Chapter 457: The Battle of the Sunken Fortress

Amber firelight danced across the bronze brazier inside the warded pavilion, wrapping the fur-draped couch in a haze of warm spirit-sandalwood smoke.

Sitting sideways across Alaric Steele’s muscular lap, Noble Consort Cui Yulan let out a hot, shaky breath as his hands moved with shameless authority over her bare flesh.

Her pale-violet silk gown hung wide open from her shoulders to her hips. In the warm glow of the coals, her voluptuous body was a breathtaking sight—fair skin flushed a delicate rose-pink, a remarkably thin, supple waist, wide fertile hips, and a pair of massive, heavy breasts that spilled over Alaric Steele’s large palms like twin mounds of warm snow.

Alaric Steele did not treat her with the timid caution of a humble camp physician anymore. His left hand gripped her right breast firmly, his fingers sinking deep into the plush, yielding flesh as he kneaded and squeezed the heavy globe with rough, possessive rhythm, while his thumb flicked and rolled her stiff, rosy nipple until she shivered from head to toe.

At the same time, his right hand glided down from her other heaving breast, sliding over the smooth, taut skin of her ribs to trace slow, teasing circles around her soft navel before dipping beneath the loose silk skirt bunched at her hips to grip the bare, round curve of her buttocks.

“Mmph… Alaric…” Cui Yulan gasped, her silver eyes misty and half-lidded as a jolt of raw pleasure shot from her pinched nipple straight down to her lower belly.

Her hands rested against his broad chest, her fingers curling into the gray linen of his healer’s robe, yet she did not push him away by even half an inch. Instead, her back arched involuntarily, pressing her massive breasts even deeper into his kneading palm while her soft thighs squirmed together on his lap.

“You… you perverted guy…” Cui Yulan breathed against his neck, her cheeks burning dark scarlet as she tried to summon a shred of her usual martial severity, even though her voice came out as a breathless purr. “Have you lost your mind tonight? Look at how roughly you are grabbing my chest… Do you have any idea what you are doing to me right now?”

Alaric Steele chuckled low in his throat, a deep, vibrating sound that sent goosebumps racing down her spine. Rather thangentling his touch, he gave her bare, round buttocks a firm, audible smack beneath her silk skirt, making the lush flesh ripple against his palm while his other hand squeezed both of her massive breasts together and rubbed their stiff pink peaks against each other.

“Ah—!” Cui Yulan yelped softly, burying her burning face in the crook of his shoulder as her round ass clenched against his hand from the sting of the playful spank. “You shameless rogue! You actually dared to spank me! Have you forgotten my identity?! I am Noble Consort Cui Yulan! I am an official consort of Emperor Huang Long! If anyone outside this tent knew that a camp physician was pulling open my robes and mauling my body like this, nine generations of your clan would not be enough to pay for the crime!”

Alaric Steele did not stop for a second. His right hand slid back up from her warm, round buttocks to slip under the lower hem of her silk top, his warm palm rubbing slowly over her soft, flat belly and dipping the tip of his middle finger playfully into her shallow navel, while his left hand lifted the heavy weight of her left breast and pinched her hard nipple between his thumb and forefinger.

“Your husband Emperor Huang Long?” Alaric Steele murmured, his voice dropping its humble scholar’s mask and taking on a low, magnetic, domineering edge as his ruby eyes locked onto her silver ones from inches away. “Tell me, Yulan—do you actually dare to let this be known to that husband of yours?”

Cui Yulan’s breath hitched as his thumb brushed across her lips and his other hand continued fondling her massive breast.

“When your brother General Cui Hao lost Azure Fall City and twelve thousand men of your Cui Clan were trapped in the mud waiting to die,” Alaric Steele continued, his hand sliding down from her soft navel to squeeze the lush curve of her bare hip and round ass, pulling her pelvis tight against the thick, hard ridge tenting the front of his trousers, “was your first thought to ask Emperor Huang Long for help? No. Your first thought was terror that Emperor Huang Long would cut off your brother’s head and wipe out three hundred years of your family’s name. You have never once considered that man on the dragon throne a support you can lean on.”

Cui Yulan bit her lower lip hard, unable to refute a single word because every word struck the exact truth buried at the bottom of her heart.

“Besides,” Alaric Steele added with a lazy, arrogant smirk, lowering his head to kiss the sensitive pulse point on her throat while kneading her massive breast with firm, unhurried dominance, “even if Emperor Huang Long somehow learned that I have his proud Noble Consort sitting half-naked on my lap tonight… I admit that with my current strength, I cannot defeat a reigning Martial Emperor head-on. However, if Emperor Huang Long thinks he can kill me or keep me from taking what is mine, he will find that even the dragon throne is not hard enough to crack my teeth.”

Hearing the calm, unshakeable arrogance in his voice—and feeling the faint, unmistakable thrum of ancient, apex vitality beneath his gray linen robes—Cui Yulan did not feel anger.

Instead, her heart gave a violent, racing throb inside her chest, and a wave of liquid heat pooled between her thighs.

She was a Peak Martial King who had spent her whole life respecting strength above all else. When she believed Alaric Steele was merely a gentle, fragile physician, she had felt grateful and protective toward him. Now, feeling the domineering aura radiating off him at close range and hearing him speak of Emperor Huang Long without a shred of mortal fear, a fierce, intoxicating attraction washed over her.

“I knew it…” Cui Yulan whispered, lifting her head to gaze into his glowing ruby eyes, her silver eyes shining with fascination rather than reproach as his fingers sank deep into the soft flesh of her massive breasts. “You really are not a simple wandering healer at all, are you, Alaric? No ordinary physician could have blocked Commander Kenjiro’s life-burning strike at Shattered Pass without a scratch, and no mere scholar would dare speak of Emperor Huang Long like that.”

She rested her cheek back against his broad chest, letting out a soft, sensual sigh as his palm slid over her bare stomach and her soft navel again before cupping her heavy breast.

“Keep your secrets if you wish,” Cui Yulan murmured softly, her fingers tracing the firm muscles of his collarbone through his collar. “In this world, only a fool bares all his cards to the sky. To tell you the truth… I like it even more knowing you are strong. At least the man whose hands are all over my body tonight is not a weakling.”

Alaric Steele smiled against her dark hair, giving her bare, round buttocks another slow, possessive squeeze that made her press her hips involuntarily against his hard shaft.

Then, after a quiet moment of enjoying his hands roaming over her lush curves, Cui Yulan tilted her chin up slightly, a sudden, sharp glint of female intuition flickering in her silver eyes.

