison—it’s not easy.”
“In the future, if you can help them a bit, let them live better than I, their mother, did… will you?”
Zhuzi and Xiaoshan were Sun Nian’s two biological sons.
Faced with this final request, Ling Muxue felt as if her heart was being cut with knives. She could only nod silently through her tears, her throat stifling with suppressed sobs.
“Hehe, good… good…” A faint, relieved smile appeared on Sun Nian’s face, her voice growing ever fainter.
“It’s alright… Xiaoxue. Don’t cry… everyone faces this day… our lives are just like this…”
Her grip on Ling Muxue’s hand gradually weakened. Those weathered eyes, full of final reluctance and love, slowly, ever so slowly, closed.
“Sun Nian—”
!!!
Ling Muxue let out a heart-rending shriek, the immense pain nearly tearing her apart.
It was at that very moment.
“Buzz!”
A low, strange hum suddenly rang out.
The massive formation shrouding the Jinhua Palace instantly blazed to life. Countless mysterious runes on the walls, floor, and even the very air, lit up in succession, radiating a gentle yet overwhelming brilliance.
A surge of nearly tangible vitality flooded in like a tide, instantly filling the entire side hall!
Ling Muxue was stunned by the sudden turn of events, staring blankly toward the bed.
There, on Sun Nian’s once ashen, lifeless face, an almost imperceptible flush of color returned at a speed visible to the naked eye. Yet, her eyes remained tightly shut, and she did not awaken.
“There’s no need to be surprised.”
Ling Ze’s deep voice sounded from the doorway. No one knew when he had arrived, standing with hands clasped behind his back, his gaze profound as he watched the light surge through the formation.
“I have activated the Spirit-Nurturing Array here, forcefully infusing vitality. It will temporarily sustain her last breath of life force, delaying her passing.”
At those words, the flame of hope instantly rekindled in the depths of Ling Muxue’s despairing heart.
She whipped around to stare at Ling Ze, her delicate face streaked with tears, now shining with wild joy and hope so strong it nearly overflowed.
“Father Emperor! Does this mean… as long as we maintain this array and keep infusing vitality, if we last until the Nirvana Essence is produced in next year’s secret realm, Sun Nian can be saved?! Is that right?!”
On Ling Muxue’s tear-streaked face, joy and fervent hope now blossomed.
Yet Ling Ze’s next words were like the harshest winter wind of the Northern Domain, instantly threatening to snuff out the fragile flame of hope, chilling her to the bone.
“Sustain it for a year? You certainly have wishful thinking.”
Ling Ze’s voice was calm to the point of cruelty, purely rational. “Do you think running this array is a child’s game?
“Not to mention the astronomical resources it consumes each moment—just based on Sun Nian’s current condition, the array can, at most, extend her life for seven more days. That’s the absolute limit. Her body and soul cannot withstand any longer infusion of vitality.”
He paused, his sharp gaze sweeping over Ling Muxue’s hopeful eyes.
“What’s more, to keep this array running for a full year would require so many resources that our entire Downline Wolf Clan would have to live in poverty for years.”
“I am king of a nation; there is absolutely no way I will exhaust the strength of the realm just to keep a servant alive.”
Ling Ze’s gaze fell on Ling Muxue, cold and unquestionable. “What I am using now are my own private stores, giving you some time.”
“Three days.”
“I can hold out for you for three days at most.”
“In three days, if you can’t find another way to save Sun Nian…”
Ling Ze’s voice was resolute as steel, announcing the final verdict. “Then she can only… pass on peacefully.”
“A way? Without Nirvana Essence, what other way is there? After three days, nothing will change!”
The light in Ling Muxue’s eyes extinguished instantly, like a candle flame frozen by ice.
The hope she had just kindled was, in the face of reality’s iron walls, once again crushed to dust—leaving only boundless despair and cold.
“Enough!”
Ling Ze’s deep, commanding voice shattered the oppressive air like cracking ice, instantly cutting off Ling Muxue’s endless weeping. “As a royal princess, sobbing and sniveling—what kind of behavior is that!”
Ling Muxue numbly raised her head, her red, swollen eyes vacant, as if she had lost all focus, simply staring mechanically at the source of the voice.
Ling Ze stood with his back to her, hands clasped behind him by the window, gaze seeming to pierce through the whirling snow into the distant void. His voice was calm again.
“There is, in this world, still one unused bottle of Nirvana Essence.”
“There’s still a bottle of Nirvana Essence?!”
This single phrase struck Ling Muxue’s dead heart like a bolt of lightning.
She abruptly widened her eyes, and in her once empty gaze, a wild, unbelievable hope blazed to life. “Where?! Father Emperor, where is it? Tell me now!”
Her urgent questions rang sharp with excitement.
Ling Ze slowly turned, his deep gaze landing on his daughter’s hope-distorted face. His voice was flat and cold, every word like an ice awl.
“The only remaining, second-to-last bottle of Nirvana Essence—I bestowed it upon Lu Qiancha.”
“Lu Qiancha? Xunxue’s son?”
At that name, Ling Muxue reacted like a cat with its tail stepped on. The hope just lit in her heart instantly flared into the rage of betrayal, her voice suddenly shrill and incredulous.
“Father Emperor! How could you give such a precious clan treasure to an outsider so easily?! You—”
“Hmph, outsider?”
Ling Ze’s lips curled into a cold, almost mocking sneer, cutting off his daughter’s protest.
He took a step forward, the pressure rolling out like a tide. “The blood that flows in him and Xunxue is the purest of the Royal Wolf Clan! Compared to them, our Downline branch is more like outsiders.”
“What’s more,”
Ling Ze’s tone suddenly sharpened, his gaze like a blade, stabbing straight at Ling Muxue. “You ignored clan rules and stole Nirvana Essence for a Dead Demon.”
“I, the sovereign of the Wolf Clan, bestow another bottle on Lu Qiancha—a young man of exceptional talent and noble blood, one our branch should spare no effort to befriend—and that’s unacceptable?!”
This barrage of reproaches and questions was like a series of heavy slaps, fiercely striking Ling Muxue’s face.
All her anger, all her self-righteousness, in the face of this brutal contrast, was instantly ground to dust.
Ling Muxue bowed her head deeply, her shoulders trembling, unable to utter a single word of rebuttal.
Then, she fiercely wiped away the tears remaining on her face, her movements carrying a kind of almost self-destructive resolve.
Facing Ling Ze, she gave a deep, formal salute, her voice hoarse but incredibly clear. “Your child understands. I will go find Lu Qiancha now.”
With that, she did not glance at her father again. She turned and strode resolutely toward the heavy palace doors of Jinhua Palace, her figure radiating a desperate solitude.