After I stopped trying, a rich woman trained me into a demon emperor.

Those who survived all understood one thing—following Zhou Ran meant you'd have food to eat, but leaving Zhou Ran meant you wouldn't even be able to save your life.

Zhou Ran ticked off each item on the reply slip and wrote four words at the end: "Record merit, resupply."

The ink had just dried when Xiao Rou ran in from outside the hall.

She was still holding the unconscious golden gu in her arms, its shell covered with seven cracks stitched together layer upon layer with golden thread.

Three of the eight membranous wings were broken, and the remaining five drooped, looking no different from leaves wilted by the rain.

"Your Majesty." Xiao Rou stopped in front of the long table, her expression not good.

"What is it?"

Xiao Rou placed the golden Gu next to the military register. A faint light and shadow were reflected on the Gu worm's carapace, so faint that it was almost invisible unless you looked very closely.

"I used Gu worms to scan the outer layer of the Emperor's consciousness." She bit her lower lip. "The wisp of silver will that the Moon Emperor left in your primordial spirit has moved."

Zhou Ran's finger stopped on the military register.

"How did it move?"

Xiao Rou flipped the golden gu over, belly up. Deep within its shell, an extremely detailed projection of her consciousness was revealed.

The silver thought was originally tucked away in the deepest corner of the sea of ​​consciousness, quiet and still, like a sleeping bead.

I'm not going to sleep right now.

The ray of silver light extended three extremely thin tentacles, pointing in three different directions.

The first mark points to Zhou Ran's neck—a bloodthirsty ancestral bloodline mark.

The second one points to the edge of Zhou Ran's sea of ​​consciousness—the soul imprint of Huan Yin.

The third mark points to the back of Zhou Ran's hand—a coffin burial law inscription from the Nine Netherworlds.

The three tentacles did not touch the target, but hovered beside the three marks, measuring something.

Xiao Rou kept her voice very low.

"It records the location, intensity, and frequency of the marks of the three empresses."

Zhou Ran stared at the projection for three breaths.

The bloodthirsty kicking down of the door happened a quarter of an hour ago. The three women faced off in the side hall, their magical powers clashing. During that time, the three marks on his body fluctuated violently at the same time.

The Moon Emperor's silver consciousness awakened at that critical juncture.

It's watching a play.

Zhou Ran clenched his fist.

The Emperor's son planted black-gold eyes within him, monitoring military intelligence and coordinates. The wisp of light that the Moon Emperor inserted into his sea of ​​consciousness, however, was focused on the imprints of three women.

"Can it be pulled out?" Zhou Ran asked.

Xiao Rou shook her head.

"This wisp of will is embedded in the layers of your primordial spirit, intertwined with your own soul power. If you forcibly separate it, half of your sea of ​​consciousness will collapse. It was already weakened by the Name Erasure Token last time, and it can't withstand any more damage."

She paused, then added.

"Moreover, it's not aggressive. It doesn't interfere with cultivation, transmit information, or affect the flow of magical power. It just watches."

Watching.

Zhou Ran gritted his teeth.

The Moon Emperor's parting words resurfaced: "If you can force it back, I won't bother making this trip again next time. Unless you return the blood of sin to me."

Sinful blood. What the Moon Emperor wants is sinful blood.

She left an eye in the Sixth Heaven, ostensibly to see if Zhou Ran could withstand the Emperor's son, but in reality, she was watching something about him.

The marks of three empresses?

Or something else?

Before Zhou Ran could think it through, Qin San pushed open the door and entered.

"My lord." Qin San's ribs hadn't fully healed yet, and his left side was slightly tilted when he walked, but his hand holding the knife was still steady.

"The burial ground is up to its old tricks again."

Zhou Ran looked up.

Qin San placed a hidden Gu on the military register. The Gu worm's belly was facing upwards, and its shell was playing surveillance footage from the past two hours.

In the scene, Souhara stands at the end of the eastern grain transport route.

Two days have passed since the battle in which the Emperor's son descended. The roads on the eastern front are riddled with craters from spatial debris, and half of the supply wagons have overturned. Zangyuan is leading three thousand supply soldiers in repairing the roads.

It looks perfectly normal.

At the forty-seventh minute of the scene, Souhara made a gesture.

He crouched down and picked up a piece of black gold, about the size of a fingernail, from a crater on the roadside.

Those were fragments of armor that fell apart when the Emperor's armor disintegrated.

Zangyuan held the debris up to his eyes, then clenched his fist. His clenched hand remained at his side, his fingers never loosening. From the forty-seventh minute until the end of the scene, that fist remained clenched.

Qin San pointed at the screen.

"He didn't hand over the debris. All three thousand grain transport soldiers were busy repairing the road, and no one noticed his actions. The hidden poison I planted happened to capture this scene."

Zhou Ran paused for a few breaths.

"When the imperial prince was born, he did not kneel."

Qin San nodded.

"They're collecting fragments of the Emperor's son again now."

When you put two things together, the flavor changes.

He was a veteran from the time of the "Swallowing Bones" incident, and was only a mid-level officer in charge of the supply lines. He never fought for power, never took sides, and was a man of few words.

Such people are either genuinely honest and upright, or they are more adept at hiding their true nature than anyone else.

"Keep an eye on him." Zhou Ran tapped the cover of the military register. "What was he doing with that fragment? Where did he hide it? Did he contact anyone afterward? Write it all down for me, word for word."

Qin San accepted the order and turned around.

He paused again as he reached the door.

"My lord, if this man is connected to the imperial prince, his three thousand grain transport soldiers are a ticking time bomb. If the eastern supply route is cut off, half of the supplies to the four regions will be cut off as well."

Zhou Ran opened the personnel allocation page of the military register.

"Therefore, we must not alert him. If he is one of the Emperor's men, forcibly removing him would ignite the entire supply route. If he has other connections, pushing him too far will make it impossible to see who is behind him."

Qin San grinned. The broken ribs made him grimace.

"My lord, fighting alongside you is fucking exhausting. After defeating the prince, we still have to play mind games with our own people."

"Aren't you tired? Why don't you sit in this chair?"

"Never mind." Qin San slipped away.

The hall returned to silence.

Zhou Ran drew his attention back to the projection in his sea of ​​consciousness. The Moon Emperor's silver will retracted its three tentacles and retreated back into the corner.

But Zhou Ran knew that it had simply stopped.

His eyes were still open.

Within its field of vision, the locations of the three markers—the bloodthirsty ancestral blood, the illusory sound's soul imprint, and the Nine Netherworld's coffin burial law—have been precisely recorded.

Where will this data be sent? What will the Moon Emperor do with it?

Zhou Ran put the projector into the bottom page of the military manual and wrote a line of small print at the bottom of the page.

[Moon Emperor's consciousness is active after the confrontation between the three women. Trigger condition: Simultaneous resonance of the three marks. Purpose: Unknown.]

He closed the military register and leaned back in his chair.

The Taihuang Black Blade rested in front of his knees, and the last trace of its pattern flickered faintly.

The Emperor's son is coming for the second round.

The Moon Emperor planted spies in his mind.

Burahara secretly collects fragments of the Emperor's son.

He personally blocked the way back.

But Lin Qingxue said that the White Bone Pen has a second use.

The key is in her head. The door is on his side.

In between lies a whole return path that the Emperor's son has been keeping a close watch on.

Zhou Ran looked down at the almost disappearing gray line on his left wrist and pressed it with his fingertip.

The pulse is still there.

It's as thin as a spider's silk.

But it's still there.

"Wait," he said again.

This time, he knew who he was talking to.