“Wait a moment, you perverted guy,” Cui Yulan said, narrowing her eyes playfully as she caught his wrist where his hand was cupping her right breast. “Now that I think about it… it was Imperial Consort Xian Zhao Mengxue and Imperial Consort Shu Su Xinyue who insisted so fiercely that I come to your tent for treatments in the first place. And whenever they speak of ‘Master Alaric’ in the command carriage, their eyes look far too warm. Tell me honestly—what is your relationship with Zhao Mengxue and Su Xinyue? Have you been putting your shameless hands inside their robes too?”

Inside his mind, Alaric Steele laughed silently.

He had indeed fucked both Imperial Consort Xian Zhao Mengxue and Imperial Consort Shu Su Xinyue half to death on his Dire-Bear fur bed just an hour before Cui Yulan walked through the door, and both women were already counted as 2 out of 10 on his “The Emperor’s Ladder” mission. Yet he knew Cui Yulan’s proud, solitary warrior nature like the back of his hand. Right now, what bound Cui Yulan so tightly to him was the intoxicating belief that amidst the cold, scheming vipers of the imperial camp, she was his sole, special sanctuary—and he was hers. Until he broke down her final walls, claimed her virgin spirit and body on his bed, and turned this proud war goddess into his devoted slut, letting her know that Zhao Mengxue and Su Xinyue were already sharing his cock would spoil the delicacy of the hunt.

Alaric Steele looked down at her with an expression of amused innocence, using his free hand to pinch her stiff pink nipple until she let out a sharp gasp.

“Imperial Consort Xian and Imperial Consort Shu?” Alaric Steele chuckled, kissing the tip of her nose. “Those two women care only for palace factions and using my medical pavilion’s alliance with the Jade Serpent Merchant Organization to keep First Prince Huang Wei’s logistics running. Do you think I would dare pull open the robes of First Prince Huang Wei’s own mother while he is camped two hundred yards away? The only consort whose robes I have ever undone in this tent is sitting right on my lap.”

Cui Yulan searched his ruby eyes for three heartbeats. Feeling the gentle, rhythmic pulse of his Resonant Heart skill and the warm sandalwood fragrance wrapping around her senses, the small spike of suspicion in her chest dissolved into a sweet, secret pride.

A faint, pleased smile curved her full lips as she leaned back against his arm.

“Hmph. You had better be telling the truth,” Cui Yulan murmured, her face still flushed red as she felt his thick, rock-hard shaft pressing insistently against the thin silk between her thighs while his hands caressed her soft navel and her bare, round buttocks.

She squirmed slightly on his lap, feeling the scorching heat radiating from his groin, and her breathing grew shallow and ragged. Slowly, she reached down with one hand and placed her palm over his chest, looking up at him with vulnerable, shimmering silver eyes.

“Alaric…” Cui Yulan whispered, her voice soft and shy in a way none of her soldiers had ever heard. “I can feel how much you want me right now… and I will not lie and say my body does not ache when you touch me like this. If we were anywhere else in the world, I would not stop you from taking me to that bed behind the curtain tonight.”

She glanced toward the tent flap where the cold mountain wind howled outside, her expression tightening with the weight of her family’s survival.

“But as long as General Tokugawa Ieyasu holds Azure Fall City and my brother’s army is bleeding in these trenches, my mind cannot let go of the war,” Cui Yulan said softly, leaning up to press a warm, lingering kiss against the corner of his jaw. “Do not ask me to share your bed until Azure Fall City is reclaimed and my clan’s soldiers are out of the shadow of the executioner’s blade. Until the day this campaign ends… you can hold me whenever I come here. You can fondle my breasts, touch my stomach, spank me, or cuddle with me on these furs however you please. And the night this war is over, I will give you everything left.”

Alaric Steele looked at the magnificent, proud Peak Martial King blushing in his arms—her massive, pale breasts heaving in his hands, her bare round buttocks resting warmly in his palm—and knew that her heart was already ninety percent inside his cage. Waiting until the final victory over General Tokugawa to take her completely on his bed and complete the third rung of “The Emperor’s Ladder” would make her conscious surrender all the sweeter.

“A promise from the commander of the Violet Thunder Pavilion is heavier than gold,” Alaric Steele murmured, capturing her soft, parted lips in a deep, possessive kiss while both of his hands cupped and squeezed her massive breasts. “Until this war ends, I will collect my interest on these furs every single night—and when Azure Fall City falls, I will collect the principal in full.”

“Mmph… greedy bastard…” Cui Yulan whimpered into his mouth, wrapping both arms tightly around his neck and kissing him back with heated abandon as his hands roamed freely over her bare breasts, her soft navel, and her round, curvy buttocks deep into the night.

Following that night, the autumn rains froze into bitter, howling mountain sleet, and a full month of grueling, continuous skirmishes ground across the rugged approaches of Azure Fall City.

Neither army gave an inch for thirty straight days.

Along the five iron-rich mountain passes ringing the city, the war turned into a daily meat-grinder of scouting clashes, artillery duels, and midnight trench raids.

In the mornings, the Fierce Tiger Unit and the Crimson Feather Archers traded volleys of fire-bolts with the Rising Sun Empire’s Scarlet Crane Unit across the frozen ravines. At midday, squadrons of the Gale-Wind Shock Cavalry clashed with patrols of the Blood-Moon Samurai Unit along the icy ore-roads. And at night, Noble Consort Cui Yulan led her Violet Thunder Strike Force to smash the forward sapping tunnels dug by the Shadow-Mist Shinobi Corps—returning every midnight to Alaric Steele’s warm, sandalwood-scented pavilion to let him strip off her armor and aggressively fondle, spank, and caress her voluptuous body on his couch until dawn.

While the soldiers bled in the frozen slush, the invisible noose woven by Guildmaster Lin Ruoli of the Jade Serpent Merchant Organization and Chief Auctioneer Ya Su of the Gilded Lotus Auction House tightened around the entire camp.

By the end of the fourth week of skirmishes, winter frost had locked the western mountain roads solid. The imperial quartermaster wagons from the interior provinces were stuck two hundred miles back in the snowdrifts. Every sack of grain, every bundle of dry charcoal, every warming talisman, and every vial of medicinal elixir consumed by First Prince Huang Wei’s seventy thousand soldiers passed straight through the counting tables of Guildmaster Lin Ruoli and Chief Auctioneer Ya Su.

For Corbin, that month of freezing skirmishes was thirty days of pure, unmitigated torment.

