Harem Master: Seduction System

Chapter 485: The Escape of the Four Prodigies and the Gu Clan’s Wrath

The great bronze bells atop the white marble spires of the Pure Maiden Holy Temple tolled through the autumn mist of Cloud-Mist City, sending deep, urgent vibrations rolling across the Southern Canal District.

Inside the outer prayer hall of the cathedral, marble pillars cracked and showered white stone dust over the floor as the reflected force of four Peak Martial King attacks blasted backward from the Starlight Crystal partition.

Feng Xiao, Corbin, Long Chen, and Qin Wu crashed through the carved wooden pews forty feet back, each man skidding across the polished tiles with bright red blood spilling over his chin.

‘A Seventh-Tier Spatial-Reflection Matrix woven directly into a holy barrier!’ Corbin wiped the blood from his mouth with the back of his gauntlet, his pale blue eyes wide with shock as he stared at the unbroken, shimmering crystal window above the altar. ‘He knew we were coming tonight! That rumor Long Chen’s scouts picked up at the canal tavern wasn’t a slip of the tongue—it was bait to lure the four of us into a sacred precinct guarded by the Gu Clan and the Imperial Royal Guards!’

Ten feet behind the one-way crystal screen, completely hidden inside the warm, golden-lit Sanctum of the Great Deity, the scene could not have been more peaceful or more decadent.

Not a single tremor from the blast in the outer hall had penetrated the inner side of the barrier.

Alaric stood calmly behind the cushioned marble altar balustrade, his tall, muscular frame completely bare as he held Princess Gu Ling’s wide, smooth hips in his large hands. He had just finished pumping a massive, scalding torrent of his thick seed deep into the Gu Clan heiress’s convulsing womb, and as her inner walls continued to flutter and milk his nine-inch shaft with soft, rhythmic spasms, a hot trickle of pearly white essence seeped out around the base of his cock and ran down her trembling inner thighs.

“Haa… mmm… Master…” Gu Ling breathed softly, resting her flushed cheek and damp forehead against the cool marble top of the balustrade as her bare toes curled into the plush carpet.

Beside her on the bench, Queen Cai Wei, Princess Hai Lan, and the Fallen Fairy Mu Qing were still bare from the waist down, their white silk temple skirts bunched up around their narrow waists and their fair thighs glistening with their own wetness and Alaric’s touch. Behind them stood Matriarch Lyra Steele, Aunt Cassandra Galanis, Grand Elder Yun Lan, Saintess Ceanna Paxton, Archmage Lilliana Valtor, and the two Grand Mage maids, Kara and Ulriya.

Looking through the one-way crystal screen at Feng Xiao scrambling up from the rubble of the outer prayer hall with blood on his lips and desperate madness in his eyes, Queen Cai Wei let out a low, throaty chuckle.

“Look at the four of them out there, Master,” Cai Wei purred, leaning her naked, voluptuous shoulder against Alaric’s chest while reaching down with two manicured fingers to scoop a drop of Alaric’s warm cum from where it leaked out of Gu Ling’s stretched entrance and bringing it shamelessly to her own red lips. “They crossed half the continent thinking they were going to play the dashing heroes and rescue us, and they couldn’t even crack the glass in front of our faces.”

“And now Elder Gu Shan and the other seven Half-Step Martial Emperors of the Gu Clan have surrounded the outer courtyard,” Grand Elder Yun Lan observed calmly, adjusting the azure silk robe over her heavy breasts as she looked at the ceiling where eight terrifying, sky-crushing Battle Auras were descending toward the main cathedral doors. “Master, shall Cai Wei, Lyra, Cassandra, and I slip out the side passage and help the elders finish them off?”

Alaric slowly slid his thick, glistening shaft out of Gu Ling’s warm depths, drawing a soft, needy whimper from the proud princess before he tapped his finger lightly in the air to seal her lower gate with a thin membrane of mana so not another drop of his seed would spill onto her robes.

“There is no need for any of us to reveal our hands outside tonight,” Alaric said, his deep voice calm and measured as Kara and Ulriya stepped forward with warm silk towels to wipe his waist and help Gu Ling, Cai Wei, Hai Lan, and Mu Qing smooth down their long white temple skirts. “Remember my rule: why spend our own mana in front of twenty palace guards when our enemies’ own beloved protectors are eager to do the work for us?”

He reached out and tilted Gu Ling’s flushed, breathtaking face up by her chin, looking into her misty, star-filled eyes.

“Go out onto the front balcony of the upper prayer hall with Princesses Huang Mei and Huang Hua, Ling’er,” Alaric instructed smoothly. “Keep your face veiled by the temple lantern-light so Elder Gu Shan sees your distress. Tell your elders that while you, the Imperial Princesses, and Saintess Ceanna were conducting a sacred midnight prayer, four masked assassins broke through the rear drainage ward, tried to shatter the altar screen to abduct you, and nearly injured the royal daughters of the Emperor.”

A cold, ruthless curve touched Gu Ling’s soft pink lips as she smoothed her pale-lavender outer cloak over her white temple vestments.

