Chapter 223

The imperial palace had already been reduced to ruins. Duke Qin Lu and another member of the royal family were overseeing its renovation and reconstruction. Meanwhile, the Emperor and the others were staying temporarily in a manor castle somewhere in the Upper District.

Perched halfway up the mountainside, the manor was magnificent, scarcely inferior to the Papal Palace. Following the attendant sent to receive her, Ye Zheng entered one of the castle buildings. The windows throughout were tightly shut, leaving the interior dimly lit. There were few people in sight, and an oppressive silence filled the halls.

The attendant escorted the Papess into a spacious hall before stopping at the foot of a staircase. He bowed respectfully toward Ye Zheng.

"His Majesty wishes to meet with Your Holiness alone."

Ye Zheng instructed the accompanying knights to wait in the hall before ascending the staircase by herself.

Her footsteps echoed softly through the quiet corridors. As she climbed, Ye Zheng silently took in her surroundings. There were no unsettling paintings here. The walls were painted a muted dark red, a color that became strangely oppressive the longer one stared at it.

This manor belonged to the Aston royal family. As far as she knew, it was an old estate with a long history, though its secluded location had kept it largely unnoticed.

Her thoughts wandered for a moment. She wondered where Heath was staying. The last time they met, Heath had stepped in to help Wende and the others. Ye Zheng wanted to thank her personally and, at the same time, quietly sound her out.

Heath enjoyed an unusually close relationship with the Emperor. More accurately, the Emperor placed a considerable degree of trust in her. That had been entirely beyond Ye Zheng's expectations.

Looking back on everything, Heath had always appeared quietly at every crucial turning point. The way she subtly guided events from the shadows had even caught Ye Zheng by surprise.

Ye Zheng maintained an even, unhurried pace. After some time, she finally reached the end of the staircase, the castle's highest attic.

The attic itself wasn't large, but the windowsill was broad. The Emperor stood beside it, gazing out at the scenery beyond.

He was clearly a man who cared deeply about his appearance. Every time Ye Zheng had seen him, he had been impeccably dressed in refined, luxurious attire, even more fastidious than Sykes. Today, he wore a fitted dark blue velvet coat. At first glance, he could easily have been mistaken for an elegant young nobleman.

Though he had undoubtedly heard her approach, the middle-aged man didn't move. He remained standing by the window, his attention fixed on the view outside. A faint trace of mockery flickered across Ye Zheng's lips.

She stepped closer. From the wide windowsill, the sprawling manor lay spread out below, the winding mountain road snaking through the landscape, while the countless buildings of the Upper District glittered in the distance like scattered stars. The mountain breeze brushed against her face, filling her with an unexpected sense of exhilaration.

“This is a good place,” Ye Zheng said, breaking the silence.

The Emperor turned toward her and gave a small nod of approval.

“Yes. Whenever my heart is troubled, I come here to feel the wind and take in the view.”

“The scenery may be beautiful, but don't you get tired of looking at it for five hundred years?”

The ease vanished from the Emperor's expression almost imperceptibly. His heavy eyelids seemed to twitch. Ye Zheng, however, continued as though she'd noticed nothing at all.

“If it were me, I wouldn't have the patience to spend five hundred years serving as Pope in the Upper District. You truly have my deepest admiration.”

Ye Zheng let out a sigh that was equal parts genuine and mocking, narrowing her eyes against the mountain wind brushing across her face.

She no longer had the patience to watch the Emperor hide behind his air of inscrutable profundity, nor to trade lofty pleasantries with him. The truth had already been laid bare. There was no reason to keep playing this game of riddles. She was tired of looking at his carefully cultivated hypocrisy.

Ye Zheng studied the Emperor with undisguised curiosity. She had known countless people who excelled at wearing masks. She herself was one of them.

But to spend five centuries assuming the identities of his own descendants, portraying more than a dozen different emperors... that was something else entirely. Ye Zheng remembered the long corridor within the imperial palace, its walls lined with portraits of every successive ruler. Whenever he walked through that hall and found an entire gallery filled with different versions of himself, didn't he find it absurd?

The two stood facing one another in silence. Ye Zheng noticed the fine lines at the corners of the man's eyes gather ever so slightly. He was smiling.

His lips remained perfectly level, his golden eyes retained their regal composure, and his stern features never softened. Yet Ye Zheng could tell. The faint quiver at the corners of his eyes gave him away. He was smiling.

