Crown Prince [POV]
The world slowed to an agonizing, crystal-clear crawl.
My eyes, trained through years of brutal high-realm combat cultivation, locked instantly onto the streak of blinding light cutting through the panicked atmosphere of the imperial plaza.
It was a golden arrow.
A cold, heavy dread settled deep within my chest. This wasn't just a standard piece of treasonous military artillery. This was a weapon of absolute, forbidden taboo.
Within the historical archives of our empire, the Golden Arrows were strictly outlawed centuries ago due to the deeply malevolent, ominous curse coated along their shafts.
In a matter of a single heartbeat, its catastrophic payload could violently terminate the life of even the most formidable peak-realm master.
The true horror of the weapon lay in its malicious tracking properties. Once a Golden Arrow was imbued with the specific spiritual signature of a target, it was completely impossible to escape.
It would relentlessly pursue its victim across the heavens until it pierced their flesh, instantly initiating a horrific process that sucked the very life force from their meridians.
Within seconds, the victim's body would be reduced to a hollow, completely drained, and desiccated corpse.
"Protect the Emperor! Shield the Crown Prince!"
Several high-ranking imperial palace guards immediately lunged forward, throwing their bodies in front of my father and me, their faces pale but determined.
Yet, looking at the trembling of their hands, I knew that they knew the grim reality: against a forbidden weapon of this caliber, their mortal flesh and basic spiritual shields were utterly useless.
My father stood frozen beside the throne. He knew he could not dodge it. His drained meridians simply could not generate the explosive velocity required to outrun a tracking curse.
And as for me? Even at my absolute physical peak, I knew the mathematical probability of survival was zero. This was the end.
The Tang family's coup had succeeded before the crown could even touch my brow.
As the blinding golden light filled my vision, roaring like a celestial beast, I didn't look at my father.
I didn't look at the crown. Instead, with what I fully believed to be the final second of my mortal existence, I turned my head toward the eastern courtyard, desperately seeking one last glimpse of that eccentric, beautiful person hiding behind the ancient spiritual tree.
*'Xiu Liang... run...'*
=====°°°°°
Lady Jiao Shu [POV]
I couldn't fathom the sheer, unadulterated horror currently clawing at my throat.
My breath hitched as I stared at the main imperial stage. I frantically glanced at my father, the head of the prestigious Heng family, but his face was completely devoid of color, his jaw clenched in absolute, helpless despair.
A forbidden golden arrow was currently hurtling directly toward my future husband, the Crown Prince. If he died today, the Heng family's political standing would be utterly demolished, the empire would fall into the bloody hands of the corrupt Tang clan, and my destined future as the supreme empress would vanish like smoke!
*This cannot be allowed to happen!*
Looking around the expansive plaza, I saw nothing but a sea of screaming, useless high-society guests trampling over one another in a desperate bid to escape.
The imperial guards were in a state of utter, disorganized chaos.
*This is my moment,* a sharp, highly ambitious tactical instinct flared within me.
If I could somehow throw myself into the fray, display my unwavering loyalty, or intercept the danger, I would permanently solidify my status as the indispensable savior of the imperial bloodline.
Slipping away from my father's side, I ignored his muffled shouts, gathered my pristine silk robes, and began sprinting with desperate, high-realm agility directly toward the VIP steps where the Crown Prince stood exposed.
=====°°°°°
Xiu Liang [POV]
The very second those four creepy shadow assassins launched themselves from the branches and bushes like a pack of rabid flying squirrels, I knew my modern corporate survival metrics were about to hit absolute zero.
I didn't have time to fill out a formal risk-assessment report. I didn't even have a nano-second to negotiate a severance package with the universe.
*"SYSTEM! ACTIVATE EMERGENCY SPATIAL-MAMBO-JAMBO PROTOCOLS right now! TELEPORT ME TO THE MALE LEAD!"*
I shrieked within the absolute depths of my consciousness.
The universe didn't just bend; it literally snapped like a cheap rubber band.
In a flash of blinding, high-tech digital distortion, the ancient spiritual tree, the closing capture nets of the shadow assassins, and the entire eastern courtyard instantly vanished.
Before my brain could even process the sudden shift in atmospheric pressure, I was suddenly standing directly on the cold marble floor of the high imperial stage, positioned precisely behind the broad, gold-embroidered shoulders of the Crown Prince.
Everything was happening at a rendering speed that my human brain could barely comprehend.
The golden arrow of absolute death was less than fifty meters away, cutting through the air with a deafening, localized sonic boom.
*'I need to protect the protagonist,'* my internal corporate manual practically screamed at me, the words flashing in giant, high-stress neon letters.
*'If the male lead dies, the plot armor fails, the novel gets permanently axed, and my soul gets immediately liquidated by the cosmic corporate compliance department! F*ck this entire situation!'*
*"System!"* I bellowed mentally, my internal voice reaching a pitch of sheer, unadulterated panic.
*"I know you have some kind of high-tech, rule-breaking corporate mambo-jambo tool in your digital inventory! Alter the tracking parameters of that arrow right now so I can save the Crown Prince from his impending doom!"*
*"Eh?! Host, are you completely out of your modern, overworked mind?!"* System 888's voice exploded inside my skull, completely dropping its usual sassy secretary persona.
