Crash!
A polished jade teacup was ruthlessly dashed towards the ground, splintering into countless fragments against the polished granite floor.
The fragments of jade scattered across the floor at great velocity, some shards cutting deeply into the flesh of the unfortunate servants kneeling in their path.
“Your Imperial Majesty, please calm down!”
Not a single cry of pain nor protest echoed in the room.
Rather, the group of servants, both maidservants and eunuchs, all kneeled in fear towards the person responsible for the destruction of the jade cup.
Some even touched their heads to the ground, not daring to face the master’s fury.
“Intolerable! How could I…” Lu Jing Yi gnashed his teeth, his dashing eyes now bloodshot.
“Yu Xin’s figure… when did it become so blurred…”
Slamming his right fist against his thigh, Lu Jing Yi could feel his fingers twitch once more, the unusual heat and bloodthirst beginning to coarse throughout his body without mercy.
His eyes roaming across the room, the emperor’s gaze riveted onto an ashwood tray, but more particularly, a jade teacup placed on top.
A dull green color, with inscriptions of a dancing phoenix laced with strands of silken gold. A priceless luxury in the Shattered Star Continent, an exquisite craft rumored to only have three sibling sets in the entire world.
Any ruler would easily sacrifice large coffers of treasures, even elementary cultivation resources, to obtain such an object, even if he was the emperor of Great Yong or Great Yan.
Rumored and verified by the Old Emperor of Great Yong, a single cup of tea drunk from the cup could alleviate any future chances of qi deviation, purifying the soul, meridians, and channels of spiritual qi regardless of the practitioner’s realm of cultivation. A divine treasure indeed immeasurable by value.
But most importantly to the current emperor, that teacup had always been constantly graced by a woman’s hand.
Warmed by the touch of her skin, her soft palms, presenting a morning tea to him each break of dawn to refresh his spirit.
He had relished such a great favor, enjoying every moment of that exchange and vowing to never relinquish.
And today, the jade teacup was present, but not the woman.
The first instance he had woken up, a palace servant had informed Lu Jing Yi that the empress was currently outside the Imperial Court, touring the streets of Jiang’an.
Staring at the exquisite ornament of jade and feeling a dull heartache at his core for reasons unknown, Lu Jing Yi couldn’t help but think back to his dream just mere moments ago.
That soft and smooth skin without blemish, the fair texture as white as snow. Although it was a mere visual projection conjured in his dreams, Lu Jing Yi could feel the softness and warmth just by reaching out with his fingertips.
He had combed that cascade of hair, running his fingers through a sensational paradise of gossamer strands.
But most importantly, that pair of scarlet eyes. Lacking lustre just like a polished piece of tempered ruby, the pair of eyes had attracted his soul like a lover’s embrace.
Needless to dispute, he had readily leaped into the paradise, all thoughts about the consequences begone.
For the duration of the night, and as the moon gave way to the sun, Lu Jing Yi had obtained the opportunity of inducting himself of the true definition of paradise.
The sensations as he ravaged the woman before him, the gentle trembling of her body as he ignored her pleas and screams for mercy, the emperor had thoroughly enjoyed them all.
Witnessed, partook, and reveled; sealed and embossed by an imperial seal within the mind.
His mind completely sobering as the last vestiges of sleep faded into oblivion, Lu Jing Yi stared at his hands, his mind in turmoil.
Those slender fingers that moved at his behest, the body that was completely subservient to him, and even his own soul, they all seemed familiar and yet so foreign.
Obviously, that woman he had plundered in his dreams mere breaths ago was not the empress.
He had known such a fact since the beginning, and had leapt in and conducted the deed completely conscious in spirit and mind.
He had performed such an action with the subconscious thought that because it was a dream, all would disappear in the wake of dawn.
And yet, the woman’s face refused to leave.
Much of the detail was lost, but the mere silhouette of that captivating figure was more than sufficient to drive Lu Jing Yi astray.
That woman was not Feng Yu Xin, the woman he had spent countless hours, tears, and blood scheming and persisting to attain her recognition. The woman who had received the Imperial Name of ‘Hong Yu’ by the Ascended Emperor himself.
She was not the woman he had met and engaged in a deadly battle in at the windy plains, nor was she the woman whom he had risked life and death as they escaped from the clutches of the Tian Yi sect.
Then why did her figure simply refuse to release his mind?
And why did Feng Yu Xin appear so distant, almost as if she were irrelevant to his life?
Numerous thoughts blazed through his mind as Lu Jing Yi attempted to control his mind, even going to the extent of infusing copious quantities of spiritual essence as he massaged his temples.
However, all seemed futile as not only did that mysterious figure not diminish, it seemed to occupy more of his thoughts, even hinting with their ‘experiences’ in the dream.
Suddenly, his pulse accelerated viciously, the veins bulging in agony as the blood raced through akin to rampaging waves across a previously calm ocean.
“Ah…” The emperor groaned in pain, clawing at his own body in an attempt of expelling the malignant symptoms.
“Your Imperial Majesty!” the chief eunuch cried in panic, before ushering the other servants to mobilize.
“Quick. The Imperial Physicians, call them here immediately!”
Hot!
Other than the sensation of burning alive, all Lu Jing Yi could experience was an ever-growing desire for bloodlust and savagery.
The panicked shuffling of the palace maidservants and eunuchs, the anxious cries and shouts of the Imperial Physicians examining his body, all were diluted to mere buzzing of mosquitoes.
Watching a hazy image of his own arm swat at the sources of the unbearable noise, Lu Jing Yi did not feel much remorse or confusion; instead, he seemed oddly driven towards compounding such actions, even going as far as amplifying his strength with spiritual essence to drive the annoying gnats away.
“Enough! Scram!”
With a fearsome roar, a jade teacup that once rested upon an exquisite ashwood tray was sent flying by a swat from Lu Jing Yi’s right arm.
Heavily struck by an attack empowered by spiritual essence, the teacup didn’t even have the opportunity to shatter into countless fragments, having forcibly disintegrated into a green cloud of powdered jade.
Lu Jing Yi suddenly lurched after another flail of his arm, his heart pounding frantically as if it had lost something dear to him.
The odd phenomenon receding completely as the bloodlust gradually faded away, the emperor dumbly gazed around the room.
The expensive and luxurious adornments, furniture, and fabrics that had once attended to the room’s interior were reduced to shreds and tarnished, condemned to the fate of being discarded.
At the base of the bed lay a small pile of a dull green powder, and a little further away, a shard of green jade, the fragmented inscription visible in Lu Jing Yi’s vision.
“What…have I done…”
His countenance blank as confusion and realization slowly began to converge, the emperor directed an empty stare towards the interior of the room. When his vision landed on the shard and pile of jade, Lu Jing Yi’s heart surged with a frenzy, the reason clearly known deep within him.
–
“The Gates of Truth and Falsehood reside within the Sanctum of Eternity. Four Gates of Truth, Four Gates of Falsehood, and one of Eternity mandate the cycling of time and natural illusory phenomenon of the environment. Truth and falsehood may not intermingle, but also may not survive without the other; the unison forms the basis of all immortal existence…”
Within a crystal throne room, a young girl in a green dress reclined against the throne as she read from an aged tome in a languished manner.
Her voice was exceedingly quiet like a soft caress of the ears, tugging gently but inexorably at the heartstrings of others.
After some point, the girl placed the book down, her scarlet irises deeply observing the hall before her.
“These corridors… Are they what the book states as the Gates of Truth and Falsehood? They do look like gates…and given that I have only explored one…but what’s the difference?”
