**Chapter 2: The Art of Playing Dead and the Asura's Arrival**
Dawn broke over the sprawling, majestic Imperial Capital of the Great Qian Dynasty, painting the glazed azure tiles of the palace roofs in hues of gold and blood-orange.
Inside the Ninth Prince's modest, dilapidated estate, the morning began exactly as it always did: with a symphony of meticulously calculated paranoia.
Li Xuan emerged from his soundproof, Qi-concealing floorboard compartment precisely at 7:00 AM. He moved with the practiced grace of a seasoned burglar in his own bedroom. He checked the nine Tier-2 Phantom Spider silk tripwires. Intact. He checked the pH balance of his anti-poison water dish. Crystal clear. He checked the microscopic layer of ash he had sprinkled by the window sill to catch footprints. Undisturbed.
Only then did he allow himself to exhale.
He walked to the bronze mirror—which he had discreetly replaced during the night after turning the previous one into metallic dust—and began his facial exercises. He dropped his jaw slightly, unfocused his eyes, and let a tremor enter his hands. He rehearsed his 'terrified stammer' for five minutes until it sounded indistinguishable from a man facing a firing squad.
"Perfect," he whispered, his voice steady and cold. "Today, I am not a Peak Soul Formation expert. I am a terrified teenager who just realized he has to marry a mass murderer. Sell it, Li Xuan. Your life depends on it."
He sat at his table, poured a cup of cold tea, tested it with a silver needle, and waited.
At 7:15 AM, a sharp knock echoed through the courtyard, followed by the shrill voice of Eunuch Gao, the estate's head steward. "Xiaohong! Xiaohong, you lazy wench! The sun is high and His Highness needs his washing water! Where are you?"
Li Xuan took a sip of his tea, his expression utterly blank.
*She is currently scattered across the atmospheric currents of the northern hemisphere,* Li Xuan thought calmly. *But please, continue yelling.*
Ten minutes later, Eunuch Gao burst into Li Xuan's chambers, his face pale and slick with sweat. He kowtowed immediately. "Your Highness! Forgive this servant's intrusion! But... but Xiaohong is missing! Her bed hasn't been slept in, and her belongings are still in her quarters. The guards at the estate gates swear no one left during the night!"
Li Xuan instantly dropped his teacup. It shattered on the floor.
He leaped up from his chair, his face contorting into a mask of absolute, unadulterated panic. "M-missing?! What do you mean missing?! People don't just go missing in the Imperial Palace!"
He ran to the corner of the room and grabbed a decorative (but thoroughly blunted) iron sword, holding it out with trembling, sweaty hands. "Assassins! It must be assassins! They came for me, but they took Xiaohong by mistake! Or... or maybe she was the assassin, and she went to get reinforcements! Eunuch Gao, lock the gates! Barricade the doors! Request a battalion of Imperial Guards from Father immediately!"
Eunuch Gao looked at the shivering, hysterical prince and suppressed a sigh of profound disdain. *What a useless coward,* the eunuch thought. *Assassins? Coming for you? You aren't worth the poison on their daggers.*
"Please calm yourself, Your Highness," Eunuch Gao said smoothly, though his eyes held zero respect. "It is highly unlikely to be assassins. Xiaohong was... well, she was known to have a wandering eye. Perhaps she eloped with one of the outer court guards. I will report her as a runaway to the Internal Affairs Bureau. There is no need to disturb His Majesty over a lowly maid."
"A runaway? Y-you think so?" Li Xuan lowered the sword slightly, letting his knees knock together audibly. "B-but what if she comes back? Change the locks! Change all the locks in the estate!"
"As you command, Your Highness," Eunuch Gao said, bowing lazily before turning to leave.
Once the door clicked shut, Li Xuan's hyperventilating stopped instantly. His trembling hands steadied until they were as still as carved jade. He placed the blunted sword back on its rack, dusted off his robes, and smiled a thin, humorless smile.
*Hook, line, and sinker.* By overreacting like a hysterical child, he ensured that Eunuch Gao—who was likely on the payroll of the Second Prince—would report this incident as a joke. The disappearance of a maid would be swept under the rug of royal gossip, attributed to illicit romance rather than foul play.
Across the Imperial Capital, in the opulent and heavily guarded Eastern Palace, the First Prince, Li Tianlong, sat on a throne carved from Tier-5 Spirit-Horned Rhino ivory. He was a towering figure, radiating the aggressive, tyrannical aura of a Late-Stage Nascent Soul expert.