What pleased him so much? Had someone finally recognized the sheer scale of the deception, the grand performance he'd sustained across an empire for hundreds of years?

A cold smile curved across Ye Zheng's lips, sharp as the edge of a drawn blade.

“My wife's remains are with you.”

The Emperor's voice was low, calm, and utterly certain.

Ye Zheng replied, “The wife you're referring to... is she the current Empress living in the castle, or the late Empress Qin Tian, who died more than ten years ago...? Ah, now that I think about it, there are nearly twenty possible candidates.”

“Ye Zheng, it seems you already know who she is. How truly... remarkable.”

“Margaret, my first wife. We stood by each other in our youth, but later she lost her way. And now... she's fallen into your hands.”

The Emperor's voice carried a sickening note of nostalgia.

“Went astray... you mean by turning into the Demonic Dragon?” Ye Zheng seized on the crucial phrase, her eyes fixing on him without wavering.

“At the time, the royal family and the great noble houses were in decline. To restore their former glory, she pursued every conceivable path, eventually placing her hopes in ancient forbidden arts. That was how the Demonic Dragon came to be.”

“I concealed both her existence and the Demonic Dragon's true identity, not only to protect the royal family's reputation, but also to preserve the last shred of her dignity.”

The Emperor, or rather, Vincent Aston, spoke with measured composure, his voice so smooth and practiced that it gave Ye Zheng the unsettling impression he was reciting lines he'd repeated countless times before.

Ye Zheng lowered her gaze slightly, a cold glint flickering in her eyes. This old monster isn't being honest at all.

From the scattered records she'd uncovered in ancient documents, she knew that Empress Margaret, five centuries ago, had championed embracing the tides of a changing era, introducing one forward-thinking policy after another. How could someone like that have placed her faith in forbidden arts?

Judging another person solely by one man's account was inherently biased. But whether his words were truth or lies, they still revealed the shape of his heart.

The one obsessed with restoring the glory of the old age, the one who truly believed in forbidden arts, was most likely Aston XIV himself.

“I don't know what you consider forbidden arts. If a woman suddenly transforming into the Demonic Dragon qualifies, then what about you?”

“Vincent, the great Aston XIV... you've lingered in this world for hundreds of years, repeatedly taking over the bodies of your own descendants to extend your life. What kind of forbidden arts did you use?”

The instant those razor-sharp words left Ye Zheng's lips, the man's calm, dignified mask cracked. For the briefest moment, his expression twisted, the corners of his eyes twitching violently before he barked, “Insolence!”

“Ye Zheng, it's true that I've resorted to extraordinary means to survive until this day. I've wronged many people, but you have no right to judge me!”

“If it weren't for me, the empire would've been destroyed long ago by the Demonic Dragon and the Aberrant Realms. Ask that old friend of mine residing within your body. It was I who united the entire empire under a single banner! Even the so-called God of Hope was someone I recognized for her worth and put to proper use. Otherwise, she'd have remained nothing more than a country girl!”

“Without everything I accomplished, you would never have been born into such a prosperous nation... and you certainly wouldn't have the right to stand before me now, baring your fangs and claws.”

The middle-aged man's voice crashed through the mountaintop like successive peals of thunder. By the time he spoke the final sentence, every word was forced through clenched teeth.

Without waiting for Ye Zheng to respond, he drew a steady breath. When he spoke again, his voice had returned to its usual calm.

“Do you think I invited you here today to make you hand over her remains?”

“No. Even if those remains were returned to me, there's no longer enough time to create another Sykes. At this point, I have no further use for them. You may keep them.”

Hearing that, Ye Zheng frowned. Aston XIV's words seemed to suggest there was something far more significant hidden behind Sykes's existence.

“You killed Sykes, destroyed the Hope Project, and despise me more than anyone else… I can overlook all of it.”

“Because time is running out.”

The Emperor spoke unhurriedly.

“Within half a year, a true catastrophe will descend. It may come half a year from now, or it may arrive tomorrow.”

“Ye Zheng, at a moment like this, do you truly intend to disregard the safety of the empire's people and wage war against me?”

Ye Zheng slowly blinked her dark eyes, silently weighing the Emperor's words.

“So, what you're saying is… you want to cooperate with me?”

The last words carried the faintest trace of amusement. Standing beside the windowsill with half her face veiled in shadow, Ye Zheng's expression remained impossible to read.