Chapter 897

Lai Junchen was first stunned, then immediately reacted.

He had thought that his own Empress wanted to use seduction to disrupt Long Ying's resolve and escape the Dao Heart Demon Seed Great Art!

"Enough, withdraw!"

After the instructions were given, Wu Zetian lost interest and dismissed Lai Junchen.

Naturally, Lai Junchen did not dare linger, and immediately bowed and took his leave.

After he withdrew, a group of palace maidens returned to the bedchamber. After changing Wu Zetian's clothes, a eunuch came before her holding a tray.

On the tray were jade tokens of various sizes.

Wu Zetian was puzzled and asked,

"This is…"

"Does Your Majesty no longer require the inner attendants for bed-service?"

The young eunuch was first stunned, then asked again.

Inner attendants?

Bed-service?

Wu Zetian felt a sudden chill of disgust!

So the former Empress Wu Zhao not only had a daughter this grown, but also played such games?

A堂堂 Empress actually kept so many male favorites?

As for Wu Zetian herself, she would never do such a thing no matter what.

After all, among all the men under heaven, she felt only that one person was her true match.

All the rest were mediocre, unaccomplished sorts.

Male favorites like these were even more disgusting.

Thud!

In her fury, Wu Zetian directly swept the jade tokens aside and said,

"I will never want any male favorites from now on. Drive them all out of the palace for me."

Actually, the reason Wu Zetian flew into a rage was, first, that she truly was disgusted by the male favorites.

Second, it was also to take revenge on the former Empress Wu Zhao.

She would drive all of her beloved male favorites out of the imperial palace.

When she returned one day to an empty bed, it would count as a revenge, neither big nor small.

"As you command…"

The eunuchs and palace maidens were flustered, at a loss.

They truly did not understand why the Empress, who had always enjoyed turning the tokens, had suddenly erupted in fury over the matter of male favorites.

But the Empress's prestige in the Great Tang was absolute; her word was almost law.

Since she said to drive all the male favorites out of the palace,

Though these eunuchs and palace maidens did not understand why, they still withdrew from the bedchamber and conveyed this imperial decree.

When the Feather Forest Guard received the decree, they immediately headed to where the male favorites were and, heedless of the wailing of these fair, jade-like male favorites, forcibly drove them out of the palace.

While the palace was in an uproar here, over there Long Ying had been received onto the small isle, into a warm pavilion.

He still did not understand why the Empress had bestowed such generous courtesy upon him.

He wanted to glean some information from Eunuch Pang, but Eunuch Pang was not someone he could simply see whenever he wished.

At present, he could only, surrounded by several beautiful palace maidens, enjoy this fragrant and alluring service.

Just then, a sudden premonition of danger surged.

Three hundred feet away, a figure suddenly darted out from the pool.

This person was dressed entirely in black night-clothes, holding a carved bow.

After drawing the bow to the full, a sharp arrow shot out like a falling star.

But by this time, Long Ying had, by a twist of fate, already learned a good deal of the Dao Heart Demon Seed Great Art.

Therefore, under the sympathetic resonance of Xin Qiji, the demon seed suddenly descended.

As his Xin Qiji radiated outward, it was as if everything around him had slowed.

Casually lifting the cup of fragrant tea handed by a palace maiden, Long Ying took a sip, then gave a gentle push.

The teacup, by sheer coincidence, met the weak point of the arrow.

The murderous arrow was immediately knocked flying on the spot.

The black-clad figure, having failed in one strike, immediately prepared to flee into the water.

Seeing him flee, Long Ying also prepared to withdraw the demon seed.

But just then, a feeling, profound and ineffable, hard to put into words, suddenly enveloped the surroundings.

The small isle and the pool area were entirely shrouded by this feeling.

The black-clad figure stood on the pool's surface, unable to move at all.

Long Ying himself found he could not withdraw the demon seed even if he wished.

What was going on?

Just as Long Ying was seized with doubt and alarm, a person suddenly appeared.

This person could not be said to be handsome, nor plain.

Yet everyone who saw him felt an uncanny, sinister aura.

After he appeared, he walked through the air and came to Long Ying's side, sensed him carefully for a moment, then spoke,

"You are quite something, to actually be able to cultivate the Dao Heart Demon Seed Great Art. Who is your Master?"

How could the Qinglong Society be easy to provoke?

Although the Dao Heart Demon Seed Art originated from a set of notes left by the Heavenly Demon Cang Ju.

After being refined by the first-generation Evil Emperor Xie Tiao, it became a unique supreme demonic cultivation method in two volumes and twelve chapters.

Among them, the upper volume comprised six realms: Entering the Dao First, Seeding the Demon Second, Establishing the Demon Third, Binding the Demon Fourth, Demon Tribulation Fifth, and Seeding Others Sixth.

Long Ying's Master, Evil Emperor Du Ao, had entrusted him with the safekeeping of all chapters of the Demon Seed Art except Seeding Others Sixth.

Although he was forced to swear an oath not to look through the texts.

Being a free-spirited man by nature, he said that an oath sworn under duress did not count, and so he read through every chapter of the Dao Heart Demon Seed Art except Seeding Others Sixth.

Moreover, he was exceptionally gifted with a memory far beyond the ordinary.

He only gave them a cursory once-over, yet all eleven chapters of the Dao Heart Demon Seed Art were committed perfectly to memory.

Wu Zhao, precisely because he was the last person in the world who knew the Dao Heart Demon Seed Art, dispatched Princess Taiping at the head of an elite squad of Great Tang experts to capture him.

By a twist of fate, Long Ying, just before Princess Taiping and the others arrived, kept his promise with his Master Du Ao and burned the secret text.

As he was preparing to leave the small valley, he happened to catch sight of Feng Guoting's falcon.

Panic-stricken, he directly crippled his own demonic true qi, and by sheer accident stumbled headlong into the first great hurdle of the Dao Heart Demon Seed Art!

Precisely so!

The first great hurdle of the Dao Heart Demon Seed Art is that the practitioner of this demonic art must cripple his own demonic cultivation and switch to cultivating the Daoist profound art to establish his foundation.

Yet the Dao Heart Demon Seed Art was originally the supreme secret method of the demonic Heavenly Evil Dao.

Apart from successive Evil Emperors, no one else was permitted to set eyes on it.

And to become an Evil Emperor, one needed deep demonic cultivation and the skill to overpower all rivals.

Yet upon seeing that the first hurdle of the Demon Seed Art was the crippling of one's own demonic cultivation.

How many Evil Emperors could bring themselves to ruthlessly discard the demonic cultivation they had painstakingly built up over many years, and switch to cultivating a profound art of their Daoist enemies?

As for the second key point of the Dao Heart Demon Seed Art, it was equally ruthless.

It was that after successfully entering the Dao, one had to undergo endless beatings and near-self-torturous ordeals, causing one's essence, qi, and spirit to shift from the solid to the void.

And merge as one with the unfathomable, profoundly mysterious demon seed.

Setting aside the wondrous subtleties involved, just speaking of these self-torturing ordeals—how many could bring themselves to be so cruel to their own bodies?

Thus these two hurdles, stated plainly at the outset, had thwarted countless prodigies who possessed the Dao Heart Demon Seed Art.

Long Ying, however, was captured by Princess Taiping, and then subjected to brutal interrogation by the harsh official Lai Junchen, who tried to force him to reveal the whereabouts of the Dao Heart Demon Seed Art.

Unwittingly, however, this allowed Long Ying to successfully seed the demon.

Thereafter, through all his subsequent experiences, he finally reached today's state where the demon seed manifested at will.

Of all the intricacies in between, even Long Ying himself understood only a fraction.