The Black Dragon Citadel had become a nexus of impossible contradictions. It was a court of sublime beauty and profound horror, a place where nightmares were dressed in the silks of dreams. The addition of Wang Xia, the gentle third wife, had created a perverse harmony—the fiery Empress, the docile Lily, and the ever-watchful Maid. The Ancestor's garden was flourishing.
But one weed of the old world remained, stubbornly rooted in the deepest, darkest dungeon: Su Moqing, the Matriarch of the fallen Hidden Su Clan.
The Ancestor decided it was time to finally pluck her.
He descended to her cell not as a jailer, but as a visiting dignitary. She was no longer bound in chains, but confined by spatial seals that made her spacious cell a beautiful, inescapable illusion of a pavilion garden. She stood proud, though her robes were simple and her silver braids had lost their luster.
"Matriarch," the Ancestor greeted, his voice light. "I trust your accommodations are… reflective?"
Su Moqing's eyes, hard as flint, bore into him. "I reflect on the day your head will be separated from your shoulders, demon."
"Tsk. Such negativity," he chided, like a teacher correcting a slow student. "I come with an offer. A new beginning for you, and for what remains of your clan."
She remained silent, her suspicion a tangible force.
"The world has moved on," he continued, pacing slowly. "Your daughter is not the girl you knew. She is the Phoenix Empress, the mother of a future sovereign, the beloved of an Eternal Ancestor. She has ascended beyond your quaint notions of clan and honor."
He stopped before her. "You cling to a name—Su—that now holds less power than the dust on my boots. But family… family is different. The bond between mother and daughter is so… sacred."
His smile was a razor blade. "Which is why, to honor that sacred bond, I am granting you a promotion. You will leave this cell. You will join my court. Not as a prisoner. Not as a Matriarch."
He let the silence hang, allowing her to hope for a moment—for exile, for a dignified retirement.
"You will join it as my fourth wife."
Su Moqing's composure shattered. "You… monstrous… pervert!" she choked, the words tearing from her throat. "She is my daughter!"
"Precisely!" the Ancestor said, his eyes alight with malicious glee. "And what could be more beautiful than a mother and daughter, side by side, serving the same husband, building the same eternal future? You will be sisters in my heart. A testament to the boundless, unifying power of my love."
The proposition was so blasphemous, so utterly deranged, that Su Moqing could only stare in mute, horrified disbelief. He was not just violating her; he was violating the very order of nature.
"Your refusal is noted, and irrelevant," he stated, his cheer vanishing, replaced by glacial finality. "The ceremony will be tonight. You will be prepared."
That night, in the same starlit garden where Wang Xia had been wed, a far more grotesque ritual took place. Su Moqing was dressed in bridal robes of somber grey and silver, a cruel mockery of her age and station. Her eyes were hollow, all fight extinguished by the sheer magnitude of the psychological violation.
Su Wan was forced to attend, standing beside a smiling Wang Xia and a stoic Chu Ling. Her face was a mask of agony, the Ancestor's beautiful lies about past lives crumbling in the face of this present, visceral horror. She was being made to witness her own mother become her sister-wife.
The Ancestor spoke vows of "eternal unity" and "transcending mortal conventions." He placed a ring of cold iron on Su Moqing's finger—a band of imprisonment, not love.
"With this," he whispered to her, loud enough for Su Wan to hear, "you are no longer Matriarch Su. You are my fourth wife, my 'Silken Matron'. Welcome to the family."
The next day, to add another layer of glorious, gilded absurdity to the conquest, the Ancestor held a grand proclamation ceremony in the main court.
With his four wives arrayed beside him—the fiery Empress, the broken Matriarch, the docile Lily, and the watchful Maid—he addressed the assembled nobility of the entire Luo Region.
"The age of sects and clans is over!" his voice boomed, echoing with absolute authority. "The petty squabbles that have defined this land are beneath us. A new era requires a new order."
He declared the formal establishment of the Eternal Dragon Phoenix Dynasty.
"The Luo Region is no more. Henceforth, these lands are the Heartland Domain, the core of our eternal reign!"
He then began bestowing titles, not as a clan leader to vassals, but as an emperor to his subjects.
"The remnants of the Su Clan," he announced, his gaze flicking to the horrified, yet powerless, Su officials in the crowd. "For their… eventual loyalty and the invaluable service of their daughters, are hereby elevated to the Marquis of the Whispering Tide." It was a hollow title over a stripped-down territory, a pretty box for a neutered house. They were given a name and a stipend, their power and resources now fully integrated into the imperial treasury.
"The Profound Yin Sect," he continued, "for its unwavering service as the foundation of our Empress's rise, is dissolved as a sect. Its lands and members shall form the core of our imperial administration. Henceforth, it shall be known as the Prime Minister's House, and Grand Elder Yu Ming shall serve as the first Prime Minister, answering directly to the throne." The sect was gutted, its martial tradition ended, transformed into a bureaucratic organ to serve the very power that had conquered it.
Finally, he turned to his own family.
"And the Lu Clan," he declared, a note of triumph in his voice. "My bloodline. The foundation of all that is to come. You are no longer merely a clan. You are the Imperial Dragon Family, the absolute sovereigns of this land. Your will is law. Your blood is divine."
The court erupted in forced, thunderous applause. The transition was complete. The sects were broken, their identities erased and repurposed. The Su Clan was humiliated and enfeebled. The Lu Clan sat atop a pyramid of their own making, absolute monarchs in a realm where the only law was the whim of the Eternal Goblin Ancestor.
He looked out over the prostrate figures, his four wives standing as living monuments to his power—one believing herself an empress, one a broken matriarch, one a docile flower, and one a branded maid.
The dynasty was not just founded. It was institutionalized. And at its heart, in a beautiful, twisted cage of its own design, the Imperial Family reigned supreme, a masterpiece of tyranny written in blood, titles, and perverted love.