Chapter 583: Chapter-583
The silver needle felt impossibly heavy in the Third Wife’s hands. It was no thicker than a blade of winter grass, yet to her, it carried the sheer, crushing weight of both their lives.
CRASH!
The sound of the outer door splintering into wooden shrapnel violently echoed through the small guest pavilion. The heavy, predatory footsteps of the Prime Minister’s assassins hit the floorboards of the outer room. They were inside. The hunt was over.
The Third Wife’s entire body was seized by a violent, uncontrollable tremor. Her breath hitched in her throat, coming out in short, terrified wheezes. She had never held a weapon in her life. She had never struck a person, never intentionally caused harm. Her hands shook so fiercely that the silver needle vibrated in the dim, watery light of the bathroom.
She looked down at the pale, exposed nape of the Vanguard Madam’s neck.
’Two inches deep. Base of the skull.’
The instructions echoed in her mind, but her brain was screaming in pure, primal panic. What if her hand slipped? What if she missed the acupoint and severed the spinal cord? What if she pushed too hard and instantly killed the only person who had ever looked at her with respect instead of pity? The terrifying reality of the human anatomy beneath that pale skin paralyzed her.
"They are checking the bedroom!" a muffled, raspy voice shouted from the outer room. "Look behind the screens!"
The Third Wife squeezed her eyes shut, hot tears instantly spilling over her dark lashes and dripping into the freezing bathwater. She could literally hear her own heartbeat roaring in her ears, deafening and erratic.
She thought of the Prime Minister. She thought of the dark, suffocating room in the manor where she had been locked away for days at a time. She thought of the bitter, agonizing poison he forced down her throat disguised as medicine, and the hollow, dead-eyed doll she saw in the bronze mirror every morning. She had spent three years trembling. Three years begging for a mercy that did not exist.
If she failed now, she wouldn’t just die. She would be dragged back to that manor.
The Third Wife’s eyes snapped open. The doll-like deadness was completely gone, replaced by the hysterical, desperate ferocity of a cornered animal. She bit down on her lower lip so hard she tasted the sharp, metallic tang of her own blood, using the pain to force her shaking hands to steady.
She grabbed Heena’s soaked, heavy collar with her left hand to brace the general’s head. With her right hand, she aimed the silver tip directly at the small hollow at the base of Heena’s skull.
"Forgive me," the Third Wife whispered into the darkness.
She pushed.
The resistance of the flesh was terrifying. The needle pierced the skin, sliding through the dense, tightly coiled muscle of the Vanguard commander’s neck. The Third Wife whimpered, her entire body shaking with the physical and emotional exertion of the act, but she didn’t stop. She pushed the needle deeper, feeling the horrifying sensation of the metal sliding past tendons and grazing the edge of the cervical vertebrae.
Pop.
A sickening, microscopic sensation vibrated through the silver needle as it hit the exact center of the Jade Pillar nerve cluster.
"WARNING! MASSIVE NEUROLOGICAL TRAUMA DETECTED!" the System shrieked at the top of its digital lungs, the blue interfaces in Heena’s vision instantly flashing a blinding, violent crimson red.
Beneath the freezing water, Heena’s body underwent an absolute, terrifying biological explosion.
The moment the needle struck the nerve cluster, it was as if a bolt of raw, unadulterated lightning had been forcefully injected directly into her spinal column. The pain was astronomical. It transcended physical agony, completely short-circuiting her brain’s pain receptors.
But the ancient battlefield technique did exactly what it was designed to do.
The extreme, localized trauma to the central nervous system triggered an instant, catastrophic dump of adrenaline. Her adrenal glands violently flooded her bloodstream with cortisol and epinephrine, completely overwhelming the chemical structure of the paralytic neurotoxin. The boiling heat of the aphrodisiac was instantly vaporized by the sheer, freezing survival instincts overriding her brain.
Heena’s eyes violently snapped open, the pupils dilating until her eyes were almost entirely pitch black.
She gasped, but it wasn’t a ragged, weak breath. It was a sharp, vicious intake of oxygen, like a drowning predator finally breaking the surface.
The paralysis shattered like fragile glass. Sensation returned to her limbs in a rush of agonizing pins and needles, followed immediately by the terrifying, explosive strength of the Vanguard.
"Holy mother of— Host! Your heart rate is at two hundred beats per minute! You are going into cardiac overdrive!" the System panicked, watching the red warnings flash across its screen.
Heena didn’t care. She could move.
In the outer room, the three black-clad assassins had completely destroyed the guest pavilion’s interior. They had flipped the wooden bed frame, shredded the silk privacy screens, and smashed the porcelain tea sets looking for their target.
"The bedroom is clear," one of the assassins hissed, gripping his serrated, poisoned blade tightly.
The leader of the trio swept his emotionless, dead eyes across the ruined room. His gaze suddenly stopped on the wooden floorboards. In the dim moonlight, a clear, glistening trail of water and wet footprints led directly from the shattered front door, across the room, and straight under the crack of the closed bathroom door.
The leader raised his hand, signaling the other two. He pointed his bloodstained blade silently toward the bathroom.
Inside, the Third Wife had collapsed against the side of the wooden tub, completely devoid of strength. She sat on the wet, freezing floorboards, her knees pulled to her chest, trembling so violently her teeth chattered. She stared at the closed wooden door, watching the shadows of the assassins’ feet appear in the crack of light at the bottom.
They had found them.
The Third Wife clamped both hands over her mouth to stop herself from screaming. The absolute terror completely paralyzed her. She closed her eyes tightly, waiting for the door to burst open and the cold steel of a blade to end her miserable life.
Thud.
An armored boot kicked the bathroom door. The wooden latch groaned, splintering slightly, but held firm.
The Third Wife sobbed silently into her hands. It was over.
CRASH!
The second kick violently shattered the lock. The wooden door flew inward, slamming brutally against the wall and bouncing back on its hinges.
The three assassins rushed into the cramped, freezing bathroom, raising their poisoned blades high, their eyes locking onto the trembling, frail woman cowering on the floor beside the bathing tub.
But before their weapons could even begin to descend, the stagnant water in the tub violently exploded.
It was not a human rising from the bath; it was a demon born from the abyss.
A massive geyser of freezing, dirty water erupted into the air as Heena vaulted out of the high wooden tub. Her champagne robes were completely plastered to her body, dripping with heavy water, but the sheer, overwhelming aura of death radiating from her instantly suffocated the cramped room.
The assassins froze in sheer, primal shock. The neurotoxin was supposed to be absolute. She was supposed to be a paralyzed, helpless target.
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