Title: Reborn as the Poison Duchess: The System Crowned Me Empress
Chapter 5: The Edict and the Emperor
The transition from the bloody autumn banquet to the Imperial Throne Room was a blur of flashing spears, screaming nobles, and torrential rain. We had been dragged directly to the palace, the blood still wet on my crimson robes.
The Throne Room was cold, vast, and suffocatingly imposing. A thousand candles flickered, casting long, monstrous shadows against the gold-leafed pillars.
The aging Emperor, pale and wheezing, sat hunched upon the dragon throne. Below him knelt a pathetic assembly: Shen Ze, pressing his forehead into the marble floor; Lu Yao, who had been force-fed a crude antidote by the imperial physicians but currently looked like a half-rotten corpse; and the Third Prince, Li Xuan, who stood tall, radiating a false, righteous indignation.
I stood in the center of the hall, my posture ramrod straight. To my right, Li Jin sat in his shattered wooden wheelchair, his bandaged hand resting calmly on his lap.
"Speak!" The Emperor coughed violently into a silk handkerchief, his eyes wild with paranoia. "Assassins at the Royal Banquet! Who is responsible for this treason?!"
Shen Ze slammed his head against the stone floor, his voice echoing with desperate, rat-like cunning. "Your Majesty! It is exactly as I said! It is my vicious, uncontrollable wife, Lu Wan! She poisoned my concubine in front of the entire court, and when she realized she would be punished, she summoned her hidden Lu family assassins to kill the Ninth Prince and create a distraction! Furthermore, the Lu family has grown far too arrogant, controlling the Northern Army as if it were their private toy. I beg Your Majesty for an imperial decree of divorce, and to immediately strip the Lu family of their military seal to protect the throne!"
"Yes, Imperial Father," Li Xuan chimed in smoothly, his eyes flashing with dark triumph. "The Duchess is completely out of control. Her actions today border on open rebellion. The military seal must be confiscated and handed to a loyal son."
They were playing their final, most desperate card. Strip me of my family's power, divorce me, and leave me utterly defenseless so Li Xuan could absorb my army. In my past life, this was the exact strategy that had left my father and brothers headless at the Meridian Gate.
The Emperor frowned deeply, his paranoid gaze shifting toward me. "Lu Wan. You dare poison a concubine and command assassins under my very nose?"
I slowly raised my chin, my golden phoenix hairpins chiming in the deadly silence. I did not kneel.
"Your Majesty, Shen Ze is a liar," I said, my voice ringing clear and steady as a silver bell. "The poison in my cup was traced back to Lu Yao’s personal maid—I merely forced the dog to drink her own venom. As for the assassins..."
I reached into my wide silk sleeve and pulled out a bloody, torn piece of black fabric. I had ripped it from the dead assassin's inner collar during the chaos.
"Your Majesty, please examine the hidden embroidery on this lining."
The head eunuch scurried down the steps, took the bloody fabric with trembling hands, and brought it to the Emperor. The Emperor held it up to the candlelight. His eyes slowly widened, the veins in his neck bulging.
"The four-clawed golden python..." the Emperor whispered, his voice trembling with rage. "This is the hidden crest... of the Third Prince's private imperial guards!"
Li Xuan’s face drained of color entirely. He took a step backward. "Impossible! She planted it! Imperial Father, she is trying to frame me!"
"Planted it?" I laughed, a sharp, cold sound that echoed off the vaulted ceilings. "Your Majesty, I have spent the last month ruthlessly auditing my Duke’s estate ledgers. I discovered that Shen Ze has been embezzling my family's military funds—over three million taels of silver—and secretly transferring them to a hidden iron forge thirty miles outside the capital."
Shen Ze stopped breathing. He stared at me in absolute, mind-shattering horror.
"An iron forge," I continued ruthlessly, my eyes locking onto the trembling Third Prince, "owned entirely by Li Xuan. They are illegally forging thousands of weapons and sets of heavy armor!"
The throne room erupted into frantic murmurs from the royal guards.
"Nonsense!" Shen Ze screamed, his voice cracking, sweat pouring down his pale face. "You barren, jealous shrew! You lie to destroy me because I love Yao'er and not you! You forge ledgers out of spite!"
"Silence!" The Emperor roared, slamming his frail hand on the golden armrest. He pointed a shaking, furious finger at Li Xuan. "Is this true, you unfilial beast? Forging private weapons is a crime punishable by the extermination of nine generations!"
Li Xuan realized the game was up.
The Emperor’s Imperial Guards were already shifting their heavy spears toward him, their expressions hardening. The Third Prince’s eyes went completely, utterly dark, losing all pretense of royal grace.
"Since the senile old fool already knows," Li Xuan sneered, a manic, deranged smile twisting his lips. He reached to his waist and drew his longsword right in the middle of the throne room. "Then there is no need to wait for tomorrow. Guards! Secure the palace! Kill the Emperor!"
Outside the heavy wooden doors of the throne room, a deafening roar erupted. The shouts of the Third Prince’s rebel army—thousands of men he had smuggled into the palace perimeter—echoed like thunder. They had surrounded the hall.
Shen Ze leaped to his feet, scrambling to stand behind Li Xuan's drawn blade.