Trudging through the ice-crusted mud at the head of the Iron-Wolf Scouting Unit under his disguise as Lieutenant Mo Chen, Corbin swung his sixty-pound black-iron greatsword in seventeen separate skirmishes against the Rising Sun Empire’s Ghost-Armored Ashigaru Unit.

He hacked down ashigaru spearmen, cleaved iron shields in half, and took three shallow katana cuts across his ribs just to stay near the front of the reconnaissance lines. Yet because his Heavenly Martial God System only awarded points for conquering high-destiny women or slaying major realm bosses above his own level, slaughtering common ashigaru and low-tier samurai officers gave him a grand total of zero system points.

[System Status: Host Corbin (Disguised as Lieutenant Mo Chen).]

[Current Balance: 0 System Points.]

[Active Quest: Identify and Eliminate the Hidden Mastermind Behind the Catacomb Framing & Camp Cipher Lock.]

Every three nights during that month, Corbin crept out of the mercenary tents in the dark to stalk the supply depots and signal stations on the upper plateau, hunting for a gap in the Jade Serpent Merchant Organization’s armor.

He found nothing but walls of iron.

When he tried to bribe a signal clerk from Quartermaster General Luo Feng’s staff with looted silver to show him the daily Transmission Jade Slip logs, the clerk took one look at the Jade Serpent loyalty tally hanging on his own belt and threatened to call the Peak Martial King patrols. When Corbin ambushed a lone Rising Sun shinobi courier in the northern pine woods and seized a map of supply drops, he discovered that the decoy coordinates had been planted by Chief Auctioneer Ya Su’s intelligence brokers two days earlier to steer the mercenary companies into clearing a frozen mine shaft for free!

“Thirty days…” Corbin growled through chattering teeth on the thirty-first morning, standing in the freezing sleet outside the command ridge while scraping frozen black blood off his greatsword with a whetstone. “Thirty days in this frozen hellhole, and whoever is sitting behind Lin Ruoli and Ya Su hasn’t left a single footprint in the snow!”

Beside him, Sergeant Zhao blew into his frostbitten mittens and pointed his chin toward the grand yellow command pavilion on the ridge above. Bronze war drums were beating a frantic, deafening summons across all sectors of the camp.

“Put away the whetstone, Lieutenant Mo,” Sergeant Zhao muttered grimly. “The brass horns have been blowing since sunrise. Word from the upper plateau is that First Prince Huang Wei finally lost his temper this morning and ordered every unit in the army to assemble for a general offensive.”

Inside the heated silk expanse of the royal command pavilion, the air was thick with the smell of spiced wine and wet wool cloaks.

First Prince Huang Wei stood at the head of the tactical table wearing a newly polished suit of gold-inlaid dragon scale armor and a thick white tiger-pelt cloak over his shoulders. His face was flushed an angry, impatient red.

Arranged around the table stood Imperial Consort Xian Zhao Mengxue, Imperial Consort Shu Su Xinyue, Noble Consort Cui Yulan, General Cui Hao, General Sun Ba of the Fierce Tiger Unit, Quartermaster General Luo Feng, and Master Array Formulator Tian Yi.

“One whole month!” First Prince Huang Wei shouted, slamming his golden goblet down onto the map table so hard that spiced wine splashed across the painted wooden miniature of Azure Fall City. “For thirty days following that little hiccup at Dragon’s Spine Gorge, I have patiently allowed you generals to fight your little probing skirmishes along the outer passes! Now the winter snows are falling, my wine reserves are running low, and General Tokugawa’s ‘Eight-Trigram Iron-Fortress Barrier’ is still shining over the walls of Azure Fall City like a giant yellow turtle shell!”

First Prince Huang Wei glared around the table, his gaze settling accusingly on General Cui Hao and Master Array Formulator Tian Yi. “Master Tian Yi! You promised this prince a week ago that your array scholars had traced the primary subterranean earth-vein feeding the city barrier! Why is that barrier still standing?!”

Master Array Formulator Tian Yi hurriedly bowed until his white beard brushed the edge of the map. “Your Royal Highness! After thirty days of measuring the ground tremors caused by our trebuchet strikes and mapping the five outer passes, we have finally pinpointed the heart of General Tokugawa’s entire regional defense grid!”

The elderly array master picked up a red chalk stick and drew a heavy circle around a deep, terraced depression nestled between three jagged iron peaks two miles east of Azure Fall City’s main wall.

“It is here, Your Royal Highness—the Sunken Fortress, built inside the ancient Kurogane Open-Pit Iron Mine!” Master Array Formulator Tian Yi announced, his voice quavering with excitement. “Before the war, that pit was the deepest iron-ore excavation on the eastern border, reaching three hundred feet below the surrounding mountain table. General Tokugawa has constructed a tiered stone fortress at the bottom of that pit, directly on top of the confluence where three major subterranean earth-dragon leylines meet!”

General Sun Ba leaned over the table, squinting at the red circle. “The Sunken Fortress? Our Fierce Tiger Unit vanguard skirmished with their outer pickets near that mine rim four days ago. The walls sit below ground level inside the crater rim, making it impossible for our trebuchets to hit the central keep from outside.”

“Because the central keep of the Sunken Fortress is not a barracks—it is a giant regulator valve!” Master Array Formulator Tian Yi explained, tapping the chalk against the center of the pit. “Every drop of earth-qi powering the ‘Eight-Trigram Iron-Fortress Barrier’ over Azure Fall City and the secondary mountain arrays flows through the central octagonal spire inside the Sunken Fortress! As long as the Sunken Fortress stands, Azure Fall City’s barrier is indestructible. If we storm the Sunken Fortress and shatter that central octagonal spire, the barrier over Azure Fall City will collapse within ten breaths!”

First Prince Huang Wei stopped glaring and stared at the red circle on the map, a wide, greedy smile slowly spreading across his face.

“One central spire?” First Prince Huang Wei repeated, his chest swelling beneath his gold-inlaid breastplate. “You mean to tell me that if we take this Sunken Fortress today, the main walls of Azure Fall City will be stripped naked before nightfall?”

“Without question, Your Royal Highness!” Master Array Formulator Tian Yi bowed.

Noble Consort Cui Yulan looked closely at the topographical chart of the Sunken Fortress, her silver eyes sharp and calculating. “Your Royal Highness, the Sunken Fortress sits at the bottom of a three-hundred-foot-deep terraced mine pit where three subterranean earth-veins intersect. Over the past week of skirmishes, the Rising Sun Empire’s Blood-Moon Samurai Unit along the eastern rim has been pulling back suspiciously fast whenever our Violet Thunder Strike Force pressed them. General Tokugawa may be counting on us targeting the regulator node.”