A shadow-clad guard knelt before him. "Your Highness, our informant in the Ninth Prince's estate, Xiaohong, failed to send her nightly report. Our agents within the Internal Affairs Bureau state she has vanished without a trace."
Li Tianlong frowned, a terrifying pressure descending upon the throne room. "Vanished? Did my dear brothers discover her? Did the Third Brother intercept her?"
"Unlikely, Your Highness," the guard reported, his head bowed. "The Ninth Prince threw a hysterical fit this morning, claiming assassins were after him. He demanded all the locks on his estate be changed. The general consensus among the spies of the other factions is that she eloped with a guardsman to escape serving the Trash Prince before the Northern War God arrives."
Li Tianlong's frown slowly morphed into a cruel, mocking laugh. "Eloped? Typical. Even the servants would rather risk the death penalty for desertion than serve that pathetic waste of royal blood. Forget her. Li Xuan is a non-factor. He is merely a fleshy collar my Imperial Father is using to choke the Mu Family. Focus all our surveillance on the Third Prince and the Northern army's movements."
"Understood, Your Highness!"
With a single, masterful display of cowardice, Li Xuan had completely erased any suspicion of his involvement in a murder.
### The Art of the Turtle
Three days passed. The impending arrival of Mu Qingxue, the Crimson General, hung over the capital like a guillotine waiting to drop.
Li Xuan, however, had a very practical problem to solve.
He was now a Peak Soul Formation expert. He had enough raw Qi to vaporize a mountain range. However, he had absolutely zero technique.
In his sixteen years of pretending to be trash, he had purposefully avoided learning any martial arts, spells, or movement techniques. The logic was sound at the time: if he didn't know how to fight, no one would force him to fight. But now that he had absolute power, he realized he was essentially a toddler sitting in the driver's seat of a highly advanced, nuclear-powered tank. He could press the gas pedal and blow everything up, but he didn't know how to steer, brake, or use the radar.
Furthermore, relying purely on his cultivation base was dangerous. What if he encountered an enemy with a bizarre, heaven-defying artifact that ignored raw Qi? What if he was poisoned by an odorless, colorless, Tier-8 divine toxin?
*I need defenses,* Li Xuan concluded while eating breakfast (after thoroughly testing his congee with four different methods). *I need armor so thick, so ungodly tough, that even if a Dao Integration expert sneezes on me, I won't lose a single hair.*
That afternoon, Li Xuan ordered his carriage and rode to the Imperial Treasury.
The Imperial Treasury was a massive, heavily fortified pagoda located in the inner sanctum of the palace, guarded by three Nascent Soul elders and a complex array formation that could slaughter armies.
As a Prince who had just come of age and received a marriage edict, Li Xuan was legally entitled to select three items from the Outer Treasury to serve as his 'betrothal foundation'.
When he arrived, the Minister of the Treasury, a haughty old man named Minister Zhao, greeted him with barely concealed contempt.
"Ninth Prince," Minister Zhao said, offering a shallow bow that bordered on insulting. "Congratulations on your impending nuptials. The Outer Treasury is open to you. Shall I guide you toward the offensive artifacts? Perhaps a Tier-4 Crimson Flare Sword? It would look very dashing, even if Your Highness cannot activate its deeper profound mysteries."
*A sword?* Li Xuan scoffed internally. *Swords are for idiots who want to get close to sharp objects. I'd rather hold a live grenade.*
"N-no thank you, Minister Zhao," Li Xuan stammered, wringing his hands and looking nervously over his shoulder. "I... I don't need weapons. Weapons are dangerous. You can cut yourself! Actually, I was hoping... do you have anything... thicker?"
"Thicker, Your Highness?" Minister Zhao raised an eyebrow.
"Armor!" Li Xuan blurted out, his voice cracking perfectly. "The thickest armor you have! I... I hear General Mu is very aggressive. People call her an Asura! What if she has a bad dream and rolls over and crushes me? What if she gets angry that I poured tea wrong and punches me? I need protection! I don't want to die!"
Minister Zhao stared at the prince for a long, silent moment. The sheer, unadulterated patheticness of the boy was staggering. He was marrying the most beautiful, powerful woman in the empire, and his first thought was that she might accidentally crush him in his sleep.
