Chapter 578: Chapter-578
"Warning: Insufficient System Points for physical manifestation," a cold, automated prompt chimed in the lion’s internal interface. "Recharge required."
The System ignored the warning, violently throwing itself at the assassins again and again, trying desperately to push their hands away from Heena’s shoulders. Its digital form glitched and flickered wildly with every failed, intangible impact.
"Let her go! I said, let her go, you damn bastards! You fucking morons!" the System screamed, its voice cracking with sheer, unadulterated panic.
It was crying now. Glowing blue tears streamed down its holographic face as its fists passed uselessly through the killers’ heavy armor. The assassins didn’t even feel a breeze. They simply adjusted their grip on Heena and began carrying her toward the dark, ruined corridors at the back of the hall.
Realizing it couldn’t physically stop them, the System floated frantically down to Heena’s eye level. It hovered right in front of her pale face, grabbing her cheeks with its intangible paws, shaking her as hard as its failing digital form would allow.
"Host, wake up!" the System sobbed, its desperate voice echoing loudly inside her mind. "Please, Host! Wake up!"
Deep inside the suffocating darkness of her own mind, Heena heard every single word.
She could feel the rough, bruising grip of the assassins’ hands digging into her shoulders. She could feel her boots dragging uselessly across the uneven stone floor as they carried her away. And she could hear the frantic, agonizing cries of her usually obnoxious System ringing clearly in her ears.
Her mind was completely awake. The freezing, sharp clarity of the Vanguard commander was still there, violently commanding her muscles to contract, screaming at her hands to reach for her hidden blades.
But the neurotoxin was absolute.
It had completely severed the connection between her brain and her body. She couldn’t twitch a single finger. She couldn’t pry her heavy eyelids open. She couldn’t even force a gasp of air through her paralyzed throat to tell the weeping System to quiet down.
She was a prisoner inside her own flesh, being dragged into the suffocating darkness of the Cold Palace, unable to move a single muscle to save herself.
As the assassins dragged her deeper into the rotting labyrinth of the Cold Palace, Heena’s mind was a storm of absolute, freezing rage.
This time, it was entirely her fault. She had been careless.
She had let the flawless execution of the banquet and the Emperor’s favor lull her into a false sense of security. She had underestimated the sheer, bottomless depravity of these ancient politicians. They didn’t play by the rules of the battlefield; they fought like cornered, venomous snakes in the dark.
’Damn it,’ Heena cursed herself violently in the dark confines of her own paralyzed mind. ’These ancient bastards.’
She made a silent, blood-soaked vow to the heavens. If she survived this night, she wasn’t just going to kill the Prime Minister. She was going to personally carve him into exactly seventy-eight pieces, completely awake and unmedicated, and feed him to the ornamental koi fishes in the imperial gardens with her own two hands.
The assassins finally stopped. A heavy wooden door was kicked open, groaning loudly on rusted hinges.
The two men unceremoniously threw her inside. Heena hit the dusty, freezing floorboards hard, her head bouncing slightly against the wood. She couldn’t even brace for the impact.
"Host! Please! Get up!"
She could still hear the frantic, agonizing shouts of her little digital sister, the System, hovering right next to her ear.
Heena desperately tried to fire a command back through their neural link. She tried to tell the idiot to stop crying and start scanning for a chemical antidote. But nothing happened.
The telepathy was completely dead.
Heena’s consciousness pushed against a thick, suffocating wall of fog in her brain. She didn’t know if the mental block was because she was simply too exhausted from the fight, or if the red powder had severely damaged her neurological pathways. Whatever the reason, her internal voice could not reach the System. She was entirely cut off, trapped alone inside her own head.
As the heavy wooden door slammed shut, plunging the room into absolute, pitch-black darkness, Heena noticed something terrifying.
The freezing, numb sensation of the paralytic toxin was beginning to shift.
It wasn’t wearing off—her muscles were still completely useless, collapsed and heavy like lead. But beneath the paralysis, a strange, creeping heat began to blossom in her chest. The cold numbness was being rapidly replaced by a deeply uncomfortable, feverish warmth that spread like wildfire through her veins. Her skin flushed, and her breathing, which had been shallow and slow, suddenly became ragged and heavy.
Her sharp, analytical mind pushed through the chemical fog, piecing the symptoms together.
The Prime Minister wasn’t just trying to kill her. If they wanted her dead, the assassins would have slit her throat the moment she collapsed in the courtyard.
They had brought her to the Cold Palace. They had used a collapsing agent. And now, this suffocating, unnatural heat...
’It’s an aphrodisiac,’ Heena realized, a sickening wave of revulsion washing over her.
It was a dual-layered, incredibly malicious poison. A collapsing medicine to render her completely helpless, mixed with a heavy, high-grade aphrodisiac to strip away her sanity. The Prime Minister didn’t just want to take her life; he wanted to completely obliterate the Vanguard’s honor, destroy her reputation, and leave her utterly disgraced before she died.
She was locked in a dark room, paralyzed, burning from the inside out, and she couldn’t even call her System for help. For the first time since she had transmigrated, the invincible Vanguard Madam was in genuine, terrifying danger.
The heavy wooden door slammed shut with a resounding thud, followed immediately by the harsh, metallic scraping of an iron latch sliding into place. The assassins had left her inside the pitch-black room.
Even through the chemical fog clouding her brain, Heena’s razor-sharp mind instantly deduced their plan.
They weren’t going to kill her themselves. They had locked her in the Cold Palace, paralyzed and burning from the inside out with a high-grade aphrodisiac, because they were waiting for someone else. The Prime Minister had orchestrated a complete theatrical destruction. Soon, a man—likely a carefully selected, repulsive pawn—would be sent into this room to defile the paralyzed Vanguard Madam. Then, ’coincidentally,’ the imperial guards or rival officials would burst in to catch her in the act, completely annihilating her reputation and forcing the Emperor to execute her for crimes of obscenity.
It was a fate worse than a battlefield death.
Trapped in the suffocating darkness, unable to lift even a single eyelash, Heena felt the unnatural, feverish heat of the medicine burning fiercely through her veins. Her breathing grew heavier, her chest rising and falling rapidly against the cold, dusty floorboards.
Suddenly, a faint noise cut through the silence.
*Creak.*
It wasn’t the heavy wooden door. The sound came from the opposite side of the room. A soft rustling of fabric, followed by the distinct, strained groan of an old wooden window frame being forcefully pushed open.
Heena couldn’t open her eyes, but her highly trained hearing picked up every microscopic detail. A sudden gust of freezing night wind swept into the stagnant room, carrying the scent of dead willow leaves.
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