Chapter 11622 — Quit Your Damned Pretending with Me
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 3
Han Jiechen was indeed a thoroughgoing fool—with a single sentence, he had pronounced his own death sentence.
Yet Han Jiechen showed not the slightest sign of coming to his senses; on the contrary, he grew more brazen by the moment.
"Quit your damned pretending with me!"
Han Jiechen kicked the Chief Steward of Han to the ground and jabbed a finger at his nose, cursing: "I see it now—you've been selling us out from the very start. You and Wei Zhao, thick as thieves, scheming all along to hand the Han Princely House over to him, isn't that right?"
The Chief Steward was utterly bewildered. "No, I—"
Han Jiechen would not hear a word of explanation. He turned to Wei Zhao and sneered: "You racked your brains and stirred up all that trouble, all of it just to take my seat as King of Han. Heh. What a hardship it must have been for you, putting on such an act, playing out so many scenes. If I were you, I'd have struck long ago."
Wei Zhao shook his head and laughed, offering no argument.
Wei Baizhan and the others made to seize him, but a look from Wei Zhao held them back.
By now Han Jiechen was a mad dog through and through. The first to refuse him was Han Niansan—there was no need to stick their noses in.
Sure enough, as Han Jiechen prattled on, jabbing a finger at the old man's nose once more and cursing ever more foully, Han Niansan's patience finally ran out.
Bang.
His pressure erupted. Han Jiechen crashed to his knees, both kneecaps shattering on the spot, the marble floor splitting into a web of horrifying cracks.
Han Niansan looked down at him coldly: "I took you for merely unworthy. Now I see you've grown a traitor's bone at the back of your skull. That your father failed to choke you to death in the privy all those years ago was his greatest dereliction."
As he spoke, he pressed a hand upon the crown of Han Jiechen's head.
"On behalf of the ancestral spirits of the Han Princely House, I hereby strike you from the clan registry and sentence you to death."
Feeling the threat of death bearing down from above, Han Jiechen finally sobered, terror flooding his face.
But in the next instant, he turned crazed again.
"What right have you to speak for the ancestral spirits? I am the King of Han of this generation—what right have you to strike me from the registry?"
Han Jiechen bit down hard on his tongue and spat out a mouthful of blood, shouting thickly: "Han Niansan, in the name of the King of Han of this generation, I lodge a complaint against you before our ancestors!"
As that mouthful of blood sprayed forth, a trace of blood-reek settled over the entire ancestral shrine.
The portraits of the ancestors hovering all around seemed to come alive, one after another, each radiating an ancient aura identical to Han Niansan's own.
"Blood sacrifice to summon the ancestors! What infernal gall!"
Watching this, Han Niansan trembled with rage, and regret crept into his heart.
Had he not hesitated just now, had his heart not softened for that one instant, had he simply put Han Jiechen to death, none of this would have come to pass.
But now, it was too late for anything.
Han Changshi and the others were likewise seized with dread.
No one had foreseen that matters would come to such a pass.
Han Jiechen himself might be a thoroughgoing fool, but he occupied the seat of the reigning King of Han, and the blood rite he had just performed to summon the ancestors truly could stir every forebear of the Han Princely House.
The trouble was that the ancestors were the wellspring of the Han Princely House's fundamental vitality.
Every summoning was bound to consume a vast measure of that vitality.
In other words, whatever the outcome, the House as a whole was certain to run a deficit of ancestral vitality this time around.
"You wretch! You wretch! How did the Han Princely House ever produce a cur like you!"
Han Niansan ground his teeth, longing to slap Han Jiechen's skull to a pulp with one blow—but alas, he could not.