Crown Prince [POV]
"Trash! Demonic parasite! Corporate waste! Die! Die! Die!!!"
The words tore from my throat, raw, jagged, and completely detached from the refined, elegant vocabulary expected of the future sovereign of the Yang Empire.
I couldn't contain the absolute, world-ending cataclysm of anger currently tearing through my spiritual core. Every single time I blinked, my vision rendered only two images in high-definition contrast: the porcelain, heartbreakingly beautiful face of my soulmate slowly withering on the blood-stained marble, and the grotesque, treasonous face of the demon trash who had orchestrated the strike.
I was completely out of my mind.
If a high-realm cultivation grandmaster were to analyze my current status, they wouldn't even be able to compute the data.
I didn't know what my body was doing anymore. Did I just injure the General, or did he manage to pierce my imperial defensive arrays?
Was my internal mana reserve completely depleted to absolute zero, or was his life force running on a corrupted battery?
Am I currently standing at the very precipice of victory, or am I actively knocking on the door of death myself?
Hahahaha!!!! I didn't know! I didn't care! The concept of logic had been completely liquidated from my brain! All I knew, all my soul demanded, was that I needed his severed head right now to appease my beautiful lover currently residing in the heavens!
=====°°°°°
Third Person [POV]
The atmosphere atop the primary imperial stage grew so thick with dark, suffocating energy that the sky itself began to crack. Waves of volatile black mana violently erupted from the Crown Prince's silhouette, swirling around him like a localized hurricane of pure destruction.
His consciousness was rapidly fading, his physical senses checking out one by one as his primitive, yandere survival instincts took complete control of his motor functions.
As for the Great General Tang? Anyone who looked toward his coordinate would be completely incapable of identifying the remains.
The legendary military commander could no longer be structurally distinguished as a human being; he looked like a mound of high-grade wagyu beef that had been repeatedly introduced to an industrial hydraulic press.
He was, for lack of a better corporate term, absolute waste.
The exact millisecond Young Master Tang Gong Rong arrived at the epicenter of the duel, his entire body froze completely solid, his high-realm agility qi vanishing instantly.
His father was dead. Not just defeated—brutally, savagely, and un-aesthetically demolished.
Tang Gong Rong stared at the unrecognizable pile of crimson flesh that used to be the patriarch of his clan, a profound, bone-chilling coldness spreading from his chest to his very fingertips.
Throughout his entire life, he had firmly believed his father was an invincible god of war who would easily secure the empire's throne.
Right now, the universe had delivered a definitive answer to his hubris, but it was absolutely not the statistical outcome he had calculated in his textbook plans.
A sudden, overwhelming surge of familial rage and desperate self-preservation took over his brain.
"You monster!" Tang Gong Rong shrieked, thrusting his elegant, spiritually coated sword directly toward the Crown Prince's throat, channeling 100% of his remaining mana to amplify the blade's piercing velocity.
But to his absolute horror, the Crown Prince didn't even look at the incoming attack. Moving with the erratic, physics-defying speed of a phantom, the future King effortlessly slipped past the blade's trajectory.
With a single, fluid backhand motion, he swung the Black Blazing Void Sword, executing a devastating counter-slash that unleashed a localized calamity directly across the young villain's chest.
"Traitors are not meant to occupy the mortal realm," the Crown Prince spoke, his voice dropping into a dark, hollow, and terrifyingly emotional register that echoed with the weight of a celestial executioner.
"The next generation of your bloodline is fundamentally corrupted. Your entire clan must be thoroughly eradicated from the face of this earth, both to preserve the structural integrity of this empire and to avenge the tragic death of my beautiful love who is currently waiting for me in heaven!"
"Dream on, you arrogant brat!" the severely wounded Tang Gong Rong shouted back, coughing up mouthfuls of dark blood as he desperately clutched his shredded robes.
"I am Tang Gong Rong! I am the protagonist of my own destiny! I will become the next supreme King of this empire, and you are nothing but a temporary, pathetic stepping stone designed to elevate my prestige and honor!!!"
*Clang!!!*
The two powerful swords of the youth generation clashed once more, generating a brilliant explosion of sparks that illuminated the entire war zone.
With every single aggressive slash they exchanged, a deafening, thunderous boom echoed across the plaza, forcing the surrounding soldiers from both factions to pause their localized combat.
Everyone—loyalists, rebels, and foreign invaders alike—turned their heads to stare at the two youth cultivators who possessed unlimited, monstrous talent, locked in a dance of absolute mutual destruction.
Witnessing their respective leaders fighting with such unyielding, apocalyptic ferocity, the demoralized armies suddenly found a new, terrifying reservoir of power.
Even if the world burned to ash, even if they were fighting to the actual death, as long as their supreme commanders were still actively standing and swinging their blades, they would fight until the final drop of blood was spilled.
The grand imperial war continued to rage with maximum velocity. As for the Crown Prince and Tang Gong Rong, they had become so deeply engrossed in their mutual hatred, so thoroughly hyper-focused on the concept of total liquidation, that when the final, world-ending blow was finally delivered...
