Ultragene Warlord

Chapter 738 – The Beggar Prince

Duan Gen, terror marring his face, began to shout, “Don't you dare do anything! My father's the king of the west! His eyes are omniscient, and he'll quickly discover that something's wrong here.
He'll rush over immediately!”

Zhang Lie smiled.
“Indeed, the king of the realm is here.”

He dropped something on the ground.
It cracked on impact with the floor and split in two.

Duan Gen asked, “What's this?”

“The king of the realm, as you requested—or rather, his head.”

Duan Gen shook his head in shock.
“No, that can't be.
That can't be! My father's the king of the realm, an undefeated existence in the west! He's the god of the west, he's invincible! Even the king of the east wouldn't be able to do anything about him in his home territory.
He wouldn't lose, and he surely wouldn't die!”

Zhang Lie sighed.
“What a pity.
I shouldn't have dug out your eyeballs initially, or you would be able to see your father's head for yourself now.”

Duan Gen cried out, “You must be lying! You know that I'm blind, so you've brought someone else's head here to scare me!”

“If you don't believe me, feel free to touch it.
I left you an arm and a leg, didn't I? You should be thankful for my pity.”

However, Duan Gen didn't dare to reach forward.

Zhang Lie laughed coldly.
“What's the matter? Scared?”

Duan Gen was indeed scared.
If what lay before him was indeed his father's head—he didn't think he would survive the trauma.

“It took me some time to preserve the integrity of your father's head.
After all, when I killed him, I bisected him vertically, even his head.
Everything else was alright, but his brain fluid spilled everywhere…”

Duan Gen shook his head, mumbling nonsense to himself to avoid listening to Zhang Lie: “My father's the god of the west, he's invincible! Even the king of the east wouldn't be able to do anything about him in his home territory.
He wouldn't lose, and he surely wouldn't die!”

Zhang Lie offered him half the head.
“Come now, touch your father's head.
It's fresh.”

Duan Gen curled up into a ball.

Zhang Lie sneered at Duan Gen, feeling a sense of triumph at his weakened, pitiful state.
In his past life, Duan Gen had been a terror to Li Qianlin, and he was repaying that favor now.

Zhang Lie tossed aside the other half of Duan Zisuan's head, then pulled Duan Gen up by his hair.
“I don't have time to play around with you.”

Rainbow fog wafted out from Zhang Lie's body as he activated his mistmeld clam soulshard.
The fog drifted over to Duan Gen's body.

Duan Gen's voice became quieter and quieter, until he obediently shut up.

“Where's the proof of kingship?” Zhang Lie had returned to the king of the west's palace primarily for this question.
He didn't care about Duan Gen's continued existence; Duan Gen was a cripple.
However, he did have to acquire the proof of kingship of the western world.

After he slew Duan Zisuan and rummaged through his belongings, he was unable to find that proof.

In general, kings of the realm didn't tend to carry the proof of kingship with them, and the only one who knew where it might be located besides the king himself was the one person he trusted more than any other in the world: his own son, Duan Gen.

If Duan Gen possessed that proof of kingship, he could very well initiate the ceremony to coronate a new king, which would cause even more trouble for Zhang Lie.
And if Duan Gen were to take the throne, unpolished, inexperienced, and crippled though he might be, he would still be the king of the realm of a large world, and there was the potential for even more trouble in Zhang Lie's horizon.

Duan Gen didn't even need to initiate such a ceremony; just keeping the proof hidden would be sufficient to foil Zhang Lie's plans.
Even if Zhang Lie were to set up a government, the moment someone else became the king of the realm, all the structures of power in the world would be meaningless.

On the other hand, as long as he were to deliver the proof of kingship to Li Zongming's hands, that alone would be sufficient to consider the world of the west 'conquered'.
That was how important the proof of kingship was, and the reason he was in Duan Gen's rooms now.

Duan Gen, controlled by the mistmeld clam soulshard, began, “Father hid the proof of kingship in a place no one would ever think to look in.”

Indeed, as Zhang Lie had suspected, Duan Zisuan had told his son about where it had been hidden—perhaps to allow his son one last chance at negotiation even if everything were to go awry.

Despite all of Duan Zisuan's plans, he had never anticipated that his son's captor would be equipped with a soulshard with the ability of mental compulsion.

“Where is it located?”

“The mouth of the golden dragon decorating the roof of my father's quarters.”

“…there?”

Duan Gen nodded.
“Father said that the safest location was the most dangerous, and the most dangerous location was the safest.”

Indeed, no one would have guessed that the proof of kingship was located in such an ostentatious location.

Zhang Lie had suspected that it was kept in the royal treasury, just as the scaleman king had done, or in some location only the king of the realm and Duan Gen knew about.
This was why the servants loyal to the Duan had no choice but to bring Duan Gen away, because he was the only remaining person in the world to know where the proof was hidden.

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Zhang Lie had even considered the notion that there might be some hidden passageway or special mechanism by which the proof would need to be recovered.

The fact that it was simply hidden in an obscure location made it far easier to recover than he had suspected.

After finding out where the proof of kingship was, the only remaining problem was dealing with Duan Gen himself.

Beheading him felt like letting him off far too easily; Zhang Lie had suffered greatly because of what he had done, and Li Qianlin had even died because of him.
Even crippling this bastard himself wasn't enough.
He wanted Duan Gen to suffer as he himself had suffered a hundred times, a thousand times over.

“From today onwards, you'll be no prince, just a lowly beggar, one everyone can kick or step on.”

Zhang Lie settled on deep hypnosis.
From that day onward, Duan Gen, the erstwhile beloved prince of the realm, would experience a complete reversal of fortune…