The Empress's No.1 Lackey-Chapter 475 - 382, Princess: Subordinate Willing to Serve Loyally for the Superior (5000 Characters)_2

"How could this be... you..."

Before Princess Lu regained her senses, she saw Zhao Douan, who had stood up in the distance, raise his right hand and make a grabbing motion toward her.

Princess Lu's complexion drastically changed, and she attempted to flee.

Suddenly, the fluttering leaves in the sky swiftly converged into two long "chains" that bound her and dragged her fiercely back to the feet of Zhao Douan!

She had no power to fight back!

A strong feeling of fear and bewilderment arose in Lu Yaner's heart. She wanted to say something, but Zhao Douan raised his hand and clenched her fair neck from the air.

Her legs flailed in the air, and her hands tried to prise apart the iron grip that confined her neck; her face turned pale, resembling a frail mortal woman.

"No..."

"No..."

Princess Lu's eyes widened with effort, realizing something as a surge of mana entered her eyes, activating the Heavenly Eye.

And with the "Heavenly Eye" activated, Lu Yaner witnessed a chilling scene.

She saw, behind Zhao Douan, a series of illusory red lines made of mana stretching toward the sky.

Each strand was connected to Zhao Douan, like a marionette, and the other ends collected in the hands of a ghostly figure with slender, pallid white hands.

It was an ancient woman, draped in a simple deep red bridal gown, her face covered with a dark gold mysterious mask, revealing only half of her delicate and alabaster chin.

One hand held the red thin threads, transferring mana to Zhao Douan.

The other hand grasped a strangely wrapped gold and red balance rod.

At this moment, she hovered midair, her presence as majestic and commanding as a deity.

Six hundred years ago, the number one female sorcerer of Jianghu, Pei Niannu, descended to the mortal realm!

Their gazes met, and the previously fiercely struggling Lu Yaner was struck as if by lightning. She stared with wide eyes at the dark gold mask and the likeness of the bridal sorcereress, her eyes glinting with an immense mix of shock and joy.

At the same time, Pei Niannu, upon clearly seeing the other's nearly cracked silver mask, furrowed her brows and suddenly withdrew half of the red threads.

The plasma-like redness in Zhao Douan's eyes suddenly faded; he felt a sudden emptiness in his body, mana withdrawn, his right hand unable to restrain his opponent, and he threw the Green-robed Princess to the ground.

"Cough! Cough cough cough!"

Lu Yaner knelt on the ground; once freed, she grabbed her throat and gasped for air, accompanied by coughing.

Utterly disheveled.

Feeling the diminishing mana within his Qi Sea, due to the loss of the red buff, Zhao Douan turned to look at Pei Niannu, lifting his eyebrows.

He conveyed a thought: "Senior, what is this..."

Pei Niannu ignored him, her eyebrows tightly knitted.

Meanwhile, the Princess on the ground hurriedly lifted her head, opened her Heavenly Eye, and looked up at the hovering female sorcerer with excitement and disbelief, venturing, "Ancestor?!"

Ancestor?

Zhao Douan's expression grew even stranger.

"On behalf of me... ask her... her identity..." Ear, Pei Niannu's voice was heard.

Her descent to the mortal realm was almost divine-like, unable to directly converse with others, she had to rely on Zhao Douan, her "follower," as a medium.

Zhao Douan looked down at the kneeling princess, with a semblance of a smile:

"Senior Pei told me to interrogate you, Princess, can you speak now? What exactly is your origin?"

Lu Yaner was still immersed in immense shock, only regaining her senses upon being questioned, and she realized she couldn't directly communicate with her ancestor, her mind in turmoil.

She couldn't understand why the ancestor her family had been searching for desperately for centuries would descend upon this pretty boy Zhao Douan.

Her first thought was doubt, but in a blink, she dismissed it, for everything else could be feigned, but the genuine repressive power emanating from Pei Niannu, based on the lineage, couldn't be faked.

It was a characteristic exclusive to this lineage: gold armor revered, silver armor secondary, and bronze armor at the bottom.

The hierarchy was clear.

A higher tier could wholly suppress and even punish a lower tier from thousands of miles away.

And the dark gold mask—historical records noted that only Pei Niannu had ever mastered it.

"It is... it is..." Lu Yaner responded unconsciously.

As expected, she indeed was a descendant of the foremost Pei Niannu family. Due to many enemies Pei Niannu made in her time, after her death, the entire Pei family hid their name and spread out to avoid being hunted.

Lu Yaner's branch changed to "Lu surname". From a young age, she was extremely talented in cultivation. Due to vendettas in Jianghu, she lost her relatives and became the sole surviving bloodline of this branch.

Whether to continue the family mission or seek the ancestral heritage for further advancement.

After many years of searching for traces of Pei Niannu, clues pointed to the Royal Family, yet she clearly couldn't investigate in the Imperial Palace and, fortuitously, received a promise from Prince Jing to work for him.

The whole process was not complicated.

Zhao Douan, after listening, also felt the peculiarity of fate, considering how bizarre and connected these events were...

Moreover, the rules of this mask, how they seemed tinged with an air of the Evil Path... not quite orthodox, but somewhat suggestive of the Evil Mage.

Could it be that the deity Pei Niannu worshiped was considered an Evil God?

"Ancestor!"

Kneeling on the ground, Lu Yaner, her green robe stained with blood, was visibly excited:

"We have searched for you for hundreds of years, our elders always said you had not died, to see you today, I earnestly request the Ancestor to return, to gather our kin scattered around Jianghu..."

Pei Niannu listened quietly. Although her mask concealed it, her bearing still revealed a touch of wistful solitude.

She looked at Zhao Douan and said calmly:

"Tell... her... I have... passed away, there is no need to cling..."

After speaking, without waiting for Zhao Douan to respond, she actively severed all the mana red lines and disappeared from the mortal world, returning to the Six Chapters Scripture.

The connection was... broken. Zhao Douan's eyelids twitched, and internally he called a few more times, "Senior", but Pei Niannu, as if touching a sorrowful matter, simply did not respond to him anymore.