NOVPUBTheir cooperation was seamless; even Li Siwen’s cellphone was dissolved and devoured by Xia Feng using the Blood Beast, making it impossible for the Prince to know it was them.
"Catch her," the Prince said, his gaze shifting toward the trio in the corner.
Mu Qingtong remained calm, Xia Feng raised his eyebrows slightly, and Mushroom’s face tensed.
A large group of guards stomped over in iron boots, quickly surrounding the three.
"My apologies, everyone," the Prince said, walking forward, hands behind his back, his gaze cold. "My daughter has committed such a grave error. I have failed as a father."
"Take her away," he gestured with his hand and immediately two guards stepped forward, grabbing Mushroom by both arms. Mushroom was dumbfounded, her scream trembling, "No, it wasn’t me! Let me go!"
"Take her away!"
"Wait," Xia Feng said, holding a guard’s shoulder, his voice grave, "Your Highness, you said it was Mushroom who killed. But how did she do it? What was her motive for killing?"
The Prince glanced at Xia Feng indifferently, "She refuses to acknowledge Yue Hongli as her mother, hence she harbors resentment against her brother who pressured her. That is her motive for murder."
"Ah?" Xia Feng was stunned. Isn’t that motive rather arbitrary?
Yue Hongli must be the name of the current Princess.
The Prince addressed Mushroom, "Hong Dou, do you have anything else to defend yourself with?"
Seeing the coldness in her father’s eyes, Mushroom snapped out of her panic, her emotions suddenly calming, her gaze darkening.
"Lord Prince, are you saying that if I accept her as my mother, I’m not the assassin?" her voice was low.
The Prince watched her impassively, "Naturally, that would mean you have no motive for murder."
The two, one tall and one short, locked eyes, the surrounding guests silenced as if chilled.
Xia Feng was thoughtful. He could see that both Li Siwen and Liszt were coercing Mushroom to recognize her mother, by any means necessary.
It was absurd... Li Siwen was dead, yet Liszt didn’t care about finding the real murderer, instead using it to continue pressuring Mushroom. 𝙣𝙤𝙫𝒑𝙪𝒃.𝒄𝒐𝙢
It was as if the sky would fall if Mushroom didn’t acknowledge Yue Hongli as her mother.
"Now tell me, who is your mother?" the Prince demanded from his commanding height.
Mushroom took a deep breath, stood firm, and looked up, her voice unusually loud, "Definitely not that vixen!"
She didn’t actually mean harm to Yue Hongli; after all, this new Princess never mistreated her. She even doubted if the Princess could speak, possibly mentally disabled.
Yue Hongli was rarely seen in public, only appearing during the Prince’s birthday banquet, a mere formality to let the nobility know of her existence.
More like a mascot.
So Mushroom didn’t intend to target the Princess; she simply didn’t want the Prince to have his way, although she didn’t know what the Prince’s real intention was... insisting she acknowledge a mother...
"Take her away!" the Prince’s face turned cold, seeing that Mushroom was still unyielding.
Xia Feng frowned, about to speak when Wei Shutong suddenly stepped forward:
"Lord Prince, extraordinary events should be handed over to the Holy Department as per procedure."
Everyone was stunned. The Prince was also taken aback, his eyes darkening as he was about to speak, but Wei Shutong had already approached, his snake staff raised.
The space around them fluctuated instantly, nearly a hundred dark spots appeared, dense firearms emerging from all directions, their dark muzzles aimed directly at the Prince’s head, "Boom!!"
Fire snakes surged, and as the space trembled, the Prince was engulfed in flames and cannonade.
The crowd: "!!!?"
"Lord Prince!!"
"Wei Shutong, have you gone mad!!"
In the ensuing panic, the lights flickered off, the glass windows shattered with a crash, and a dozen black-robed figures wearing cat masks burst through the windows.
With the swiftness of lightning, they knocked the guards unconscious and simultaneously bit their thumbs, their blood hitting the ground as they shouted, "Reconstruct!"
