That idiot… If she gets swept into a succession storm, she’ll be a leaf in a flood. No one will care.

From what Tangxue knew of Qingyu Mengyin, that big-chested, empty-headed fool wouldn’t hurt kin unless a blade kissed her throat. In a fight for the crown, that’s taboo. The books say so.

Tangxue reads odd palace-intrigue novels when bored, so she knows a little. Seeing textbook scheming bloom in a Vampire imperial tomb, she got excited, like a reader starving for the ending.

Qianyue rested lightly on the crystal coffin. She stared at her dead mother, dazed, years like wind still failing to answer why her mother chose to die.

It wasn’t her fault; the blame was a shadow that never fit.

Her slender hand brushed the crystal lid, tender as if caressing a mother’s cheek rather than an ice-cold coffin.

Qianyue bowed her head to her mother and murmured, “Sister… if it had been you, what would you have done?”

“Me?” Tangxue looked at Qianyue, puzzled, then thought. “If it were me, I wouldn’t choose suicide… I’d stand in the storm rather than run.”

Cold fury rose like iron. Even if I had to die, I’d take the culprit first, Tangxue thought.

…

Qianyue offered Tangxue a strained smile, then rose slowly, like mist lifting.

“My lady sister, let’s go…”

“Is this enough, Qianyue?” Tangxue glanced at the woman in the crystal coffin, a Sleeping Beauty no one could wake, grace carved by nature.

“This is fine…” Qianyue shook her head, a bitter smile. “If Mother wanted to leave, what right do I, her child, have to block her?”

The ache was a winter pit. In life I couldn’t beg her love; in death I don’t deserve to, either.

“Qianyue, what’s wrong? You look worn thin, like a candle in wind.”

“I’m fine now, sis~ Let’s go.”

“Alright…” Tangxue drew a deep breath, steady as a lake. “If that’s what you want.”

Qianyue answered with a quiet smile, moonlight soft.

They left that chamber and entered the final main tomb—the resting place of Qianyue’s father, the seventy-second Vampire King.

The divine sword lay in this chamber.

This wasn’t Tangxue’s first time here. She’d come before to borrow the sword, though she hadn’t studied the murals. She hadn’t realized that robust, ordinary middle-aged Blood Clan man was the seventy-second Vampire King.

When she stepped in again, the first shock had faded. Gemstones carpeted the floor, treasures glittered everywhere. Most dazzling were the seven-colored Spirit Flowers from the Forest Elves. The Giants’ several-meter-high “Demon Eye” and the violet-gold dragon-scale armor at the center were equally stunning.

The seventy-second king marked the Vampires’ peak in this world. His son unified the Blood Clan, turning alliance into monarchy. Unbeaten wars drove the Duskmoon Empire to an unprecedented height.

At Duskmoon’s strongest, its flag speared dragon nests, the far edge of cloud-cliffs, and lone isles in the sea.

The empire without sunrise once cloaked half the continent.

But strength burned fast; the Duskmoon Empire fell to civil war.

He shifted, in the people’s eyes, from laurel to shackles, from hero to sinner.

Wilder was the seventy-second king’s name, yet in today’s Duskmoon Empire, almost no one remembers it.

Records of him faded like ink in rain; many cautionary books vanished too. Still, if you dig with true intent, you can unearth fragments.

For example: he fathered the culprit who destroyed the old Duskmoon realm…

After the Vampire royal house was wiped out, the City of Woe’s palace sealed shut. The leyline the Vampires had nurtured for millennia was sealed as well. The City of Woe turned from a magic-rich, clear-water, fertile land into a barren stretch where even birds won’t stop to rest.

You could say the City of Woe kept nothing but its walls.

Its people, and nearby petty states, still suffer the former Duskmoon queen’s wrath like summer thunder.

“Ah… the sword’s still here!” Tangxue dug through heaps of treasure and found the divine sword she’d tossed last time. She dusted it lightly, ash drifting, and carried it to the chamber’s center.

The blade’s design was… peculiar. Unlike a common rapier, both edges carried a segmented cutting ridge. They say it was built to counter a Vampire’s Blood Reservoir; wounds struck by it keep burning and refuse to heal.

Vampires heal by drawing on their inner Blood Reservoir. This divine sword maims both flesh and reservoir at once.

They say the sword was forged after a god-spear from another world, called Longinus, so it carries a shard of that Divine Artifact’s power.

The eerie blade seemed drenched in fresh blood. Holding it, Tangxue felt like she stood over a sea of corpses and crimson.

It echoed the feeling she’d had facing the Dreamsound family’s harpoon last time…

“Let’s set the sword aside, Qianyue. Let’s check the murals.” Tangxue tossed the blade back onto the treasure pile with mild distaste, clapped dust like chalk from her hands, and walked to the wall.

“Okay~”

Qianyue answered softly. As she passed the coffin, her gaze tangled like threads, lingering on the middle-aged man within, then she ran to Tangxue.

Qianyue felt little for that man; in her memory, even palace maids left deeper footprints in the snow than he did.

Maybe the Sixth Princess, buried like an ember under ash, still held feelings for her father. Qianyue did not.

Because the Sixth Princess was dead—killed by the son he cherished most.

Qianyue walked with a water-calm face, yet when she saw her sister spacing out at the murals again, a smile rippled across her lips.

Qianyue glided close and crouched beside Tangxue. Like a kitten, she nuzzled Tangxue’s cheek, her hands slipping around that willow waist.

“…Qianyue?” Tangxue pushed her forehead back, confused, and looked at her.

