Yin Country.
Midnight.
Li Lianhua leaned back on a recliner, as a 14-year-old girl attended to his foot bath.
The warm water made his old feet feel just right, pudgy little hands gently kneaded the tops and soles, cleaning the gri from between his toes.
Thud, thud, thud, thud...
Urgent footsteps echoed down the hallway.
Li Lianhua’s eyebrows twitched in annoyance. "What’s the fuss? Can’t I get so peace? Xixi, go see who it is."
Xixi stood up, shaking her wet hands, and ran to the door, only to have it kicked open loudly, smacking her forehead.
Holding her head, Xixi squatted to one side, while Li Lianhua, fuming, looked outside to see several mbers of the Superpower Special Departnt.
"What are you doing? Are you rebelling?!" Li Lianhua shouted.
"The Emperor commands! All traitors must be taken to Fengrao City to be questioned! Get up, you old coot!" the team leader said darkly.
Finished speaking, a man and a woman, both team mbers, barged in, grabbed Li Lianhua’s arms, and started to haul him away.
"Wait! Wait! Are you idiots? Just because she says she’s the Emperor, she is? Zhao Ling has long been dead!" Li Lianhua yelled.
But the special forces didn’t hesitate; they put a prepared muzzle on him and dragged him out the door.
At that mont, they also noticed Xixi; the team leader ordered sternly: "Take everyone involved here, including personal attendants and those in charge of the household!"
Behind them, two other special forces nodded; one asked, "The guards in the courtyard are resisting. How should we deal with them?"
"Kill them all," the captain responded.
The two saluted their chests and then turned to leave.
The captain, dragging Xixi out of the house, now heard sporadic gunfire and intense lightning spray sounds throughout the courtyard.
Two guard soldiers crashed through a window, only half of their bodies remaining, thrown into the hallway; Xixi was stunned in place, and the captain barked, "Move!"
"Please let go! I’m just a maid who washed his feet and ward his bed..." Xixi pleaded in dismay.
"Another word, and I’ll kill you right now!" the captain threatened.
At the sa mont, at Venerable Qin’s residence, the guard soldiers surrendered imdiately, and both the revolutionaries and defectors moved in as if entering an unguarded realm, with crowds running wildly in the streets.
Many citizens stuck their heads out from their apartnts, buzzing with speculation.
"The Emperor is back?! But wasn’t she long dead?"
"Might be fake news, or maybe she’s been revived by Wei Tianyang. Now, Yin Country might be saved."
"Emperor is back! Emperor is back!!"
In 39 hours, Yin Country underwent a massive change because of Zhao Ling’s return. A vast majority of the forces silently watched the revolutionaries and the pro-Zhao Ling faction launch their night attacks, while very few resisted doggedly. That’s because behind Zhao Ling was Wei Tianyang. If the real Zhao Ling had returned, then you’d better pray she wouldn’t ask Wei Tianyang for help...
Those who knew they were dood either jumped off buildings, hanged themselves, or swallowed massive amounts of sleeping pills overnight. And those who believed they still had so value were trying to find the right mont, waiting for an opportunity to swear allegiance to Zhao Ling.
And the most excited were certainly the remnants of the Foreign Affairs Bureau.
Venerable Qin trembled with fear. She pulled open a drawer, took out a derringer hidden inside, and wanted to give herself a dignified end in the study.
But after hesitating for a long ti, she still lacked the courage to place the gun against her forehead. It was at this ti that her cat jumped onto the desk and started pawing at her gun-holding hand.
Venerable Qin, furious, exclaid, "You beast! You also damn to die!!"
With that, she fired several shots at the old cat she had raised for over ten years, killing it on the desk.
Not long afterward, Venerable Qin, with a gray face, was taken from her residence by the revolutionary soldiers and, along with Li Lianhua, was shoved into a prisoner transport vehicle.
The next day, at noon, the Tree of Fertility in Yin Country’s Fengrao City.
Beneath the great tree, hundreds of mbers of the Superpower Special Departnt arrived to assemble.
Zhao Ling sensed the scent of Black dicine and walked to the edge of the canopy, looking down.
Not only were there mbers of the Superpower Special Departnt, but there were also many from the army—a formidable crowd numbering tens of thousands, all fully equipped, with even large war machines and tanks being brought in.
However, the rocket army that she used to take pride in during her tenure was not among them.
These military forces carried no malice; they stood in well-ordered rows, not in a combat formation, but similar to a parade square. The soldiers looked up toward the canopy, and though it was hundreds of ters from the ground, Zhao Ling’s super vision still enabled her to see the eyes of the soldiers. Their hearts were filled with rage, a rage with no release, a thirst for a true revenge. Zhao Ling knew who was the cause of all this, as those from the Superpower Special Departnt had already brought the person forward.
She spread out her arms, and the ground rumbled loudly. The earth beneath the feet of the Superpower Special Departnt mbers suddenly rose, lifting them up to the canopy.
More than a hundred mbers of the Superpower Special Departnt, escorting over sixty individuals, stepped into this natural grand hall. Zhao Ling sat on the throne at the far end, tilting her head in anticipation.
On seeing her, people confird that the woman before them was indeed Zhao Ling. Despite more than twenty years had passed, many still recognized her appearance.
After Zhao Ling’s death, Venerable Qin quickly took control of the dostic dia to sar Zhao Ling, distorting her past and denying all her achievents. Such political maneuvering could indeed cause great confusion to ordinary people, but in the face of absolute power, these tactics seed childish.
Among that group, the one leading saluted Zhao Ling and then brought forward Venerable Qin, Li Lianhua, and the several dozen affiliated clan elders, confidants, personal attendants, maids, and the top figures within their party faction, all being forced to kneel before her.
Zhao Ling eyed them with interest. She was well aware that controlling a country was definitely not just reliant on these people; their interest groups were imnsely large, and these sixty-odd individuals were far from enough. It was only due to limited ti that they could only catch this many at first.
There were certainly many more opportunists within the country waiting to see how things would unfold. Zhao Ling wasn’t going to let them get away with such scheming.
"Venerable Qin, your ancestors must be very happy with you," Zhao Ling said with a smile.
Venerable Qin dared not look at Zhao Ling, bowing her head and kneeling without her usual arrogance. Despite still wearing fine silk, her hairstyle was a ss, resembling an old crone beyond her years.
"I see you’ve managed Yin Country very well, bringing back many ancestral thods. They even call you ’Qiansui.’ When I was in power, I never enjoyed such treatnt. I heard you even shut down my Foreign Affairs Bureau and sold off my entire navy as scrap," Zhao Ling said.
She slowly stood up and walked toward Venerable Qin. With each step, her form grew an inch taller, and by the ti she reached Venerable Qin, she had completely transford into the Red Knight.
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