‘Old Prince!?’

Hearing that faint call, Jiang Zirou’s heart suddenly lurched.

But after some time had passed.

Jiang Zirou realized that the faint calling voice did not seem to be coming from a human at all.

‘Could it be some kind of spirit artifact…’

According to legend.

Some divine weapons, after being bathed in the blood of powerful enemies and nourished by the essence of heaven and earth, could, under a series of coincidences, give birth to a trace of spiritual awareness.

Weapons like that.

It was the dream of countless martial experts. Not only were they incomparably sharp, but when one’s mind and blade moved as one, the power they unleashed was far beyond what ordinary weapons could compare to.

Jiang Zirou cultivated the Sword Control Divine Ability.

She had been longing for a handy blade or sword for a long time now.

Now that she had an inkling, the girl immediately found it hard to restrain herself.

‘There’s a treasure… I should go take a look!’

Seeing that there was no one around.

Jiang Zirou’s figure blurred. The gate sealed with black-iron chains was like nothing to her and in the next instant, the girl’s slender silhouette had already appeared inside the imperial mausoleum.

Entering the tall and shadowy mausoleum.

A few candles were burning faintly in the high walls on either side, giving off a pale green, chilly light.

Jiang Zirou gripped one of the candle stands.

With a light twist, deep inside the mausoleum came the rough sound of stone grinding.

A bottomless passage appeared before her.

The more skilled, the bolder.

Jiang Zirou flicked her skirt and stepped inside.

As air rushed in.

The oil lamps along both walls lit up one after another.

There were no mechanisms or poison gas. Jiang Zirou stayed on guard and very smoothly walked to the end.

There, a great bronze gate awaited her.

Thick, massive, carved with dragons and phoenixes, it looked to weigh at least tens of thousands of jin.

Yet this gate had been blasted open with a single punch.

Shattered chunks of bronze were embedded into the walls on both sides, cracks spiderwebbed outward and the entire underground palace showed signs of minor fracturing.

‘What terrifying strength…’

Jiang Zirou drew in a sharp breath.

A punch thrown from the inside out that shattered this ten-thousand-jin bronze gate was clearly the Old Prince’s doing.

Taking an oil lamp down from the wall.

Jiang Zirou slipped through the crack and entered deeper into the mausoleum.

Under the dim, wavering light.

A strange, heavy stench of blood filled the air.

Jiang Zirou stepped forward.

She had only taken a few steps.

When a bloodied human head, hair gone gray-white, eyes staring hollowly, suddenly appeared right in front of her.

Unreconciled!

I cannot die!

Unfilial descendant Jiang Lie has shamed his forebears!

If I, Jiang Lie, had the True Martial Body, how could I possibly have fallen to this point!

The new world… can never be returned to…

People of Great Xia… I can no longer protect you…

Those mangled limbs, that thick smell of blood and the blood-red characters written across the walls together formed the entire scene Jiang Zirou saw.

Her breath caught in her throat.

‘What on earth happened here?’

Holding the oil lamp.

She slowly read the bloody words on the walls and there was a hint of admiration in her eyes.

In the very last moments of his life.

What the Old Prince still could not let go of was, even then, the tens of millions of citizens of Great Xia.

‘Truly worthy of the title War God.’

She reached out and gently closed the old man’s eyes.

Only after straightening the Old Prince’s corpse as best she could did Jiang Zirou bow deeply to this uncle-grandfather she was related to by blood.

Jiang Lie’s corpse sat cross-legged on the ground.

The once-towering body was now nothing more than a layer of skin covered in age spots, sagging over a thick frame.

‘For a War God to end up like this… it was a sorry sight.’

His left hand rested in front of him, his right hand braced on a long blade.

The call from before had been coming from this blade.

‘Famous Blade, Great Xia Dragon Sparrow.’

Jiang Zirou drew in a deep breath.

This was the treasured blade passed down since the founding of Great Xia a thousand years ago.

In the past decades, the Old Prince had ridden to war across north and south and although the world was full of Grandmasters, none dared not submit. Aside from his own cultivation that was close to the Great Grandmaster realm, part of that deterrent came from the Great Xia Dragon Sparrow in his hand.

But now, the Old Prince had already fallen and this treasured blade had birthed a sliver of spiritual awareness.

Coming before the Old Prince.

Jiang Zirou gripped the Great Xia Dragon Sparrow. The icy, razor-edge pressed into her palm.

Jiang Zirou exerted her strength, wanting to pull the blade free.

Yet she found that the Old Prince’s hand was still so strong and at the same time, a sense of resistance came from the blade itself.

Jiang Zirou thought for a moment.

And understood the issue.

‘You want to protect Great Xia too, don’t you… I promise you, if Great Xia is ever in danger, then within the limits of my power, I will act once for Great Xia.’

She spoke softly, pressing harder. The fine joints of her fingers were sliced by the edge.

Blood bearing the lineage of the direct Great Xia imperial line flowed out, seeping into the blade.

The Great Xia Dragon Sparrow let out a clear ring.

The Old Prince’s head, which had been thrown back, suddenly dropped and his hand loosened.

* * *

In the south, at Dead Man Lake.

In the ghost-lit, ancient building, a white candle burned slowly as gusts of gloomy wind blew past the windows outside, making an endless wailing sound.

A few assassins had gathered as usual.

One of them had a deathly pale face, blood-red pupils full of viciousness. One of his arms was wrapped in thick bandages, yet blood still kept seeping through.

“Tiansha… how did you get hurt this badly!? Did you run into the Old Prince?”

Everyone was dumbfounded.

“Hehe… if I’d run into the Old Prince, do you think I could have come back alive?”

“Then who hurt you this badly? What useful information did you get from the Great Xia Imperial Palace?”

The skeleton-like elder seated at the head of the table asked, barely concealing his anxiousness.

“One piece of good news, one piece of bad news. The good news is, while it can’t be confirmed, the Old Prince is most likely truly dead. The bad news is… these injuries were dealt to me by a little girl in the imperial palace… heh. If we don’t make our move soon, in a few years Great Xia will probably have another existence as invincible as the Old Prince.”

“Beaten by a little girl? Are you joking?”

“Do I strike you as someone very humorous?”

Tiansha lifted his eyes and glanced at the man. Seeing that he didn’t dare say more, he gave a sinister smile.

“When I’m killing, I’ve always been very humorous.”

“How old is this girl and what is her cultivation?”

The ghost-like old man asked.

“Judging from her appearance, maybe twelve or thirteen, very tender, but I don’t know how she’s cultivated. Both her cultivation and her physical strength surpass mine. I exchanged one palm strike with her and this arm of mine was almost ruined.”

Tiansha withdrew the neurotic grin from his face and answered seriously.

Once again, the hall of Dead Man Lake filled with the sound of people sharply drawing in breaths.