"I... see," Minister Zhao said, his lips twitching as he suppressed a laugh. He led Li Xuan down a long corridor filled with glowing weapons, ancient scrolls, and pulsing pills. They arrived at the back of the treasury, where the bulky, undesirable defensive items were kept.
"Here we are, Your Highness," Minister Zhao said, pointing to a massive, dark green chest plate that looked suspiciously like half a boulder. "The Tier-4 Black Tortoise Heavy Carapace. It weighs eight hundred pounds. It is incredibly durable, but it restricts movement so severely that most cultivators consider it a death trap, as you cannot dodge while wearing it."
"I'll take it!" Li Xuan said instantly, his eyes lighting up.
*Dodge? Why would I dodge? If I dodge, I might trip and hit my head! I want to be an immovable object!* Li Xuan ran his hand over the ugly, bulky armor. With his Soul Formation divine sense, he could see the intricate defensive arrays woven into the beast shell. It was decent. If he layered his own Qi underneath it, it could probably withstand a direct hit from a cruise missile.
"A wise choice for... stationary defense," Minister Zhao sneered. "You have two selections remaining."
Li Xuan began to wander the aisles. He kept his posture hunched, his eyes wide and vacant. But beneath that flawless facade, his Peak Soul Formation divine sense was expanding.
He didn't use his eyes to look at the treasures; he used his soul. His divine sense washed over the entire Outer Treasury like an invisible, omniscient tide. He saw past the glowing illusions, the fancy display cases, and the boastful plaques. He analyzed the fundamental Qi structures of every single item.
Most of it was garbage. Flashy, low-tier junk meant to placate minor nobles.
But as his sense swept over a dusty, neglected corner reserved for unidentified or broken artifacts, it caught on something.
It was a pair of old, scuffed, grey leather boots. They looked like they belonged to a peasant farmer who had walked through a mudslide.
But to Li Xuan's soul-sight, the boots were a terrifying anomaly. They didn't radiate Qi. Instead, they seemed to continuously absorb and fold the ambient space around them. The spatial laws woven into the leather were so ancient and profound that even Li Xuan's vast Soul Formation knowledge couldn't fully comprehend them.
*Spatial manipulation,* Li Xuan's heart beat faster. *Those aren't just boots. Those are a divine-tier escape artifact disguised as trash.*
He immediately wanted them. But he couldn't just walk over and grab them, or Minister Zhao might suspect he had an appraiser's eye.
Li Xuan continued his bumbling walk, accidentally knocking over a display stand of cheap talismans. "Oops! S-sorry! I'm so clumsy!" he wailed, scrambling to pick them up. As he flailed around the room, he 'accidentally' kicked the dusty shelf holding the boots. The boots tumbled to the ground, landing right by his feet.
"Oh, ew, what are these dirty things doing here?" Li Xuan asked, picking them up by two fingers with a look of extreme disgust. He examined the thick soles. "Wait... these soles are really thick. Eunuch Gao says the courtyards in the North are very muddy. Minister Zhao, if I wear these, I won't ruin my silk socks, right?"
Minister Zhao looked at the scuffed boots and sighed heavily. "Your Highness, those are unidentified artifacts recovered from a collapsed ruin a century ago. They have no apparent spiritual energy. They are completely useless. Are you sure you wish to waste a royal selection on... mud boots?"
"Yes! Clean socks are very important!" Li Xuan declared stubbornly, clutching the boots to his chest. "I'll take these!"
For his final item, Li Xuan selected a Tier-3 'Thousand-Mile Smoke Bomb' artifact, citing a need to escape from aggressive northern bees.
Minister Zhao finalized the paperwork, eager to get the embarrassing prince out of his sight. As Li Xuan loaded his humiliating haul into his carriage, the guards snickered behind their hands.
Li Xuan ignored them. He climbed into his carriage, pulling the curtains shut.
In the dim light of the carriage, the cowardly, bumbling prince vanished. Li Xuan sat perfectly straight, his eyes sharp and cold. He stroked the scuffed leather of the spatial boots.
*Laugh all you want,* he thought, an icy smirk playing on his lips. *With these boots, if a Dao Integration expert tries to kill me, I can step through the void and be in a different timezone before their sword even clears its scabbard. My survival rate just went up by at least 15%.*
### The Omniscient Thief
That night, secured within his underground bunker, Li Xuan decided it was time to address his lack of 'software'.
