Chapter 17

After 10 minutes of waiting 4 more guards came into the room and started walking towards the group standing over the eunuch while the guard that originally went to inform the head eunuch that stands outside the door and is usually the only person that can go into the emperor's study unannounced had instantly reappeared back into the position that he was originally in.

"Let's go," Zheng Men said before walking to the main doors that the guards went through while the 4 imperial guards flanked the sides of the 3.

After walking down the halls and turning multiple times they reached the Imperial housing side of the palace where anyone that is given permission to live there although these are can only barely not be counted on one's hands being less than 20 people.

To get to the emperor's study they must walk through the Imperial housing than to the Emperor's personal housing which was way more protected even though there were way fewer people, and all the guards wore Red armor instead of the normal black ones, so Yui whispered to Zheng and asked who they were.

"They are the first battalion of the Imperial guard, unlike the other corps of the imperial guard their job isn't to protect the palace but only the emperor, and can only be found near the emperor, not only that but their equipment is better with runes on everything they wear and its not just ordinary runes but runes straight from the greatest runemaster that the court was willing to buy, you should have seen the faces of those old men when they had to spend billions on armor for only 1000ish people" Zheng men didn't even whisper because he knew that any person that was in the imperial guard would be at least required to hear a conversation taking place 1 meter away.

"Telling outsiders the secrets of the imperial guard, imperial protector even for you that is going too far" a voice could be heard from one of the guards but none of them could tell where it came from nor if it was male or female, all the black-armored guards faced the 3 and pointed their spears while activating runes on their spears.

"Ohh shut up" Zheng men stopped walking and put his hand on both Yui and Zhao before disappearing and reappearing at the door to the imperial study, back at the hall the 4 guards heads could be seen falling to the ground while their bodies were still standing up the group of red armored guards didn't even stop and just walked through the pools of blood that were pouring out of the severed heads, but all of them pitied those stupid guards as probably the only person that could punish or push around The Iron Gate was the emperor.

As Zheng men was about to knock a voice sounded out, it was as majestic of a voice as it could possibly be almost forcing Yui and Zhao to their knees even though there was no power in the voice at all.

Once inside the study they saw a table in the middle of the room with papers strewn about and only 1 elderly man, both Yui and Zhao thought that he was the emperor before they saw that he was in the eunuch uniform so they thought knew that he wasn't the emperor but must be someone incredibly important as being able to work in the imperial study wasn't something everyone could do.

"He is upstairs," the elderly man in the eunuch uniform told them.

"Thank you, elder Buji" Zheng men thanked the elder and slightly bowed him before walking to the stairs.

Once they got up the stairs everyone could see a man barely in his 40s sitting at a desk not really doing anything except laying back in his chair with his eyes closed.

"You know that the eunuch's arent going to like you killing 4 imperial guards and will try and get you into trouble right" he suddenly spoke and opened his eyes before Zheng men takes a seat "and if they knew that you took a seat in front of me without permission".

"If I have to take some land from the Bonid empire to appease them then so be it," Zheng men said.

"Hahahaha, the only imperial protectorates that would dare say so easily is you" the man laughed while slapping his knee multiple times, on the first floor elder Buji could be seen shaking his head while rubbing his eyes at how the emperor of the empire was acting.

After some small talk about how each other was doing the man got kinda serious and asked "anyway, what is this great threat to my reign".

"Zhao give it to him," Zheng men told him.

When Zhao was walking up to give the screw he started to get very nervous even though he was doing nothing wrong, when he was within 10 steps of the emperor the only 2 guards in the whole study look turned their heads to watch him and prepared to kill this nobody knight if he tried anything, after Zhao gave him the screw he felt a ginormous weight has lifted off of him and after he gave a small bow he walked back to where he was standing originally.

"A…. screw," the emperor said with a bit of anger in his voice "even if you are my brother, wasting my time like this will get you a punishment".

"It's not the screw, but where it came from that we should be careful about" Zheng men said as he worded that very carefully so that he didn't anger him even more.

"Where," The emperor asked suspiciously at how he worded it.

"When I was babysitting that girl, what we found were very very dead bandits chopped up into little bits, some of their faces were still morphed in fear and anguish, the screw was the only thing that we found that would place the blame of their death on something other than human, so when the knights and soldiers in the army sent to look for the bandits fanned out on the Yun's orders and found hundreds of footsteps going into the forest and stoping there with dozens of trees damaged from something I decided that was enough so I ordered the retreat of the army, but when we were retreating I felt something looking at me, something more powerful than the both of us" Zheng men recounted what happened that day.

"ok sure that is a bad thing but a threat not really as every single one of the first battalion could take on 3 alone but something that my brother doesn't think that neither of them could take on, also he emphasized something so it probably also a golem but who could possibly create something that could rival me and Zheng as we are both above stage 7, not even the great golem masters have something like that" After Zheng men stopped talking the emperor began to thing to himself before asking "what do you think we should do".

"Duan, I believe that we should treat this very carefully and call a court conference now with all the imperial protectorates" Zheng men said with great seriousness in his voice.

"Alright," The emperor said while rolling up his sleeve showing a tattoo of a snake eating its own tail with 5 different lumps in its body after putting some power into the tattoo all of Duan's, while only the first lump on Zheng's tattoo began to glow.