Even with her womb still hot, heavy, and throbbing with Alaric’s seed inside her belly, her mind was crystal clear. If Feng Xiao managed to corner her elders and shout wild accusations about Alaric, it would only cause annoying complications for her Master’s plans. Better to label Feng Xiao and his three accomplices as brazen temple-raiders before they could open their mouths!

“Leave it to me, Master,” Gu Ling whispered devotionally, rising onto her tiptoes to press a quick, passionate kiss to Alaric’s lips before turning toward the private spiral stairs that led up to the cathedral’s front viewing balcony, where Princesses Huang Mei and Huang Hua were already waiting with Saintess Ceanna.

Down in the shattered outer prayer hall, Corbin grabbed Feng Xiao by the collar of his scorched blue robe, hauling the dazed Flame King backward toward the high stained-glass windows on the western wall!

“Move, Feng Xiao!” Corbin snarled, his dark-iron Battle Aura flaring to knock aside a falling marble beam as the heavy bronze front doors of the cathedral trembled under the approaching footsteps of multiple Half-Step Martial Emperors. “That crystal partition is linked directly to the city’s leyline! And the Gu Clan’s eight Half-Step Martial Emperors are three breaths away from walking through that front gate! If we get trapped inside this hall by eight Half-Step Emperors, none of us is walking out alive!”

“But Ling’er and Cai Wei are right behind that glass!” Feng Xiao shouted hoarsely, blood dripping from the corners of his mouth as he looked back at the golden-lit crystal window—which had now turned completely opaque so they could no longer see inside! “You heard how strangely they spoke! That bastard Alaric is right behind that wall controlling their minds!”

“Even if he is, we can’t break a Seventh-Tier fortress array with eight Half-Step Martial Emperors cutting off our heads from behind!” Qin Wu hissed, his green soul-fire wrapping around his gaunt frame as he shattered the thirty-foot stained-glass window on the western wall with a blast of ghostly claws. “Out the window to the canal roofs—now!”

Seeing that lingering for even two more seconds meant certain death, Long Chen cursed furiously, grabbed Feng Xiao’s other arm, and launched himself alongside Corbin and Qin Wu straight through the shattered stained-glass window out into the misty night air above the Southern Canal!

The very instant the four Peak Martial Kings burst through the high glass window and landed atop the glazed blue tiles of the outer temple colonnade, the heavy bronze doors below blasted wide open!

Eight towering figures in star-embroidered gray robes—led by the white-bearded Elder Gu Shan of the Gu Clan—shot into the air above the courtyard like eight rising meteors, flanked on the left and right by the four Half-Step Martial Emperor Royal Guards protecting Imperial Princesses Huang Mei and Huang Hua!

At the exact same moment, high up on the golden balcony overlooking the courtyard, the silk curtains parted.

Princess Gu Ling stepped out onto the balustrade between Imperial Princess Huang Mei and Imperial Princess Huang Hua, with Saintess Ceanna standing serenely beside them in her glowing white mitre and robes.

Seeing Gu Ling step out onto the high balcony under the lantern light, Feng Xiao’s heart leaped into his throat. Pulling off the tattered black hood that covered his face so Gu Ling could see him clearly, Feng Xiao opened his mouth to shout across the courtyard with all his lung power:

“Ling’er! It’s me, Feng Xiao! Tell Elder Gu Shan to stop! That scholar Alaric is—!”

Before Feng Xiao’s voice could carry ten yards across the courtyard, Princess Gu Ling raised her slender hand on the balcony—and at a subtle signal from her fingers, Saintess Ceanna tapped her golden staff against the balcony floor, unleashing a ringing, amplified wave of sacred sound that completely drowned out Feng Xiao’s shout beneath Gu Ling’s clear, echoing cry:

“Elder Gu Shan! Royal Protectors!” Gu Ling’s crystalline voice rang out across the entire Southern Canal District, trembling with Oscar-worthy outrage and fright as she pointed straight at Feng Xiao, Corbin, Long Chen, and Qin Wu on the colonnade roof! “Those four thieves broke through the rear drainage wards of the inner sanctum while Princess Huang Mei, Princess Huang Hua, and I were disrobed for the sacred purifying prayer! They tried to smash the altar screen to seize us, and that man in the blue robes is using an illusion mask to mimic a friend’s face to confuse you! Do not listen to their wicked tongues—strike them down!”

standing on the colonnade roof fifty yards away, Feng Xiao froze as if a spear of absolute-zero ice had been driven straight through his chest.

He wasn’t wearing an illusion mask.

That was his real face—the face of the boy who had just slaughtered a Peak Sixth-Rank Magma Drake in a burning pit and carried its core eight hundred miles through the snow for her!

And yet, standing up on that balcony with her fair cheeks still flushed pink from whatever had just happened behind that altar screen, his beloved Ling’er had looked right into his bare, bleeding face and told her eight Half-Step Martial Emperor clan elders that he was a peeping thief wearing a fake mask to abduct her!

‘Why… Ling’er, why?!’ Feng Xiao’s mind went blank with a pain so sharp and suffocating that his eight Heavenly Flames flickered and nearly died around his fists. ‘Can’t you recognize my aura?! What did that monster Alaric do to your soul behind that curtain to make you point your own clan elders’ swords at my heart?!’