He needed martial arts. Specifically, he needed the absolute best concealment techniques, escape techniques, and defensive arts the Great Qian Dynasty had to offer.
The Imperial Library, located deep within the palace, held the empire's greatest manuals. Normally, a prince would need to request access, undergo trials, and swear blood oaths to read the high-tier scrolls.
Li Xuan didn't have time for that. Furthermore, checking out a book left a paper trail. A paper trail meant people knew what you were capable of. And if people knew what you were capable of, they could plan around it.
*Rule number two: Trust no one. Let no one know your limits.*
Li Xuan sat cross-legged on his bed. He closed his eyes, controlled his breathing, and unleashed his divine sense.
He didn't let his aura leak out; he only extended his mind. The invisible, incorporeal tendrils of his soul slipped through the floorboards, burrowed through the earth, and traveled miles across the Imperial Capital.
To a Soul Formation expert, physical matter was merely a suggestion. His divine sense bypassed the heavily armored guards, phased through the three-foot-thick steel doors of the Imperial Library, and effortlessly slipped past the Tier-6 defensive arrays that were designed to stop Nascent Soul intruders.
He found himself 'standing' in the Forbidden Pavilion, the highest floor of the library, reserved only for the Emperor and the Royal Ancestors.
Floating in stasis spheres were ancient, glowing jades slips containing the ultimate foundations of the dynasty.
Li Xuan didn't steal them physically. He just read them.
His divine sense wrapped around a jade slip labeled: **[Emperor's Dragon-Subduing Fist - Tier 7 Offensive Art]**.
*A technique that requires burning one's life force to punch with the weight of a mountain,* Li Xuan read the summary. He immediately scoffed. *Garbage. Why would I burn my own life force to hit someone? If I have to punch them, I'm already too close. Discard.*
He moved to the next. **[Nine Heavens Sword Art - Tier 7 Offensive Art]**.
*Requires twenty years of meditating under a waterfall, forming a sword heart that knows no fear, and constantly seeking strong opponents to temper one's blade.* Li Xuan mentally spat on the jade slip. *Psychopathic garbage. Seeking strong opponents? That's just a fancy way of saying 'committing elaborate suicide.' Discard.*
He searched for nearly an hour before he found what he was looking for. Tucked away in a dusty corner of the Forbidden Pavilion were the manuals left behind by the dynasty's founding assassins and shadow-guards.
**[Phantom Void Concealment - Tier 8 Stealth Art]**.
*Transforms the user's Qi, heartbeat, and soul signature to match ambient background radiation. At absolute mastery, the user cannot be perceived by sight, sound, smell, karma, or divine sense, as long as they do not attack.*
"Beautiful," Li Xuan whispered in his dark room. "Absolutely gorgeous. I will master this immediately."
He rapidly copied the entire manual into his perfect, enhanced memory.
He then found **[Blood-Burning Heavenly Escape - Tier 7 Movement Art]**.
*Ignites the user's essence blood to propel them ten thousand miles in a single breath. Drawback: Severely damages the foundation and reduces lifespan.*
Li Xuan frowned. He liked the distance, but he absolutely despised the drawback. He analyzed the technique with his vast Soul Formation intellect.
*Wait,* he thought. *The technique uses blood as a fuel source because lower-realm cultivators don't have enough pure Qi to compress space. But I am Peak Soul Formation. I have oceans of pure Qi. If I rewrite the meridians pathway... substitute the blood ignition trigger with a compressed sphere of Soul Qi...*
Within minutes, Li Xuan had mentally rewritten a thousand-year-old, top-tier escape technique.
**[Li Xuan's Modified Cowardly Retreat - Unranked]**.
*Compresses half a sea of Soul Qi to fold space, instantly teleporting the user ten thousand miles away. Drawback: Consumes a massive amount of Qi, forcing the user to take a nap afterward. No blood burned. Zero lifespan lost.*
"Perfect," Li Xuan smiled, thoroughly satisfied with his genius.
For the next three weeks, Li Xuan did not step foot outside his courtyard. Publicly, Eunuch Gao reported that the Ninth Prince was paralyzed by fear, weeping in his room every day as the date of the Northern War God's arrival drew near.