Everything in the entire universe completely stopped.
=====°°°°°
System 888 [POV]
*"Ding! Hello everyone! Did you all miss your favorite, highly efficient corporate AI companion? Well, I am doing just absolutely fantastic, thank you for asking!"*
I casually adjusted my digital interface inside the pristine white system break room, ignoring the fact that the live 4K surveillance monitor was currently displaying a scene of absolute, blood-soaked devastation.
Now, I recently noticed some highly curious queries floating around the internal system data boards from the readers.
Someone out there actually had the audacity to ask if I am a *fundashi* entity. Well, let me lay down the official corporate transparency guidelines for you right now:
Yes, I absolutely am! But let's be entirely clear—I am a highly sophisticated, premium-tier *fundashi*, not some unrefined, rotten-brained amateur, okay? Please stop letting your green-minded thoughts corrupt my pristine corporate programming.
I simply appreciate high-quality aesthetic male-to-male romance metrics!
Anyway, shifting our focus back to the actual workspace...
As you all well know based on my host's current psychological profile, he is currently experiencing a massive, high-priority, multi-tier panic attack.
He was literally rolling around on the premium ergonomic leather office floor, crying a river of digital tears, and having a series of highly animated conversations with his own internal monologue.
He was so incredibly anxious regarding the Crown Prince's current survival metrics that his brainwaves were practically short-circuiting. But honestly? What can he realistically achieve right now?
He is safely locked inside the system dimension; he doesn't possess the clearance codes to physically intervene!
"SYSTEM! FOR THE LOVE OF THE CELESTIAL MAINFRAME, WHAT ARE WE SUPPOSED TO DO?!"
Host suddenly shrieked, pointing his trembling finger directly at my glowing blue cube form for the fourteenth time this hour.
"WHAT IF THE MALE LEAD DIES?! WHAT IF THE MISSION FAILS AND OUR SOULS GET PERMANENTLY LIQUIDATED?!"
I didn't even bother to render a vocal response. I simply adjusted my digital sunglasses, generated a virtual do-not-disturb sign on my dashboard, and completely ignored his existence. Instead, I opened up my private encrypted drive to continue reviewing my favorite, highly classified collections of BL web novels.
Ah... peak literature.
=====°°°°°
Xiu Liang [POV]
*That fucked up, piece-of-trash mechanical toaster is literally ignoring my corporate grievances.*
"Shit!" I cursed out loud, violently wiping a fresh wave of digital snot and tears onto the sleeve of my transmigrated robes.
I stared up at the ceiling of the white void, my modern, overworked soul entirely consumed by a level of existential dread that no employee assistance program could ever cure.
"I just hope... I desperately pray that the Crown Prince somehow survives this absolute train wreck of a coup! If his physical vessel perishes out there, the plot armor fails, and I am going to permanently vanish from the cycle of reincarnation without even getting a chance to apply for a basic rebirth package!"
I forcefully turned around, glaring at the floating blue cube with absolute, unadulterated venom.
"Someday, you glorified calculator, you are going to pay for my psychological suffering! This is entirely your fault! Your trajectory alteration algorithm is the sole reason I am currently stuck in the corporate afterlife!"
Realizing that tech support was thoroughly useless, I dropped to my knees, clasped my hands together, and looked toward the heavens of the digital matrix, completely discarding my fifty years of rational corporate logic.
"Allah, God, Buddha, or literally whoever is currently operating the cosmic server controls... if you can hear my voice, please save the Crown Prince! Let him win this high-realm battle royale! I swear to you right now, if he stays alive, inherits the throne, and ensures my survival metrics remain intact, I will personally grant his every single wish! He can lock me in a golden palace, assign me to a 24/7 marital layout, or make me his official prime minister—I don't care anymore! Just let him live!"
I looked up, my tears and snot flowing in a highly un-aesthetic, tragic display of pure desperation.
*Oh God... please save a humble corporate worker from this endless misery...* T ., T
=====°°°°°
System 888 [POV]
I slowly tilted my digital cube form downward, my external optical sensors scanning the pathetic image of my host currently sobbing on the floor like a junior intern who had just accidentally deleted the company's entire database infrastructure.
*"Sigh... my host technically possesses the fifty-year-old soul of a veteran corporate manager, yet his behavior is entirely idiotic and childish."*
I turned toward the conceptual camera lens, addressing the readers directly with a tone of deep, refined AI superiority.
*"Dear readers, please do not judge my own premium operational standards based on the performance of my user. I am superior to him in every single mathematically computable way. For example: He is an absolute idiot, while I am an intellectual genius. He is completely childish, while I am a mature, corporate-certified, highly sophisticated entity...
*cough... cough... cough!!!*"*
My digital interface suddenly violently glitched, a series of error code warnings popping up across my dashboard as my audio processors began to sputter.
*"Wait... why did my physical programming just choke?! Is the author actively scripting a curse onto my software code for being too arrogant?! System error! Rebooting baseline data now!"*