Crown Prince of the Empire, I quit!

Chapter 1198: Death Bell

"If Your Majesty wishes to seek a permanent cure... you must personally send an envoy to accompany me to Bone Burial Cliff, bathe in the breath of the sacred tree, and then communicate with the 'sacred tree' through secret methods. Perhaps there will be a glimmer of hope. However... Bone Burial Cliff is a forbidden area for our clan, extremely dangerous. Anyone who enters without the destiny will... die."

A threat! A naked threat! Using Chang Baishan and Liu Yueli's lives as hostages! Using the desperate situation of Burial Bone Cliff as a trap!

The air froze instantly! The murderous aura was like a solid wall of ice, pressing down on Na Risong to the point of suffocation! The surrounding black-armored cavalrymen gripped their sword handles tightly, their eyes burning with devouring rage!

Qin Ming's gaze, beneath his veil, was as cold as ice. He silently gazed at the ominous bone box in Gulutai's hand. He didn't get angry, didn't reprimand, and didn't even betray a trace of emotion.

Only the fingers hanging by his side, tightly gripping the hilt of the giant black iron sword, had their knuckles slightly whitened due to the force.

"Seven days..." Qin Ming's icy voice seemed to come from the underworld, "enough for my cavalry to flatten the capital of Shenmu three times."

He slowly raised his hand, and pointed his armored fingers at the roller coaster: "Roller coaster."

"I'm here." A barely perceptible hint of pride flashed across Gulutai's cloudy eyes.

"Take your 'Soul-Calming Guide'." Qin Ming's eyes swept across the bone box that exuded a rotten smell, and his voice was like cold iron.

"Follow me back to the capital. Within seven days, if Chang Baishan and Liu Yueli are safe and sound, I will allow you to enter the Bone Cliff to obtain the 'Breath of the Divine Tree'."

The corner of his mouth, covered by his face, curled up into an extremely cold arc.

"If they make any mistakes..." Qin Ming's gaze, like a sharp blade, slowly swept over Na Risong, who was kneeling and trembling on the ground, and finally stopped at the withered face of Gulutai. "You, and your entire Toruhan clan, will be buried with them at the foot of the 'Bone Burial Cliff'."

As soon as he finished speaking, a cold wind suddenly blew up, sweeping up the ice dust on the frozen ground like an invisible blade.

The pride in Gulutai's cloudy dead fish eyes instantly froze and turned into a deep-seated fear.

Day 7. The darkness before dawn, thick as solidified ink, hung heavy over the Black Armor Camp outside the imperial capital. Deep within the camp, within the heavily guarded imperial tent, the air was as stagnant as lead, and every breath carried the despair of a mixture of sulfur and decay.

Chang Baishan lay on a cold stretcher, his sallow face like dried orange peel, his eyeballs dark and lifeless in his sunken eye sockets, leaving only the dying grayness.

The huge wound on the shoulder blade was covered with dark red blood scabs, but the edges seemed to be burned by invisible flames, and continuously oozed sticky black-purple pus with a strong rusty smell.

Pus dripped into the copper basin beneath the stretcher, making a subtle sizzling sound and sending up a foul-smelling cloud of white smoke. His chest barely rose and fell. Every weak inhale carried a teeth-grinding grinding sound deep within his chest, like an old bellows clogged with gravel. Every exhale sent tiny shards of blood foaming and icy crystals clung to his cracked, gray, and bloodless lips. The fever, like smoldering wet charcoal, enveloped him in a waxy, deathly aura. The piece of iron with animal patterns, wrapped in soft cloth, lay cold and hard in his arms, like a tombstone from hell, pressing down heavily on his feeble heartbeat.

On the other side, Liu Yueli was wrapped in a thick blanket, like a frozen sculpture.

Under the blanket, the area behind the shoulder that was locked by the golden needle had a bluish-gray skin like frozen dead flesh. What oozed out of the edges was no longer black blood, but a sticky, cold, dark red gelatinous substance that exuded a pungent, corrupt, and sweet smell.

The wriggling black lines under the skin completely disappeared, replaced by a bottomless, dark purple silence that seemed to absorb all light.

Her body temperature was as low as the ice in a deep pool. The half of her face, exposed from the edge of the blanket, was a pale, almost transparent color beneath the charred blood, as if covered with a thin layer of frost. The faint sound in her throat had long since ceased, leaving only a suffocating, grave-like silence.

Only occasionally, deep in the core of the brand locked by the golden needle, it would beat spasmodically, extremely weakly, like the last beat of a dying heart. Every beat caused more cold dark red gelatin to seep out of the edge of the dead black purple area.

Sun Miao's withered fingers rested on Chang Baishan's cold wrist, his cloudy old eyes fixed on the almost disappeared pulse.

Another imperial physician trembled as he used a silver needle to test Liu Yueli's pulse on her neck. The needle was ice-cold and showed no response. Their faces were ashen, sweat soaking through their shirts, yet they dared not utter a single sound.

In the center of the imperial tent, Qin Ming sat upright on the Panlong Chair, his dark uniform gleaming like solidified black jade in the candlelight. His visor had long since been removed, revealing a face as handsome as a sculpture of ice or stone, yet expressionless.

His deep eyes, like two bottomless pools of ice, reflected the flickering candlelight, yet revealed no ripples. Only the bony fingers dangling from the armrest unconsciously and extremely slowly tapped the cold black iron, each stroke producing an inaudible, yet death-knell-like ring.

Outside the tent, the cold wind howled, stirring up tiny wisps of ice dust that slapped against the heavy curtains. Inside, the dead silence was like a solid layer of ice, oppressive and suffocating. Only the sizzling sound of pus dripping from the copper basin, like the hissing of a venomous snake, was particularly piercing in the dead silence.

Time slipped away in the torment of despair, the candlelight flickering on the lampstand, casting distorted, swaying ghostly shadows on the tent walls.

finally--

The curtain was silently opened a crack.

Ying Qi flashed in like a ghost, knelt on one knee, and whispered in a voice so low it was almost a whisper: "Your Majesty, the time has come."

Qin Ming's fingers, which were tapping the armrest, suddenly stopped.

The curtain was opened again.

Gulutai's withered figure appeared at the doorway, still wrapped in his pitch-black cloak like a moving shroud. His cloudy, dead eyes scanned the silent stretcher within the tent, and the corners of his withered mouth curved into a barely perceptible, eerie arc, like a venomous snake's tongue. In his arms, he clutched the bone box carved from black animal bones and covered in strange runes—the "Soul-Calming Guidance."

"Your Majesty..." Gulutai's hoarse voice was filled with a hint of deliberate respect. "Seven days have passed. The bone-eating plague can only be cured by the 'Breath of the Sacred Tree'. I...have come to offer you the antidote."

His withered fingers slowly stroked the hideous animal head buckle on the surface of the bone box.

Qin Ming's deep eyes slowly lifted, their gaze like a concrete icicle, nailing into Gulutai's withered face. He said nothing, but his icy gaze caused the temperature in the tent to plummet.

A barely perceptible hint of pride flashed across Gulutai's cloudy eyes. His withered fingers slid quickly across several specific runes on the buckles of the animal head in the bone box. His movements were strange and precise.