“Of course he knows it is important, Noble Consort Cui—that is why he built a fortress over it!” First Prince Huang Wei scoffed, waving his hand airily as if swatting away a gnat. “Do you know why his samurai have been pulling back over the past week? Because after a full month of facing this prince’s relentless pressure, their morale is broken and their supply lines are starved! Even a child can see that General Tokugawa is running out of men to defend both Azure Fall City and the Sunken Fortress at the same time!”

Imperial Consort Xian Zhao Mengxue exchanged a calm, imperceptible glance with Imperial Consort Shu Su Xinyue across the table. Just twenty minutes earlier, inside Alaric Steele’s silk pavilion, both women had been kneeling naked at Alaric Steele’s feet while he briefed them on the exact instructions to give her son.

“Wei’er is right that we cannot let the army sit in the snow for another month,” Imperial Consort Xian Zhao Mengxue said smoothly, her regal voice carrying effortless weight. “Taking the Sunken Fortress will decide the campaign at a single stroke. However, since the fortress sits inside a sunken mine crater, you must remain on the high western rim inside your royal command carriage surrounded by the Black Tortoise Shield Corps to oversee the battle from above, while Noble Consort Cui Yulan, General Cui Hao, and General Sun Ba lead the assault columns down into the courtyard.”

Imperial Consort Shu Su Xinyue nodded gracefully, adjusting her sapphire fur stole over her full chest. “And since the fighting around the central array spire will be fierce, make sure Master Alaric and his elite medical retinue accompany Noble Consort Cui’s command column into the field so any array backlash against our senior officers can be countered on the spot.”

First Prince Huang Wei beamed with delight at a plan that kept him safely on the high rim with a spyglass while handing him all the glory of the breakthrough.

“My thoughts exactly!” First Prince Huang Wei declared, drawing his jeweled sword halfway out of its scabbard with a theatrical ring. “Listen to my decree! Leave ten thousand reserve infantry to watch the southern gates of Azure Fall City! The rest of the army—the Fierce Tiger Unit, the Thunder-Spear Relief Force, the Violet Thunder Strike Force, the Crimson Feather Archers, and all mercenary scouting units—will march on the Sunken Fortress immediately! I want the outer gates of that mine pit smashed and the central spire reduced to gravel before the sun touches the western peaks!”

“As Your Royal Highness commands!” the generals roared in unison, clasping their gauntleted fists.

While the war horns echoed across the frozen plains and sixty thousand troops formed into assault columns along the eastern ore-road, inside the high rock cavern overlooking the Sunken Fortress two miles away, General Tokugawa Ieyasu stood in silence.

Below him lay the Sunken Fortress—a sprawling, circular citadel of black iron-stone built at the very bottom of the three-hundred-foot-deep terraced quarry of the Kurogane Mine.

In the center of the sunken inner courtyard rose a sixty-foot octagonal spire of dark magnetic iron, humming with thick, golden-ochre streams of subterranean earth-qi drawn straight from the three massive mountain leylines converging beneath the pit floor.

Yet inside the barracks and inner halls of the Sunken Fortress below, there were no supply crates, no reserve grain sacks, and no sleeping quarters left.

Every chest of spirit stones, every extra bundle of arrows, and eighty percent of the Rising Sun Empire’s elite Blood-Moon Samurai Unit had already been quietly evacuated through three hidden subterranean mining tunnels that led five miles east into the impregnable mountain fastness behind Mount Kurogane.

Only two thousand ashigaru spearmen of the Ghost-Armored Ashigaru Unit and four hundred rapid-retreat shinobi of the Shadow-Mist Shinobi Corps remained on the outer ramparts of the Sunken Fortress to man the wall banners and fire the decoy ballistas.

Standing beside General Tokugawa Ieyasu at the mouth of the high escape tunnel were Commander Honda Tadakatsu, Commander Hattori Hanzo, and Senior Array Grandmaster Seimei of the Rising Sun Empire.

“Lord General Tokugawa,” Commander Hattori Hanzo reported quietly, bowing as a black-feathered scout hawk landed on his gauntleted wrist. “First Prince Huang Wei has taken the bait. Nearly sixty thousand troops of the Celestial Dragon Empire have left the southern siege lines and are marching in full assault formation toward the western rim of the Sunken Fortress. Noble Consort Cui Yulan and General Cui Hao are leading the heavy infantry spearhead themselves.”

Commander Honda Tadakatsu gripped the shaft of his great spear, looking down at the empty courtyard of the Sunken Fortress below with a grim, admiring nod. “For a month, we gave them just enough resistance along the eastern ridges to make them bleed for every yard, then let their array scholars ‘discover’ the leyline conduits leading into this pit. Even Noble Consort Cui Yulan could not stop that arrogant prince from lunging at the throat of our barrier.”

“Because in conventional array warfare, destroying the central regulator node is the only textbook answer,” General Tokugawa Ieyasu said calmly, his dark eyes reflecting the pulsing ochre light of the octagonal spire below. “What their array scholars do not know is that the ‘Eight-Trigram Iron-Fortress Barrier’ over Azure Fall City has already fulfilled its purpose. We have delayed their sixty-thousand-man army at the border for over two months until the winter snows locked the mountain passes.”

General Tokugawa turned toward Senior Array Grandmaster Seimei. “Are the seven subterranean pressure locks beneath the Sunken Fortress primed, Grandmaster Seimei?”

Senior Array Grandmaster Seimei, clad in white-and-black ceremonial robes, bowed low and held up a crimson jade control disc etched with seven intersecting volcano runes.

“Everything is in readiness, Lord General,” Senior Array Grandmaster Seimei replied. “Over the past thirty days, while their scouts thought we were merely reinforcing the mine walls, we drove seven hundred iron-seal wedges into the three intersecting earth-dragon leylines and the four deep geothermal magma pockets directly beneath the floor of the Sunken Fortress. We have turned the entire three-hundred-foot quarry into the ‘Tremor-Eruption Array’.”

Commander Honda Tadakatsu’s eyes gleamed behind his iron mask. “When we intentionally allow their heavy infantry to breach the outer gates of the Sunken Fortress and pack the inner courtyard to strike the octagonal spire…”

“The octagonal spire is the trigger,” General Tokugawa said, his voice steady and pitiless as winter stone. “The moment Noble Consort Cui Yulan or their heavy strike forces crack the outer casing of that spire, the ‘Tremor-Eruption Array’ will release a month’s worth of dammed subterranean leyline pressure and geothermal magma at once. The bottom of the mine pit will blow skyward like an erupting volcano, and the four surrounding three-hundred-foot quarry walls will collapse inward, burying their entire assault army under ten million tons of solid iron-ore and molten rock.”