"Wan'er!" Shen Ze shouted, a deranged, hysterical laugh escaping his throat. "You stupid, arrogant bitch! If you had just been an obedient wife, if you had just swallowed your pride, you could have enjoyed immense wealth! But now? Now you will die right here, slaughtered like a pig along with this old man and that useless cripple!"
The Emperor slumped back onto his throne, clutching his chest in sheer terror as the heavy oak doors began to shudder under the battering rams of the rebel army. "Treason... it is treason!"
I didn't panic. I didn't scream.
I just turned and looked at Li Jin.
[System Action: Administering Ultimate Reward 'Miracle Marrow Pill' to Target: Li Jin.]
I walked calmly over to Li Jin’s wheelchair amidst the chaos. Under the shocked, bewildered gaze of everyone in the room, I pressed a glowing, golden pill between his pale lips. He didn't ask questions. He didn't hesitate. He swallowed it instantly.
"What are you doing?" Li Xuan laughed, pointing his sword at me. "Feeding a dying cripple his last meal? How touching!"
Suddenly, the ambient temperature in the throne room plummeted to below freezing.
The air itself seemed to warp and crackle with an invisible, suffocating pressure. A wave of pure, condensed martial Qi exploded outward from the wheelchair, blowing out half the candles in the hall.
Li Jin slowly gripped the wooden armrests of his wheelchair.
Crack. CRACK.
The solid, iron-reinforced wood completely shattered into dust under his grip.
To the absolute, mind-breaking horror of Li Xuan, Shen Ze, and Lu Yao... the Ninth Prince, the man who had been hopelessly paralyzed from the waist down for ten long years, placed his heavy, black leather boots flat on the marble floor.
And he stood up.
He uncoiled to his full height, towering over every man in the room at an imposing six-foot-three. The dark, brooding, fragile cripple was gone. In his place stood a monstrous war god, radiating an apocalyptic, heaven-shaking killing intent.
"You..." Shen Ze stammered, dropping his cane and falling backward onto his hands, his eyes practically bulging out of his skull. "Your legs... it's a trick... it has to be a trick!"
Li Jin reached beneath the blanket of his shattered wheelchair and drew a massive, pitch-black iron sword. He stepped over the debris, walking slowly, deliberately toward the Third Prince. Every footstep echoed like the tolling of a death bell.
"Third Brother," Li Jin said, his voice deep, resonating with a terrifying power. "Did you really think I spent the last ten years doing nothing but sitting and staring at the rain? The Northern Army stationed outside the palace gates doesn't belong to you. It doesn't even belong to the Emperor anymore."
He raised the black sword, its edge gleaming in the dim light.
"They belong to me. And they have already slaughtered every last one of your pathetic rebels."
As if on cue, the heavy doors of the throne room swung violently open, the hinges screaming.
My eldest brother—alive, whole, and magnificent in his blood-drenched silver armor—strode into the hall. He carried a dripping burlap sack in his hand. He threw it onto the marble floor, where the severed head of Li Xuan’s rebel commander rolled to a stop at the Third Prince's feet.
"The rebellion is completely crushed, Your Majesty!" my brother roared, kneeling before the throne.
A sharp, pungent smell suddenly filled the air near me. I looked down. Shen Ze had wet his pants. Literally. A dark, pathetic stain spread across his fine silk robes as he collapsed completely, sobbing and groveling in his own filth. Lu Yao, witnessing the absolute annihilation of all her grand schemes, let out a choked gasp and fainted dead away on the floor.
Li Xuan screamed—a raw, desperate sound of a cornered beast—and charged at Li Jin with his sword raised.
Li Jin didn't even blink. He swung his black iron sword in a singular, flawless, blinding arc.
Schwing.
The sound of tearing flesh and shattering bone echoed through the hall. Li Xuan’s body crumpled to the floor, his throat sliced completely wide open. Blood pooled rapidly across the pristine marble, reflecting the flickering candlelight.
The throne room fell deadly silent.
The Emperor, weeping tears of profound relief and sheer exhaustion, pointed a trembling, frail finger at Li Jin. "Jin'er... you... you hid your strength... you saved the dynasty..."
Li Jin flicked his wrist, shaking the blood from his black blade before sheathing it with a sharp clack. He didn't bow to the Emperor. He didn't even acknowledge the praise.
He turned around, his dark, bottomless eyes locking onto mine, and walked back to me.
"Your Majesty," Li Jin said loudly, though he was speaking only to me. "I saved your throne. I want my reward. I want the Duke of Zhenguo stripped of all titles and sentenced to death by a thousand cuts for treason."
He stopped right in front of me, his towering frame casting a protective shadow over me. Slowly, gently, he reached out with his massive, bloodstained hand and took mine.
"And," Li Jin declared, his thumb tracing the knuckles of my unscarred hand, "I want the Legitimate Duchess, Lu Wan, as my Crown Princess."
Shen Ze, hearing his death sentence and the ultimate elevation of the woman he had discarded, let out a blood-curdling shriek of pure, soul-tearing despair. He clawed at the stone floor, realizing he had thrown away the ultimate power in the empire for a useless, backstabbing concubine.
I looked down at him, a cold, empty smile on my face. The debt is paid.
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