Chapter 11605 — Withdraw from the Night Palace

Just then, another towering phantom a thousand zhang tall descended, and once again a hush fell over the whole gathering.

The King of Qin!

Inside and outside the venue, a fresh wave of astonished murmurs broke out.

In the minds of the vast majority within the Inner Royal Court, the King of Qin alone was worth more than the other five kings combined.

After all, the original purpose behind founding the Vertical Alliance had been to stand against the King of Qin's estate.

Now that the five kings had been put in their place, the King of Qin had not only refrained from kicking a man when he was down—he had come forward to hold the field. That was a sight that genuinely caught everyone off guard.

The expression that showed between Wei Zhao's brows at once grew several degrees more grave.

If anyone in the Inner Royal Court could truly put the fear in him, it was none other than this King of Qin.

The King of Qin's face betrayed no emotion as he looked down from on high and spoke five words.

"Withdraw from the Night Palace."

Wei Zhao broke into a smile at once. "The Night Palace really does have remarkable reach—it's even stirred the King of Qin. So there really is something to it after all."

In truth, had he not been so close to the King of Zhao's estate, he suspected even the King of Zhao would have been dragged out to join the pressure campaign.

Say what you would, when it came to building a community of shared interests, the Night Palace truly had a knack for it.

Once more the focus of the entire Inner Royal Court fell upon Wei Zhao.

First the five kings had applied pressure, and now the King of Qin had been added to the scales—by any measure in the Inner Royal Court, no one could withstand pressure of that order!

Everyone was waiting for Wei Zhao's response.

Wei Zhao raised his head slightly. "Is there anyone else?"

The crowd could make no sense of it.

What did he mean?

Far away in the royal palace, watching this scene, the new Grand Tutor Hou Chuang was the first to catch his meaning, and he could not help but laugh aloud with scorn. "That brat's got some nerve, all right."

Wei Zhao's meaning was simple: he simply wanted to ask whether, apart from the six kings before him, anyone else meant to step forward and bring pressure to bear on him as well.

The Son of Heaven of Zhou finally caught on as well, and said with disgust, "I once thought the boy had some potential, that he was a promising talent—who would have guessed he'd prove so unequal to a real crisis? All my painstaking cultivation of him was wasted."

Toward Wei Zhao, he harbored a grudge.

He had dispatched Wei Zhao into the Kingdom of Sin for the purpose of bringing the Martial Marquis, Wu Wudi, back.

And now a full year had passed; Wei Zhao had returned on his own, yet he had not come at once to report the whereabouts of Wu Wudi.

In the eyes of the Zhou Son of Heaven, this was now unmistakably the conduct of an ingrate.

And now, by kicking up such a storm and throwing the whole Inner Royal Court into turmoil, Wei Zhao had shown himself a man with no sense of the larger picture, unfit for any weighty charge.

Hou Chuang only laughed. "Calm yourself, Your Majesty. In truth, this is an opportunity for us."

"An opportunity?"

The Zhou Son of Heaven started, then his expression changed. "The Grand Preceptor surely does not mean for Us to step forward and save him?"

Ever since Hou Chuang, the new Grand Preceptor, had taken his post, a string of maneuvers had indeed won him more real power than before—yet in essence the Son of Heaven remained a puppet still.

Even if Wei Zhao was a serviceable piece on the board, there was no chance whatsoever of his standing toe to toe with the Six Kings, headed by the King of Qin, merely to preserve the man.

At least that much self-knowledge the Zhou Son of Heaven still possessed.

Hou Chuang smiled faintly. "Your Majesty misunderstands. This old minister does not mean to step forward and save Wei Zhao, but to join the Six Kings in pressing him."

"This..."

The Zhou Son of Heaven was struck dumb, and his face took on a rather odd look. "Would that not be... a little unseemly?"

Cold of heart though he was, Wei Zhao was, after all, in the eyes of others as in his own, a man he had raised up with his own hand.

To drop a stone on him at such a moment—that was, perhaps, a shade too cruel.

Hou Chuang said gravely, "This old minister knows Your Majesty is a sovereign of generous heart, but a great man does not scruple at trifles."

"To step forward now and press Wei Zhao serves, first, as a gesture of goodwill and a declaration of stance toward the Six Kings. Once Your Majesty takes his stand, the Six Kings will afterward have no grounds to make an issue of it and vent their wrath upon Your Majesty."

The Zhou Son of Heaven came round at last. "The Grand Preceptor speaks sense."

Since Wei Zhao was his man, then in the eyes of others, everything Wei Zhao had done this time must surely have carried his own instruction.

At the very least, his tacit consent.

And when the Six Kings came to settle accounts afterward—or, worse still, staged an outright coercion of the throne—the joke would be far too grave.

Hou Chuang went on, "Second, this is a declaration to the entire Inner Royal Court."

The Zhou Son of Heaven did not follow. "How do you mean?"

Hou Chuang said with peculiar emphasis, "Matters having come to this, Wei Zhao is bound to submit. If he does not submit, there is nothing for him but to be crushed."

"Let Your Majesty consider: if Your Majesty steps forward today, will the common folk see it as the Six Kings crushing Wei Zhao, or as Your Majesty crushing Wei Zhao?"

The Zhou Son of Heaven's eyes blazed with sudden light. "Then it would naturally be Us."

Those in the know understood perfectly well that even if Wei Zhao ultimately submitted, it would be to the Six Kings.

But in the eyes of the common folk of the Inner Royal Court, it was an altogether different matter.

Puppet sovereign though he might be, the Son of Heaven of Zhou was still the Son of Heaven by proper investiture, the nominal master of the Inner Royal Court. To those watching, this scene could only read one way: the Son of Heaven had come in person, with the Six Kings at his back, to put Wei Zhao down!

Come the morrow, the Son of Heaven would reap a tidy harvest of popular goodwill.

And that was no mere matter of empty-faced vanity; for a sovereign such as him, popular goodwill carried enormous practical weight.

Once he had won enough of it, it was not at all unthinkable that he might use it to stand as an equal against the Seven Kings, and from there shake off entirely the humiliation of being a puppet sovereign.

The Son of Heaven's interest kindled at once. "Then this lone man shall make his move?"

Hou Chuang gestured in invitation. "This old subject shall pave the way for Your Majesty."

With that, he raised a hand and swept it through the air, and above the Night's End Palace there rose at once a throne of supreme sovereignty.

Then, amid an uproar that swept through the hall and beyond it, the phantom image of the Son of Heaven appeared upon the throne.

Wreathed in golden light that shimmered like countless streams of molten gold, his eyes deep as the stars of the night sky, he radiated an imperial majesty that brooked no equal in the world.

Setting aside actual strength, at least in outward show, the Son of Heaven of Zhou was at this moment in no way inferior to the other Six Kings—and in some respects he even surpassed them.

Wei Zhao arched an eyebrow slightly.

That the Son of Heaven of Zhou should choose this occasion to show himself was somewhat beyond what he had expected.

The same astonishment surfaced on the faces of the Six Kings and the other magnates of every faction. After all these years as a puppet sovereign, was he finally going to start making trouble?