“And our two thousand decoy soldiers on the inner wall?” Commander Hattori Hanzo asked.

“As soon as the outer gates are breached, our rear companies will pull back into the three reinforced basalt escape tunnels behind the keep and drop the iron blast-doors,” General Tokugawa instructed, turning toward the dark, torch-lit tunnel leading deep into the eastern mountain fastness. “Open the outer defense line just enough to make them sweat for the gatehouse. Let First Prince Huang Wei taste his victory—and then drop the mountain on his head.”

Two hours past noon, the sky above the Kurogane Mine pit turned the color of bruised lead as sixty thousand armored soldiers of the Celestial Dragon Empire surrounded the wide, terraced western rim of the Sunken Fortress.

Deep bronze war drums thundered across the snow-dusted crags, shaking loose icicles from the pine trees.

Up on the high western ridge overlooking the vast, bowl-shaped quarry, First Prince Huang Wei stood on the gilded viewing platform of his war carriage, wrapped in his white tiger-pelt cloak and flanked by two thousand soldiers of the Black Tortoise Shield Corps and Imperial Consort Xian Zhao Mengxue and Imperial Consort Shu Su Xinyue’s guarded carriages.

Down below them, three wide, zig-zagging stone haulage ramps led three hundred feet down the terraced quarry walls to the massive black-iron outer gates of the Sunken Fortress.

“Attack! Sound the iron horns!” First Prince Huang Wei shouted from the rim, waving his gold-hilted sword toward the pit below. “The first battalion to plant my dragon banner atop the central spire inside that fortress receives ten thousand spirit stones!”

“Kill—!”

Twenty thousand heavy infantrymen of the Fierce Tiger Unit, the Thunder-Spear Relief Force, and the mercenary vanguard roared in unison and charged down the three wide stone ramps into the quarry!

At the front of the left ramp, Corbin ran through the swirling snow with his sixty-pound black-iron greatsword held diagonally across his chest, leading the thirty scouts of the Iron-Wolf Scouting Unit behind a rolling wooden mantlet pushed by the heavy infantry.

From the crenellated black-stone battlements of the Sunken Fortress below, the two thousand warriors of the Rising Sun Empire’s Ghost-Armored Ashigaru Unit and Shadow-Mist Shinobi Corps loosed a dense hail of iron-tipped arrows and roaring fire-pots.

Arrows clattered off raised shields and wooden mantlets. Men screamed and tumbled off the edges of the zig-zagging stone ramps as fire-pots burst in sheets of burning pitch.

Yet to Corbin’s battle-honed eyes, as his unit reached the bottom of the ramp and engaged a squad of Ghost-Armored Ashigaru defending the outer hornwork, something felt off.

Corbin swung his black-iron greatsword in a savage horizontal cleave, smashing through the iron yari pikes of three ashigaru spearmen and sending their broken bodies flying against the gatehouse wall.

Instead of pouring out of the inner barracks in fanatical counter-charges as the Blood-Moon Samurai Unit had done in every battle over the past two months, the Rising Sun defenders on the gatehouse ramparts fired two hasty volleys, dropped smoke-bombs at their feet, and retreated rapidly down the interior stone stairs toward the rear cliff wall of the fortress!

“They’re giving up the gatehouse!” Sergeant Zhao yelled excitedly, wiping blood from his cheek as fifty muscular engineers of the Fierce Tiger Unit rolled a massive, rune-inscribed iron battering ram up to the main black-iron gates of the Sunken Fortress. “First Prince Huang Wei was right! The Rising Sun dogs are out of men!”

Corbin stood on the stone steps of the outer hornwork, his chest heaving as he looked past the smoking gatehouse into the vast, circular inner courtyard of the Sunken Fortress and the sixty-foot octagonal spire pulsing with violently bright ochre light at its center.

Why was the ground beneath his iron-shod boots vibrating with a low, rhythmic thrum that grew heavier with every passing heartbeat?

And why did the air rising from the drainage grates in the courtyard floor smell not of cold rainwater, but of scorched sulfur and compressed subterranean iron-gas?

Corbin’s system interface suddenly flashed bright crimson in front of his eyes.

[System Warning: Abnormal Subterranean Tectonic & Leyline Pressure Detected Beneath Fortress Floor.]

[Analysis: Three Intersecting Earth-Dragon Leylines Are Artificially Dammed Under the Central Spire. Compression Level: Critical (94% and Rising).]

[Warning: Imminent Catastrophic Eruption. Evacuate Inner Quarry Immediately!]

Corbin’s blood turned to ice in his veins. “A self-destruct array! Tokugawa dammed the mountain leylines under the floor!”

At that exact moment, the rune-inscribed iron battering ram slammed into the main gates of the Sunken Fortress for the third time.

BOOM—CRASH!

The massive black-iron locking bar on the inside of the gates—which General Tokugawa’s engineers had intentionally filed two-thirds of the way through with acid that morning—snapped in two with a deafening clang!

Both thirty-foot iron gates swung wide open, revealing the wide, empty flagstone expanse of the inner courtyard and the glowing sixty-foot octagonal spire standing completely unguarded in the center!

Up on the high western rim of the quarry, First Prince Huang Wei jumped up and down on his carriage platform, waving his golden goblet in the air.

“The gates are broken! The gates are broken!” First Prince Huang Wei cheered at the top of his lungs. “Look how General Tokugawa’s garrison runs before my mighty army! General Sun! General Cui! Noble Consort Cui! Pour all heavy strike units straight into the courtyard and smash that octagonal spire to pieces right now!”

Down at the center ramp, fifteen thousand heavy infantrymen of the Fierce Tiger Unit, the Thunder-Spear Relief Force, and the Violet Thunder Strike Force let out a deafening victory roar and surged like a tidal wave through the breached gates into the sunken courtyard!

Riding at the head of the central command column, surrounded by her Peak Martial King guards, Half-Step Martial Emperor Commander Jin, and her brother General Cui Hao, was Noble Consort Cui Yulan in her dark violet profound-steel armor.

And walking calmly just ten paces behind Noble Consort Cui Yulan’s warhorse—dressed in his simple gray linen healer’s robes and carrying his wooden staff and medicine satchel as her personal combat physician—was Alaric Steele.

From the high stone steps of the outer gatehouse rampart fifty yards away, Corbin saw Noble Consort Cui Yulan’s dark violet banners and the thousands of soldiers packing shoulder-to-shoulder into the sunken courtyard around the glowing octagonal spire.

