Chapter 437: Chaos

The aesthetic spray of arterial blood across a marble floor, and the unadulterated horror of a battlefield.

Sitting in a plush chair watching a bunch of oiled, perfumed twigs flail their limbs around like dying chickens to the sound of a lute was his personal definition of psychological torture.

He took a slow sip from a crystal goblet of wine, his amber eyes completely dead.

’I should have stayed in the Celestial Sword Sect,’ Yan Xuanye mused, a sudden, entirely out-of-character wave of fond nostalgia washing over his dark heart.

For three years, the Blood Sovereign had engaged in a highly entertaining, deeply bizarre undercover hobby.

Bored of his throne, he had suppressed his monstrous cultivation, disguised his purple hair, and infiltrated the orthodox Celestial Sword Sect under the alias "Yan Lie", a common, wild, unremarkable outer-sect disciple with a supposedly trash-tier spirit root.

He hadn’t done it to steal sect secrets.

He had done it because it was fun.

But the true highlight of his infiltration had not been tricking the elders. It had been the Drunken Peak’s kitchen.

More specifically, it had been the Drunken Peak’s terrifying, spatula-wielding, and utterly unhinged Head Chef.

Yan Xuanye’s lips curled into a faint, highly masochistic smile behind his mask. He remembered sneaking into the kitchen at three in the morning to steal freshly steamed pork buns, only to be instantly ambushed by Lin Ji’an.

He remembered the exhilarating thrill of having a heavy cast-iron ladle hurled at his head with the speed of a comet.

He remembered the Chef screaming at him, beating him out the door with a rolling pin, completely fearless and unbothered by the fact that he was technically assaulting a disciple.

He was the only person in the entire world who treated him like an absolute nuisance rather than a god of death.

He had let Ji’an bash him.

He had intentionally stolen more food just to provoke him. Ji’an’s fury was the most entertaining thing he had experienced in centuries, and his cooking was a revelation that ruined normal food for him forever.

He had eventually grown bored of the sect and vanished without a trace, returning to his throne.

But as he sat in the brothel, sipping subpar wine, the Blood Sovereign realized with a heavy sigh that he genuinely missed getting hit in the face with cookware.

’Perhaps I shall orchestrate a raid on the Drunken Peak just to steal his pantry,’ Yan Xuanye plotted lazily, swirling his goblet.

Down on the ground floor of the atrium, hidden amidst the chaotic throng of serving boys and waitstaff, the greatest rescue mission in orthodox history was currently experiencing a catastrophic malfunction.

The Vanguard Retinue had not frozen the brothel to the bedrock.

When Xie Wangchen had shattered their cell, Lu Jianheng and Wen Shiru had frantically, desperately pleaded with the Ice Demon to reconsider an area-of-effect glacial strike. "If you freeze the stage, Sovereign Xie, you might accidentally freeze the Vanguard Leader’s toes!" they had argued. "We must use stealth! We must infiltrate the audience and extract him without causing structural damage that could drop the ceiling on his beautiful silver head!"

Logic, specifically, the logic of keeping Ji’an unharmed, had prevailed.

They had ambushed a troupe of male servants in the lower corridors, stripped them, and stolen their uniforms.

This, however, was a mistake, because the servant uniforms of the Crimson Lotus Pavilion were designed exclusively for visual titillation.

Gu Zhiwei, the Golden Retriever of the Holy Sect, was currently trying to balance a tray of wine glasses while wearing a transparent silk vest that exposed his abs and a pair of flowing pants that rode dangerously low on his hips.

He was flushed a brilliant, humiliated crimson, trying to use the serving tray to cover his orthodox modesty.

"My purity is on public display," Zhiwei wept softly, shuffling through the crowd. "If the Holy Elders see me like this, I will be excommunicated. I feel a breeze. Why is there a breeze?!"

Lu Jianheng, the aristocratic Sword Lord, looked like he was about to expire from pure shame.

His servant outfit consisted of a black silk harness that crisscrossed over his chest and pants that were slit all the way up the sides of his thighs.

He was limping slightly on his fractured shin, his face twisted in a mask of agony.

"Maintain your cover, Zhiwei," Jianheng hissed through gritted teeth, aggressively polishing a wine glass with a cloth. "We are invisible. We are shadows. We are here to rescue the Chef from defilement. Do not look at anyone in the eye."

"I am calculating the retail value of this humiliation," Wen Shiru muttered, wearing a deeply scandalous, off-the-shoulder mesh tunic, aggressively clicking his gold abacus behind his serving tray. "I expect a massive hazard-pay bonus for this."

But the most visually arresting, terrifying sight in the entire atrium was Xie Wangchen.

The Ice Demon was forced to wear a silver-threaded belly-dancer top and flowing white silk pants.

But because his immortal core was in a state of meltdown, the fabric was currently covered in a thick layer of black frost.

The grapes on his serving tray had been flash-frozen. His ruby eyes were bleeding crimson light into the air as he glared at the main stage, looking less like a servant and more like an exotic, high-fashion harbinger of the apocalypse.

"Look!" Shen Zechuan whispered happily, wearing a matching outfit but looking completely unbothered, happily eating a grape from Wangchen’s frozen tray. "The lights are dimming! It is time for the recital!"

The heavy, booming sound of the massive taiko drums echoed through the cavernous atrium.

The thousands of patrons fell silent, turning their eager, lustful eyes toward the polished obsidian stage.

The velvet curtains parted.

Stepping into the spotlight was Su Liuyun, the Top Courtesan.

He wore his heavy, fuchsia-amethyst robes, his chest bare, the gold chains catching the stage lights.

He moved with that foxy grace, his amber eyes scanning the crowd with a knowing, seductive smirk.