Chapter 534: Chapter-534
The scholar’s chest heaved. "You have absolutely no respect! To speak to your elders with such venom!"
Heena’s smile widened. She slowly turned her head and looked directly at Grandpa Marcuset.
"Grandfather, look at you," Heena sighed, shaking her head in profound disappointment. "You have absolutely no manners."
Grandpa Marcuset blinked, his massive, armored shoulders dropping in utter bewilderment. The rest of the military faction stared at her in stunned silence, completely lost. Even the civil scholars looked confused. Why was she suddenly scolding her own grandfather?
"Such an ancient, venerable man is speaking to you, and you are not even offering him an apology?" Heena continued, gesturing gracefully toward the red-faced scholar.
"What... what absolute nonsense are you talking about?!" the scholar demanded, his voice cracking.
Heena looked back at him, her expression the picture of serene logic.
"Did you not just loudly declare that I was disrespecting an elder?" Heena reasoned smoothly. "By all accounts of time and reality, my grandfather is decades older than you. Yet, you just insulted him directly to his face in front of the entire court. Therefore, the only logical conclusion I can draw from your strict adherence to the rules of ’respecting elders’ is that my memory is entirely flawed."
She turned back to the towering warlord.
"It is obvious, Grandfather. This man must actually be vastly older than you! He is a living fossil!" Heena gasped theatrically. "Hurry, Grandfather. Apologize to our new great-grandfather immediately."
For three solid seconds, the courtroom was dead silent as the sheer absurdity of her logic processed in their minds.
And then, Grandpa Marcuset threw his head back and let out a booming, thunderous roar of laughter.
The military generals behind him instantly followed suit, their deep, rumbling laughter echoing off the high ceilings of the jade hall. They slapped their armored thighs, pointing at the middle-aged scholar, who now looked as if he were about to physically pass out from sheer humiliation.
He had tried to use his age and status to suppress her, and she had twisted his own words to publicly crown him a fossil.
The scholar grit his teeth so hard they squeaked. "You—!"
But before he could utter another insult, Heena’s smile vanished.
The playful, mocking warmth evaporated from her face in a millisecond, replaced by a cold, suffocating pressure that instantly killed the laughter in the hall. She looked at him not as a young woman, but as a predator staring down a very fragile piece of prey.
"Here is a second poem for you, Lord Scholar," Heena whispered, her voice carrying flawlessly through the sudden silence. "And this time, I highly suggest you commit it to memory. Because this one is not a joke."
She locked eyes with him, her voice turning into a quiet, dangerous cadence:
You bow before the silver, silent moon,
And curse the glaring, common sun at noon.
You praise the pale and distant midnight gleam,
Yet mock the forge that makes your daytime dream.
But fools forget the moon is cold and dead,
It steals the light the burning sun has shed.
So mock the sun that toils in the sky—
But if it nears, you burn, you choke, you die.
The silence that followed was absolute.
Behind her, Grandpa Marcuset and the military generals furrowed their brows. Poetry was not their strong suit, and the metaphorical nuance went slightly over their heads. They just knew it sounded incredibly intimidating.
But the scholars? The scholars understood it perfectly.
The blood drained from the faces of the civil faction. The metaphor was brutally clear. The scholars worshipped the ’Moon’—the untouchable royalty, the high society, the elegant and distant rulers who sat high above the grit of the world. And they despised the ’Sun’—the military, the Vanguard, the common soldiers who were always there, sweating and bleeding every single day to keep the empire alive.
They thought the military was common. They thought it was crude.
Heena took one step closer to the trembling scholar, dropping the poetic structure entirely to deliver the final, crushing blow in plain prose.
"Just because the sun stays with you the whole day, and the moon only graces you for a few hours, you worship the moon as if it is precious, and you taunt the sun because it is always there," Heena said coldly. "You sit in your velvet robes and think the sun is just a playful ball of light put in the sky to warm your gardens. You think the moon is a deity, completely forgetting that your precious moon produces absolutely no light of its own. It is a dead rock."
She leaned in slightly, her fox-like eyes glinting with a lethal promise.
"Never forget, Lord Scholar," Heena murmured, "that the same common, blinding sun you despise... is the only thing determining whether your fragile world lives or burns to ashes."
Clap. Clap. Clap. Clap.
The slow, rhythmic sound echoed sharply through the jade hall, instantly slicing through the volatile tension that was about to turn the Imperial Courtroom into a petty battlefield.
Everyone turned toward the front of the hall. The moment they saw the figure draped in striking imperial yellow robes emerging from behind the golden dragon screen, the entire assembly dropped to the floor like stones.
The greetings were strictly divided by faction. The civil scholars and nobles practically threw themselves down, fully kneeling with their foreheads pressed flat against the cold jade floor. The military faction, however, adhered to the martial salute. Heena, her grandfather, and the surrounding lieutenants dropped to one knee, keeping their backs straight and pressing their right fists firmly over their hearts.
The Emperor walked slowly, his dark eyes sweeping over the bowed heads. He ascended the short stairs and gracefully took his seat upon the golden dragon throne.
"Rise," the Emperor commanded, his voice smooth and echoing with absolute authority.
The court stood in unison, bowing their heads once more. "Greetings to His Imperial Majesty! May the Emperor live ten thousand years!"
The Emperor smiled, casually waving his hand to dismiss the formalities. He leaned forward, resting his chin on his knuckles, his dark eyes sparkling with a dangerous amusement.
"So," the Emperor drawled. "What interesting, funny thing was going on here just before I arrived?"
The entire courtroom immediately shut their mouths. The civil scholars wouldn’t dare repeat the humiliating poem they had just suffered, and the military generals weren’t about to snitch on their own Madam.
The Emperor’s gaze drifted past the trembling civil scholars and landed squarely on Heena.
"Well, Lady Seera," the Emperor mused, his smile widening slightly. "I must confess, I did not know that the Vanguard’s granddaughter was such an accomplished scholar. It has been a very long time since I heard such a fiercely eloquent poem within these walls."
Before Heena could answer, Grandpa Marcuset puffed out his chest. Sometimes, Heena genuinely wondered how on earth this man had survived the viper’s nest of the royal court for so many decades.
"Ha! She got it from my wife, Your Majesty!" Grandpa declared proudly, a massive grin on his weathered face.
The Emperor burst into a loud, cultured laugh. "Yes, General Marcuset. It certainly seems like she possesses her grandmother’s... formidable spirit." He looked back at Heena. "I never knew you were so deeply interested in poetry and the literary arts, my child."
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