Tang Dynasty: Feeding Chang Le, Emperor Li Er exclaimed that she was a true immortal!

"Don't move, don't make a sound."

Lu Ming's voice was very soft, but every word was like a nail driven into Chang Le's ears.

Chang Le stood frozen in place, staring at the moving red figures on Lu Ming's phone screen, her breath almost stopping.

"Turn off the lights," Lu Ming said.

"Wh...what?"

"Stop all the lights. Blow out all the oil lamps and candles. Quickly."

Chang Le did not hesitate.

She turned and left.

Blow out the first oil lamp.

The second lamp, blow it.

Blow out the candlestick in the corner.

With each lamp extinguished, the bedchamber grew darker.

Lu Ming simultaneously turned off the LED table lights.

Snapped.

The last glimmer of light disappeared.

The inner and outer chambers were plunged into complete darkness.

"Go behind the bed, squat down, and wrap yourself in the blanket. Cover your eyes too."

Lu Ming's voice came from the darkness, calmer than one would expect when facing a group of assassins.

Chang Le ran to the back of the canopy bed in the dark, squatted down, and pulled a brocade quilt to wrap herself up from head to toe.

In the darkness, she could only hear the pounding of her own heart.

and also--

A very faint metallic sound came from the direction of the gate.

Someone is trying to pry open the door latch.

Chang Le's teeth started chattering.

She grew up in the palace and was always protected by the Imperial Guards.

She had never truly faced such naked murderous intent before.

Fear flooded my limbs and bones like a tidal wave.

But she didn't scream.

Because Lu Ming told us not to make a sound.

She remained silent.

The latch was pulled open.

Click.

A soft sound.

Then came the faint creaking sound of the door hinges turning.

The night wind squeezed in through the crack in the door, carrying the chill of late autumn.

The bedchamber was pitch black.

It was even darker than the night outside.

Because all the windows were covered with heavy curtains, not even moonlight could get in.

Six dark figures silently slipped into the hall.

Their footsteps were so light they moved like cats on the mahogany floor, without making a sound.

The first three dispersed, forming a triangular formation as they advanced deeper into the sleeping quarters.

The last three guarded the two sides of the entrance, controlling the retreat route.

The leader was a middle-aged assassin codenamed "Night Falcon".

He relied entirely on his hearing and touch to move in the dark.

Right hand on the knife, left hand probing the path.

Breathing pressure was reduced to the lowest level.

Five steps.

We bypassed the first screen.

Ten steps.

It touched the edge of the dressing table.

Fifteen steps —

That should be the princess's bedchamber ahead.

The night falcon stopped.

Listen attentively.

There are breathing sounds.

It was very light and rapid, as if it was being deliberately suppressed.

Behind the bed.

The night falcon's lips curled slightly in the darkness.

His right hand slowly tightened its grip on the hilt of the sword, his thumb pressing against the tsuba, preparing to draw it silently—

In that very instant.

A voice came from a strange direction inside the hall.

Not behind the bed.

Not at the entrance.

It is not any normal location inside the hall.

The sound seemed to be coming through something, with a slight distortion.

But I could hear the content very clearly.

"Close your eyes."

The night falcon froze for a fraction of a second.

Those fractions of a second cost him his life.

The light came.

It's not the kind of light that comes from a single point.

It exploded.

It was as if someone had stuffed the sun into a stick and then pressed a switch over the entire sleeping quarters.

A 10,000-lumen tactical high-power flashlight with strobe mode.

A high-frequency flashing light that blinks fifteen times per second.

In complete darkness, a person's pupils dilate to their maximum size in order to capture every ray of light.

And when the pupils are fully dilated, being suddenly exposed to this level of intense direct light—

The consequences were disastrous.

The photoreceptor cells on the retina were burned through to their limit in an instant.

The brain did not receive a visual signal, but rather a pure, excruciating pain.

The night falcon was the first to be affected.

He was facing the light source, less than three steps away.

The world exploded into pure white before his eyes.

Then came the pain.

It hurts more than having a red-hot iron needle pierce your eyeball.

"ah------!"

A piercing scream burst from his throat.

The knife slipped from my hand.

My body has lost its balance.

He slammed his knees to the ground, his hands tightly covering his eyes as if he wanted to gouge his eyeballs out of their sockets to stop the burning sensation.

But the light did not stop.

The strobe mode is still active.

A frequency of 15 Hz means that every second, there are 15 switches between darkness and bright light.

This high-frequency flickering can lead to severe vestibular dysfunction—meaning that even with eyes closed, a person may experience severe dizziness, nausea, and disorientation.

The other five assassins inside the hall screamed almost simultaneously.

