THE NIGHT EMPEROR: 夜安王 【The Night Emperor Book 1】| ✔️

Chapter 1 The Beginning

22 years ago

"Your Majesty, we have achieved the impossible! All that's left for us to do now is to ambush the Empress Mother! Then everything will be yours once and for all! Everything!" The court official's voice rang clearly in the enormous Throne Hall, but his enthusiasm was only met with tense silence.

The regal-looking man that the exclamation was directed at only stood quietly on the shimmering platform at the front of the hall. He was clothed in the emperor's Dragon Robe which was disheveled and unfastened at the waist. With his back towards the rest of the room, the man surveyed the throne that was placed in the middle of the platform. It was swathed in gold and was exquisitely carved with ferocious dragons intertwining with each other in harmony. With his eyes hooded and his face shielded, no one else in the room knew what was currently etched on his handsome face.

The man turned his charismatic thin eyes towards the court official who had just spoken. As the man lazily inspected the court official, he realized that he couldn't recognize him, let alone remember his name. His eyes grazed past the hundreds of people standing behind the court official, other court officials who were supposedly on his side.

Without uttering a single word, the man let out a sudden burst of mirthless laughter which echoed throughout the large hall. The officials below the platform eyed each other nervously at the sudden shift in the air.

The man on the platform continued his demented laughter until he suddenly stopped, bringing an abrupt silence to the enormous space. The court official who spoke earlier was the closest to the man on the platform and he was the first to notice the sudden change in the man's demeanor. It was in the way the man's eyes turned bloodshot and the way his pupils shrunk. That was the last thing the court official ever saw.

It took less than a flutter of an eyelash for the man to descend the platform. With a swing of his sword, he beheaded the court official without even a single trace of hesitation. The court official's head fell to the ground with a prominent thud. The rest who were present were instantly frozen in their places, the air in the room pregnant with the primal fear of hundreds of men. Several moments passed before the floodgates of chaos were released. Everyone in the room hastily scrambled over each other to reach the only exit to escape the Throne Hall, but none of them had the chance to even touch the wooden frame of the doors.

The man struck each and everyone down, his hysterical laughter returning in full force with every strike. He had been trained in swordsmanship under the nation's best swordsman ever since he was young, while those officials were mainly middle-aged men who have had one too many years of overindulgence. They didn't stand a chance against him. In less than five minutes, the shimmering hall was drenched in warm, slimy blood. The acrid smell of human blood seeping through every single surface and orifice in the room.

The man somehow lost one of his boots during the ordeal. But that didn't stop him from dragging his bootless feet across the blood-spattered floor back up the platform. Once he reached the top, he propped himself on the throne and surveyed the lifeless bodies lying all over the room. The gruesome splatters of blood on his face couldn't compare to the crazed glint in his eyes. He took the view in hungrily as if he was enjoying what he was seeing while savoring the metallic tang that hung in the air with his eyes closed like the mad man that he was. Then, his bloodied face suddenly broke into a self-derogatory smile as he scoffed and plunged his bloody sword straight into his own heart.