In reality, Li Xuan was underground, silently mastering the highest-tier stealth and escape techniques in the world, binding the spatial boots with his blood, and reinforcing his Black Tortoise armor with twelve overlapping layers of Soul Formation Qi-wards.
He was turning himself into an unkillable, untrackable, indestructible bunker.
### The Asura Arrives
Twenty-one days later, the air in the Imperial Capital changed.
The usual bustling noise of merchants, scholars, and nobles fell silent. An oppressive, iron-scented pressure rolled through the city streets like a creeping fog. It was the scent of a hundred thousand battlefields.
The Northern Vanguard had arrived.
Li Xuan stood at the grand Vermillion Bird Gate, the southern entrance to the capital. By Imperial Decree, he was required to formally welcome his betrothed.
He stood alongside the Minister of Rites and a contingent of Imperial Guards. He looked utterly miserable. He was sweating profusely. He was wearing his heavy, absurdly bulky dark-green Black Tortoise armor *underneath* his royal silk robes, making him look fat, lumpy, and entirely un-royal. He kept flinching every time a horse whinnied.
"Stand straight, Your Highness," the Minister of Rites hissed, humiliated by the prince's display. "You are representing the Imperial Family. Have some dignity!"
"Dignity doesn't stop swords, Minister!" Li Xuan squeaked out, hiding slightly behind the older man.
A rhythmic, thunderous sound echoed from the distance. *Thud. Thud. Thud.* It was the marching of boots.
Over the horizon, a sea of crimson banners appeared. Beneath them marched three thousand soldiers of the Blood Vanguard. They wore armor stained permanently dark red by the blood of demonic beasts. They moved in perfect, terrifying unison, their collective killing intent forming a visible, hazy red cloud above them.
Leading the vanguard was a massive, Tier-5 Armored Frost-Lion. It was the size of a siege tower, breathing plumes of icy mist.
And riding atop the beast, looking down upon the capital with eyes as cold as the northern glaciers, was Mu Qingxue.
Li Xuan peeked out from behind the Minister of Rites, using a microscopic fraction of his divine sense to observe his future wife.
She was breathtakingly beautiful, but in a way that made you afraid to look at her for too long. She wore form-fitting silver scale armor, a crimson cape billowing behind her like a river of blood. Her hair was black as midnight, tied high, and her skin was pale as snow. A massive, heavy halberd—radiating the terrifying pressure of a top-tier killing artifact—rested casually across her lap.
**[Ding! Target: Primary Spouse Mu Qingxue.]**
**[Cultivation Confirmed: Peak Golden Core Realm.]**
**[Status: Highly aggressive. Extreme battle-intent detected.]**
*She's only nineteen,* Li Xuan thought, genuinely impressed despite his terror. *Her foundation is incredibly solid. She's suppressing her breakthrough to Nascent Soul purely to temper her killing intent. A true combat genius. And completely, utterly psychotic.*
The Frost-Lion stopped a hundred paces from the gate. The three thousand Blood Vanguard soldiers halted in unison, slamming their spears against the earth. The sound echoed like a thunderclap, causing several minor nobles in the welcoming party to stumble backward.
Li Xuan let out a highly convincing, high-pitched shriek and fell onto his backside, scrambling backward on the cobblestones.
The silence that followed was deafening.
Mu Qingxue sat atop her lion, staring down at the lumpy, fat-looking prince rolling around on the ground in terror. Her perfect, icy features did not change, but a profound chill descended upon the area.
*So this is the Emperor's insult,* Mu Qingxue thought, her grip tightening slightly on her halberd. *My family bleeds to protect the northern borders from the demon tides, and in return, he shackles me to a coward who wets himself at the sound of a spear. He wants to chain the northern dragon to a sick dog.*
Her lieutenants, hardened veterans of a hundred massacres, glared at Li Xuan with open, murderous disgust.
"Stand up," Mu Qingxue spoke. Her voice was not loud, but it carried a spiritual resonance that commanded obedience. It was cold, clear, and utterly devoid of emotion.
Li Xuan frantically scrambled to his feet, dusting himself off with trembling hands, keeping his head bowed low. "W-welcome to the capital, General Mu! I am... I am Li Xuan. Your... your betrothed."
He intentionally let his voice crack on the word 'betrothed'.
Before Mu Qingxue could respond, a cold, mocking voice rang out from the side streets.
"Hahaha! Is this the legendary Blood Asura? And her glorious future husband? What a match made in heaven! A fierce tigress paired with a castrated pig!"