“Stop! Don’t hit the spire! The leylines under the floor are rigged to blow!” Corbin roared at the top of his lungs, waving his greatsword from the rampart steps.

His voice was drowned out completely by the roar of fifteen thousand cheering soldiers and the thunder of sixty war drums beating on the quarry rim above. Seeing that the central spire was already glowing bright white-red at its base, Corbin cursed savagely, grabbed Sergeant Zhao and the nearest scouts by their collars, and dragged them backward behind a thick, reinforced granite buttress built into the outer gatehouse arch.

Down in the center of the courtyard, Alaric Steele stopped walking and looked down at the black flagstones beneath his boots.

Through his Level 69 Peak Archmage perception, the subterranean nightmare beneath the Sunken Fortress was laid bare in terrifying detail.

Three hundred feet below the courtyard flagstones, seven hundred iron-seal wedges driven into the three mountain leylines and four subterranean magma chambers had built up a reservoir of compressed earth-and-fire pressure equivalent to ten Peak Martial Kings self-destructing their Dantians at the exact same instant!

Worse still, the trigger was wired directly to the outer runic shell of the sixty-foot octagonal spire—and fifty yards ahead of him, Noble Consort Cui Yulan had just leaped thirty feet into the air off her warhorse, her long thunder-lance blazing with the dazzling violet-gold lightning of her Peak Martial King cultivation as she plunged her spearhead straight into the center of the octagonal spire!

“Shatter!” Noble Consort Cui Yulan’s clear, commanding voice rang across the quarry.

CRACK-BOOOOOOOM!

Her thunder-lance pierced three feet deep into the dark magnetic iron of the octagonal spire!

Instead of the spire crumbling and powering down as Master Array Formulator Tian Yi had promised, the seven volcano runes carved inside the core of the spire flashed blinding blood-red!

A mile away at the mouth of the high eastern mountain tunnel, General Tokugawa Ieyasu watched Senior Array Grandmaster Seimei crush the crimson jade control disc in his hand.

“Farewell, soldiers of the Celestial Dragon Empire,” General Tokugawa murmured, turning his back as the iron blast-doors of the mountain tunnel rumbled shut behind his retreating army. “Tremor-Eruption Array—detonate.”

Deep beneath the floor of the Sunken Fortress, the seven hundred iron-seal wedges vaporized at once.

For one terrifying heartbeat, every sound in the quarry vanished.

Then the earth beneath the Sunken Fortress roared like a dying god.

BOOOOOOOOOOM!

The entire three-hundred-foot-wide flagstone floor of the inner courtyard split open in a jagged, seven-pointed star of blinding golden-red magma and hyper-compressed subterranean leyline energy!

A column of liquid fire, pulverized black iron-stone, and razor-sharp earth-qi shockwaves erupted vertically out of the fractured pit floor at the exact spot where Noble Consort Cui Yulan, General Cui Hao, Commander Jin, and the core command group stood!

At the same time, the tremendous subterranean explosion blew out the foundational rock pillars supporting the four surrounding three-hundred-foot quarry walls.

Ten million tons of granite cliffs, iron-stone ramparts, and siege towers groaned, cracked down the middle, and began avalanching inward from all four sides to bury the Sunken Fortress in a tomb of solid mountain rock!

Hanging in mid-air twenty feet from the rupturing octagonal spire, Noble Consort Cui Yulan felt the terrifying heat and crushing subterranean pressure of the “Tremor-Eruption Array” lock the air around her body.

Her silver eyes widened as a thirty-foot wall of molten leyline fire and shattered iron spire fragments blasted straight at her chest at point-blank range—an explosion of concentrated mountain-vein force that even her Peak Martial King armor could never survive without tearing her internal organs and meridians to pieces!

Yet in that split second of blinding fire and falling stone, Noble Consort Cui Yulan did not look toward the high rim where First Prince Huang Wei’s carriage was already wheeling around in cowardly panic.

Her silver eyes instinctively turned ten paces back toward the tall figure in simple gray linen robes standing amidst the rising smoke.

‘Alaric—!’

Through the deafening roar of the exploding earth, Alaric Steele did not hesitate.

If Noble Consort Cui Yulan died here in General Tokugawa’s scorched-earth trap, his third target on “The Emperor’s Ladder” and months of careful psychological conditioning would go up in smoke.

With thick clouds of black coal-dust, pulverized stone, and blinding golden-red magma smoke boiling over the courtyard and blocking all line of sight from the upper quarry rim, Alaric Steele took a single step forward.

Beneath his gray healer’s robes, his Level 69 Peak Archmage mana core and his Beast Emperor grade Violet-Gold Celestial Spirit-Lion Physique surged in silent, overwhelming harmony, masked from the outside world by his Absolute Concealment Protocol.

In less than the blink of an eye, Alaric Steele vanished from his spot through a short-range spatial step, appearing directly in the air behind Noble Consort Cui Yulan!

His strong left arm wrapped tightly around her narrow waist, pulling her armored back and her round buttocks flush against his chest, while his right hand swept his wooden staff in a sharp, commanding circle in front of them.

To the blinded, coughing soldiers and guards tumbling through the smoke around them, a dazzling flash of ancient, imperial golden dragon-runes—an optical illusion Alaric Steele wove over his spell to provide a convenient cover story—flared briefly through the dust.

Beneath that thin golden veil, Alaric Steele cast a true Peak Archmage defensive formation: the “Void-Cushion Spatial Aegis” combined with the “Subterranean Leyline-Harmonic Dampening Matrix”!

Instead of trying to brute-force block the entire volcanic eruption across the half-mile quarry—which would have exposed his power—Alaric Steele created an invisible, thirty-yard-wide double-layered spatial dome centered tightly around himself, Noble Consort Cui Yulan, General Cui Hao, Commander Jin, and her core Violet Thunder guards.

When the roaring wall of molten leyline energy and thousand-ton falling cliff boulders slammed into the outer skin of his “Void-Cushion Spatial Aegis”, the spatial fold bent the destructive earth-shockwaves ninety degrees downward and sideways, channeling eighty-five percent of the lethal volcanic force straight back down into an empty subterranean fault line beneath the collapsed barracks!

Even so, absorbing and deflecting the central core of a mountain-level leyline eruption at point-blank range sent a tremendous physical tremor vibrating through the spatial anchor.

Alaric Steele planted his boots on a rising slab of granite, his Beast Emperor grade Violet-Gold Celestial Spirit-Lion Physique absorbing the residual concussion like an unmovable pillar of divine gold while his left arm held Noble Consort Cui Yulan locked safe and untouched against his chest.

