The words of his mother, 'raising a venomous insect', lingered in Liu Bingyi's mind. However, he knew that before he could possess the absolute power to shatter the system, he had to utilise every resource it provided to build a loyal force of his own — one that wasn't entirely under its control.
At dawn, he dismissed all the newly appointed eunuchs and sat alone on the dragon throne, tracing the system panel in the void with his fingertips: 'Ding! Detected that the stability of imperial power has reached the required level. Advanced function unlocked: Shadow Guard Recruitment!"
Function description: The host can designate commoners to undergo a 'marrow cleansing' process through the system, granting them superhuman stealth and killing abilities.
Special bonus: recruits will receive the 'die-hard loyalty' attribute, meaning their loyalty is anchored directly to the host and not to the imperial power.
Current quota: Five people.
'Die-hard loyalty?' Liu Bingyi sneered. The system wanted to bind his men in this way, but he valued the 'evil' nature of those who had struggled in the streets and played by their own rules. That evening, a rubbish cart brought five listless, timid men to the side gate of Weiyang Palace.
They were Liu Bingyi's closest friends from his days as a wanderer: the leader, nicknamed 'Big Mouth Ox', was a professional chicken thief; the second, 'Zhang San', was skilled at lock-picking and climbing walls; the third and fourth were twin butchers; and the fifth was a down-on-his-luck scholar who frequented gambling dens.
'Bing... Bingyi? Is it really you?' Big Mouth Ox looked at the dignified and reserved emperor before him. His legs went weak and he almost collapsed to the ground. He could never have dreamed that the emperor's once-destitute grandson, who had led him and his friends to steal wine and squat on the street, would now truly be the master of this land.
'In this palace, I have no brothers, only a lonely soul.' Liu Bingyi descended the steps, helping Big Mouth Ox to his feet personally, his eyes deep and penetrating. 'But outside this palace, I need a few more pairs of hands to catch ghosts for me. Do you dare to take on the task?"
[Ding! The host has confirmed the recruitment of Big Mouth Bull and four others as the first batch of Shadow Guards.
'Marrow Cleansing begins, consuming 50,000 reputation points.'
With Liu Bingyi's command, five dark purple beams shot out from the system panel and entered the bodies of the five thugs instantly.
Big Mouth Bull felt his bones crack as his previously bloated body rapidly became lean and wiry. The cunning glint in his eyes was replaced by an extremely restrained killing intent. Meanwhile, Scholar Five's sea of consciousness expanded, vaguely awakening a kind of 'disguise and reading' ability.
'From today onward, you have no names, only code names: Gold, Wood, Water, Fire and Earth.' Liu Bingyi took out five black iron tokens and tossed them to the five men. 'The Lei Zhen Imperial Guards are out in the open, helping me to intimidate the officials. You will operate in the shadows, keeping an eye on Lei Zhen, the harem and... this thing in my head.'
The fifth man (code name 'Gold')'s eyes flashed with a sharp light, seemingly sensing the hidden meaning in the emperor's words. Having been modified by the system, he was the most intelligent of them all and instantly realised that their purpose was not only to defend against external enemies, but also to serve as a secret weapon for the emperor to counter that indescribable force.
The next day, rumours circulated around the palace that His Majesty had recently developed a fondness for folk songs and was summoning mysterious 'folk artists' to the palace every night for long conversations. Although the surveillance network had been purged, new eyes were always present, recording these events. 'His Majesty drank with five strangely dressed men, behaving rudely and completely lacking imperial decorum.'
However, behind these records, the five men had vanished silently into the shadows of the palace. Liu Bingyi stood by the window, sensing five faint connections in his mind. He knew the system considered these five men its 'creations'. But etched in their souls was the brotherhood he had forged with them through hardship.
Looking up at the cold moon, his eyes flashed with a chilling light, he said, 'Huo Guang, I've finished this play. For the next act, I'll try a different approach. Not even the system can fathom the depths of the human heart."
