The Invincible Bodyguard Starting by Escorting the Doomsday Imperial Princess Chapter 80 : Chapter 80

Chapter 80: If It’s Not Part of My Duty, You’ll Have to Pay More?

“The temperant of a ruler must be as firm as bedrock. For the sake of all living beings beneath heaven, one must be able to abandon a single person; for the sake of a single thought, one must also be able to slaughter all living beings beneath heaven!”

“The thods of a ruler must be ruthless and rciless. One must understand grand overt strategy, yet also master shadowy and sinister calculation—kill without shedding blood, and break hearts without leaving a trace!”

Luo Li slowly raised her head and looked at Chen Guan in shock.

At that mont, she suddenly felt that he was the one who truly resembled a qualified ruler, while she herself was nothing more than a student.

“Brother Chen...” Luo Li’s eyes were full of confusion.

It was not that she failed to understand those principles. She simply could not truly comprehend them, nor could she accept them.

And she also knew what she lacked.

“Brother Chen, do you think... the reason they arranged this trial in such a way... was to temper ?”

“Temper you?”

Chen Guan was directly amused by her naive thought and laughed.

In the eyes of others, this might indeed have looked like a cruel form of tempering.

But in his eyes, this was simply a feast of jianghu, and that girl was one of the dishes laid out on the table.

If those people truly wanted to temper this girl and turn her into a qualified ruler,

then from the mont she was born, they should have thrown her into the wilds of jianghu and the treacherous currents of court politics, so that she could stumble, struggle, be forged, and be baptized in blood.

Instead of shutting her up in a room like a canary and making her study those arts of kingship drawn only on paper!

No matter how intelligent a person was, what they learned that way would still amount to empty theory!

As the saying goes, if your five fingers have never touched the spring water, how can you know the hardship of farming?

If soone did not even know how much a bowl of noodles cost, then how could that person govern the realm? How could that person sympathize with the common people?

And now they wanted to temper her?

Wasn’t that just taking off your pants to fart?

To put it bluntly, those people had been deliberately burying this girl all along!

They had done it on purpose!

She was clearly such a clever girl, yet they had ruined her into this state?

At that mont, Chen Guan finally understood completely why Su Jingyan had stopped Luo Li from going to the Great Zhou Imperial Dynasty in the first place.

Perhaps only Su Jingyan had truly understood that this girl’s so-called Emperor’s Fate was nothing more than a key for the people lurking behind the scenes to satisfy their own desires!

She was rely a blade forged by those people to fulfill their lust for power.

Chen Guan did not answer her. He rely turned around and faced the silent sunset. His shadow was stretched long, and his voice was so calm that not the slightest ripple could be heard in it.

“Luo Li, you have your path of kingship to walk, and I have my escort road to tread.

“We are not on the sa road.

“I cannot show you the way.

“The road beneath your feet can only be walked out by you, one step at a ti.”

Luo Li simply stood there, quietly watching Chen Guan’s back.

She knew that although his words sounded as though he were drawing a line between them, in truth, every word was showing her the way.

The road ahead of her, the rest of her life, all depended on this single choice before her.

That sentence echoed in her mind once more—“The temperant of a ruler must be as firm as bedrock. For the sake of all living beings beneath heaven, one must be able to abandon a single person; for the sake of a single thought, one must also be able to slaughter all living beings beneath heaven!”

She slowly turned around and looked toward the bustling little town street in the distance, a place full of hypocrisy and deceit.

She questioned her own heart.

Could a weak girl like her, one who had never stained her hands with blood, truly walk a path soaked in blood, a path of utter ruthlessness and rcilessness?

She had always felt that sothing was missing from the road of her life, yet she had never been able to find it.

So she simply stood there, quietly watching, not knowing how much ti had passed.

Perhaps it was a minute. Perhaps it was an hour. Only when her eyes had grown sore from staring did she suddenly awaken to the answer.

“That’s right. Blood!”

What had always been missing from her path of kingship since childhood was blood. Ever since she was young, her grandfather had kept her shut inside a room, teaching her those so-called arts of kingship, those so-called arts of balance and control, teaching her the history of her family.

Yet he had never let her co into contact with blood.

How could a ruler possibly remain untouched by blood?

Why had they placed the most important lesson at this mont?

Why in the Great Zhou Imperial Dynasty?

Was it restraint, or was it neglect?

Luo Li turned back around and faced Chen Guan again. After several seconds of silence, she finally asked, word by word, “Brother Chen, can you... take out of this rule-bound strange tale?”

Chen Guan suddenly turned around and looked at her, his eyes filled with surprise.

“Are you sure?”

“I...”

Luo Li did not hesitate in the slightest. Her gaze beca sharp, and an innate air of pride radiated from her body, as though she were a treasured sword that had remained sheathed for far too long and was finally revealing its edge at this very mont.

