I risked my life, using the butterfly effect to shatter the immortal realm.

The next day, death row.

Ling Qingxuan stepped into this filthy place once again.

Yu Liang was squatting on the ground, fiddling with the leftover rice grains to create a strange pattern.

"What are you doing?"

Yu Liang suddenly looked up, his face instantly filled with that nauseating obsequiousness.

"Your Excellency, I am having my fortune told. I want to know if I can be reborn into a good family in my next life, so I can experience what it's like to be a servant."

Ling Qingxuan let out a cold snort.

"Fool."

She turned and left.

After she left, the smile on Yu Liang's face vanished, leaving only a deathly silence.

A violent wave of dizziness washed over me, and the world before my eyes instantly lost all color, turning into a gray silhouette.

Only countless threads of cause and effect, some bright and some dark, intertwine and flow in the void like a galaxy.

He stared at the few dim threads wrapped around the structure of the imperial prison, representing its weak points, and forced himself to deduce their trajectory.

A drop of warm blood slowly flowed from his nose.

He wiped away the bloodstains, his gaze returning to the "destiny plate" made of rice grains on the ground, a wolf-like glint flashing in his eyes.

Qingzhou.

Su Xiu sat at home all night in silence.

The tears had all dried up, leaving only an empty void like ashes in his eyes.

She refused to accept her fate.

But the village where she was born and raised no longer has a place for her to stay.

As dawn broke, she packed her bags and left the place that had brought her endless sorrow.

she does not know.

On her desperate, hasty escape route through the night, in a quiet mountain forest, an elite scout under the command of the King of Qingzhou is secretly meeting with an inside agent from the capital.

A country girl, filled with nothing but despair and confusion, barged in.

"who!"

The scouts lurking in the forest were terrified at the sound, thinking their presence had been discovered; their hearts nearly leaped out of their throats!

Without a second thought, he hurriedly handed a forged military map, which he had prepared beforehand and pointed to the east gate of the capital, to his inside man. He then fled in the exact opposite direction, trying to lure away the non-existent "pursuers."

In the chaos, the sheepskin map in his arms, which actually marked the route to raid the imperial prison, was caught on a sharp twig.

It fell silently into the dark grass.

The scouts fled in haste, completely unaware of what was happening.

After a while.

A dark figure appeared silently at the edge of the bushes.

"Old Wolf," a top secret agent of the Suspended Mirror Bureau.

He has been lying in wait here for three days.

He picked up the scroll, unfolded it, and saw that the pupils of the old man who had roamed the martial arts world for decades suddenly contracted!

A shockingly detailed battle plan outlining the surprise attack on the imperial prison and the direct assault on the palace!

This unexpected windfall was swiftly delivered to the commander-in-chief of Daye.

When Ling Qingxuan returned to the Suspended Mirror Bureau's headquarters, the inexplicable irritability, like a persistent boil, grew even stronger.

wrong.

That's not right at all.

Yu Liang was too calm. A true madman would never have that cold look hidden beneath his madness.

An irresistible urge compelled her to review all of Yu Liang's files for the third time.

Yu Liang was from Qingzhou. His parents were unknown. He had been living in the streets since childhood, making a living by telling fortunes and divination.

Smooth-talking, with a long history of bad behavior.

A complete fraud.

Ling Qingxuan's fair fingertips traced the words "fortune-telling fraud" over and over again with force.

The third day, at noon.

Yu Liang changed into brand-new prison clothes, his collar neatly adjusted. He didn't look like he was going to his death, but rather to a banquet.

Ling Qingxuan stood outside the prison gate for the last time.

"Sir, do you believe in fate?"

Yu Liang asked with a smile, his eyes as calm as a stagnant pool.

Ling Qingxuan frowned. She tried to find fear, collapse, or even a trace of regret in the eyes of this liar.

But she saw nothing. The madness hidden beneath that calm made her inexplicably uneasy.

"Playing tricks."

……

The capital city, Caishikou.

The restaurants surrounding the execution ground were already packed.

For the powerful and wealthy in the capital, the greatest amusement today is watching how that madman who "wanted to eat wontons to feed mice" loses his head.

"Did you hear? That idiot begged the executioner to delay his attack by a quarter of an hour, saying he wanted to bask in the sun a little longer!"

"Hahaha! What a coward! I bet a hundred taels, he'll wet his pants before the knife even falls!"

In the private rooms on the second floor, young men in fine clothes laughed heartily, the air thick with an atmosphere of merriment and arrogance.