On the first night after the five Shadow Guards entered the palace, the air in Weiyang Palace felt unusually heavy. Liu Bingyi wasn't in a hurry to send them to the Western Regions; he wanted to test the five 'outcasts' within the palace first to see how much power they could unleash with the system's enhancement.
'Pingjun hasn't been sleeping well these past few days,' said Liu Bingyi, sitting in the darkness with his fingertips lightly tapping the table. 'She says she can always smell a faint odour of rotting flesh. The Embroidered Uniform Guards have searched the entire Jiaofang Palace, even the rat holes, but they've found nothing.'
Jin (the fifth brother) closed his eyes and used the 'disguise and reading' abilities granted by the system to sketch a 3D structural diagram of Jiaofang Palace in his mind.
'Your Majesty, Lord Lei's Imperial Guards are searching according to military tactics, looking for assassins. But what we need to find are 'ghosts'." Jin opened his eyes, revealing the cunning smile typical of a street thug. 'Water, Fire, you two go check the ditches and ventilation shafts. Earth, probe the condition of the foundation.'
[Ding! Shadow Guard detected performing a special reconnaissance mission.]
[System notification: No abnormal energy fluctuations in this area; deemed safe.' Seeing the green 'Safe' text displayed on the system panel, Liu Bingyi's eyes grew colder still. If the system indicated safety and yet Xu Pingjun felt uneasy, it could only mean that the other party possessed a method to circumvent 'logic scanning'.
An hour later, the third butcher, codenamed 'Earth', emerged from a crack in the ground. Covered in mud, he clutched a thin, transparent piece of human skin. 'Master, I caught it. It was stuck in a crack in the beam directly beneath the bed in the Empress's Chamber. If it weren't for my ability to detect the smell of blood, I would have thought it was a piece of old wood.'
Jin took the transparent skin, sniffed it, and his eyes instantly became extremely sinister. 'This is a kind of evil magic from the Western Regions called "Breath-Soaked Skin Painting". The skin of a corpse, which has been soaked in a secret medicine, is used to cover the body, completely isolating body temperature and breath. It can even fool the most discerning sensory experts." As he explained, he used the system's logical deduction function to trace it back.
'The owner of this skin is Granny Zhao, who served the previous Empress. The Imperial Guards thought she had retired from the palace three years ago, but she has actually been by Consort Pingjun's side the whole time, lurking in the shadows.'
'Take her away. I want to interrogate her myself,' said Liu Bingyi. Rather than going to the Court of Justice's prison himself, he ordered the shadow guards to take the captured Granny Zhao directly to a dry well in the most secluded part of Weiyang Palace.
Despite her collarbone being bound with golden chains, Granny Zhao smiled coldly and remained silent.
"Your Majesty, you can't kill me. My life has already been offered to the gods..."
'Gods?' The butcher — Fourth Brother, codename 'Fire' — grinned and stepped forward, holding a rusty cleaver. 'When I was butchering pigs in the southern suburbs, I loved listening to the dying cries of those beasts. Since you think you're a god, let's see what the difference is between a god's intestines and a pig's."
There was no grand interrogation, only extreme, primal pain. This violence, which defied the very logic of interrogation, shattered Zhao Mama's mental defences. Before she died, she uttered a chilling message that sent shivers down Liu Bingyi's spine:
'It wasn't the Huo family… what is the Huo family… it was that person from Chang Le Palace… she didn't want my life, she wanted the imperial heir's "fate"...'
'It wasn't the Huo family. What is the Huo family? It was that person from Chang Le Palace. She didn't want my life; she wanted the imperial heir's "fate"...' She coughed up blood and her eyes became unfocused.
[Ding!] System task update: 'The shadow of Chang Le Palace'.
Current situation: The Shadow Guards have evaded the system's warnings and uncovered a potential threat that the system has deemed 'safe'.
Host's Insight: The system is not omnipotent; human nature and evil magic are its blind spots.
Liu Bingyi stood by the dry well, watching the east gradually brighten.
'Jin, take the other brothers with you and keep an eye on Chang Le Palace tonight.'
