First Elder Cai Weizhe cast his awareness to the far-flung corners of the Dragon Empire, and into his projections. The Thousand Hands of the Emperor technique was his own contribution to the Cloud Emperor’s Heavenly Palace and had become a vital tool over the centuries in monitoring the world outside the sect.

In the imperial palace, the child emperor had managed to reach late Qi Gathering with the aid of potent pills and elixirs. Cai Weizhe had sent messages—and had been ignored. To propel the child through the lower realms this quickly was a mistake. There were other members closely related enough to the main imperial line that they could have found a suitable regent. Or even a replacement. Without a strong hand to rule the Dragon Empire, the more ambitious clans would soon begin to stir. Those loyal retainers still left in the capital wouldn’t be able to maintain the ruse for long.

The foolishness of the imperial court was the least of Elder Cai’s concerns, however. While the retainers in the capital scrambled to hide the death of the last emperor, none of them bothered to answer the most important question. How?

How it had happened was clear, known only to a select few. The emperor had been poisoned. That was a closely guarded secret—more closely guarded even than the fact the empire was now ruled by a child of twelve.

The real question was how had it been allowed to happen. How had it been permitted for someone so close to the emperor to slip him poison? Killing a Ninth Realm immortal was no trivial task. To do so surreptitiously? Nearly impossible.

Cai Weizhe had been the only one to conduct a real investigation into the matter. The poisoning had occurred over a span of years, making the act even more difficult to hide. But it had remained hidden nonetheless. The poison itself had been designed to slowly build up in the emperor’s dantian and meridians, then remain there, inert, until it reached a critical dose. Then, it activated. Overnight the emperor’s cultivation base deteriorated and he was dead a day later.

Such a creation could only be the work of a master alchemist. Even so, it was beyond the capabilities of all the masters that Elder Cai knew of. While identifying the poison’s maker was beyond him, it had been a trivial thing to find the culprit. One of the court attendants had disappeared the day after the emperor died. Through his projection, Cai Weizhe had found him inside a week, lying dead in a gutter in one of the capital’s outlying slums.

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While there was nothing to point toward any one person or group with certainty, Cai Weizhe certainly had his suspicions. He sent his awareness far to the west, into his oldest projection. The projection that he’d specifically created the Thousand Hands of the Emperor to maintain.

Nestled in a secluded valley, in the farthest reaches of the Shrouded Peaks, lay the Dawn Palace. The single greatest formation work of Cai Weizhe’s life. Protected by distance, geography, and obscurity, it lay forgotten and unseen by all except Cai Weizhe himself, and Sect Leader Zhou Shanyuan.

Creating and maintaining the formation had cost Cai Weizhe his future advancement. He’d been stuck at the late Eighth Realm—Divine Soul Apotheosis—for nearly a thousand years now. It had been worth the price.

Through his projection, Cai Weizhe paced around the outer script of the formation array, inspecting the characters. They were all intact. The opaque golden dome that covered nearly the entire valley floor held as well. No breaches, no cracks, no signs of weakness. For all appearances, the formation remained wholly intact.

The land around the Dawn Palace was rugged, and filled with sixth and seventh grade spirits and divine beasts. It was far too dangerous for mortals to settle, and most cultivators couldn’t survive here either. Only the most powerful of immortals would be capable of finding this place, and thanks to the efforts of Cai Weizhe and those of his generation who yet survived, they had no reason to.

Shaking his head, Cai Weizhe returned to his body. The Dawn Palace was intact, yet only she could be behind the assassination of the Dragon Emperor. Cai Weizhe had long since given up trying to fully root out the remnants of her followers, the self-styled Sunset Court. Those who had survived their “empress’s” suppression and imprisonment had vanished soon after. Occasionally some would be found and killed, but they always returned like cockroaches.

A mere half dozen of those immortals who had set out to defy the Sunset Empress had survived the effort. With the death of the Dragon Emperor—one of the empire’s few Ninth Realm cultivators—Cai Weizhe was the last. He was the only one left who had stood against the greatest threat the empire had ever known—Jin Xifeng, the Sunset Empress.

By all appearances, she was still sealed. Still forgotten. The Shrouded Peaks Sect still guarded her prison but her court had been moving in the wider world. More concerning, she’d been forming pacts. That bandit, King Hao, couldn’t have been the only one. It was the only explanation for what had happened to the emperor.

For the first time in a thousand years, Elder Cai felt fear.