300: I'd rather be a sinful emperor for all time than a slave emperor for ten thousand generations!

The mountain-collapsing, tsunami-like cheers scorched the Souls of every citizen of the Great Xia Divine Dynasty like molten lava, and also burned against Ji Hongxue's eardrums.

"Long live our Emperor!"

"Great Xia is eternal!"

Atop the palace roof, Ji Hongxue held the Emperor's Sword; her golden Nine-Phoenix Imperial Robe flapped fiercely in the fierce wind.

In the eyes of hundreds of millions of her subjects, she was the savior who repelled the Great Emperor, the sole deity propping up this heaven and earth.

She merely stood there quietly, accepting the most fanatical worship of her people, not a trace of joy visible on her face.

That peerlessly beautiful countenance was as cold and sharp as ten-thousand-year-old profound ice.

The more fervent the external clamor, the more bone-piercing the ice within her heart.

Those fanatical shouts not only failed to invigorate her, but instead felt like red-hot steel needles, viciously piercing her long-since scarred and battered Emperor's Heart.

Did we win?

No.

We merely repelled a barking dog.

Yet the price paid was nearly one-tenth of the Divine Dynasty's foundational National Luck reserves.

Dragging her steps, heavier than a mountain range, she turned and walked down from the palace roof.

The glazed tiles beneath her feet groaned; the Nine Dragon Emperor's Sword in her hand, which had once illuminated eternity, now felt as heavy as a dead dragon.

When the last cheering subject had dispersed, when the massive palace gates behind her slammed shut with a 'boom,' cutting off all sight, the entire world fell into deathly silence.

The supreme majesty she had forcibly maintained in front of others completely crumbled at this moment.

She could no longer stand steady, staggering forward, her slender hand gripping a cold, coiling golden dragon pillar beside the corridor.

"Bang!"

It wasn't intentional; just weakened, her arm swept aside a nearby ornamental Qilin statue carved from ten-thousand-year-old green jade.

That treasure symbolizing auspiciousness and National Luck was as fragile as a bubble before her current weakness and fury, shattering into pieces in an instant.

However, this crisp shattering sound couldn't budge in the slightest the mountain crushing her Soul.

Pfft—!

A clot of dark red blood, long accumulated in her chest, could no longer be suppressed, violently spraying forth!

The cloyingly sweet, metallic taste instantly filled her mouth and nose; the exquisite carpet before her was stained with a startlingly somber patch, like a flower of despair blooming in Hell.

She gasped violently, the fingers gripping the golden pillar turning white from the strain. The pillar's cold touch brought a slight clarity to her Divine Soul, burning with rage.

She looked down.

In her hand, the Great Xia's Imperial Weapon that safeguarded the nation—the Nine Dragon Sword—its blade now dim, the nine Luck Golden Dragons coiling upon it listless and lifeless.

On the body of one of these Golden Dragons, a fine yet impossible-to-ignore crack had appeared.

The National Luck was wounded.

That sword strike seemed awe-inspiring, sending a Great Emperor fleeing with blood spurting from his mouth.

Yet only she herself knew that what she had unleashed was the vast, accumulated foundation of nearly a hundred thousand years of the Great Xia Divine Dynasty.

And this was merely the beginning.

Dragging her heavy body, Ji Hongxue moved step by step to the Dragon Throne symbolizing supreme authority and heavily sat down. The cold, hard back of the throne made her shudder uncontrollably.

The wounds to her Physical Body, the shaking of her Dao foundation—none could compare to even one ten-thousandth of the sting brought by that 'Decree.'

"The thirteen thousand eight hundredth concubine..."

She murmured this number in a low voice, each word like a blunt knife flaying her Soul. A morbid flush appeared on her peerlessly beautiful face, a madness born of extreme fury and humiliation.

I, the Female Emperor of the Great Xia Divine Dynasty, Ji Hongxue.

Born the master of this land, the sovereign of hundreds of millions of living beings.

In the end, in the eyes of those Upper Realm beings, am I only fit to be a plaything, and one with such a lowly serial number at that?

A chill of death, icy to the extreme, quietly spread from the deepest recesses of her heart, rapidly freezing her anger, her resentment, all her emotions.

Leaving only absolute calm.

A terrifying calm. She rapidly considered all possible escape routes.

Escape?

If she fled, these hundreds of millions of her subjects would become lambs for the slaughter.

Seek peace?

The other party's lofty, condescending attitude left her no room for negotiation whatsoever.

Since even living in humiliation is an unattainable luxury.

Since the dignity of being a sovereign is to be trampled upon so thoroughly.

Then... let us all be destroyed together.

Ji Hongxue's gaze shifted from icy cold to empty void. She slowly opened her trembling palm; a simple, ancient jade Seal entwined with ninety-nine fine strands of Dragon Qi quietly appeared in her palm.

The Imperial Seal.

This was not merely a symbol of imperial authority, but the final, and most devastating, trump card of the Great Xia Divine Dynasty.

Within the Seal was Sealed a forbidden grand formation powerful enough to detonate the entire Central Continent's earth vein Dragon Qi—'Jade and Stone Burn Together!'

Once activated, the Divine Dynasty's foundations of a million years, the beautiful landscape spanning a million miles, the hundreds of millions of innocent subjects... all would, at her single thought, transform into the most magnificent burial ground to entomb that Upper Realm 'Divine Envoy.'

If this land is destined for slavery, then I shall personally bury it! With the blood of hundreds of millions of lives, forge the tomb of the Upper Realm Divine Envoy!

I would rather be a condemned emperor for a thousand years, than a slave sovereign for ten thousand generations!

Those Phoenix eyes that had once looked down upon the world now held only a mad desire for destruction.

She could already imagine the scene fifteen days later, when that arrogant 'Divine Envoy' descended, what a brilliantly fatal deathly panorama he would behold.

Just as her Divine Thought stirred slightly, preparing to imprint a sliver of resolute will into the Imperial Seal, finally setting this path of no return in stone—

An image, utterly without warning, surfaced in her mind.