The battlefield fell silent. Where a hundred thousand foreign warriors had stood, only a wasteland of shattered steel and fading screams remained. The sky, once choked with the killing intent of an army, was now terrifyingly clear. Lu Feng descended from the air, his white robes untouched by a single speck of dust or drop of blood. He landed as softly as a falling leaf.
The ground trembled as a thousand figures in black armor appeared, dropping to one knee in perfect unison. At their head was the War Goddess, her silver armor gleaming. Her helmet was off, revealing a face of breathtaking beauty etched with worry.
"My Lord!" she called out, her voice urgent. "The Regent King fled into the palace! He has activated the city-destroying array! It's a trap! Allow us to clear the path for you!"
Lu Feng’s gaze swept over them, an indifferent glance that held the weight of mountains. He did not look at the palace. He did not look at his loyal subordinates. His eyes seemed to pierce through reality itself.
"Stay," he said.
The word was not a request. It was a law of nature. The War Goddess bit her lip, but she did not dare to disobey. The thousand warriors of the Dragon God Hall remained kneeling, their heads bowed, not a single one moving a muscle. An order from the Sword God was absolute.
Lu Feng turned. He began to walk toward the towering vermilion gates of the Imperial Palace. He walked alone. Each step was unhurried, almost lazy, yet it covered a dozen yards. The citizens of the capital were fleeing in the opposite direction, a tide of panic and despair. They screamed of fire beneath the earth, of the Regent King's final madness. Lu Feng walked against that tide, a solitary rock in a raging river, utterly unmoved.
The palace grounds were a scene of chaos and desertion. Eunuchs and palace maids had dropped everything and fled. Ornate carriages were overturned. Imperial decrees were scattered by the wind like common trash. The silence here was different from the silence of the battlefield. It was a heavy, suffocating silence, pregnant with the promise of fiery annihilation.
Lu Feng’s divine sense spread out, a web of invisible energy. He felt it instantly. Deep beneath the marble foundations, a catastrophic amount of unstable power pulsed like a dying heart. The Grand Array of Imperial Destruction. An ancient weapon of last resort, designed to turn the entire capital city into a crater of molten glass. The Regent King was not bluffing.
A lesser martial artist would have felt their meridians freeze with terror. A Grandmaster would have hesitated. Lu Feng felt only a profound sense of annoyance. This entire affair had become tedious. His killing intent, which he had restrained until now, began to leak out. It was not a wild, raging torrent, but a slow, cold mist that seeped into the air, making the stones crack and the air temperature plummet.
He arrived before the Golden Hall, the heart of the empire. The immense, gilded doors, each weighing thousands of pounds, stood slightly ajar. He didn't slow his pace. With a casual wave of his hand, a surge of invisible sword-qi blasted them open. The doors flew from their hinges, slamming into the inner walls and shattering into splinters.
Inside, the magnificent hall was in disarray. Tapestries were torn, pillars were cracked. In the center of the room, before the desecrated Dragon Throne, stood the Regent King. His regal robes were shredded and soaked in his own blood. One leg was a mangled ruin. His hair was undone, plastered to his face with sweat and grime. He looked less like a king and more like a cornered beast.
In his trembling hands, he clutched a glowing red crystal—a Fire Soul Detonator. Thick, arcane wires ran from it into a hastily drilled hole in the throne platform, connecting it to the array deep below.
"You came!" the Regent King shrieked, his voice cracking with a mixture of terror and triumph. "You actually came alone! Arrogant fool! Do you see this? The fate of millions rests in my hand!"
Lu Feng’s eyes were cold and empty. He walked forward, his footsteps echoing in the cavernous hall.
"My brother was just like you," the Regent King spat, his face twisting into a mask of pure hatred. "So high and mighty! He sat on this throne, writing poetry and talking of peace, while I bled on the battlefields! I secured this empire! It was mine by right!"
He coughed, spitting a glob of blood onto the polished floor. "I poisoned him. Slowly. So slowly he never even knew. He died thinking he had failed the ancestors, a weakling succumbing to illness. And now his whelp returns to claim my throne? Never!"
Lu Feng continued his slow, deliberate advance. He hadn't said a word. His silence was a form of supreme contempt, and it drove the Regent King further into madness.
"Kneel!" the Regent King screamed, holding the detonator high. "Kneel before me, Lu Feng! Acknowledge me as the true Emperor, or I will turn this entire city into our shared grave! Your woman! Your followers! Every man, woman, and child will be vaporized because you refused to bow your head!"
Lu Feng stopped. He stood ten paces from the throne, his expression unchanged. For the first time since entering the hall, he spoke. His voice was flat, devoid of all emotion.
"You talk too much."
The three words struck the Regent King like a physical blow. All his threats, his grand, world-ending leverage, dismissed as mere noise. The last vestiges of his sanity shattered. A wild, animalistic howl tore from his throat.
"DIE! DIE WITH ME! IF I CANNOT HAVE THIS EMPIRE, THEN NO ONE WILL!"
He poured the last dregs of his true essence into the Fire Soul Detonator. The crystal blazed with an apocalyptic light, its heat scorching the air. He lunged, moving to slam the detonator onto the activation plate.
Just as he moves to light the fuse, Lu Feng's sword-qi severs his remaining leg. Lu Feng calmly picks up the imperial seal that has fallen and rolled across the floor.