Villains Aren't Chapter 189: The Gathering

Chapter 189: Chapter 189: The Gathering

The Imperial City was a place of dizzying opulence and architectural impossibility. Buildings carved from white cloud-jade floated at varying altitudes, connected by bridges of solidified light that humd with ancient energy.

At the very center of this tropolitan marvel, nestled within a grove of trees whose leaves were forged from actual silver, stood the Myriad Dao Pavilion.

This was not rely a building; it was a sprawling complex of open-air terraces, ditation halls, and banquet gardens.

Currently, this was the designated place for the gathering of the noble clans’ geniuses, used for them to get along and plan before heading towards the Eastern Region.

The air here was already thick with the scent of high-grade spiritual tea, expensive perfus, and the unmistakable, suffocating weight of vanity that always followed the scions of the elite.

At this mont, Xu Xiansu stood at the corner of the pavilion, half-hidden by the shadow of a weeping willow made of erald glass.

She watched with a cold, detached expression as the noble geniuses arrived in batches, each group more flamboyant than the last.

Their carriages were pulled by winged beasts that cost more than entire mortal villages, and their robes were embroidered with protective arrays that sparkled with every movent.

Was she worried about getting seen? Not really. Aside from the Emperor, the Empress, and those few high-ranking servants that served them in the deepest recesses of the Inner Palace, no one even knew she existed.

She was a neglected princess, and not even her half-siblings knew that they have a sister like her.

Of course, that bastard Shen Haoran knew of her as well.

But he probably already forgot about her, she thought bitterly.

To soone like him, the favored son of the most powerful clan, she was likely just a fleeting shadow, a minor encounter in his path to the heavens.

Although that man had already took the most precious thing a girl like her can possess, for him, such a thing was probably as common as a pebbles on the roadside.

And besides, she had taken precautions.

She left behind a spirit puppet back there that looked exactly like her, infused with enough of her aura to fool even a casual spiritual scan, primarily to act as a decoy and also to take care of her mother.

Her mother’s safety was the only thing that gave her pause, but the puppet was programd to handle daily life with seamless precision.

This risk, this escape from the palace, was all so that she can co here and get to the Eastern Region and absorb that blood of the Three-Legged Golden Crow.

Although, she felt incredibly annoyed at how much these nobles praised each other as if they were the center of the universe.

Their conversations were a cacophony of sycophancy and exaggerated achievents.

"Look! That’s Young Master Peng!" a young noblewoman squealed, pointing toward a man dressed in robes the color of a sumr sky. "The son of Marquis Peng, known as the ’Universe Blue’! I heard he broke through to the Golden Core Realm recently, and he’s only 26 years old!"

The surrounding group gasped in performative awe.

"Don’t you find it weird that there are so many Peng Clans?" one youth whispered to his companion, eyeing the various banners fluttering in the wind.

"Weird? You should be worried. Maybe your father is secretly from the Peng Clan," the other joked, leading to a round of stifled, aristocratic giggles.

Then, another group of nobles arrived, and everyone imdiately started praising them with even more fervor.

The level of spiritual pressure in the garden rose as several figures with higher cultivation bases made their entrance.

"Look! Look! That’s Young Master Si from the Po Clan! I heard he broke through to the Nascent Soul Realm! And he’s only 48 years old!"

"And right there! That’s Young Master Kuo from the Di clan! A genius who broke through the peak of the Golden Core realm at the young age of 40!"

Xu Xiansu listened to these proclamations with growing disgust.

Forty-eight? Forty? By her standards, and certainly by the standards of the monsters in the Immortal Lineages, these were diocre results at best, trash at worst.

These people were actually celebrating snails for finishing a race that dragons had already won.

"Gods, they are so cool. I wish I could hang out with them."

’Why don’t you suck their dicks then!?’ Xu Xiansu almost scread at them. ’Maybe then they’ll let you follow along!?’

The sheer, unadulterated fawning made her skin crawl, but thankfully, she held it in, keeping her presence masked by a low-level concealnt technique.

She stared at the nobles, especially those whose nas were ntioned as they started to show off their expensive clothing and artifacts.

One was waving a fan made from the feathers of a Frost Phoenix, while another adjusted a jade belt that contained a miniature spatial world.

They strutted like peacocks in a courtyard, oblivious to the storm brewing at the borders of their empire.

Tsk. No wonder she was able to raze the entire empire in her previous life.

With these bunch of trash as the next generation guardians of the empire, not to ntion an external enemy, they will probably destroy the entire empire themselves from infighting.

