Chapter 890 — Greeting That Old Friend
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
"The Empress's younger sister.
.
. How did her body get here?
" Shen Mu's mind went blank; he could hardly believe his own eyes. The Empress's body had been hidden aboard the ghost ship, and Shen Mu's experiences on that ghost ship had been so strange that he would never forget them.
In order to solve the ghost ship's mystery, he had memorized every detail of the vessel, every reincarnation, and so his memory of it was unusually deep. On the ghost ship, the Empress and Jue Wuchen had lain in the same coffin. When Shen Mu performed the soul-summoning rite for Jue Wuchen, he discovered that Jue Wuchen had no soul at all—she was a manufactured beauty, a flawless woman created by Ling Tianzun with the art of creation in order to destroy the Ancient God Heavenly Emperor. When he performed the soul-summoning rite for the Empress, however, he was horrified to discover that the Empress was not dead at all—she was still alive in the mortal world! Afterward, he deduced the process by which the Empress and her sister had joined with the Heaven Alliance to murder the Ancient God Heavenly Emperor.
The two sisters had worked in concert. The younger remained in the Heavenly Court to hold the Ancient God Heavenly Emperor in check, while the Empress returned to her native place to visit her family.
There she made use of the nearby Longbo Kingdom, caused the King of Longbo to rebel and wound her, and had herself trapped in Guixu.
The Heavenly Emperor ordered Wei Suifeng to lead the Feather Forest Guard in putting down the rebellion and rescuing the Empress. After Wei Suifeng had suppressed the revolt, on the eve of the army's triumphant return, the incident of the Empress's ambush exploded. The dark currents of Guixu surged; in the dark night two Empresses appeared, and the true Empress died.
Wei Suifeng carried the Empress's corpse back to the Heavenly Court. On the dark celestial river, he encountered Ling Tianzun casting a spell, and Wei Suifeng at once used the fog to leave the Longhan Era and return to his own age, while the Feather Forest Guard and the towered warship were transformed by Ling Tianzun's divine power into a ghost ship that shuttled through the thirty-six time-spaces. And yet the Empress had not died—she had become Jue Wuchen. The Heavenly Court also proclaimed that the Empress had not died, and Shen Mu conjectured that the Empress in the Heavenly Court must be the Empress's younger sister.
According to this inference, both Empress sisters had participated in the plot to murder the Heavenly Emperor. Yet before him now lay the coffin of the Empress's younger sister, and her body was lying in it! What if, at the time, the younger sister had not stayed in the Heavenly Court to hold the Heavenly Emperor in check, but had followed the Empress to Guixu, incited the Longbo Kingdom to revolt, and seized the chance to strike at her elder sister—only to be killed by her sister instead? Then the elder sister hid the younger sister's body in Guixu, pretended that she herself had been ambushed and killed, had Wei Suifeng bear her own body to the Heavenly Court, and afterward used the ghost ship to slip away and transform into Jue Wuchen.
Wei Suifeng, however, discovered the catch—the one who had died was actually the Empress's younger sister—and so he left behind a map to guide Shen Mu toward the truth.
"But there is a flaw in this conjecture: why did the Heavenly Court announce that the Empress was not dead? " Shen Mu steadied himself and sank into thought.
"The Empress in the Heavenly Court is certainly one of the sisters; if so, which one?
Or perhaps there is another possibility: the sisters were playing a double act. The younger pretended to ambush the elder and killed her before everyone's eyes; the elder faked her death, slipped away, and became Jue Wuchen, while the younger returned to the Heavenly Court and was promoted from stand-in to the true Empress.