The crowd gasped and parted. A young man, dressed in opulent robes embroidered with gold, strode forward. He radiated the aura of a Mid-Stage Golden Core cultivator. Behind him stood several smirking retainers.
Li Xuan instantly recognized him. Wang Teng. The young master of the Marquis of Iron, a faction fiercely loyal to the Third Prince.
*Ah,* Li Xuan analyzed instantly. *The Third Prince sent a proxy to test the waters. He wants to provoke Mu Qingxue into attacking a noble in the capital, which would give the Imperial Censors an excuse to strip her of her military command before the wedding. A classic, albeit crude, political trap.*
Wang Teng sneered, looking up at Mu Qingxue. "General Mu, it is a tragedy to see a martial genius like you wasted on royal garbage. I hear the Ninth Prince sleeps under his bed because he's afraid of the dark. Are you going to hold his hand every night?"
The killing intent from the Blood Vanguard spiked to terrifying levels, but Mu Qingxue raised a single, armored hand. The troops froze instantly.
She looked down at Wang Teng as if looking at a particularly annoying insect.
"You insult the Imperial Decree," Mu Qingxue said, her voice dropping the temperature of the air by ten degrees. "You insult my future husband. And you block my path."
Wang Teng puffed out his chest, confident in his status and his cultivation. "I am simply speaking the truth! He is a coward! Look at him shivering! He isn't worthy to even look at your shoes, General! If he had any honor, he would duel me right now to prove—"
He never finished his sentence.
Li Xuan's Soul Formation senses captured the entire sequence in ultra-slow motion. He watched as Mu Qingxue's Golden Core Qi flared not outward, but entirely inward, compressing into her muscles. She didn't draw her halberd. She simply vanished from atop the lion.
*Fast,* Li Xuan evaluated clinically. *For a Golden Core cultivator, her burst speed is remarkable. She uses a unique blood-step technique. However, her left side is slightly exposed during the deceleration phase. A fatal flaw if facing a higher-realm opponent.*
*CRACK.*
To normal eyes, it looked like teleportation. One second, Mu Qingxue was on the lion. The next, she was standing directly in front of Wang Teng.
Her armored fist had buried itself entirely into Wang Teng's stomach.
The Mid-Stage Golden Core young master didn't even have time to register the pain. The kinetic force of the blow shattered his Qi barrier, pulverized his ribs, and ruptured his dantian in a single, perfectly executed strike.
Wang Teng was launched backward like a cannonball, smashing through three solid stone walls of a nearby teahouse before coming to a halt in a pile of rubble, coughing up chunks of his own internal organs, his cultivation base entirely crippled.
The street descended into absolute, horrified silence. She had just crippled the heir of a Marquis in broad daylight, in front of the Imperial Guards.
Mu Qingxue stood slowly, her silver armor completely unstained. She didn't even look at the ruined body of Wang Teng. She turned her cold, terrifying gaze toward Li Xuan.
"Are you hurt?" she asked him, her tone completely flat.
Li Xuan knew exactly what to do. The script demanded a flawless performance. He had just witnessed his future wife casually destroy a powerful noble for mildly insulting them. If he acted brave, she would be suspicious. If he acted grateful, she would despise him.
He had to be the Trash Prince.
Li Xuan's eyes rolled back into his head. He let out a soft, pathetic squeak, and pitched forward, face-planting directly onto the hard cobblestones, perfectly faking a dead faint.
He lay there, motionless, his face pressed against the dirt.
*Flawless execution,* Li Xuan congratulated himself from the safety of his internal darkness. *She handled the assassin-proxy. My reputation as a useless coward is cemented in front of the entire capital. And I am wearing so much armor under my robes that hitting the ground didn't even hurt.*
Above him, he heard Mu Qingxue let out a very faint, almost imperceptible sigh of profound exhaustion.
"Guards," Mu Qingxue ordered, her voice laced with heavy disdain. "Pick up my betrothed. Put him in a cart. And try not to wake him; he seems to need his rest."
As rough hands grabbed his arms and dragged his 'unconscious' body away, Li Xuan smiled inwardly.
*Yes, wife. Let everyone look at you. Let everyone fear you. I will be right here, pretending to be dead, while my System prepares me to outlive every single one of you.*
The marriage of the cowardly prince and the God of War had officially begun.