ABHL 01

Chapter – 01

“Let her kneel outside and reflect on her mistakes! The Desolate Sea is such a poor and remote place. She didn’t want to go herself, so she schemed to convince Zhao’er to switch with her. All that cleverness used just to plot against her own sister—does she have any sense of being an elder sister at all?!”

A brutal snowstorm raged, with snow piled three feet deep.

Zhuo Ying knelt in the biting cold wind, hearing every word of the angry scolding from inside the hall.

The young girl’s face, delicate like a lightly painted peony, showed little expression. Hearing this, she merely tucked her frost-stiffened, itching fingers deeper into her sleeves.

“Your Majesty, please calm your anger.”

The Empress’s gentle voice sounded from inside.

“Princess Zhuo Ying has been frail since childhood. It would indeed be difficult for her to endure the harsh cold of the Desolate Sea. Why not send her to the Shangqing Heavenly Palace instead? Perhaps the spiritual energy of the immortal realm could help restore her health. In the future, she might even learn cultivation and return to assist Your Majesty.”

However, when he heard the words “assist Your Majesty,” the Human Emperor Di Que showed a trace of wariness instead.

Although his eldest daughter had been born weak and sickly, she could read by age three, compose essays by five, and by ten had earned the favor of the Confucian Immortal, the Saint Zhìwēi, leaving the palace to study under him for eight years.

Unfortunately, her frail body prevented her from cultivating spiritual arts, so the Saint could only teach her the Four Books and Five Classics.

A girl studying the Confucian classics was already considered improper enough.

What troubled him more was that every time she returned to the palace during those eight years, she would offer advice on matters of state. Several times she had tried to stop him from declaring war on the immortal realm, insisting the war would end in defeat.

And now, everything had turned out exactly as she predicted.

Human Emperor Di Que gazed toward the sacrificial terrace outside.

After he ordered the destruction of the temples of the immortals who once descended to slay demons and protect humanity, the immortal realm punished the human world with one hundred days of heavy snow, forcing the Human Emperor to abandon his ambition of becoming ruler of heaven and earth.

Each snowflake looked light, yet weighed heavily upon the shoulders of the people of Great Yong.

It crushed their desire to conquer the immortal realm and forced them to consider picking up their rusted farm tools to revolt against the emperor within his palace walls.

The imperial house of Great Yong had already reached the end of its road.

To show submission to the immortal realm, he had no choice but to send his two daughters as hostages to appease heavenly wrath and buy time to rebuild his strength.

The girl kneeling outside remained neither servile nor arrogant. The wind and snow blurred her appearance, but Di Que could see her heart clearly.

His daughter was laughing at his incompetence.

“Father! Mother—”

A crisp, lively voice suddenly sounded from outside, causing the tense expressions of the Emperor and Empress to relax slightly.