He turned to look at the five Shadow Guards, and for the first time, genuine trust appeared in his eyes: 'The system gives you power, and I give you souls. Tonight, I will let the 'Empress Dowager' know whose realm Weiyang Palace truly belongs to.'
In the dead of night, the Chang Le Palace was deathly silent, like a giant tomb. Moonlight spilled onto the white marble floor tiles, but seemed to be swallowed by an invisible force; it reflected no light whatsoever. Jin (Old Five) and his two shadow guards, Fire and Earth, moved like wisps of smoke, avoiding the visible and hidden sentries around the palace.
'Something's wrong here,' muttered the butcher codenamed 'Earth'. 'The system senses this is a blank area. But when I step on the ground, I feel like a thousand ghosts are weeping beneath.'
'That's the system's blind spot, and also the Empress Dowager's territory.' Jin closed his eyes and relied on his instinctive sense of danger, honed by his background as a street thug, rather than using the system's scanning function. They climbed onto the roof of a side hall of Chang Le Palace and hung upside down from the pillars in the shadow of the drainage ditch, rather than landing in the courtyard.
In the deepest, darkest chamber of Chang Le Palace, the Empress Dowager was no longer dignified and elegant, but was kneeling before a pitch-black altar. Her long hair was dishevelled and she held a dark red bone spur in her hand, frantically carving something into a stone statue.
Jin stared intently and broke out in a cold sweat—the statue's face was an exact replica of Liu Bingyi's! Not only was Liu Bingyi's birth date and time engraved on the statue's chest, but seven long black nails had also been driven into major acupuncture points on its body.
'Bingyi… don't blame me…' the Empress Dowager murmured in a terrifyingly hollow voice. 'The Huo family has fallen; the curse has ended. If I hadn't locked you in this statue, 'that one' would have descended and the Han dynasty would have been reduced to ashes!'
Jin ordered Huo and Tu to stand still while he used the 'disguise' ability granted by the system to silently slip into the shadows of the dark room. There, he discovered a row of densely packed black manuals behind the altar. Quickly flipping through one of the books, his pupils suddenly contracted — this wasn't a palace secret history at all, but a book titled The End Record of the Chosen Ones of All Dynasties!
[Qin Er Shi Hu Hai]: System integration: 40%. Cause of death: 'Hallucination Suicide'.
[Emperor Hui of Han, Liu Ying]: System integration: 60%. Cause of death: 'Consciousness collapse'.
[Changyi King Liu He]: System integration: 10%. Judged as 'inferior product', erased.
[Current host: Liu Bingyi]: System integration: 85%. Status: Extremely Dangerous. Recommended to accelerate 'harvest'.
'So the Empress Dowager wasn't killing His Majesty, but using evil magic to "seal" him, thus delaying the system's absorption of His Majesty!' Jin's heart raced as he realised he had touched upon the most fundamental secret of this world.
[Warning! Illegal acquisition of core confidential information! System 2.0 is forcibly executing the Clean Up Witnesses plan!
[System 2.0 forcibly executing the 'Clean Up Witnesses' plan!]
In that instant, a piercing roar echoed in the minds of Jin, Huo and Tu. The system power that had granted them their abilities began to backfire. Their bodies defied their will and their weapons shifted to their throats. 'Damn it... is this what they call "die-hard loyalty"?' Jin bit his tongue, using the excruciating pain to regain control for a moment.
Just as the three shadow guards were about to kill themselves, a dazzling golden light pierced the roof of Chang Le Palace. Liu Bingyi, wielding an iron sword, landed heavily in the centre of the altar, like a god descending from the heavens.
'Brothers, even though I disagree, the system can't take you away!' Liu Bingyi cleaved the stone statue in two with his sword and the seven long, black gold nails shattered instantly. The system icon in his mind flashed red and emitted a deafening alarm. But he ignored it, staring coldly at the limp Empress Dowager beneath the altar.
'Empress Dowager, I'll take on the secret you've kept for ten years for you.' He turned around and looked at the illusory panel in his mind that was trying to control his body. It revealed extreme madness. 'System, you want to harvest me? You'd better check with the dragon vein of the great Han Dynasty first!"