Held tight in his embrace in the very eye of the storm, Noble Consort Cui Yulan stared in stunned, breathless awe.

All around their thirty-yard golden-shimmering dome, the Sunken Fortress was disintegrating into apocalyptic ruin. Massive granite towers the size of hills were crashing down into the boiling crater, and geysers of red-hot earth-qi were tearing the sky apart. Yet inside the circle where Alaric Steele held her against his chest, not a single spark of magma burned her skin, and not a single falling boulder touched a hair on her head!

She could feel the steady, immovable heartbeat in Alaric Steele’s chest pressing against her back, and the familiar, faint trace of warm spirit-sandalwood clinging to his gray collar even in the middle of a volcanic collapse.

“Hold onto me, Yulan,” Alaric Steele’s deep, calm voice murmured right against her ear, completely unshaken by the collapsing mountain around them.

With a flick of his wrist, Alaric Steele angled the upper curve of his spatial barrier like an invisible plow, carving a sloping tunnel of clear, pressurized air straight up through the avalanching rubble toward the western stone ramp, while a gentle wave of upward wind-mana lifted General Cui Hao, Commander Jin, Noble Consort Cui Yulan, and four hundred of the nearest soldiers out of the burying rockslide and deposited them onto the solid upper terrace of the western ramp!

Five seconds later, the four three-hundred-foot walls of the Kurogane Mine pit finished crashing together at the bottom of the crater.

A mushroom cloud of black iron-dust and gray smoke billowed a thousand feet into the winter sky as the Sunken Fortress—along with its central octagonal spire and nearly four thousand soldiers of the Fierce Tiger Unit and mercenary companies who had been too slow to escape the lower courtyard—was buried forever beneath a smoking mountain of jagged granite rubble.

Half a mile away across the plain, the shimmering yellow dome of the “Eight-Trigram Iron-Fortress Barrier” covering Azure Fall City flickered three times, let out a sound like shattering glass, and vanished into thin air now that its central regulator node was buried under ten million tons of rock.

And five miles to the east, along the high, snow-covered fortress roads of the eastern mountain fastness, General Tokugawa Ieyasu’s surviving main army marched smoothly into their second line of mountain bastions without losing a single samurai in the explosion.

Back at the collapsed rim of the Sunken Fortress, black dust rained down like soot over the coughing, shell-shocked survivors crawling up the western ramp.

At the broken arch of the outer gatehouse rampart, Corbin shoved a two-ton slab of cracked granite off his back with a roar of Martial King strength, his black-iron greatsword groaning as he levered himself and Sergeant Zhao out of the rubble pocket that had kept them from being crushed flat.

Spitting gray rock dust from his mouth, Corbin looked down thirty yards toward the upper terrace where Noble Consort Cui Yulan, General Cui Hao, Commander Jin, and the gray-robed physician were standing unharmed amidst a circle of soldiers whose armor did not even have a dent on it.

More importantly, Corbin had been looking straight down into the courtyard through a crack in the gatehouse arch at the exact instant the “Tremor-Eruption Array” detonated!

He had seen the blinding golden flash at the epicenter—and through his system’s passive anomaly tracker, he had seen the unmistakable, geometric folding of space itself that had swallowed ninety percent of the volcanic blast!

In front of Corbin’s wide, bloodshot eyes, a rapid stream of red system notifications flashed across his vision.

[System Alert: High-Order Spatial Law Manipulation Recorded at Blast Epicenter!]

[Energy Signature Analysis: Non-Martial Spatial Fold DetectedBeneath Optical Golden Illusion.]

[Cross-Reference Match: Spatial Signature Matches the Unknown Entity from the Whispering Gorge Catacomb Void Anomaly (89.4% Correlation)!]

[Note: Residual Spatial Crystals and Runic Scorch-Marks Remain Active in Crater Rubble for 15 Minutes. Physical Inspection Will Reveal the Caster’s Exact Identity!]

Corbin’s heart slammed against his ribs like a war hammer, a fierce, savage grin splitting his soot-stained face beneath his iron helm.

“I found you…” Corbin hissed, his fingers clamping around the hilt of his black-iron greatsword until his joints popped. “The bastard who framed me in the catacombs… the mastermind behind the array inversions… he was standing right down there in that courtyard command group! If I grab a single piece of the spatial-warped stone from the blast center before the mana fades, the system can lock onto his face for free!”

Ignoring the bleeding cuts on his arms, Corbin vaulted over the broken rampart wall and sprinted down the smoking rubble slope toward the exact spot where the spatial dome had anchored against the granite terraces!

He was sixty paces away.

Fifty paces away.

Forty paces away—

“Halt! Clear the blast perimeter immediately by order of Imperial Consort Xian and the Quartermaster General!”

Before Corbin’s boots could touch the edge of the blast circle, twelve Peak Martial King guards wearing the crimson-and-gold cloaks of Imperial Consort Xian Zhao Mengxue’s personal retinue dropped down from the upper ridge like iron hawks, locking a solid wall of golden halberds across the rubble slope!

Right behind the Peak Martial King guards marched Guildmaster Lin Ruoli of the Jade Serpent Merchant Organization and Chief Auctioneer Ya Su of the Gilded Lotus Auction House, accompanied by forty black-cloaked Jade Serpent array-cleaners carrying heavy iron canisters of alchemical slag-powder and runic scrubbing brooms.

“Step back, soldier!” one of the Peak Martial King guards barked at Corbin, leveling the tip of his golden halberd three inches from Corbin’s throat. The suffocating pressure of a Peak Martial King’s Battle Aura pressed down on Corbin’s shoulders, warning him that taking one more step forward would mean instant death. “This sector is contaminated by unstable leyline fire! All scouting units return to the upper ridge at once!”

“I am Lieutenant Mo Chen of the Iron-Wolf Scouting Unit!” Corbin ground out, craning his neck desperately to look past the guards’ shoulders at the smoking crater floor twenty yards behind them. “I saw strange array fragments down in that crater! Let me retrieve a sample for the array masters—”

“There are no enemy array fragments down here, Lieutenant,” Chief Auctioneer Ya Su said smoothly, stepping up behind the guard line with a polite, cold smile on her beautiful face while her golden eyes looked at him as if he were a stray bug.

Behind Chief Auctioneer Ya Su, Guildmaster Lin Ruoli raised a slender hand and gave a crisp snap of her fingers.

