The Invincible Bodyguard Starting by Escorting the Doomsday Imperial Princess Chapter 65 : Chapter 65

Chapter 65: The National Preceptor... Who Had Assisted Two Generations of Emperors

At that question, confusion flickered in Luo Li’s eyes.

“I don’t know either.”

“According to the original plan, in order to avoid drawing attention and exposing my identity, my grandfather and my aunt were supposed to escort together to Great Zhou, where I would et up with my uncle and the others.”

“But... but Grandfather suddenly passed away, and Aunt said she had urgent matters she could not leave behind. In the end... I could only travel there alone...”

Chen Guan’s face darkened on the spot.

If they had not all lost their minds, then they had deliberately found an excuse to withdraw and shove this ticking disaster into his hands, making him the one who would go down in history as the sinner.

Luo Li keenly noticed the change in his expression and imdiately said,

“Brother Chen, if you want to withdraw now, I can pay you the full escort fee. You only need... only need to escort as far as Yulin City at the end of the Luofeng Mountains.”

Chen Guan was so angry that he laughed.

“That dead old man of yours already dragged headfirst into this cesspit by force, and the money hasn’t even been settled yet. And now you want to chase off?!”

Startled by that sudden roar, Luo Li shrank her neck slightly. “Brother Chen, I can give you all the silver I have on .”

With a black face, Chen Guan looked her up and down again and again, growing more irritated the longer he looked.

Did he want silver?

He had originally thought this was a succession struggle. At the very least, he could have squeezed out a thousand system experience from it. But now...

Damn it!

How had he failed to see that this troubleso girl was a remnant of the forr dynasty?

He had always possessed absolute confidence in his own eye for people!

Wait!

He suddenly thought of that dead old man—Su Jingyan!

And with that ca the mory of certain parts of their past.

Su Jingyan had appeared in Sanhua Town in the very year Chen Guan first set foot on the path of an Escort Master.

There was an unwritten rule in the escort trade: the first three escorts counted as a test for newcors. Only after passing them smoothly could one officially register at the county office and receive formal recognition as an Escort Master.

And the first three escort jobs Chen Guan had ever taken had all co from the Su Residence!

Originally, all of that had seed perfectly normal.

But set against everything that had happened now, sothing about it was deeply wrong.

Could it be... that old bastard had begun laying this sche ten years ago?

He suddenly rembered the first day he t Su Jingyan in Sanhua Town. The old man had coughed like a broken bellows, yet his eyes had shone with a terrifying brightness.

At the ti, Chen Guan had assud it was simply a dying man’s final flash of life.

Now, looking back on it, the problem had not been with his judgnt at all.

It was that he had already fallen into the ga.

A chill swept through Chen Guan’s heart, and he imdiately asked, “Before your grandfather ca to hire , had he gone to see other Escort Masters too?”

Luo Li did not quite understand why he was asking, but she still answered honestly. “He visited nine Escort Masters in total. Brother Chen... you were the tenth.”

“Their ages?”

At that, Luo Li froze as well. She tried to recall it and said uncertainly, “They... they all seed... rather young. None of them looked older than twenty.”

Just as he had thought!

Chen Guan understood everything at once!

That old scher had been arranging things in Sanhua Town for the past ten years, searching for a candidate capable of escorting his granddaughter to Great Zhou to raise a rebellion!

And from the very beginning, Chen Guan had been one of his chosen targets!

For ten whole years, the old man had been observing him. He had learned of Chen Guan’s capabilities, knew that he had never failed once since entering the trade, and knew that he always kept his word.

And so Chen Guan had beco the most suitable candidate in his eyes.

“What exactly was your grandfather’s identity?” Chen Guan’s voice had turned hoarse.

“He...” At the ntion of her grandfather, the grief that had only just faded from Luo Li’s eyes surged back again, now mixed with a deep and puzzling confusion.

“He... he was the National Preceptor of the forr Violet Firmant Imperial Dynasty, the man who oversaw the fate of the realm and assisted two generations of emperors.”

“National Preceptor?!”

