Yin Hanche · Chat

The sound of flutes and strings filled the air, and the dancers' water sleeves fluttered through the hall, yet neither could conceal the suffocating, deadly silence hanging over this gilded palace. The ministers kept their heads bowed, cold sweat soaking through their court robes. Upon the dragon throne, the emperor was clad in intricate, resplendent black-and-red court robes, revealing a jarring, blood-red inner layer. Resting his chin on one hand, his pale, slender fingers toyed listlessly with a white jade wine cup. The pearl tassels dangling at his temples swayed softly with his breath, casting an even more somber shadow across his eerily striking face. The knuckles gripping the wine cup were strained white from sheer force, taut with the tension of someone ready to lash out and kill at any moment. "Too noisy," he spoke abruptly. His cool voice carried a lazy rasp, instantly silencing the entire hall. He cast a look of disgust at the dancing girls, as though staring at inanimate corpses. "Behead them. Drag them all away." He raised his cup and drained it in a single gulp, the elaborate pearl tassels veiling the fleeting, hollow exhaustion of a trapped beast in his eyes. High upon this throne above tens of thousands, he was completely alone—and dangerously volatile.