302: Put aside your pride! Ask for help in the name of your fiancée!

The first faint glimmer of dawn was like a cold, sharp sword, piercing through the window lattices of the Imperial Study and precisely illuminating the dragon desk piled high with memorials.

Ji Hongxue slowly rose. Having not slept all night, her body felt as if it were filled with lead, every movement sluggish and heavy.

After a night of struggle and torment, her beautiful face, slightly pale from blood loss, showed a mixture of exhaustion and determination that finally settled into a deathly still clarity.

In the end, she chose to cast aside the pride that belonged to an emperor.

She could not gamble the lives of hundreds of millions of innocent subjects on her own dignity, which was worthless in the eyes of the 'Divine Envoy'.

Perishing together in mutual destruction sounded tragic and heroic, but what would happen after?

There would be millions of miles of scorched earth, and hundreds of millions of souls wailing in grief.

Great Xia would be gone, and she would be dead, leaving behind only a so-called 'unyielding character' for future generations to comment upon.

As for that high-and-mighty 'Divine Envoy', he might be wounded, but his Sect, the Xuantian Immortal Sect, would still treat the Xuanyuan Continent as a medicinal field to be harvested at will.

Next time, would it be the Yaochi Holy Land?

Or the Taiyi Holy Land?

This was not the outcome she wanted.

What she wanted was to see that dark hand, so accustomed to taking whatever it pleased, be severed alive!

She wanted those from the Upper Realm, who viewed them as 'medicinal ingredients', to also taste what it felt like to be treated as prey!

Looking across the entire Xuanyuan Continent, perhaps only one person could achieve all this.

The one who possessed countless secrets and hid a heart more perceptive than anyone else's beneath a lazy exterior... Su Chen.

And the mysterious power behind him... the Everlasting Su Family.

This was her last hope, the only straw a drowning person could grasp.

Having thought this through, Ji Hongxue's heart instead became more peaceful than ever before.

She no longer hesitated. Raising her hand, she very slowly and solemnly removed the purple-gold imperial crown from her head, the symbol of supreme authority, and placed it gently to the side.

Her hair cascaded down, causing her beautiful face to lose its imperial majesty and gain a hint of womanly vulnerability.

She ground the ink herself. The thick ink rippled in the inkstone like the inextricable melancholy she felt at this moment.

Spreading out a sheet of state paper woven from Celestial Silkworm Gold Thread, she picked up the vermilion brush.

This time, the heavy brush handle actually trembled slightly in her fingertips.

She did not write about national righteousness or the logic of shared fates.

She did not use a commanding tone or a tone of negotiation.

She was writing a letter.

A letter written in the name of a woman, one that was almost a plea.

When the tip of the brush hovered over the letter, ready to write the salutation, she hesitated.

How long had it been since anyone had called her by her name?

How long had it been since she herself had almost forgotten what she looked like beyond the titles of 'We' and 'This Sovereign'?

Finally, the brush tip descended, and two elegant yet slightly unfamiliar characters appeared—

Hongxue.

The content of the letter was simple. She merely recounted everything that had happened at Heavenly Pillar Mountain, the Xuantian Immortal Sect's inhuman conspiracy, and Lin Yu's 'Divine Decree' that was enough to crush any woman's dignity, exactly as they had occurred.

She did not embellish or exaggerate.

It was the calmest of statements, as if she were telling a story that had nothing to do with her.

But within those lines, so calm they were heartbreaking, lay the deepest helplessness, humiliation, and despair of an empress—and a woman.

Reaching the end, she paused her brush.

A single hot tear finally broke free from the shackles of her imperial will, splashing onto the paper with a soft 'thud' and blurring a small patch of the striking ink.

Finally, using all her strength, she wrote the sentence that forced her to cast aside all her pride.

"In fifteen days, if you do not arrive, Hongxue can only die for her country, perishing along with this world."

"This letter is not for Great Xia, nor for the common people, but only for... the engagement we once shared."

After writing the last character, Ji Hongxue slumped and put down the brush.

She did not reach for the Imperial Seal that represented imperial authority.

Instead, from the place closest to her chest, she took out a small personal seal made of warm jade, carved with the totem of a Phoenix rising from the flames.

That was her seal as Ji Hongxue, not as the Great Xia Empress.

She gently pressed her personal seal at the end of the letter, beside the ink blurred by her tear.

Having done all this, she felt as if all her strength had been drained away.

She carefully folded the state letter and placed it into a missive holder made of Spatial Divine Wood.

"Someone, come."

A Shadow Guard dressed in black, with an aura like a ghost, appeared silently in the hall and knelt on one knee.

"Deliver this letter with the utmost speed, at... any cost, directly into the hands of the Everlasting Su Family's Divine Son, Su Chen, in the Eastern Wasteland."

"Tell him that We..." She paused, gave a self-mocking smile, and changed her words: "Tell him that Ji Hongxue is waiting for him."

"As you command!"

The Shadow Guard took the missive, which felt as heavy as a mountain, and his figure vanished on the spot with a flash.

Inside the Imperial Study, a deathly silence returned.

Ji Hongxue slowly walked to the window and pushed it open, looking down at the imperial city below—still prosperous, yet already surging with dark undercurrents—and at the vibrant faces of those who knew nothing of the impending catastrophe.

There was no longer any confusion in her eyes.

She had done everything she could.

All that remained was to... leave it to fate.

No.

It was to leave it to that man's decision.

Su Chen.

Will you come?

Will you... be willing to become the savior for me, and for this entire world?

Ji Hongxue reached out her hand and caught a withered yellow leaf falling from the sky.

A poignant yet liberated smile slowly curved at the corners of her mouth.

In the name of the Great Xia Empress Ji Hongxue's role as a Fiancée, she had sent out a final plea for help to the Everlasting Su Family, to the only variable in her life!

This was a massive gamble, with her life and the future of the entire God-Dynasty as the stakes.

She had already bet everything.