He was trying to calculate the structural resonance frequency of the dungeon walls using a piece of chalk on the wet floor. "If we all strike the same brick simultaneously with our physical mass, we can generate a tremor!"
"I don’t care about bricks! Brother Lin is upstairs!" Gu Zhiwei wept, pacing the cell like a caged, golden tiger.
"He is being subjected to the demonic wiles of the succubi! At this rate, his purity is in grave danger! I can feel it in my heart!"
"Your heart is an idiot, Gu Zhiwei," Lu Jianheng snapped, though he was visibly sweating, his composure hanging by a thread. "The Leader is a master tactician. He is likely assessing their defenses, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. We must have faith in his martial dignity!"
Just outside the bars, two demonic guards were casually leaning against the wall, sharing a smoke from a long, thin pipe, ignoring the frantic demigods inside the cell.
"Did you hear the news from the penthouse?" the first guard gossiped, exhaling a plume of purple smoke.
"The new broker?" the second guard chuckled. "The silver-haired one who made Xuefeng cry?"
"Yeah. Madam Rouge just announced the lineup for the Grand Welcoming Ceremony tonight," the first guard smirked, leaning closer. "Master Liuyun challenged the broker to a duet. They’re doing the opening sequence together."
The second guard’s eyes went wide. "A duet with Su Liuyun? But that routine is... it’s the Crimson Lotus Entanglement Dance. It requires absolute, uninhibited physical contact! It’s the most scandalous, sensual choreography in the entire sect!"
"I know!" the first guard giggled. "They say the broker is going to wear the sheer silk performance robes. The Madam is selling tickets to the front row for double the usual price. They’re going to be writhing on the stage!"
Inside the cell, the frantic noise abruptly ceased.
Gu Zhiwei stopped pacing.
Lu Jianheng dropped his piece of chalk. Hu Yanlie stopped chewing the bars.
The four prodigies in the Azure Empire slowly turned their heads, staring at the gossiping guards through the iron bars.
The words processed in their unstable, romantically paranoid and territorial brains.
Duet.
Sensual choreography... Silk performance robes... Writhing on the stage...
"He is... dancing?"
Lu Jianheng whispered, his voice cracking, the reality of his entire universe collapsing. "The Vanguard Leader... the Iron Wok Demon... is doing a sensual dance routine... in transparent silk... in front of an audience?!"
"BROTHER LIN IN SILK?!" Gu Zhiwei shrieked, a violent nosebleed instantly erupting from his nostrils, his golden light violently short-circuiting as his brain attempted to process the visual and utterly failed, collapsing backward in a dead faint.
"I MUST GOUGE MY EYES OUT!" Hu Yanlie roared, covering his face, his feral instincts unable to cope with the eroticism of the concept. "THE CHEF IS A WARRIOR! HE CANNOT BE A DANCER! IT IS BLASPHEMY!"
Wen Shiru frantically began sliding the beads on his abacus at Mach 5. "The ticket prices! If we break out right now, we can buy the front row! I will liquidate my entire portfolio! I must secure the VIP seating!"
But in the darkest, coldest corner of the cell, the reaction was not one of panic, faints, or mercantile calculation.
Shen Zechuan happily chewed on a piece of dried fruit. "A dance? That sounds nice. Ji’an is very good at footwork. Do you think he will do the spatula-kick?"
Zechuan looked over to his cellmate.
Xie Wangchen was no longer sitting in a lotus position.
The Ice Demon was standing.
The anti-magic suppression cuffs locked around his pale wrists were not glowing pink.
They were glowing black. They were violently frosting over, cracking under the apocalyptic pressure of an immortal soul that had completely surrendered to madness.
’Transparent Silk,’ Wangchen’s fractured consciousness whispered. ’A sensual duet. With another man. In front of an audience of demons and humans...’
The blood-iron bars of the cell began to groan.
The Yin-Suppression array, designed to smother Yang energy, encountered a fundamental error.
Xie Wangchen did not rely on Yang energy. He relied on the freezing void of the Eternal Cloud Peak.
The temperature in the dungeon dropped from a humid eighty degrees to minus two hundred and fifty degrees in a fraction of a second.
The two gossiping guards didn’t even have time to scream.
They were instantly frozen into solid blocks of opaque black ice, their pipes frozen halfway to their lips.
"Sovereign Xie?" Lu Jianheng gasped, his breath pluming in the freezing air, stepping away from the rapidly icing bars. "What are you doing? The array—"
"The array is dead," Wangchen purred.
His voice was a soft, melodic, chillingly gentle hum of genocide.
He didn’t break the cuffs; the cuffs simply shattered into dust, unable to withstand the frosting power of ice.
He reached out and grasped the thick, blood-iron bars of the cell. The metal crystallized, became brittle as glass, and shattered effortlessly under his grip.
Wangchen stepped out of the cell.
His ruby eyes were not glowing; they were burning, bleeding a terrifying crimson mist into the freezing air. The thirty-foot executioner’s scythe of solid black frost, Winter’s Sigh, materialized in his hand, humming with the promise of mass extinction.
He didn’t care about stealth.
He didn’t care about the diplomatic mission.
He knew Ji’an was a woman.
The thought of his beautiful, fierce, celestial Chef being forced into a transparent silk robe and paraded around on a stage with a foxy courtesan was a violation of his exclusive viewing rights that could only be paid for in oceans of blood.
"I will freeze the stage," Wangchen whispered to the dark corridor. "I will shatter the audience, sever the courtesan’s limbs, and freeze his soul in a block of ice at the bottom of the deepest chasm."
He turned his terrifying, bleeding ruby eyes back to the terrified boys in the cell as he murmured something.
"Follow me," the Ice Demon commanded. "We are going to the theater."
Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!
Use arrow keys (or A / D) to PREV/NEXT chapter