"It's high noon—"

Yu Liang was escorted to the high platform.

The sunlight was blinding, and the blades were chilling.

Ling Qingxuan stood on the execution platform, performing his routine: "Prisoner Yu Liang, do you have any last words?"

Yu Liang raised his head, his gaze sweeping over the mocking and sarcastic faces below the stage, finally settling on Ling Qingxuan's aloof face.

He smiled.

There was no fear in that smile, only the pity and mockery of a hunter watching his prey fall into the net.

"I've finished speaking."

"Now, it's time for the world to speak."

The executioner took a sip of strong liquor and raised his broadsword high!

The moment the cold light shone on Yu Liang's neck—

"Wait a minute!"

Ling Qingxuan's voice was as cold as ice.

She called a halt.

It was not out of kindness, but rather stemmed from the Suspended Mirror Bureau Inspector's morbid obsession with "order".

This mortal is too calm!

This calm is an insult to the law!

She wanted to witness this ant break down and cry at the last moment, in order to uphold the absolute authority of the Suspended Mirror Division.

The executioner's blade froze in mid-air.

The entire room fell silent.

Yu Liang's smile deepened.

His last wish was to be executed a quarter of an hour later.

It was achieved.

Not too much, not too little, just right.

At that very moment, a few miles away, at the Capital Military Commander's Mansion.

The commander-in-chief of Daye looked at the two completely contradictory intelligence reports on his desk and let out a confident laugh.

"One letter was delivered by 'Lone Wolf,' who's been lying in wait for ten years, saying he'd attack the East Gate; the other was picked up by the roadside, saying he'd attack the Imperial Prison? Does the King of Qingzhou think I'm a fool?"

The head coach tapped his finger heavily on the "East Gate" position on the sand table.

"Send the order! The main force of the city defenses must rush to reinforce the East Gate at full speed! I want to wipe out all the rebels in Qingzhou!"

Military orders are absolute.

The most elite troops of Daye, who were originally stationed on the south side to guard the imperial prison and Caishikou, were transferred to the distant east in a grand procession at this moment.

This 15-minute time difference became a fatal window of opportunity.

……

boom!

The ground at Caishikou suddenly shook!

Just as Ling Qingxuan uttered "Wait a minute," a muffled thud came from the direction of the imperial prison, less than a hundred feet from the execution ground.

It was a silted-up waterway connecting to the moat, the only blind spot in the imperial prison's defense system.

In the past few days, a blind rat that Yu Liang had fed with steamed buns has instinctively crawled into the deepest part of the building and frantically gnawing on the already rotten support beam.

That beam, detonated by a small amount of gunpowder planted by the Qingzhou assassins, became the final straw that broke the camel's back.

A chain reaction erupted, and the entire copper and iron wall was completely torn apart from the inside!

Immediately afterwards—

"kill!!"

This was not just the sound of an explosion, but the roar of a massive army!

Countless Qingzhou assassins clad in black armor surged through the massive breach, pouring into the imperial prison like a flood bursting its banks!

"Prison break! Someone's breaking into prison!!"

"Where is the main force? Where did the main force of the city defense army go?!"

The screams and sounds of fighting instantly drowned out the music playing in the restaurant.

At that moment, Ling Qingxuan felt as if the blood in his body had frozen.

A bowl of wontons with too much pepper caused the prime minister to choke to death.

A captain who flipped a copper coin caused the imperial physician's carriage to overturn, making it impossible for him to save the patient.

A rat that was deliberately fed to gnaw through a broken beam.

And that absurd dying wish—to live just a quarter of an hour longer, just in time for the main force to be transferred away.

All the fragments she had once scoffed at now exploded in her mind, connecting to form a noose that strangled the entire defense line of Daye!

And she herself!

Her "Wait a minute" in order to uphold so-called dignity became the most precise starting gun for this earth-shattering coup!

Ling Qingxuan turned around abruptly, his gaze piercing through the chaotic crowd and fixed firmly on the execution platform.

Yu Liang remained kneeling there, his body trembling slightly from weakness, but as he looked at her, his lips moved silently.

"Sir, was the play enjoyable?"

Snapped!

This slap, though silent, was louder than any tangible blow.

Inside the restaurant, those powerful and wealthy people who were laughing at Yu Liang for wetting his pants just a moment ago were now ashen-faced, their wine glasses shattering in their hands.

Outside the window was purgatory; inside, it was deathly terror.