“I’m sure!”

“My road, Luo Li’s road, will be decided by . It will be chosen by . No one has the right to arrange it for , and no one has the right to point it out to !”

The surprise in Chen Guan’s eyes instantly turned into undisguised astonishnt and admiration.

He truly had to admire this girl’s insight.

She had actually found the right direction on her own!

For the past sixteen years, she had walked the road paved by others and seen the flourishing world fashioned for her by others.

If she wanted revenge, if she wanted to truly understand what jianghu was, and even that dream of rulership, then there was one thing she had to learn first—she had to step off the road arranged by others and use her own feet to carve out a path that belonged to her alone!

Only by doing that could she find her true heart and truly seize control of her own destiny.

Only then could she avoid becoming a blade in the struggle for power and bringing an unearned catastrophe upon this world!

And now was that crucial first step!

If this girl truly followed those people’s “script,” slaughtered ten thousand people to establish her authority, and thereby broke these strange-tale rules, then that would an she had completely accepted their arrangent.

And once that happened, the road ahead would only force her to keep walking, step by step, along the line others had already drawn for her, until in the end she beca a soulless puppet dangling from strings, to be manipulated at will!

They would turn her into a bloodthirsty, tyrannical ruler, a puppet emperor who cleared the path for their desires.

“I really can take you out of these strange-tale rules.”

Chen Guan spoke directly. “But you have to understand—this is the trial they prepared for you.

“If I take you out, that ans you did not complete their trial. You failed.”

“Brother Chen, just take out!” Luo Li’s tone was incomparably firm. “As for everything else, I’ll handle it myself!”

Chen Guan suddenly turned his head and looked at Luo Li.

The mont Luo Li t his gaze, her neck shrank reflexively, and she braced herself for the blow and ridicule she expected from him.

Yet to her surprise, Chen Guan simply said, “Fine. But this has nothing to do with my escort road. You’ll have to Pay More!”

Luo Li froze for a mont, then nodded. “All right!”

She hurriedly took out two taels of silver from her purse.

【Ding! On-the-Spot Price Hike Successful!】

【Escort mission reward increased: 10%】

【Escort Mission: Escort Luo Li to the Grand Preceptor’s Manor in Shangjing City of Great Zhou.】

【Current mission reward: Escort Points 388】

The corners of Chen Guan’s mouth curled upward. He quickly snatched the silver away and only then said in satisfaction, “Now you finally look a little like imperial material!”

Luo Li’s hand stiffened as she was putting away her purse.

She had originally thought that Chen Guan would strike at her instead, saying she had no backbone and relied on others for everything.

So the only thing it took for him to praise soone was paying more?

And yet, for so reason, a surge of excitent rose in her heart.

She would take it as Chen Guan acknowledging her.

Chen Guan’s gaze once more fell upon the inconspicuous little lotus pond not far away.

“The reason we triggered this ‘Ten Thousand Deaths, No Retreat’ strange tale should be because of this little lotus pond.”

He spoke slowly, and a trace of eerie cadence entered his voice.

“When we passed by here, the setting sun happened to cast our shadows into the pond.

“And so that thing took away our shadows and silently pulled us into a world ford by rules.

“So if we want to resist the rules, the first thing we must do is follow them.

“Since we were dragged in here personally by ‘It,’ then I will make ‘It’ personally send us back out. Only then will it accord with the logic binding us.”

Luo Li did not cultivate and could not understand such abstruse matters, but she understood Chen Guan’s temperant from his tone.

Whoever had set up these rules was probably about to suffer terribly.

She did not interrupt. She rely widened her eyes and listened with the utmost seriousness.

Chen Guan continued, “I told you before that this little town is divided into ‘Yin’ and ‘Yang.’

“‘Yang’ is your ho ground. You can order them to do anything there, and they cannot refuse, right?”

“Then doesn’t that an that if I enter the town during ‘Yang,’ I can order them to find a way to send us out?”

Luo Li imdiately drew an inference from it.

“That brain of yours really can’t stand praise.”

Chen Guan shot her an annoyed glance.

“Uh...” Luo Li froze.

Chen Guan continued to emphasize, “I already told you. We can only be ‘passively’ sent out by them, not actively follow their rules.

“You are a future empress. If you let others lead you around by the nose, don’t you find that embarrassing?”

Luo Li awkwardly pursed her lips.

Chen Guan looked toward the town and then said blandly, “What uncanny fiend rules love most is inverting Yin and Yang, reversing truth and falsehood, substance and illusion.

“When ‘Yang’ is in effect, it looks like our ho ground, full of life and vitality, but in truth, that is the gate of death. Any active move will only deepen our entanglent with the rules.

“And the true gate of life lies precisely within that eerie and terrifying ‘Yin’!”

“‘Yin’?!” Luo Li’s expression changed sharply.