Chapter 24: The Final Battle

The sky above Chang'an took on the hue of a rotting plum. Shen Qinghuan stood atop the crumbling city tower, her black brocade robe billowing like ink splashed across rice paper. Beneath her feet, the once-bustling streets were being devoured by a blood-red mist—a byproduct of her activation of the "Xuanwu Soul-Devouring Array." Cursed vines snaked through the city, siphoning living souls to fuel her vengeance. Beside a ditch lay half a still-warm barbarian flatbread, dropped by a fleeing child with hair tied in loops.

*This is all your doing, Wu Zhao.*

Memories cut like blades—Caiyun's head rolling across a frost-covered courtyard, Zun's fingers snapping one by one under iron torture tools. The stench of their charred flesh still clung to her hair, despite bathing thrice in the Wei River. That day in the execution chamber, the Empress's laughter had echoed, her gold-embroidered slippers tapping to the rhythm of the *Rainbow Skirt Feather Dance*, keeping time for the executioners.

"Wu Zetian, show yourself!" Qinghuan's roar tore through the thick smoke. The mutated compass coiled around her left arm—now a living black python—hissed in resonance. Since she reversed the Eight Trigrams to unlock the seventh yin gate, the golden-scaled snake had turned the color of black iron. In the distance, a Buddhist pagoda collapsed with a thunderous crash, its flying eaves impaling fleeing civilians. The moment a beam crushed a swaddled infant, the mother's scream abruptly ceased.

Mingyue emerged from the miasma, dragging a figure in a tattered phoenix robe. "Caught her in the ice cellar." She flung Wu Zetian onto the blood-smeared bricks. The once-peerless beauty had decayed, her right cheek—scorched by soul fire—twisted like a distorted map of the Yangtze River basin.

"Kneel before His Majesty, the sole Empress now." Mingyue pressed a poisoned dagger to Wu's throat, blood beads sizzling as they met the blade. "Kiss His Majesty's feet—that spirit snake that devoured your heavenly mandate."

The compass python slithered to Qinghuan's bare instep, its fangs framing the bixi tattoo—a dragon-turtle totem, her proof of imperial claim. Wu Zetian let out a rasping, bone-sawing laugh.

"A lowly turtle-snake dares intimidate this palace?" She tilted her neck, letting the blade sink deeper. "When Taizong's bones were still warm, I straddled the dragon bed and drank my own sister's tears from a jade cup. Your curse is but a mosquito's sting—"

Qinghuan's boot smashed Wu's front teeth. "You will address me as Your Majesty."

Blood pooled in the cracks of the green bricks, forming an unintended hexagram. Wu Zetian spat out a broken tooth, her scarlet lips curling. "Wait until you discover the black spots in the granaries, the bloodshot eyes of your soldiers—your title won't save you."

Mingyue's frame stiffened—three imperial guards had already perished that morning, their organs liquefying.

"The Silver Toad Poison acts faster than expected, doesn't it?" Wu's shattered teeth gleamed like broken porcelain. "Kill me, and ten thousand citizens will burn with the antidote in the flames."

The compass python lunged, sinking its fangs into Wu's shoulder. Qinghuan grabbed her hair, forcing eye contact. "Forgot I can redirect the Yellow River and turn child-eating demons into waterwheels? Your poison is a mere drop in the ocean."

Her five fingers plunged into Wu's scalp, activating the soul-seizing technique taught by the Tubo corpse forest master. Memories flooded in—a secret chamber beneath Luoyang's peony garden, where alchemists ground midnight-blue petals into powder…

The python's body suddenly convulsed. Corrosive agony shot through Qinghuan's veins, and triumph flared in Wu's pupils.

"Did you think this palace would let you touch me unprepared?" Black veins spread beneath the Empress's skin, identical to those of the dying soldiers. "Every drop of my blood is a weapon. Kill me, and you unleash the greatest plague since the Han Dynasty's end."

Mingyue's dagger clattered to the ground. "Your Majesty, we can't risk—"

"Silence!" Qinghuan's roar startled a magpie from its nest. The compass python split in two—one half continued injecting venom, the other coiled around its master's neck to keep her lucid.

In the throes of pain, she saw it—three soul fissures at the convergence of Wu's aura, a fatal vulnerability left by Emperor Gaozong's dying curse.

"Want a plague?" Qinghuan tore open her robe, the Eight Trigrams scar on her chest erupting with blinding light. "I'll grant them a god."

She thrust her hand into Wu's chest.

No heart—just an eight-petaled lotus seal buried during last year's solar eclipse. The talisman ignited, binding their lives through shared pain. Ten li away, citizens kneeling in the alleys suddenly clutched their hearts in unison.

"Now our blood flows as one," Qinghuan said, her nosebleed black as ink. "Every corpse bears your sin."

Wu Zetian's shriek harmonized with the howling wind. Beyond the smoke and dust, new constellations were forming—the seven luminaries aligning into the silhouette of Shanghai's Oriental Pearl Tower.

The compass python began to shed its skin.