The corner of Chen Guan’s mouth twitched.

No wonder he had never realized he had already fallen into the trap.

No wonder Su Jingyan had known soone like the Peach Blossom Immortal.

No wonder he had been able to lay out a sche so patient and far-reaching!

Chen Guan took a deep breath and continued, “And your aunt? Is she truly your blood-related aunt?”

Luo Li shook her head. “I have no blood relation to either my grandfather or my aunt...”

Once she finished explaining, Chen Guan more or less understood their relationship.

That Su Jingyan had been one of the people who escorted her out of Shangjing City a hundred years ago, while Su Yue was the daughter of the commander of the Violet Firmant Emperor’s personal guards.

As for her so-called uncle, he was a Luo heir who had changed his surna to Su in order to conceal his identity.

To put it plainly, they were all remnants of the forr dynasty.

Chen Guan asked again, “Then do you know why Su Yue wanted you dead?”

At the ntion of that, Luo Li’s expression turned sharply cold, and her voice was filled with unconcealed frost.

“I do not.”

“All right.”

Chen Guan waved a hand. He had more or less sorted it out by now.

That dead grandfather of hers had, from beginning to end, likely never approved of Luo Li going to Great Zhou to throw her life away attempting to restore the dynasty.

So he had prepared a final backup.

And that backup was the Peach Blossom Immortal!

Still, Chen Guan felt that an old conspirator like Su Jingyan would never have made such a simple one-step move. It did not fit the hand of a National Preceptor who had assisted two emperors.

After a mont’s thought, Chen Guan arrived at a guess: the Peach Blossom Immortal’s purpose had likely not been Luo Li at all, but rather to test his strength...

Because he rembered that the Peach Blossom Immortal had once said, “You must be the turning point Su Jingyan spoke of.”

At the ti, he had not understood what she ant.

But now it seed likely that the old man had used her as a test, to see whether Chen Guan was the “turning point” he had been searching for over the past ten years.

As for her aunt Su Yue, he could not understand her at all.

She had raised Luo Li painstakingly for more than ten years, yet had also hidden Li Fei and the other deathsworn at her side. She had even been able to mobilize rulers from within the Ten Directions Marsh and arrange sothing like Do Not Look Back to assassinate Luo Li.

If she had defected to the emperor of Great Zhou, then that would at least make so sense—after all, the emperor of Great Zhou clearly had a habit of colluding with fiends.

But Chen Guan still felt sothing was off.

If Su Yue had truly defected to the emperor of Great Zhou, then why had she not acted when the troubleso girl was still a child?

Why wait until after she left Sanhua Town to begin making her move?

Could it be that the price simply had not been high enough before?

Luo Li looked at him and stood quietly to one side without disturbing him. Only a trace of reluctance and a thread of expectation flickered through her eyes.

After thinking it through again and again, Chen Guan still could not determine which side Su Yue truly belonged to.

So, carrying the heavy Horse-Cleaving Saber on one shoulder, he walked alone to a huge rock at the edge of the forest and sat down in silence.

Shaking off his jumbled thoughts, Chen Guan raised his head and looked at the endless dark mountain ranges looming ahead, feeling as though storm clouds covered the entire road before him.

If he gave up now, then he would need to dig that dead old man back out of the grave and make him cancel this escort mission.

That in itself was not the issue.

The issue was that if he did so, the rules he had upheld for ten years would be broken.

But if he escorted this troubleso girl all the way to Great Zhou, then he would inevitably bear the infamy of a thousand ages.

And the consequences would be disaster across the land.

Chen Guan thought again of the parents he had never truly known, who had died at the jaws of fiends without even leaving bones behind. He thought again of the uncles who had gone in search of blood nourishnt to heal his body, only to die the sa way.

And then he thought of the “answer” he had always been searching for in his heart.

“The answer...”

He glanced sideways at Luo Li again, looking at her from every angle—left, right, up, down. No matter how he looked, he simply could not see a born rebel in this troubleso girl.

“The turning point?!”

Suddenly, he thought of sothing.