At Taiyang Palace's Palace of Eternal Spring, three small figures were seen kneeling on the snowy ground.

These were the daughters of the reigning emperor of Great Wu, Kang Ziyuan, who ascended the throne three years ago.

The youngest of the three, three-year-old A-Li had already stopped moving a while ago. Her head was pressed against her rigid chest, her eyes closed, her face white as snow, and her lips blue from the cold.

The five-year-old A-Yu was weak from birth. Her entire life, her mother had shielded her from severe weather.

Unlike her siblings, she had never experienced the joy of dancing in the rain, or playing with snowballs.

She had always been inside her mother's bed chamber, looking out of the window with deep-seated longing in her heart.

Tragically, the day she spent the most time outside was the day she passed away.

The snow beneath her knees was cold, but the wind blowing past her small, fragile form, was even colder.

She did not even have the strength to remain kneeling. She had to be forced to do so, even as her life force was slowly seeping away.

The seven-year-old A-Xue had been kneeling for two hours now. She was the oldest, and the most robust one among her siblings.

When the mean guards first brought her to this spot and forced her on her knees, she tried resisting them, only to be beaten up and thrown onto the snow.

Their faces, cold and indifferent masks, remained unmoved by the little girl's heartrending cries.

At first, she hugged herself in a futile attempt to keep herself warm. Her tiny hands kept rubbing her upper and lower arms. Alas, the warm hands too turned cold, and she had no other source of warmth.

Cold made her teeth chatter, and she turned to her sisters to speak.

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"A-Yu, A-Li, don't worry," she said, her voice shaking and her body shivering uncontrollably. "Mommy is going to find us soon. Don't worry."

When her younger sisters stopped making any sound, she tried to rouse them back to consciousness but it was for naught.

She was too young to understand the concept of death, but she could sense that something horrible had claimed them. Soon, it would come to claim her as well.

When a familiar woman in tattered robe was finally brought in front of her, her arms tied to her sides, the seven-year-old was at first elated.

Mommy is here, she happily thought to herself.

Mommy always knows what to do.

Mommy is going to make everything right.

But not this time.

Her facial expression morphed from relief to terror when she saw her mother being stripped down to her inner robe and slammed onto the snow.

"M-mommy," the seven-year-old timidly mumbled.

"A-Xue," the woman called out with a trembling voice.

She was none other than the Second-Rank Consort Xi, the woman who once enjoyed the privileges of becoming the emperor's primary consort, only to be demoted to a mere second-rank consort upon his ascension to throne.

Pressing against the thick bed of snow beneath her body, Consort Xi craned her neck to take a better look at her daughters.

Her heart dropped when she saw A-Yu and A-Li's motionless bodies.

The thick wooden plank made a swishing sound as it arced through the air and slammed onto Consort Xi's back, causing her to scream in agony.

"Ahhhhhhhh…!!!"

"M-mommy…!"

The seven-year-old, A-Xue, wanted to rise to her feet to help her mother, but she could no longer feel her feet. They seemed to have turned into two blocks of ice.

Consort Xi's tears fell like a waterfall.

A-Xue, too, cried and cried.

The biting cold froze her tears to her cheeks. Her voice faltered, then fell silent, along with her breath.

"A-Xue…"

The woman was no longer able to scream. She could only call out for her eldest daughter with a weak, broken voice.

"A-Xue…"

The thick layer of snow beneath her stomach slowly hardened into a block of ice, sending tendrils of icy coldness into Consort Xi's body.

Meanwhile, thick wooden planks continued to rain down on her slender body one by one, tearing at her delicate back and reducing it into a bloody mess of flesh and bones.

The pain was excruciating, but it was nothing in comparison to the pain of seeing her daughters die slowly in front of her eyes.

"Please, please," she begged amidst the torture.

"Please spare my daughters. At least spare A-Xue! Please let A-Xue live!"

But the guards remained unmoved.

They continued delivering the punishment as intended, unfazed by Consort Xi's agonized cries.

Eventually, A-Xue stopped crying.

Her last breath came out in the form of a puff of air.

Just like that, her little life was snuffed out, and she was gone.