“Sis~” Qianyue puffed her lips in mock complaint. “I’ve stared at these murals forever. Let me cuddle a bit…”

“…I’m not a plush toy. What’s there to cuddle?”

“Hehe~ But your cheeks are so bouncy, sis~” Qianyue leaned in again, shameless. She loved how her sister’s mouth said no while her body… tried to refuse and couldn’t. Watching Tangxue blush and push weakly, Qianyue felt a strange surge inside, like spring sap rising.

But Qianyue reined herself in like a horse at the bit.

Because it would plant a thorn in her lady sister’s petal-soft heart.

After a small tussle, Qianyue reluctantly let go and turned to the dull murals, her sigh drifting like wind.

By now, the king’s story was clear from the earlier walls. These added little; royal halls love hollow boasting. To find real history, you sift sources and refine, like panning a river.

After a while, Qianyue finished telling everything to Tangxue. It wore her out, like walking through deep snow.

“Good work~” Tangxue patted Qianyue’s shoulder. “So it was worth reading every mural. Otherwise we wouldn’t know the way to unseal the City of Woe’s leyline is right here…”

Tangxue looked toward where the Crown Prince had stood in the tale. She had to admit his cruelty: even dying, he dragged the City of Woe to the grave, though his killer was already at death’s door.

The final way to ruin the City of Woe was to seal its leyline. When the Vampires first came to heal and settle, it took ages to warm that vein, like tending a hearth. Without their long nurture, the City of Woe would be plain, even poor soil.

That Crown Prince, Vito, didn’t want others to have the boon. Before dying, he hid the secret method and sealed the palace and the leyline. He laughed like a madman at the end, but he never saw what he wanted in the other’s eyes—only a cold gaze that shattered his last shard of reason.

Tangxue felt no affection for the seventy-second Vampire King; he was a classic hawk without a blade’s edge.

When the Vampires first fled to this plane, no one wanted them. The Blood Elves ignored scorn and took in that otherworldly race. The Vampires healed and grew here. Duskmoon’s strength climbed year by year.

Then came the disaster, more than seven millennia past. The gods withdrew from the world. Without the Elf progenitor and divine oversight, the plane slid into ceaseless war. For dwindling resources and land, armies fought a thousand years, until the continent settled into a rough balance.

After that upheaval, Duskmoon’s lands nearly doubled. Much credit belonged to the Vampires. They were warlike and strong; their gifts gave them edge over foes. Perhaps Vampires were born for war.

But by then, you couldn’t speak of only Vampires. Vampires and Blood Elves were both near-human. Other Blood Clan branches came in many forms. Both core races were strikingly beautiful. Without divine oversight, long cohabitation made intermarriage natural.

Over millennia of mingling, most of the Blood Clan became Vampire–Blood Elf hybrids, except for the royal cores of both lines.

The two royal houses avoided marriage for a reason. Both races grew stronger the purer their blood, especially among Vampires. The Blood Elf royals lacked the Vampires’ absolute command over common folk, yet their mana and recovery ran thicker than any citizen’s.

Hybrids did inherit traits from both sides, yet their bodies and mana ran thinner than purebloods.

By the time that truth spread, it changed little. Married couples wouldn’t break for blood. And while their children lacked a single overwhelming trait, the blend still made them strong enough.

And so a thousand years flowed by like a river.

When the Blood Elf royals finally looked up, most of the Blood Clan were already hybrids. At that point, they couldn’t rein it in; the horse had bolted.

But the Vampire royal house kept a secret from the Blood Elves: as long as a child carried Vampire blood, the royals claimed absolute dominion over them.

A pride carved into bone refused to bow forever to the Blood Elves. From the shadows, voices in the Vampire court kept pushing to overturn the order and take Duskmoon. They had the power now.

But inside the Vampire royals, voices split—some for, some against. So Duskmoon stayed mostly at peace, a sea with crosswinds yet calm.

Until the seventy-second king.

The seventy-second king, Wilder, beat the drums of war, yet his heart was paper-thin.

In his reign, most of the Blood Clan carried the Vampire bloodline like a shadow.

With one decree, he could've made the Blood Elf royal house a target for ten thousand arrows.

He burned to do it, but his courage froze like winter water.

Of his seven children, only the eldest nursed that fire and dared to act.

He slew his brothers one by one, steady as a falling guillotine, with his father's shadow at his back.

Maybe a thorn pricked his heart, yet he let the blood dry on his son's hands.

Until that son ferried him across the dark river with his own hands.

“For your lifelong wish, Father—please die.” Those words fell like frost, the last he ever heard.

After his death, the eldest laid a lavish funeral, silk and incense thick as fog.

Then, as the old wish demanded, he made the Vampires the sole rulers of the Duskmoon Empire.

It happened as smoothly as a blade through water.

The newborn state toppled just as fast, a house of cards in a crosswind.

Cold dread slid under her skin as the eldest prince's ruin flashed back; Tangxue shivered.

His corpse hasn't rotted after all these years; that alone speaks of power.

In life, he was likely no weaker than the woman called Qing Feng Yuelian, a blade as bright as hers.

If she'd crossed blades with him then, Tangxue would've been fighting uphill.

Even so, confidence steadied her pulse—she'd still take the win.

Yet curiosity gnawed: what monster scythed down every pureblood Vampire in a single night?

Not just the royal house; every prince great and small went out like snuffed lamps.

Even a lightweight like Edgar once plunged Starfate City into crisis; any prince here would cast a longer shadow.

At its peak, the Duskmoon Empire didn't wave that Overlord of the Land banner for show.