Their foundations were shallow, their spirits were fragile, and their hands had never been stained with the blood of a true life-and-death struggle.

How pathetic.

At that mont, another commotion resounded, far louder and more frantic than the ones before.

The crowd imdiately parted like a sea before a storm.

"It’s the Crown Prince Xu Xiaojun!"

"It really is him! The genius who broke through to the 1st Stage of the Nascent Soul Realm at 28 years old!"

"That’s old news! He recently broke through to the 2nd Stage a few weeks ago, and he’s only 31 years old now!"

Xu Xiansu looked at that brother of hers and shook her head slowly.

He walked with a swagger that suggested the world was rely a stage for his glory. How utterly ridiculous.

Although this man is indeed so full of talent, possessing a supre Imperial Bloodline, he got suppressed by their Fourth Brother, the Fourth Prince, who rose from being an unfavored, ignored son to becoming the Emperor.

One hundred years from now, in her past life, the Fourth Prince and Xu Xiaojun would battle for the soul of the nation.

It was in that battle that it was revealed that Xu Xiaojun actually colluded with the Demonic Cultivators, selling out the empire’s secrets to gain a forbidden breakthrough.

That revelation had caused him to be sentenced to death and have his soul burned for eternity.

Seeing him now, so bright and honored, felt like watching a corpse dancing and carrying a coffin, not realising that the coffin was for him.

"Oh, the Fourth Prince is here!"

"Crap! Are they about to fight?"

"I bet one spirit stone mine on the Crown Prince! His 2nd Stage Nascent Soul base is too stable!"

"That’s your family’s only mine! You’re insane!"

"No risk, no gain! High risk, high reward! I’m going all in!"

The atmosphere turned electric as the sycophants scrambled to clear a path, sensing the friction between the two imperial siblings.

Xu Xiansu looked up and saw the Fourth Prince.

Unlike the radiant, armor-clad Crown Prince, he was an average-looking man in a simple, unadorned white robe.

He had long black hair tied back with a piece of twine and clear, deep blue eyes that seed to hold a profound, hidden stillness.

He didn’t radiate power, instead, he pulled it inward, like a black hole masquerading as a pond.

He was facing the Crown Prince, standing face to face, just a ter away from each other.

The air between them crackled with invisible lightning as Xu Xiaojun looked down at his brother with a mixture of amusent and barely concealed contempt, while the Fourth Prince remained as calm as a mountain lake.

The Myriad Dao Pavilion’s central fountain, carved to resemble a dragon breathing liquid spiritual qi, humd in the background, but the sound was drowned out by the intense silence between the two princes.

The noble scions who had just been bragging about their artifacts were now holding their breath, their eyes darting between the Crown Prince’s golden radiance and the Fourth Prince’s understated calm.

"You’ve grown quite bold, Fourth Brother," Xu Xiaojun said, his voice carrying a resonant vibration that caused the jade tiles beneath their feet to groan. "Leaving your library to join a war? I thought you preferred the company of dusty scrolls over the heat of the battlefield."

The Fourth Prince, Xu Jingshan, didn’t blink. "Books teach us the mistakes of the past, Brother. For instance, they teach us that pride often precedes a very long, very painful fall."

The crowd gasped.

To speak so bluntly to the Crown Prince was tantamount to suicide for most, but Jingshan was still a Prince of the Blood.

Xu Xiansu, watching from her corner, felt a twinge of familiarity.

Jingshan always had that way of speaking, like a scholar, possessing a gentle and soft voice, yet also very solemn.

In her past life, he was the one who had finally caught on to her plans, though he was too late to save the empire from her wrath.

After her revenge, the Empire was left fragnted, with nobles and kings fighting for power.

If Xu Jingshan weren’t a Supre Emperor to keep things in order, the empire would’ve already split into countless independent nations.

She shifted her gaze away from the confrontation as she leaned back, crossing her arms, appearing unconcerned.

"Try not to die too early, Fourth Brother," Xiaojun whispered, his voice loud enough for the onlookers to hear. "It would be a sha if the Empire lost its most diligent librarian before the real fun begins."

Jingshan simply smiled, a small, enigmatic curve of the lips. "I’ll try my best, Crown Prince. I would hate to miss the finale."

The tension broke as Xiaojun laughed boisterously and turned to lead his entourage toward the banquet tables, leaving Jingshan standing alone in the center of the plaza.

The noble geniuses sward after the Crown Prince, eager to stay in his golden light, while Jingshan was left in the taphorical shade.