Chapter 689 --689

Chapter 689: Chapter-689

She had already surrendered the Vanguard family’s absolute military authority—the exact same power her grandfather had bled on the battlefield to build. She didn’t hand it over to the Minister of the Right or the civil courts. She submitted a formal, written vow directly to the Emperor himself, willingly giving up her family’s right to command the army.

Heena understood the one golden rule of monarchy that the rest of the arrogant nobles seemed to forget: a ruler will never, under any circumstances, tolerate a subject who holds more power than the throne. The five Imperial Death Pardons she held were just a small, temporary resistance against an Emperor who would inevitably try to slaughter her entire family.

But the Emperor was a cunning, terrifying bastard.

When he received her written surrender, he didn’t accept it. Instead, he put on a spectacular, hypocritical show for the entire capital.

"How can We take it?" the Emperor had announced to the court, playing the role of a deeply moved, generous sovereign. "The Marquis Vanguard fought for this empire with his own flesh and blood. Therefore, as long as the Vanguard bloodline resides in this nation, they shall retain their inheritable army."

When Heena had first heard that imperial edict, she had laughed so hard in her private chambers that she almost coughed up blood.

She laughed because she saw right through the Emperor’s "mercy." It was a flawlessly executed, three-pronged trap.

First, in the eyes of the public and the history books, the Emperor instantly became a saint. He looked like a benevolent, deeply loyal ruler who had absolutely no greed for military power. It was a flawless public relations victory.

Second, he made that grand promise because he knew it was a completely hollow gamble. He fucking knew the Vanguard family registry was a dead end. Her grandfather was the only official patriarch left. Her grandmother was just a wife by marriage. Their only biological son had been exiled to a remote monastery to rot, and the estranged daughter-in-law was as good as dead. That left Heena as the absolute last, singular drop of the true Vanguard bloodline. And the Emperor knew she was terminally ill. He knew she was a dying woman, and even if she somehow survived the disease, he fully intended to have her assassinated. He was giving the military power to a ghost.

But it was the third reason that proved just how lethal the Emperor truly was.

By tying the absolute control of the army exclusively to the Vanguard bloodline instead of safely reabsorbing it into the imperial ranks, the Emperor had essentially painted Heena and her future generations with a massive, glowing red target.

He had stood in front of the entire civil and military court and essentially announced: Here is the prize. If you want to destabilize the military or seize the power for yourselves, all you have to do is slaughter this sickly woman.

Heena had handed the Emperor her sword, and the bastard had turned around and used it to put a bounty on her head.

But Heena was not the type of woman to let an Emperor back her into a corner without dragging his entire court into the abyss with her.

The nobility worshipped hierarchy, didn’t they? They clung to their ancient bloodlines, their pristine family registries, and their rigid aristocratic rules. They believed blood was above all else.

Fine, Heena had decided. Let them choke on it.

If the Emperor wanted to decree that the military power belonged exclusively to the Vanguard bloodline, and if he planned to execute the Vanguards the moment the dust settled, she was going to make him work for it. How many people did an Emperor typically execute to wipe out a noble house? Three hundred? Five hundred? A thousand?

Heena was going to adopt thousands of adults into the Vanguard family.

She was actively signing papers to adopt rogue scholars, merchant daughters, wandering mercenaries, and street-smart bureaucrats. Give it a few years, and the prestigious, terrifying title of the "Marquisate Family" was going to become as common as cabbage in the capital’s street markets. She was going to completely mass-produce the aristocratic title until the entire concept of nobility became a hysterical joke.

Right now, the capital thought she had completely lost her mind. The traditionalists were mocking her in the tea houses, laughing at the sickly Madam who was collecting adult children like stray cats. But beneath the mockery, the powerful noble factions were beginning to realize the catastrophic legal implications of her actions.

They were having collective, blood-spitting strokes. And to Heena, the sheer, unadulterated agony of the civil court was the most potent, magnificent painkiller in the world. Better than any bitter sludge Samuel could force down her throat.

She was going to make absolutely sure the history books remembered her name. Since her physical body was too fragile to ever survive a real battlefield—a single stray arrow would instantly send her to the grave—she would wage a war of pure, bureaucratic terrorism instead.

Besides, why should she preserve the military power for the future?

Currently, Heena considered herself a "good girl." (The System, naturally, violently rejected this assessment, but her opinion was the only one that mattered). Her grandfather was a good man, her grandmother was a saint, and maybe, just maybe, the immediate next generation of Vanguards might turn out decent.

But what about the generation after that? What about fifty years down the line?

Heena refused to believe that a bloodline could remain pure and uncorrupted forever. Eventually, a Vanguard would be born who craved absolute power, a greedy, incompetent tyrant who would use the family’s military might to oppress the very people her grandfather had fought to protect.

Why leave a loaded weapon sitting on the table for a hypothetical idiot to ruin the family name? It was infinitely better to dismantle the weapon herself, wrap it up as "charity," and violently smash it directly into the Emperor’s hypocritical face.

The citizens of the capital, completely unable to comprehend her 4D political chess, had resorted to the supernatural to explain her behavior. The rumors running through the streets claimed that ever since the Vanguard Madam had fallen ill, she had been possessed by a vicious eagle spirit.

"What else could it be?" the gossips whispered. "Look at her! Since she took over, she has caused nothing but chaos! She is actively grinding the Old Master’s legendary reputation into the dirt!"

But the supreme irony that the capital’s gossips completely failed to realize was the Old Master’s actual stance on the matter.

While the Emperor plotted, the civil court bled from the ears, and Heena systematically burned the aristocratic hierarchy to the ground, the legendary Marquis Vanguard was entirely unbothered.

Decades ago, he had only climbed the military ranks, slaughtered enemy generals, and hoarded mountains of gold for one singular, obsessive reason: to earn the right to marry his wife. He had secured the girl. He had won his ultimate prize. He didn’t give a single, solitary damn about political power, legacy, or the military anymore.

While the capital screamed that his granddaughter was ruining his life’s work, the terrifying Old Master was sitting peacefully in the sunlit courtyard of the estate, pouring a fresh cup of jasmine tea for his wife, blissfully ignoring the smoke rising from the empire around them.