Chapter 136
Chapter 136: Rip Out Your Heart—Let’s See What You’ll Use to Seduce Me
The youth trembled, pain twisting his perfect features. His red lips went pale. “Impossible… you clearly inhaled my phosphor dust. You were clearly hypnotized.”
Jiang Tea Tea’s lips curled. “You keep saying ‘clearly.’ I’m not a girl named Clearly. Don’t drag me into your fantasies.”
Overlord Wang Die’s wings jerked, shedding glittering dust in panicked spurts. He stared at her like she was a nightmare made real.
He still wouldn’t give up.
Those shimmering eyes locked onto hers, trying to force hypnosis through sheer will. “Jiang Tea Tea. I’m beautiful. I’m perfect. You really don’t like me? You really don’t love me? You really won’t be captivated?”
Jiang Tea Tea clicked her tongue.
Her grip tightened around his heart.
His face twisted. For a moment, insect patterns crawled up his skin like he was about to lose his human form.
He couldn’t hypnotize her.
He really couldn’t.
Why?
His phosphor dust plus his hypnosis—no living creature had ever escaped it. So why could she?
Jiang Tea Tea looked him over with open disdain. “Little butterfly. I won’t deny your insect form is beautiful. Radiant. Strong enough to catch my eye.”
“But your human form is ugly.”
“Ugly enough to make my eyes hurt. Ugly enough to make me want to rip your heart out, crush it, and use your blood to wash my eyes clean.”
She was a tree demon. Her sense of beauty didn’t bow to human standards.
To her, the more radiant, the stronger, the more towering and magnificent—those were the things that deserved to be called beautiful.
A sickly little sapling that couldn’t even reach wrist-thickness?
Ugly.
A great tree—thick-trunked, upright, soaring into the sky?
Beautiful.
Overlord Wang Die’s true butterfly form was gorgeous to her.
But turning into a human to seduce her, to hypnotize her?
That was like stripping naked just to break wind—completely pointless.
The youth shook, still refusing to accept reality. “If you don’t like this form… I can change into what you like.”
“What do you like? Someone as strong and arrogant as the Da Xi Nation Chief Executive? Or a merfolk clan beauty—deep blue eyes, seaweed hair, a pretty tail?”
“Or do you like the Zhen Lin Empire’s national idol, Commander-in-Chief Chong Ming—golden and radiant?”
“Tell me. Tell me what you like, and I’ll become it. Perfectly. Exactly—”
“Too loud,” Jiang Tea Tea cut in.
The youth gasped.
His mouth opened in a soundless cry as powder shook from his wings like leaves in a gale.
Jiang Tea Tea withdrew her branch-hand slowly from his chest.
And with it came a heart—bloody, slick, still beating hard in her grip.
The youth clapped a hand over the hole in his chest. Blood flooded between his fingers in bright streams.
Jiang Tea Tea held the heart out, smiling as if the gore were a gift. “Little butterfly, I think I like your heart more than I like your human form.”
The youth stared at her, shaking with pain and horror. “Who are you? You’re too cruel to be a pure human.”
Jiang Tea Tea laughed. “Little butterfly, you’re a bug. You’re not human. Don’t use human thinking to judge whether humans are cruel.”
“Tonight, you used your phosphor dust to drive the entire primeval forest into hallucinations. You tried to control those aberrant beasts and send them to attack the Royal Military Academy.”
“I tore out your heart. You’re not wronged.”
Without his heart, Overlord Wang Die’s human form collapsed.
In a spill of glittering light and blood, he reverted into a massive, radiant butterfly—wings still dazzling even as his body went slack.
He fell into the forest below.
Jiang Tea Tea’s magic power wrapped around the heart in her hand, keeping it alive, keeping it beating.
Sui Xuan Chu arrived in a rush, eyes wide.
Jiang Tea Tea swung her branch-staff and called, “Roommate. Here’s a first-class merit for you.”
The enormous, blood-soaked butterfly body went flying at him.
Sui Xuan Chu yelped, grabbed a wing, and staggered under the weight. “Roommate! That’s your first-class merit, not mine!”
The thing was heavy—dozens of pounds at least—and a confidant of the Insect Royal Family. The color alone screamed value.
First-class merit, no question.
A Crown Prince needed achievements too—records strong enough to shut mouths when he became Emperor.
Jiang Tea Tea waved him off. “What’s yours is mine. What’s mine is mine.”
Sui Xuan Chu blinked, then nodded quickly, like a man choosing survival. “Right. Right. We don’t separate yours and mine.”
He lifted his head. “Come on. Let’s go back and watch the Police Bureau, the Special Operations Bureau, and my uncle’s bodyguard team handle the aberrant beasts.”
“They came too late,” Jiang Tea Tea said flatly. “I’ll give them something to do.”