Instantly, the forty Jade Serpent operatives uncorked their heavy iron canisters and dumped five hundred pounds of grey “Spirit-Eating Alchemical Lime” and crushed magnetic iron-slag directly over every square inch of the thirty-yard circle where Alaric Steele’s spatial dome had touched the stone!

Hiss—crackle!

The alchemical lime reacted violently with the lingering spatial mana and runic marks on the rocks, dissolving the geometric signatures into harmless white steam and ordinary mud in less than five seconds!

In front of Corbin’s eyes, his system notification box flickered and died.

[System Notification: Residual Spatial Energy Signature Erased by High-Density Alchemical Neutralizer. Trace Lost.]

Corbin’s fingernails dug so hard into the leather grip of his greatsword that blood welled beneath his gauntlets.

And before he could even open his mouth to question why merchant operatives were dumping alchemical neutralizer on a battlefield crater, Quartermaster General Luo Feng rode down the upper ramp waving a gilded imperial scroll and shouting at the top of his lungs to the cheering soldiers lining the ridge:

“Hear ye, soldiers of the Celestial Dragon Empire! Rejoice in the grace of the Dragon Throne! When General Tokugawa’s cowardly self-destruct trap erupted inside the Sunken Fortress, Imperial Consort Xian Zhao Mengxue and First Prince Huang Wei remotely activated a supreme treasure bestowed by His Imperial Majesty Emperor Huang Long himself—the Ancient Imperial Dragon-Scale Protective Talisman! By the divine shield of the Imperial Family’s talisman, Noble Consort Cui Yulan, General Cui Hao, and our brave commanders were protected from the flames while the Sunken Fortress and the barrier of Azure Fall City were smashed to dust!”

All along the western quarry rim, fifty thousand surviving soldiers—who had seen the brief golden flash in the smoke before the dust settled—erupted into thunderous, credulous cheers:

“Long live His Imperial Majesty! Long live First Prince Huang Wei! Long live Imperial Consort Xian!”

Up on his gilded carriage platform, First Prince Huang Wei—who had crawled out from under his tea table thirty seconds after the rocks stopped falling—adjusted his white tiger-pelt cloak, puffed out his chest, and waved modestly to the cheering troops as if he had personally thrown the protective talisman himself.

Down at the guard cordon, Chief Auctioneer Ya Su tilted her head at Corbin, her smile widening slightly. “Did you hear that, Lieutenant Mo? What you saw was the Ancient Imperial Dragon-Scale Protective Talisman bestowed by Imperial Consort Xian. Now run along to the rear trenches before the guards mistake your curiosity for looting.”

Corbin stood frozen in the soot and snow as the Peak Martial King guards prodded him backward up the slope with the shafts of their halberds.

He looked at Guildmaster Lin Ruoli supervising the scrubbing of the stones, looked at Imperial Consort Xian Zhao Mengxue standing serenely on the upper ridge, and looked at the smoking, scrubbed-clean rubble where the only physical proof of his enemy had just been turned into white steam.

“An Ancient Imperial Protective Talisman, my ass!” Corbin raged silently inside his skull as he trudged back into the mud with empty hands and zero points. “Imperial Consort Xian, Lin Ruoli, Ya Su… they are all working for the same ghost! The entire upper command of this army is rotten to the core!”

That night, while First Prince Huang Wei threw a grand victory banquet to celebrate the destruction of the Sunken Fortress and the collapse of Azure Fall City’s outer barrier—conveniently ignoring the four thousand men buried in the rubble and the fact that General Tokugawa Ieyasu’s main force had slipped cleanly into the eastern mountain fastness—the interior of Alaric Steele’s silk pavilion was quiet, warm, and fragrant with burning spirit-sandalwood.

Inside the consultation chamber, sealed tight behind the “Sound-Severed Void Ward”, Noble Consort Cui Yulan stood before the bronze brazier.

She had already washed the gray quarry dust from her skin and hair, wearing only a thin, unlined robe of dark crimson silk tied loosely at her waist.

Unlike the fifty thousand soldiers outside who believed Quartermaster General Luo Feng’s tale of an “Ancient Imperial Dragon-Scale Protective Talisman”, Noble Consort Cui Yulan had been standing inside Alaric Steele’s arms at the exact center of that volcanic blast.

She knew that Imperial Consort Xian Zhao Mengxue had not thrown any talisman. She had felt the invisible, world-bending power that erupted from Alaric Steele’s wooden staff, and she had felt his unshakeable chest holding her safe against ten million tons of falling mountain rock.

When Alaric Steele stepped through the velvet curtain from the inner room wearing a loose black silk robe, Noble Consort Cui Yulan did not wait for him to speak.

She walked straight up to him, rose onto her tiptoes, wrapped her arms around his neck, and pressed her soft, full lips directly against his mouth in a deep, trembling, worshipful kiss.

Alaric Steele smiled against her lips, wrapping both of his large hands around her bare, round buttocks beneath the hem of her crimson silk robe and lifting her voluptuous body straight off the carpet to carry her over to the fur-draped couch beside the brazier.

Sitting down on the furs with her straddling his lap face-to-face, Alaric Steele pulled the loose knot of her crimson silk sash undone with one tug, stripping the robe off her shoulders so that her magnificent, massive breasts and her smooth, ivory torso were completely bare against his chest.

“An Ancient Imperial Protective Talisman from Imperial Consort Xian, hm?” Cui Yulan whispered breathlessly against his lips, her silver eyes glowing with deep affection and intoxicating submission as he cupped both of her massive breasts in his hands and squeezed them roughly. “You tore open the laws of space itself in the middle of a collapsing mountain just to hold me in your arms… and then let First Prince Huang Wei and his mother take the credit so no one would look at you.”

“Do you care who takes the credit outside this tent, Yulan?” Alaric Steele murmured, lowering his head to suck hard on the stiff pink nipple of her left breast while his right hand slid down over her soft navel and under her hips to deliver a firm, ringing spank to her bare, round buttocks.

“Ah—! No…” Cui Yulan moaned aloud, her head falling back and her fingers tangling in his dark hair as the rough suction of his mouth on her sensitive nipple and the sting of his hand on her bare ass made her whole body shudder with heat. “I don’t care about the credit… and I don’t care what secrets you are hiding anymore, you domineering bastard… Just keep holding me like this…”

With the barrier of Azure Fall City finally shattered outside and her heart bound ever deeper to the man kneading her massive breasts and caressing her round buttocks by the firelight, Noble Consort Cui Yulan pressed her naked chest against Alaric Steele’s mouth, counting down the days until the end of the war when she would surrender the very last inch of herself to his bed.