DTBACF

Chapter 286-290

Chapter 286: A Nation Must Not Have A Day Without A Ruler

There was no human who doesn’t fear death. The soldiers stopped chasing their liege when they were caught by their fear of death. That moment of hesitation was enough for the emperor to disappear, right in front of their very eyes. The emperor had been trying to subdue his startled horse, but had been quickly interrupted by a man who’d leaped up on his horse. The mysterious man struck the emperor’s acupoints before he could shout for help and dragged him off the horse. By the time the emperor’s body hit the ground, he was already unconscious.

And thus, the pitiful emperor fainted before he could even see who his assailant was. The whole group returned to the underground tunnels after Long Heng waved at the assailant. There was a person outside the tunnels who was tasked with the job of clearing the scene of evidence. After he was done, he turned around and vanished in the chaos of the battlefield.

After escaping from the battlefield, Long Heng and his cohort stared at the unconscious emperor. This man was once the ruler of millions of people, but now he was nothing more than just a common prisoner. Long Heng looked at the emperor coldly and jabbed at his eyes with his fingers.

The emperor was thus blinded in his sleep. Two streams of bloody tears began to flow down his cheeks. Ah Song and the rest were shocked by how ruthless Long Heng was. All things considered, this man was still once Long Heng’s liege. How could he blind his previous ruler without even a moment’s hesitation? Long Heng then said, “It’s time for me to return to the capital. Handle everything else here according to our original plan. Understood?”

“Understood.” After that, Long Heng no longer spoke. He wasn’t planning to let the emperor have the pleasure of knowing who his abductor was before his death. Long Heng had actually made a very cruel move today. Losing the emperor so early had been a critical blow to his army, and the emperor’s army began losing very badly soon after the emperor went missing.

The great army was forced to retreat back to Tranquil City. Meanwhile, Long Heng and his cohorts were going in two separate ways after they exited the tunnel. One group headed for Shu County, while the other headed for the capital. After arriving at Tranquil City, everyone else only realized what kind of disaster had happened when they failed to find the emperor, no matter how hard they searched. They immediately sent some men to the capital to report the matter, because it was an incredibly frightening thing for a nation to lose its ruler.

However, these men were still one step slower than Long Heng. When Long Heng’s men arrived at the capital, they followed the plan and invited Prince Rong to the palace, along with Princess Consort Rong and all his other noble consorts. Soon after that, the news from Tranquil City arrived. The emperor was announced missing after many failed search attempts. A nation must not have a day without a ruler, therefore the country was actually in very dire straits.

And during this critical time, three of the five senior officials actually voted for Prince Rong to ascend to the throne immediately. On the other hand, the other two voted for the ten year old crown prince to succeed his father. It was during this moment when Prince Rong said, “There is someone else who can give out their opinion on this matter. Does everyone want to see him?”

“Who is it?”

“Ah! P-Prince Li! How can it be you? Didn’t you pass away already?” These men only saw a heavily injured Long Heng limp his way into the meeting room.

“Truth be told, while it was true that Prince Li was heavily injured, it wasn’t actually a mortal wound. Realizing that there was a spy hiding in our court, the emperor and Long Heng decided put up an act so that he could remove the spy in secret,” Prince Rong said.