*"If I redirect the forbidden tracking curse toward your current coordinates, you will be the one getting violently shot! If your physical vessel perishes, this entire transmigration mission will be classified as a catastrophic, multi-generational failure!"*
*"Stupid mechanical toaster!"* I snapped back, my mental teeth grinding together so hard they practically generated sparks.
*"Who said anything about me voluntarily sacrificing myself or calling my own death to my front door?! I have fifty years of corporate experience in shifting blame and surviving toxic work environments! I have a plan!"*
*"But host! That arrow is literally coated in an ancient, life-sucking—"*
*"No buts! Shut up and execute the algorithm faster, you glorified calculator! We need to protect his imperial life force right now, or else both of our souls are going straight into the eternal corporate recycling bin!"*
*"Sigh... Host, you genuinely refuse to listen to me every single time I issue a well-documented, HR-approved legal warning. But oh well... executing system-level trajectory override now."*
In the span of a single, imperceptible nano-second, the system's high-tech digital coding successfully hacked into the ancient, mystical tracking matrix of the forbidden weapon, forcefully altering the arrow's targeting coordinates from the Crown Prince's spiritual signature directly to mine.
Now that the tech support was handled, all that was left was for me to utilize the absolute pinnacle of my modern, theatrical corporate acting skills.
With a dramatic, movie-tier lunging motion, I threw myself entirely across the remaining distance.
I slammed my hands directly into the Crown Prince's solid, heavily muscled chest, pouring every single ounce of my physical strength into shoving him completely out of the golden arrow's trajectory.
The Crown Prince staggered backward, his balance completely broken by the sudden, highly unexpected physical intervention. As he fell away from the danger zone, he looked up at me, his eyes wide, his jaw completely dropped, and an expression of pure, unadulterated shock written all over his usually icy, unbothered imperial face.
Even in the middle of a literal coup, a tiny, deeply sarcastic part of my brain wanted to tease him.
*'Wow, look at that face. That's a brand-new expression for the majestic male lead. I should definitely charge him a consulting fee for discovering this side of himself.'*
But unfortunately, I didn't have a single second to crack a joke.
The moment my brain remembered my actual, current physical location, a sudden, cold realization washed over me.
*'Oh, wait. I just put myself exactly where the arrow is going. Fu*ck... this is going to hurt so incredibly bad that I might actually cry like a toddler.'*
Suddenly, all the ambient noise in the entire imperial plaza—the screaming commoners, the shouting guards, the roaring drums—completely faded into dead, terrifying silence.
*THWACK.*
A sudden, explosive burst of white-hot agony erupted right in the center of my chest. The sheer, kinetic force of the impact lifted my body entirely off the marble floor.
It felt like a molten iron bar had been driven straight through my lungs, followed immediately by an icy, parasitic sensation that began violently tearing through my internal meridians, aggressively drinking my life force like a cheap soda.
*Ah... fuck... it hurts... it hurts so bad...*
Before I could even formulate a final, coherent curse word directed at the author of this trash novel, the world completely dissolved into pitch-black darkness, and my consciousness safely checked out for an early weekend.
=====°°°°°
Xiaofan [POV]
My mind completely short-circuited.
Standing on the outer edge of the crowded plaza, my eyes had been firmly locked onto the terrifying trajectory of the golden arrow. I had prepared myself to witness the violent, historic downfall of the imperial family.
Instead, I witnessed a sequence of events that completely defied the literal laws of physics, cultivation logic, and the structural reality of the universe.
In one single millisecond, gege was completely gone from his original position behind the ancient spiritual tree, leaving four shadow assassins grasping at empty air.
In the very next millisecond, he had somehow—without a single ripple of high-realm movement technique or spiritual energy—materialized directly on the restricted imperial stage, throwing himself like a fragile shield in front of the heir to the throne.
I watched, completely frozen, as gege shoved the Crown Prince out of harm's way. I watched the golden arrow pierce directly through his chest. I watched his body collapse limply onto the cold marble floor.
My face remained completely blank. The sheer, overwhelming absurdity of the situation was so profound that my brain couldn't even muster a basic physical reaction. My eyes simply stared at the distant pooling crimson on the stage.
But amidst the numbing shock, one single, terrifyingly logical question began to violently beat against the walls of my mind.
*How?*
How on earth did that golden arrow change its trajectory? I am a trained cultivator; I know the fundamental mechanics of forbidden weaponry.
When a Golden Arrow is forged and imbued with a target's spiritual signature, its trajectory is absolute.
It possesses an unyielding tracking curse. It will never, under any circumstances, alter its course to strike someone who was not its intended prey.
It should have bypassed gege entirely to strike the Crown Prince. Yet, it had actively curved, locking onto gege as if he were the true target all along.
But the biggest, most mind-shattering question of them all...
*How did gege get up there in the first place?!*
He was standing right next to me a second ago! There were hundreds of meters of open space and high-security imperial barriers between that tree and the throne!
What kind of monstrous, forbidden secrets is my seemingly weak, constantly complaining gege hiding from the world?! What is truly going on here?!