The three that absorbed the full amount of light from the front, like the night falcon, were instantly blinded.

The two affected from the side fared slightly better, but were still completely blinded by the glare, knocking over the screen and the table.

The entire bedchamber was filled with screams, crashes, and groans of someone falling to the ground.

Someone was rolling on the ground.

Someone bumped into a pillar and his forehead bled.

Someone instinctively swung their knife wildly, the blade slicing into the forearm of their companion, eliciting an even more piercing scream.

"Heavenly lightning!! It's heavenly lightning!!!"

One of the assassins screamed.

His vocal cords were stretched to their limit by fear and pain, and the sound that came out was like the howl of a dying beast.

Thunder.

This is the only explanation they can understand.

Because in the Tang Dynasty, nothing except heavenly lightning could emit such a destructive light.

And those who unleash heavenly lightning—

Only gods and immortals.

Fear is more deadly than pain.

It directly pierced through the psychological defenses that these suicide squads had built up over thirty years of training.

They are not afraid of people.

Not afraid of knives.

Not afraid of death.

But they feared God.

The guards at the door heard the commotion inside the hall.

One person tried to rush in to provide backup.

He had barely stepped half a step across the threshold—

A flash of light, escaping from the crack in the doorway, swept across his face.

It was just out of the corner of my eye.

But it was enough to blur his vision for two seconds.

He retreated in terror, tripped on the threshold, and fell backward.

At the same time, a sharp whistle rang out from the hidden sentry posts outside Changle Palace.

Qianniu Wei finally realized what was happening.

The screams inside the hall were so loud that it was impossible to pretend not to hear them.

Torches surged in from all directions.

The clanging of armor was like the sound of molten iron being poured, heavy and rapid.

"Assassins! Protect Her Highness!!"

Li Junxian took the lead, drawing his sword and charging ahead.

The elite guards on the perimeter, facing the swarming Imperial Guards, knew that all was lost.

The two immediately bit off the poison sacs under their tongues, vomiting black blood and collapsing to the ground.

The other four tried to break through, but were shot down by archers at the base of the wall.

When Li Junxian led his men into the bedchamber—

He saw a scene he would never forget for the rest of his life.

Six men in black lay sprawled on the ground.

They are all in different poses.

Some curled up like shrimp, covering their eyes with their hands.

Some were lying on their backs with their limbs outstretched and their mouths wide open, as if they were screaming silently.

Some were twitching slowly, their fingers spasming uncontrollably.

Everyone's eyes were bleeding.

It's not bleeding.

It's seepage.

Blood seeped out from his tightly closed eyes, trickling down his cheeks and pooling into a dark red line on the floor.

There was an indescribable smell in the air.

It doesn't smell like blood.

It's something else.

Later, Lu Ming told Chang Le that it was called ozone smell, which is produced when strong light ionizes the air.

But in the minds of the people of the Tang Dynasty, that was the taste that came after a "heavenly thunder".

"Heavens...heavenly lightning...there's heavenly lightning..."

A conscious assassin lay on the ground, muttering incoherently.

His eyes are completely blind.

The whites of his eyes were bloodshot, and his pupils were dilated to their limit, like two broken black glass beads.

Li Junxian, holding a knife, stood in the center of the hall, looking around.

After confirming the princess's safety, Chang Le peeked out from behind the bed, her face pale but unharmed.

He breathed a sigh of relief.

Then his gaze swept across the depths of the sleeping quarters.

Amidst an overturned screen and scattered objects, he saw the curtain of light.

Normally, that barrier is almost invisible.

But at this moment, perhaps because the intense light had activated some kind of reaction, the surface of the light screen was rippling with extremely faint waves, like an undercurrent beneath a calm surface of water.

On the other side of the ripples—

There is a figure.

Sitting.

His posture was so casual it was unbelievable.

One leg is crossed over the other, and the body is leaning against something with a high back.

He was holding a black, rod-shaped object in his right hand.

The details of the face were blurred by the light screen and could not be seen clearly.

But the aura emanating from that silhouette—

Li Junxian's scalp tingled instantly.

That's not a person's aura.

At least not ordinary people.

How to describe it?

It's like standing on the edge of a cliff looking down into an abyss.

You know it won't hurt you on its own.

But every bone, every inch of skin, every pore in your body is telling you—

You are nothing in its presence.

Li Junxian's sword slipped from his hand.

It crashed to the floor with a loud thud.

He didn't even realize he had let go.

The guards beside him were startled and reached out to support his arm.

"General? General, what's wrong?"

Li Junxian did not answer.

He stared intently at the blurry figure on the other side of the screen, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down several times.

His lips moved as if he wanted to say something, but he couldn't utter a single word.