Chapter 556: Chapter-556
Ten minutes after the thief vanished into the night, three figures materialized on the roof of the Marcuset estate. They wore skin-tight, soundless black leather that absorbed the moonlight. These were Samuel’s personal hounds.
The shadow leader knelt, pulling a thick piece of dark violet alchemical glass from his pouch. He held it to his eye. Through the lens, the iron padlock and the stone wall were painted with violent, glowing green handprints.
The leader signaled his men. The hunt was on.
But as they leapt across the first gap, a cold drop of water hit the leader’s cheek. A light, misty drizzle began to fall over the capital.
The leader swore silently. The phosphorus powder was highly advanced, but it was water-soluble. The glowing tracks on the clay roof tiles were already beginning to blur and wash away under the rain. The hunt had just turned into a desperate, high-speed ticking clock.
The hounds abandoned caution for pure speed, tearing across the high rooftops of the merchant district. They had to keep their eyes locked on the fading green smudges before the rain erased them entirely.
They expected the trail to drop down into the heavily fortified walls of the Prime Minister’s estate. But to the shadow leader’s absolute shock, the glowing green footprints bypassed the civil district entirely.
The thief was heading straight for the towering, blood-red walls of the Forbidden Inner City—the Imperial Palace.
The hounds skidded to a halt on the roof of a high pagoda just outside the palace perimeter. The rain was falling harder now, completely washing away the glowing tracks. But they didn’t need the phosphorus anymore.
Below them, the thief dropped into the shadows of the western palace wall.
This was the most heavily guarded sector in the empire. Elite Imperial Guards in golden armor patrolled the perimeter every two minutes, and the walls were lined with hidden tripwires. But the thief didn’t panic. He pulled a specialized, heavy jade token from his belt and slid it into a hidden groove in the stone wall.
Click.
A small, hidden servant’s door—one that wasn’t on any official architectural map—swung silently open. The thief slipped inside the palace grounds just seconds before the golden-armored guards marched past.
The shadow hounds could not follow through the door without triggering the palace’s internal alarms. Moving flawlessly, the leader scaled the sheer outer wall, completely bypassing the tripwires, and hauled himself onto the glazed yellow roof tiles of the outer pavilion.
He crawled to the edge and looked down into a secluded, heavily guarded inner courtyard.
It was the Imperial Medical Pavilion.
Down below, the thief stepped out of the shadows and knelt on the wet marble. The grand doors of the pavilion opened, and an old man stepped out. He was dressed in the magnificent, crane-embroidered robes of the Head Royal Physician—the man personally responsible for brewing the Emperor’s daily health tonics.
The Physician did not look surprised. He casually accepted the dark cloth bundle from the thief.
The shadow leader watched through the rain as the Physician untied the bundle, inspecting the two jins of Aurawood and the toxic roots. The old man smiled—a chilling, hollow expression.
To ensure the goods were authentic, the Physician reached into his robes and pulled out a small, pure white rabbit by the scruff of its neck. He pinched a minuscule fragment of the raw root, mixed it with a drop of liquid from a vial, and forced it into the rabbit’s mouth.
The shadow leader held his breath.
For three seconds, nothing happened. The rabbit twitched its nose. Then, completely silently, its eyes rolled back into its head. Its tiny body seized once, violently, and then went entirely limp. Dead in less than five seconds.
The Head Royal Physician nodded in deep satisfaction. He tossed the dead rabbit to a waiting eunuch, handed the thief a heavy pouch of gold, and turned back into the pavilion to brew the Emperor’s tea.
The shadow leader felt a cold shiver run down his spine that had nothing to do with the rain.
The Prime Minister was absolutely orchestrating the theft, but he wasn’t making poison to kill a political rival. He had formed a terrifying alliance with the Head Royal Physician. They were methodically, untraceably assassinating the Emperor himself.
The leader melted back into the shadows, pulling a small bamboo cylinder and a charcoal pencil from his belt. His hands moved rapidly, drawing a highly complex Southern cipher that only Samuel could read.
Trail washed out by rain, but the rat entered the Dragon’s den. Target is the Head Royal Physician. The poison is lethal and tested. The target is the Throne.
He secured the note to the leg of a pitch-black messenger bird and released it into the storm.
The stakes had just astronomically shifted. Tomorrow night at the grand Imperial Banquet, the Emperor would raise his cup, completely unaware that his trusted Physician and his smiling Prime Minister were watching him drink Vanguard poison.
The shadow leader watched the bird disappear into the dark clouds. He knew exactly what would happen when Samuel read that note. The "idiot fiancé" was going to stop playing defense, and the capital was about to drown in blood.
The storm raged over the capital, masking the sound of a tiny tap against the carved wooden lattice of Samuel’s window.
Samuel stood in the pitch-black room of his eastern pavilion, listening to the rain. He opened the window just a fraction. The wet, pitch-black messenger bird hopped onto the sill, holding out its leg.
Samuel smoothly untied the small bamboo cylinder, offering the bird a piece of dried meat from his sleeve before sending it back out into the night.
He unrolled the tiny parchment, holding it up to the faint light of a single, shielded candle. His dark eyes scanned the complex Southern cipher. As he translated the shadow leader’s message, his expression did not twist into panic or fear.
Instead, a slow, terrifyingly brilliant smile spread across his face.
’The target is the Throne.’
Samuel burned the parchment in the candle flame, watching it turn to ash.
"So, the Prime Minister is not just a corrupt, sadistic politician," Samuel whispered to the empty room, his eyes reflecting the firelight. "He is attempting a full imperial coup. He kills the Emperor with an untraceable Vanguard poison, frames the Marcuset family for the assassination, wipes out the only military force that could oppose him, and installs a puppet prince on the throne."
It was a flawless, devastatingly ambitious plan. If Samuel had been a normal, foolish fiancé, the Vanguard would already be dead by tomorrow morning.
"How incredibly bold," Samuel murmured, crushing the ashes between his fingers. "It is going to be so much fun tearing it all apart."
.
.
.
The storm cleared by morning, leaving the capital washed and glittering under the rising sun. It was the day of the grand Imperial Banquet.
Inside her pristine pavilion, Heena stood before her bronze mirror. She was not dressed like the fragile, heavily perfumed noblewomen of the civil court. She wore the traditional formal attire of the Vanguard—deep crimson and black silk, tailored sharply at the waist, with subtle gold embroidery shaped like roaring tigers. She looked less like a noble’s daughter and more like a merciless young general preparing for war.
She attached a ceremonial, jewel-encrusted dagger to her belt, her fox-like eyes completely cold.
Suddenly, the serene silence of her courtyard was violently shattered.
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