The blood instantly formed a complex Array, buzzing— the entire venue shook as if a seal was being broken, with continuous cracking sounds emanating from beneath their feet.
As the firelight faded, a figure in a black robe wearing a pure white mask appeared under the muzzle, his robe fluttering. Behind him, Prince’s face darkened: "Wei, Shutong!"
"Old Wei, you indeed have a problem," Zhao Jie slowly withdrew his broadsword, smiling broadly.
Boom—
The ground’s bricks turned to flying ash in an instant, and everyone lost their footing and dropped into the darkness below.
Prince and a few others still stood suspended in midair.
Wei Shutong spun his snake staff emotionlessly, transforming the long staff into a dark-colored hunting shotgun, retreating and raising his gun again as the Fire Snake spat fire.
The roaring sound was relentless. Xia Feng and Mu Qingtong glanced at each other, and without much exchanging words, they both clasped Mushroom’s arm and descended into the abyss.
"Hey, hey, hey! Slow down, you two slow down~~" Mushroom’s sharp, panicked tremor echoed through the air.
Upon reaching the bottom, the trio discovered a dark room built of Infinite Stone, containing only a black, chilling tunnel.
Although they didn’t know what had happened or why Wei Shutong suddenly wanted to kill the Prince, or what the purpose of the cat-faced assassins was, everything was unclear, but Xia Feng had had enough of wondering; it was time to run. "Let’s go."
It wasn’t long before the three rushed out of the tunnel space, and what met their eyes was a gloomy, dense forest, with a sinister Blood Moon hanging in the sky.
"Evil Dragon Forest?"
Xia Feng looked puzzled around him; this tunnel had actually bypassed the Empire Military Department’s nuclear checks and led directly into the Evil Dragon Forest!
"There seems to be a building over there."
Following Mushroom’s gaze, Xia Feng saw through the dense forest leaves what seemed to be... a hospital?
The three made their way through the thick forest, and Xia Feng saw a sign he was all too familiar with.
[Ping Shan Hospital]
"Over there! Catch her!"
A loud shout erupted, and the trio turned around to see about ten figures in black robes and pure white masks charging at them, followed by about ten others wearing cat-faced masks—ragdolls, Siamese, Scottish folds, Maine Cats... a peculiar sight.
"Stop them!"
At the same moment, a Persian cat-person dropped directly from the sky landing in front of Xia Feng, "Quick, hand over Li Hongdou to me, I’m here to help you!"
"Do you think I’m stupid?" Xia Feng grabbed Mushroom and turned to run.
Clearly, both groups were after Mushroom.
Although the cat-faced people seemed to be with Wei Shutong, they still weren’t trustworthy enough.
With a crowd relentlessly chasing behind them and all paths blocked, the trio had no choice but to burst into the hospital.
"There are white-masked people in the hospital too," Mu Qingtong’s gaze slightly darkened.
They were encircled.
"You guys go first!" The cat-faced people and the white-masked people began to fight, not forgetting to turn back and urge.
"Yeah, like you’re one of us," Xia Feng muttered internally, but still hurriedly followed the direction, "Optimization!"
He directly took out the Forest Wand, and ten wooden soldiers transformed into frenzied fighters delivering blow after blow to those in their way.
Each possessed combat abilities comparable to a Second Order Body Master, and these small brawlers were no match.
Xia Feng, with the escort of the cat-faced people, broke through directly inside the hospital.
As the number of cat-faced guards dwindled around them, they finally burst into a laboratory.
The scene inside the laboratory stunned everyone; in the center of the large circular experiment field stood a cyan glass coffin, its surface intricately adorned with golden networks spreading like branches, as if a sacred Array was eternally trapping the woman inside.
The woman, dressed in a bright red Divine Phoenix immortal dress, stood with hands clasped and bare, graceful legs lifted in mid-air, her slightly closed fox-lifted eyelids revealing traces of golden light, adding a divine quality to her exceptionally beautiful and seductive face.
"Protect the Princess!"
As the command echoed, a group of white-masked figures guarded the front of the glass coffin, their murderous intent chilling.