Sui Xuan Chu stared at the beating heart in her hand and swallowed. “Roommate… what are you planning?”
She jumped down from the treetops and tossed him a single word over her shoulder. “Watch.”
They returned to the rear gate.
Jiang Tea Tea climbed onto the wall and surveyed the chaos.
Below, the ice wall still blocked the breach, and aberrant beasts battered it like a tide trying to break a dam. Above, Police Bureau ships, Special Operations Bureau units, and the bodyguard team swarmed the airspace.
Jiang Tea Tea lifted her branch-staff and stabbed it into the wall.
The ice wall collapsed.
Instantly, the forces below went pale. People leapt from ships and flyers, boots slamming down as they formed a line and raised weapons.
Gunfire erupted.
Aberrant beasts poured through. Bullets weren’t enough—abilities flared one after another as they held the breach with bodies and power, refusing to let the beasts surge deeper onto campus.
Sui Xuan Chu landed beside Jiang Tea Tea, still hauling the butterfly body, and gave her a thumbs-up—half admiration, half despair. “Roommate, you’re insane. Your first-class merit is gone.”
Jiang Tea Tea shrugged. “Gone is gone. I don’t care.”
Sui Xuan Chu looked like he might cry. “You don’t care, but I do! We had merit for attacking the Insect Clan, merit for capturing them, merit for blocking the aberrant beasts from invading the Royal Military Academy.”
“And now you—” He flung a hand at the shattered wall. “You tore down your own ice wall and let beasts pour in. Congratulations. First-class merit gone. Second-class gone. Third-class—maybe gone too.”
Jiang Tea Tea pointed at the people fighting below. “If they can’t hold it, that’s their incompetence. What does it have to do with me?”
“And if your uncle is slow, if the Police Bureau is slow, if the Special Operations Bureau is slow—that’s the academy’s failure. What does it have to do with me, a minor pure human?”
Sui Xuan Chu stared at her, stunned.
Then, horrifyingly, he nodded. “That… actually makes sense.”
Jiang Tea Tea snapped her staff back into her hand. “From the moment we realized the Insect Clan poisoned the academy until now, it’s been nearly thirty-five minutes.”
“If we hadn’t held the line—if Huang Da Zhuang and the others hadn’t gotten tranquilizer guns to us in time—the academy would already be a river of blood.”
Sui Xuan Chu nodded even harder. “Roommate, your logic is outrageous. Teach me.”
Jiang Tea Tea waved him off. “No need. We leave this to the Police Bureau, the Special Operations Bureau, and the bodyguard team. We go find Huang Da Zhuang and the others.”
At the Military Department, Chong Ming sat in a brightly lit office, staring at the giant screen where Jiang Tea Tea stood on the wall like she owned the world.
Adjutant Ai, Secretary Wen, Secretary Yao, and a line of staff stood in front of his desk, barely daring to breathe.
Chong Ming finally pulled his gaze from the screen and looked at Adjutant Ai. “Eldest Prince Agris hasn’t gone to sleep yet, has he?”
Adjutant Ai answered immediately. “Commander-in-Chief, Eldest Prince Agris usually doesn’t sleep until after midnight. At this hour, he’s still awake. Staring into space.”
Chong Ming tapped the desk once, soft and precise. “Have a few people disguise themselves as subordinates of Crown Princess Asais. Beat him.”
“Then find an excuse to visit Crown Princess Asais. Show her a blurry update of Eldest Prince Agris’s condition. Make the quality poor enough to be believable. Make it look real.”
“After the beating, keep the footage and send it to Eldest Prince Agris’s fiancée, General Atuya.”
“And bring Minister Cai in. Cut Crown Princess Asais off from Insect Clan communications. Make sure that after Atuya receives the video, she can’t contact Asais for one to three hours.”
“Yes, Commander-in-Chief!” Adjutant Ai left at once.
Chong Ming’s golden gaze shifted to Secretary Wen. “Secretary Wen. Cheng Lin Yue’s uncle, Cheng Yuan—has he been brought in?”
Secretary Wen swallowed. “Commander-in-Chief, he arrived this afternoon. After he arrived, he went straight to the Ministry of Justice gates.”
“He waited at the Ministry of Justice gates for nearly eight hours. He’s currently resting at the unit hotel near the Ministry of Justice.”
Chong Ming’s fingers paused for a beat. “Bring him to the Imperial Palace.”
Secretary Wen’s heart sank, but his voice stayed steady. “Yes, Commander-in-Chief.”
Chong Ming turned to Secretary Yao. “Secretary Yao. Mark the Insect Clan spy infiltration of the Royal Military Academy as a major public dereliction event. Form an emergency investigation team.”
“After we clear the aberrant beasts and handle the infiltrators, we investigate everything—from the Police Bureau director to the Special Operations Bureau director to the Royal Military Academy itself. From top to bottom. Every level.”