Chapter 576: Chapter-576
The carriage groaned to a halt in front of the legendary Cold Palace. From the outside, the towering walls and sweeping eaves still carried the grand, imposing architecture of the royal family. But the moment Heena stepped out of the carriage and the heavy wooden courtyard doors creaked open, the illusion violently shattered.
Damn. It wasn’t a palace. It was a literal haunted house.
The courtyard was choked with overgrown, dead weeds. The red paint was peeling off the pillars like rotting skin, and the paper windows were torn, dark, and hollow. A freezing, unnatural wind swept through the courtyard, rattling the broken roof tiles and making the dead branches of a massive willow tree scratch against the stone walls.
Pop.
"Host! There is a ghost!"
The glowing blue lion materialized, let out a high-pitched, digital shriek, and immediately launched itself into the air. It scrambled frantically up Heena’s robes and dove straight under her thick fur collar, clinging to her neck and trembling violently.
Heena let out a long, exhausted sigh, not even bothering to swat the glowing coward away. ’You absolute idiot,’ she muttered in her mind, completely unbothered by the eerie atmosphere. ’We have literally died and transmigrated through so many different worlds. Tell me, is there any ghost in existence that is more dangerous than us?’
The System poked one glowing blue ear out from beneath the fur collar, its voice pitching up in pure panic. "That doesn’t matter! At least I can talk to you! What about those ghosts?! I cannot communicate with them! What if they don’t listen to reason?!"
Heena rolled her eyes, stepping gracefully over a broken piece of masonry as she walked casually into the dark, desolate courtyard. ’You are a multidimensional digital system. They are dead people. They cannot even see you, even if they were actually here.’
"Who knows?!" the System cried out, aggressively burrowing itself even deeper into her collar until only its pixelated tail was visible. "You do not know what an ancient ghost can do! They bypass firewalls, Host! Spiritual firewalls!"
Heena just shook her head. Talking to him when he was in this state was completely useless. She let the System hide in her collar, her champagne robes sweeping over the dead grass as she kept her laser-sharp eyes locked onto the dark, open doorway of the main hall, ready to see exactly what kind of living monsters were waiting for her in the dark.
The heavy, rotting wooden doors of the main hall stood slightly ajar, completely swallowed by the suffocating darkness inside.
Heena stepped over the high wooden threshold, her boots clicking softly against the dusty stone floor. The moment her back completely cleared the doorway, a loud, violent SLAM echoed through the desolate courtyard. The heavy doors were forcefully shoved shut from the outside, instantly followed by the distinct, heavy clack of an iron padlock snapping into place.
Outside, the frantic, scrambling footsteps of the servant girl could be heard sprinting away into the night, desperate to escape whatever bloodbath was about to happen.
Heena didn’t flinch. She didn’t turn around to bang on the locked doors. She simply stood in the pitch-black hall, the faint moonlight filtering through the torn paper windows casting long, distorted shadows across the floor. The air inside was thick with the smell of rotting wood, dust, and the unmistakable, metallic tang of old blood.
"Well, that was incredibly cliché," Heena muttered aloud, casually brushing a speck of dust off her champagne-colored sleeve.
From inside her fur collar, the System let out a muffled, terrified whimper. "Host... please tell me that was just the wind."
’It was the wind locking the door with an iron padlock,’ Heena replied dryly. ’Now stay quiet. You’re vibrating against my neck, and it’s highly distracting.’
Heena slowly let her hands drop to her sides, her long fingers sliding seamlessly into the deep folds of her wide sleeves. The Prime Minister was truly desperate. To set an ambush in the Cold Palace meant he wasn’t just trying to kill her; he was trying to make her disappear entirely. If the Vanguard Madam vanished in the forbidden harem gates, her grandfather would tear the capital apart, but without a body, he could never legally prove the Prime Minister’s involvement.
A soft, almost imperceptible rustle of fabric echoed from the exposed wooden rafters above.
Heena didn’t look up, but her fox-like eyes narrowed into deadly, freezing slits. She could hear them. The slow, controlled breathing. The faint creak of weight shifting on old wood.
One. Four. Seven... Twelve.
There were twelve men hiding in the shadows of the ceiling.
"If the Empress Dowager truly wanted to share a cup of midnight tea," Heena’s voice rang out, cold and entirely unbothered, echoing through the empty hall, "she certainly has an unusual way of greeting her guests. Or perhaps the Prime Minister’s budget has simply run so dry that he can only afford to send rats to do a tiger’s job?"
The shadows instantly detached from the ceiling.
Twelve figures dressed in pitch-black, form-fitting armor dropped silently to the stone floor, completely surrounding her in a tight circle. Their faces were entirely concealed behind black cloth, leaving only their dead, emotionless eyes visible. In their hands, they held curved, serrated blades that gleamed with a sickening, greenish-purple hue under the moonlight.
Poison. Highly concentrated, fast-acting poison. A single scratch would be enough to paralyze a full-grown horse.
The assassins didn’t speak. They didn’t engage in villainous banter or announce their master’s name. They were elite, soulless killers bred for one purpose, and they moved with terrifying, synchronized precision.
Without a single sound, the three assassins directly in front of her lunged, their poisoned blades slicing through the air, aiming directly for her throat, heart, and legs.
"HOST!" the System shrieked, completely forgetting its fear of ghosts in the face of actual, physical death.
Heena finally moved.
She didn’t step back. She didn’t try to dodge the encirclement. Instead, with a flick of her wrists, two sleek, midnight-black Vanguard daggers slid perfectly from her sleeves and locked into her grip.
She dropped low, sliding across the dusty stone floor with terrifying speed, completely ducking under the first assassin’s blade. Before the man could even register his miss, Heena spun, kicking his knee with bone-shattering force. As his leg buckled, she drove her left dagger straight up through the underside of his jaw, the blade piercing cleanly into his brain.
She yanked the dagger out in a spray of warm blood, using the dead man’s collapsing body as a human shield just as the second and third assassins brought their swords down.
Their poisoned blades bit deeply into their own comrade’s back.
Heena didn’t give them a fraction of a second to recover. She kicked the corpse forward, throwing them off balance, and launched herself into the air. Her heavy champagne robes flared out like the wings of a predatory bird. She landed lightly on the shoulders of the second assassin, crossing her arms and viciously dragging both of her daggers across the throats of the second and third men in one fluid, blinding motion.
They collapsed, clutching their gushing throats, choking on their own blood.
Three down. Nine to go.
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