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The words in her ears felt as though they were drifting out of a dream—or rather, Gouchen felt as if he still hadn't awakened from a nightmare even now.
She clearly bore the clan's specially crafted toothed-wood shackles; at most, she should only have been capable of a few childish parlor tricks.
And yet he, a Preceptor, had been defeated by this so-called High Elder who had once only known how to obediently obey orders—with a single move… no, it wasn't even a move, just one shout. Now he lay collapsed on the ground like a drowning dog, unable even to stand.
And on top of that, he was being made to imitate a mangy dog from the roadside?
Such humiliation—how could he endure it, how could he possibly endure it?
Slowly, he dug his fingers into the stone slabs, lifting his head, trying to prove that he was worthy of being an immortal's descendant, worthy of the nobility of the Vidyadhara.
But when he looked at Bailu and met those golden eyes shining like a constant star, his struggle abruptly ceased.
Those eyes nearly shattered his soul. She was undoubtedly Bailu, yet the aloof pride and untamed arrogance within those eyes were heights utterly unreachable to a Preceptor like him.
That was a High Elder!
After a few seconds of frozen eye contact, all of his dignity, ambition, resentment, and fury collapsed into dust, leaving only pitiful self-mockery.
He had once regarded Bailu as a puppet he could manipulate at will. Now, he was the true drowned dog, one that anyone could kick and trample as they pleased.
"I… I apologize!"
He spoke those three words—smoothly, effortlessly, nothing like the imagined difficulty.
In fact, a sliver of sudden clarity arose within him. He scrambled and crawled forward, prostrating himself at Bailu's feet, using his head like a mallet against the ground, kowtowing as furiously as pounding garlic.
With tears and snot streaming down his face, he cried, "This lowly one deserves death ten thousand times over! In the past, my heart was blinded by greed, and I was misled by Taoran, daring to covet the High Elder's mighty authority! I beg you, my lord, to take me as your hound and claw—I know many of the clan's darkest secrets!"
He pointed at Taoran, who was nearly unconscious. "Not just him—all the elders of the clan, all of them! I know every filthy thing they've done in secret. If my lord wishes to settle old accounts—ah, no—to reclaim what rightfully belongs to you, with me here, you can save a great deal of effort! I can bite them clean to the bone, so your hands won't be dirtied, and your wise eyes won't be sullied!"
After speaking, he even involuntarily turned toward the other two Preceptors and shouted, "Woof! Woof woof!"
"Gouchen, you—!" Shaoying's eyes widened in shock. In his surging rage, he found himself unable to utter a single sound.
Even Taoran's gaze regained a trace of focus, his mouth muddled with blood and saliva as he cursed indistinctly.
Bailu watched the Preceptors who had just moments ago been covering for each other's escape, only to immediately start tearing one another down. In her heart, she exclaimed that this was an unexpected bonus.
She had only thought of how the Trailblazer punished those Company lackeys in Aurum Alley, which was why she'd told him to bark like a dog. She hadn't expected him to go straight for becoming a dog!
That was really shameless.
Watching the farce unfold, Lingsha rested her slender hand beneath her chin and said thoughtfully, "This… isn't necessarily a bad approach."
She was delighted that Bailu had regained her freedom and reclaimed her authority, but she also had to admit that Bailu still lacked the experience needed to manage all the complicated affairs within the Vidyadhara clan.
As for herself, while she did possess that capability, the Alchemy Commission alone already had her silently reciting "Don't get angry, anger leads to illness with no one to blame" every day just to keep calm. Add the Vidyadhara clan on top of that, and she feared she might drop dead from sheer frustration.
Since their side lacked manpower, letting the Preceptors tear into one another like dogs biting dogs suddenly seemed rather tempting.
Dan Heng, however, held the opposite view. He had no intention of influencing Bailu's decision and merely muttered to himself, "They fear power but do not cherish virtue. These people truly haven't changed at all."
In his past life, Dan Feng had forcibly established authority through sheer might. The Preceptors were displeased at first, but before long, each of them wore smiling faces—until the incident after the Sedition of the Transient.
He closed his eyes and shook his head. "Like fat rats in a granary. When the cat meows, they vanish without a trace; once the cat leaves, they come back to gnaw away again. If not eradicated, they'll always be a disaster."
"Lady Lingsha, your insight is unmatched! Lady Lingsha, your insight!" Gouchen hurriedly drowned out Dan Heng's appraisal, turning to Lingsha with endless thanks, utterly ignoring that his head was already battered and bleeding from repeated kowtows.
"Enough." Faced with his submission, Lingsha felt not the slightest joy. She turned her head away, waving her hand through the air as though trying to dispel something foul.
She bent down toward the High Elder and said, "Bailu, you are their High Elder. This decision is yours to make."
"Mhm, I know what's best."
Bailu nodded, lifting her small, delicate feet and slowly walking up to Gouchen.
Gouchen didn't know whether his thudding heartbeat could escape the High Elder's notice, but he felt that he'd already recovered somewhat.
Lowering himself into the mud had clearly worked. "What's best"? Was there even a need to ask?
What sovereign in this world didn't need a white glove to hide the blood on their hands, to display their own cleanliness to others?
He prostrated himself in a grand salute. "My lord! This lowly one will give everything, body and soul!"
"No need. For eating raw flesh and drinking blood, there's no use for body and soul."
Bailu slowly shook her head and recited the verdict she had prepared for Gouchen:
"Convict Gouchen: treacherous and venomous, wolfish by nature, consorting with heresy, harming the loyal and the good. Turning traitor at the brink of battle, a heart of a wolf and conduct of a dog. To keep you within the clan would be like leaving a dragon leech and black turtle behind—poison without end."
Gouchen had already composed his words of praise to the High Elder, but this single sentence from Bailu plunged him straight into an icy abyss.
His body began to tremble like chaff once more as he cried shakily, "No! My lord, I'm useful—useful!"
Bailu ignored his struggle entirely. "In consideration of Alliance law, the death penalty shall not be applied. Effective immediately: strip him of Vidyadhara bloodline, reducing him forever to a commoner; remove the ability to consume cooked food—nothing but raw fish and live shrimp shall pass his throat; sever the sensation of fatigue and unconsciousness, so that he shall neither sleep nor rest from this day until the curtain falls!"
"By imperial decree, so ordered!"
The childish voice delivered an unfeeling sentence. As her golden eyes flickered, Gouchen felt an intense burning sensation in his eyes. In agony, his body curled like a shrimp, hands clutching his eyelids, wishing desperately he could tear them out to find relief.
This was the result of the [Word magic: Emperor]. Gouchen would henceforth regard Bailu's judgment as an unavoidable, inviolable decree—one that could only be endured, never escaped.
From this moment on, he would lose the ability to wield the power of the Path, forced to scrape by as an ordinary person; unable to eat cooked food, sustaining himself only by raw flesh and blood as Bailu had declared; unable to relieve exhaustion through sleep, while the Words of Spirit ensured he would not die from it, condemning him instead to fully experience the torment.
Under such horrifying pain, Gouchen's body rolled back and forth before plunging into the bottomless trench of the sea.
Bailu watched the scene unfold before her eyes, momentarily dazed.
Just now… had that really been her speaking?
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