Chapter 594: Chapter-594
The first pale, grey light of dawn slowly crept through the intricately carved wooden lattice windows of the Prime Minister’s opulent estate. Outside, the estate was perfectly serene, the picture of aristocratic elegance.
Inside the master bedroom, it was a literal slaughterhouse of human dignity.
Smack.
A heavy, blood-stained leather whip was violently thrown to the hardwood floor. It coiled like a dead snake at the Prime Minister’s feet.
The Prime Minister stood over the trembling figure on the ground, his chest heaving with exertion. His immaculate, expensive silk robes were completely disheveled, his face twisted into a grotesque, demonic mask of pure, unfiltered rage. The polished, calculating scholar of the imperial court was entirely gone, replaced by the sadistic monster he truly was behind closed doors.
"If you dare to make a sound," the Prime Minister hissed, his voice trembling with a terrifying, homicidal fury, "I will kill you. Do you understand me? I will tear your throat out right here."
On the cold, polished floorboards, the Third Wife lay entirely collapsed.
She couldn’t have made a sound even if she wanted to. Her throat was raw, her breath coming in shallow, agonizing gasps. There was not a single inch of her pale skin that wasn’t covered in fresh, violent welts, dark purple bruises, and the raised, overlapping ridges of old scars.
She had been beaten continuously since the absolute second the carriage doors closed and they crossed the threshold of the estate the night before.
The Prime Minister had not rushed her away from the Emperor’s palace out of concern for her health. He hadn’t brought her home because she "needed treatment."
It was all a meticulously calculated, disgusting lie.
When his entire spy network was silently butchered by the Vanguard shadow guards, and his flawless assassination plot had blown up in his face, the Prime Minister had been consumed by a suffocating, terrifying rage. But inside the Imperial Palace, surrounded by the Emperor’s guards and the Vanguard’s hidden blades, he couldn’t show a single ounce of his frustration.
He couldn’t scream. He couldn’t strike out. He had to swallow his defeat and play the calm, grieving husband.
So, he used his "traumatized" wife as the perfect excuse to flee the palace. He dragged her back to the absolute isolation of his own heavily guarded manor for one singular purpose: he needed a punching bag. He needed to vent the terrifying humiliation and fear that Heena and Samuel had inflicted upon him, and he could only do that in a place where no one would hear her scream.
"Useless," the Prime Minister spat, looking down at her battered body with absolute disgust. "I am surrounded by incompetent fools and useless animals."
He turned his back on her, pacing toward the bronze washbasin to scrub the sweat and exertion from his hands, muttering venomously about the Vanguard and the Emperor’s court.
On the floor, the Third Wife’s body violently trembled. She had no strength left in her limbs. Her vision was completely blurred from the sheer agony radiating through her broken ribs and torn skin.
But as she lay there in a pool of her own blood and tears, her bruised fingers curled tightly against her stomach.
Hidden securely inside the innermost lining of her torn undergarments was the tiny, waterproof wooden pillbox.
Every time the whip had struck her back, every time he had kicked her frail body, she had focused her entire, shattered mind on that single, microscopic pill.
Endure, she told herself, biting the inside of her cheek so hard it bled, refusing to give him the satisfaction of a whimper. Just endure this one last night.
She watched his back through her swollen, half-lidded eyes. He thought he was breaking her. He thought this beating was just another routine punishment to keep his pathetic, frail wife in line. He had absolutely no idea that every strike of the whip was only carving her hatred into an unbreakable, diamond-hard resolve.
The Vanguard Madam was right. It was time to build a half-coffin.
As the morning sun finally broke over the horizon, bathing the bloody room in a soft, golden light, the Third Wife closed her eyes and waited for the servants to bring his morning tea.
The Prime Minister stood over the ornate bronze washbasin, plunging his hands into the warm, scented water. He meticulously scrubbed his skin, watching with cold, detached apathy as the water slowly tinted a faint, rusty pink from the blood of his Third Wife.
He dried his hands on a pristine white silk towel, tossing it carelessly onto the floor beside the basin.
"Enter," he commanded, his voice completely smoothed over, returning to the cultured, melodic baritone of the empire’s highest civil official.
The heavy wooden doors creaked open. A line of silent, head-bowed servants quickly filed into the room, expertly keeping their eyes fixed firmly on the floorboards. They completely ignored the battered, bleeding woman curled up in the corner of the room. In this manor, seeing, hearing, or acknowledging the Prime Minister’s brutality was a guaranteed death sentence.
With practiced efficiency, the servants began to dress him for the morning imperial assembly.
They draped him in the immaculate, deep crimson robes of the Prime Minister, heavily embroidered with gold thread and the insignia of the mythical silver crane—a symbol of supreme scholarly virtue and unyielding loyalty to the Emperor. They smoothed every crease, secured his jade belt, and carefully pinned his official headdress into his perfectly combed hair.
In a matter of minutes, the sadistic monster who had just spent the entire night torturing a helpless woman vanished entirely. In his place stood the dignified, untouchable pillar of the imperial court.
The Prime Minister walked over to his heavy mahogany study desk, adjusting his cuffs. Resting in the center of the table was a freshly bound imperial memorial, drafted in his own flawless, sweeping calligraphy before the dawn broke.
He picked up the heavy bamboo scroll, a dark, venomous smile playing on his lips.
Heena and Samuel thought they had won. They thought that by erasing the assassins and retreating to their fortified estate, they had outsmarted him. But the Vanguard family were wolves, and wolves only understood the physical hunt. They fundamentally lacked the subtle, poisoned fangs of a political serpent.
"The Vanguard Marquis mobilized a fully armed, unsanctioned unit of lethal shadow guards directly into the Emperor’s Forbidden Inner Palace," the Prime Minister thought, his dark eyes gleaming as he traced the ink on the scroll. "A blatant display of military force within the Imperial Harem. A direct threat to the Son of Heaven."
It didn’t matter that the Vanguard guards were hunting assassins. It didn’t matter that Heena was the victim.
The Emperor was an incredibly paranoid, insecure ruler who constantly lost sleep over the overwhelming military might of the Vanguard Marquis family. If the Prime Minister stood before the imperial court today and publicly pointed a finger at the Vanguard, accusing them of treating the Emperor’s home like their own private military playground, the Emperor’s fear would do the rest of the work.
The Emperor would demand the old Marquis surrender his military seals as punishment for the treasonous overstep. And without their military command, the Vanguard family would be entirely defenseless.
He was going to sever the Vanguard’s neck without ever drawing a sword.
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