AUBTN -Chapter 147 Bloodbath at Yuyuan

“Ah—!” The maid who had been smiling sweetly just moments ago was scared out of her wits and screamed.

Yu Qing and Su Hewan were also badly frightened.

They had seen people kill before, and they had seen corpses—but they had never experienced such sudden, close-range violence bursting in like this.

One second ago it had been a joyful paradise of games. The next, it had turned into a hell of carnage.

The fires in the courtyard were extinguished one after another, leaving only the pale moonlight.

More than a dozen dark figures stepped over the still-warm corpses of the hidden guards, silently closing in on the waterside pavilion.

Their bodies were hunched, their eyes glowing with an eerie crimson under the moonlight, and their muscles showed an abnormal purplish-blue hue.

Drug men.

The death soldiers Zhao Jieyu had raised by feeding them datura and opium—monsters impervious to blades and spears.

“R-Run… run!” A bold servant finally reacted. He shoved the maid beside him and grabbed a chair himself, intending to hold them off.

But before he could even reach the door, one of the drug men slipped into the pavilion like a ghost.

Ignoring the chair smashed toward it, the creature let the wooden chair shatter against its body.

Then it stretched out a claw and seized the servant’s head with lightning speed.

Crack!

The crisp sound rang clearly in the deathly silent pavilion.

The servant who had been bickering and joking with Yu Qing in the previous round of the game now had his neck twisted at a grotesque angle. His body collapsed limply to the ground, eyes still wide open with endless terror.

Warm blood flowed from his seven orifices, staining the Werewolf game cards scattered on the floor.

“A-Niu!” Another maid cried out miserably. She turned to run, but another drug man burst in and pounced on her from behind, its sharp claws piercing straight through her heart.

The girl’s body convulsed twice before falling completely still.

Blood sprayed everywhere—several drops even splashed onto Su Hewan’s cheek, still carrying a trace of warmth.

Su Hewan’s body instantly turned cold and rigid. She stared blankly at the maid lying in the pool of blood—the girl who had carefully helped her pick out a hairpin that afternoon was now nothing more than a cold corpse.

An unprecedented terror made Yu Qing and Su Hewan clutch each other tightly.

Friends who had been laughing with them just moments ago were brutally slaughtered right before their eyes.

Yu Qing screamed in fright. She watched as the remaining servants were torn to pieces by those monsters in just moments, thick blood forming small streams that snaked across the floor.

Her stomach churned violently. Her legs trembled like sieves, yet she instinctively stood in front of the stunned Su Hewan, shielding her behind her.

“Wanwan, don’t be afraid! I… I took two self-defense classes!” Yu Qing shouted hoarsely, her voice trembling with tears.

“Come on! This young lady isn’t that easy to scare!”

Suddenly, a coquettish laugh accompanied by the tinkling of bells came from behind the drug men.

All of the drug men suddenly stopped moving.

Zhao Jieyu, dressed in black night-clothes and a black veil covering her face, slowly walked forward.

She looked with satisfaction at the corpses littering the ground and the two women cornered against the wall.

“So the Director of the Eastern Depot and the Commander of the Imperial Guard are both such sentimental fools. Unfortunately, their brains don’t work very well.” Zhao Jieyu laughed wildly.

“You two wretched sluts dared to ruin my foundation and sabotage my grand plan! Today, I’ll let you experience what it means to wish you were dead!”

She suddenly shook the bronze bell in her hand.

“Take them alive! I’ll use their blood to consecrate my new medicine!” Zhao Jieyu ordered.

Two towering drug men lunged forward like vicious wolves.

“Don’t come any closer! I’ll beat you to death!” Yu Qing shouted with her eyes shut, wildly swinging her jade abacus. By sheer luck, it struck one of the drug men’s heads with a loud bang.

The jade abacus shattered—but the drug man didn’t even sway. With a backhand slap, it sent Yu Qing flying.

“Qingqing!” Su Hewan cried out in alarm.

Just as the large hand was about to clamp down on Su Hewan’s throat—

“Stop!”

Instead of panicking, Su Hewan suddenly became calm.

She stared straight at Consort Zhao, speaking rapidly, every word striking the core of the matter:

“Your Highness went to great lengths to set up a lure-the-tiger-away-from-the-mountain scheme. If all you wanted was to kill us to vent your anger, you could have ordered the drugged men to finish us off immediately. Why keep us alive? What you truly want is the original formula for the Qingxin Pill, and the lives of Lord Lu and Chief Shen—am I right?”

A flicker of surprise flashed across Consort Zhao’s eyes. Then she snorted coldly and raised her hand, stopping the drugged men.

“You’re quite clever.”

“Since this is about profit…”

Su Hewan quietly glanced at Yu Qing, who had been thrown so hard she was still dizzy and disoriented. Seeing that she was still alive, Su Hewan felt a slight sense of relief and continued negotiating.

“The formula is in my head. Let us go, and I guarantee you’ll get it.”

【Delay for time. Preserve our strength. When Shen Jue and Lu Yan reach the Wangyou Pleasure Boat, they’ll discover it’s empty. At their speed, they can return within two incense sticks at most. If we fight now, we’ll definitely die. The only option is to play along with their plan.】

Su Hewan calculated rapidly in her mind, forcibly suppressing the churning emotions caused by the horrific scene she had witnessed.

“What a silver-tongued girl,” Consort Zhao sneered. “If I release you, how would I force those two to submit?”

“Bind them! Take them away!”

With a wave of her hand, several black-clad assassins stepped forward. They roughly twisted Su Hewan and Yu Qing’s arms behind their backs and pressed thick cloth soaked in anesthetic over their mouths and noses.

By the Jinshui River — Wangyou Pleasure Boat

The river wind carried the chill of late autumn, whipping the heavy curtains hanging on the painted boat.

Bang—!

With a thunderous crash, Lu Yan kicked open the hidden door to the boat’s lower cabin.

But the enormous compartment was completely empty.

Lu Yan’s pupils shrank sharply.

“A diversion!”

At almost the same moment, Shen Jue, standing behind him, suddenly clenched his fists.

“Damn it—Yuyuan!”

Without wasting another word, Shen Jue’s figure shot out of the pleasure boat like a phantom.

The veins on Lu Yan’s temples bulged.

“All Jinyiwei, listen to my command! Back to Yuyuan! Now!”

In both of their hearts, an unprecedented panic rose simultaneously.

In less than half the time of half an incense stick, Shen Jue and Lu Yan rushed back to Yuyuan like men possessed.

But it was already too late.

The once elegant and tranquil Yuyuan—its carved beams and painted rafters a symbol of refined beauty—had become a living hell.

The thick stench of blood rose into the air, nauseating and suffocating.

The vermilion agarwood gate had been shattered into powder by terrifying brute force.

Inside the courtyard, the bodies of Eastern Depot guards and Yuyuan servants lay scattered in pools of blood.

Severed limbs littered the ground.

Every corpse had been brutally torn apart or had its neck twisted off.

Their deaths were unimaginably horrific.

“Wanwan!”

“Yu Qing!”

Lu Yan rushed into the waterside pavilion, stepping through the sticky blood covering the ground.

Lowering his gaze, he saw a jade abacus lying in a pool of blood.

It was Yu Qing’s treasure—something she always carried with her and never let out of her hands.

Now it had been smashed apart, stained with glaring crimson.

Not only that—the round rosewood table had been overturned. The Werewolf game cards that Yu Qing had been doodling on were scattered across the blood-soaked floor.

Lu Yan’s tall body suddenly swayed.