Chapter 11640 — Hou Chuang's Face Was Also Written All Over With Disbelief, Yet in the End, He Still Gave a Firm Nod
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 3
Though he had never before seen the Queen's true face, he had always harbored doubts about her in his heart—he had simply never voiced them.
Now, seeing her at last, his suspicions were confirmed.
The Son of Heaven's faith collapsed in an instant; he took one more look at the Queen and promptly vomited a mouthful of old blood.
Even if he wished a thousand times over not to believe it, before cruel reality every act of self-deception is, in the end, nothing but a joke.
However deeply he had been bewitched by the Queen's divine countenance, at this very moment the Son of Heaven still managed to cling to the last shred of his reason.
To speak plainly, the Queen's true appearance could only be called ordinary—more precisely, clownish—but it was not so hideous as to be utterly unbearable to the eye or to turn one's stomach at a single glance.
The problem was that beauty and ugliness are always born of comparison.
Set against her divine countenance, her true form now was ugliness beyond the very sky!
"Let's go."
Wei Zhao called out to Cheng Shuang'er; matters had reached this point, and there was nothing more he needed to do.
The day's visit to the Son of Heaven's palace had tested the waters as needed, the unexpected harvest had been secured, and as for this Queen, she had already paid her price—stripped of her divine countenance, she was now well and truly worse off than dead.
The next step: it was the turn of the Prince of Qi's manor.
Wei Zhao's gaze turned dark and distant. All seven great princely manors were first-tier targets. The Prince of Han's manor had already been taken; the Prince of Zhao's manor was his own; next, whether by turns or by right, it should be the Prince of Qi's manor.
In the Prince of Qi's manor, from the Prince of Qi down, the entire high command broke out in a collective shiver.
The Prince of Qi swept his gaze around: "Where is the Fourth?"
The assembled high officials exchanged glances.
Ever since that incident before, not only had the Prince of Qi's son not set foot in the manor again, but even Qi Zhuiyun had left the manor, his whereabouts unknown.
Someone ventured a guess: "Could the Fourth Brother have gone to seek a private settlement with Wei Zhao?"
Whatever else might be said, in the whole of the Prince of Qi's manor these days, Qi Zhuiyun was likely the only one who still carried any weight with Wei Zhao.
"Settlement? What a joke!"
The Prince of Qi gave a cold snort: "I am the Prince of Qi's manor—do we need him to go groveling for a settlement on our behalf?"
No one dared make a sound.
Such a thing was indeed a loss of face, but then again—they had already knelt publicly before Wei Zhao; they had already done things far more humiliating than this. There was no need to cling to this particular point, was there?
Given the oppressive force displayed by the Ten Sins beneath Wei Zhao's command, if a private settlement could be reached, every one of them would raise both hands in favor without a moment's hesitation.
The Prince of Qi spoke heavily: "The several ancestral lords have all been awakened. If Wei Zhao is sensible, well and good. If he is not, then let him see for himself what the foundation of the seven great princely manors truly means!"
In the Night's End Palace affair before, though the other princely manors had knelt as well, the greatest losses had still fallen upon his own Prince of Qi's manor.
After all, it was Wei Zhao who had personally dissolved the Vertical Alliance.
His Prince of Qi's manor had been the leader of the Vertical Alliance, its greatest beneficiary—with the alliance's backing, the manor's prestige had nearly eclipsed even that of the Prince of Qin's manor!
Now, with the Vertical Alliance dissolved, the entire prestige of the Prince of Qi's manor had plummeted overnight.
Especially with the Great Upheaval arriving, to take such a blow to the head at this moment—the impact on the manor's future trajectory could well be imagined.