“How dare four filthy rats peep upon our Gu Clan’s Princess and the Imperial Daughters and even dare to impersonate Young Master Feng!”

Elder Gu Shan’s white beard bristled like steel needles as his Half-Step Martial Emperor cultivation erupted into the night sky, turning a half-mile radius of clouds above Cloud-Mist City into a swirling vortex of crushing silver starlight!

Beside him, the Third and Fourth Elders of the Gu Clan and the two lead Half-Step Martial Emperor Royal Guards did not waste a single breath asking questions. To them, Princess Gu Ling’s word was sacred law, and seeing four bloodstained men bursting out of the women-only inner sanctum at midnight was all the proof they needed!

“Star-Fallen Heaven Art: Nine Silver Meteors Crush the Earth!” Elder Gu Shan roared, thrusting both withered palms downward from the sky!

Instantly, the ambient spiritual energy above the Southern Canal compressed into nine house-sized meteors of solid, blazing silver Star Qi that plummeted downward at blinding speed, locking down the spatial air around the temple colonnade so the four men could not even leap sideways!

At the same time, the two Half-Step Martial Emperor Royal Guards flanking Elder Gu Shan drew their heavy golden dragon-sabers and slashed in a crossed pattern through the mist:

“Imperial Dragon Guard Art: Golden Cross Purging Slash!”

SHING—BOOOOOM!

Two hundred-foot blades of condensed golden saber-qi screamed across the night sky right beneath the nine falling silver meteors, turning the entire colonnade roof into a lethal kill-zone capable of vaporizing ordinary Peak Martial Kings on contact!

“Feng Xiao, snap out of it or we’re all dead!”

Corbin’s furious roar snapped Feng Xiao out of his daze half a second before the golden saber-qi and silver meteors struck!

Knowing that holding back even a single drop of power against five attacking Half-Step Martial Emperors meant instant annihilation, all four Peak Martial Kings bit the tips of their tongues, spitting mouthfuls of bright red life-blood essence directly onto their weapons and energy cores!

“Sea God Blood-Burn: Ten-Thousand Fathom Tsunami Shield!” Long Chen bellowed, slamming his coral-scale gauntlets together as a massive, spiraling wall of deep-black abyssal ocean water rose up from the adjacent canal to wrap around the four of them!

“Netherworld Soul Lantern: Hundred-Ghost Bone Armor!” Qin Wu shrieked, uncorking his black soul-lantern and releasing three hundred hoarded Martial Grandmaster resentful spirits that wove into a howling dome of black bone-plates above the water shield!

“War-God Overdrive: Mountain-Cleaving Heavy Bastion!” Corbin roared, burning ten thousand System Points in an instant to coat his black greatsword in a ten-foot layer of crimson-black kinetic force as he swung upward!

And in the center of the group, with tears of blood streaking down his cheeks as he tore his gaze away from Gu Ling’s cold silhouette on the balcony, Feng Xiao slammed both bloodstained palms together and compressed four of his Heavenly Flames into a volatile, spinning sphere:

“Angry Buddha Four-Flame Lotus: Detonate!”

KRA-KOOOOOOOM!

The collision of the four Peak Martial Kings’ life-burning techniques against the nine silver meteors and the golden cross-slash of the Half-Step Martial Emperors lit up the entire southern sky of Cloud-Mist City like a miniature sun!

A titanic shockwave of silver starlight, four-colored fire, black ocean water, and shattered bone-fragments tore the entire outer colonnade roof off the cathedral gardens and blasted a hundred-yard trench down the middle of the Southern Canal!

Even with all four of their ultimate defensive and counter-attack moves combined, the sheer realm gap between four Peak Martial Kings and a squad of Half-Step Martial Emperors was too vast to bridge head-on.

The four-colored fire lotus and the black water wall shattered after holding for barely two breaths!

“Guh—!”

All four men were slammed downward like ragdolls by the remaining force of Elder Gu Shan’s silver starlight palm!

Long Chen’s left shoulder plate cracked open in a spray of blood; Qin Wu’s black soul-lantern suffered a violent fracture across its casing; Corbin’s arms went numb to the bone as three ribs snapped inside his chest; and Feng Xiao took a grazing hit from the golden dragon-saber Qi across his back that laid open a deep, bleeding gash from his left shoulder blade down to his waist!

Yet instead of fighting the downward momentum, Corbin and Feng Xiao used the crushing downward blast of Elder Gu Shan’s palm to rocket straight down into the churning, blasted depths of the Southern Canal’s subterranean river-culvert!

“After them into the underground river!” Elder Gu Shan shouted, diving toward the boiling canal crater alongside the other elders!

Down in the pitch-black, roaring underground river current thirty feet beneath the city streets, however, Corbin pulled a high-grade silver talisman from his inner pocket—a One-Time Void-Current Escape Talisman that had cost him another fifteen thousand System Points—and crushed it in his bleeding palm while Qin Wu detonated a Blood-Mist Decoy Orb that split their spiritual signatures into twenty different directions down the subterranean rapids!

WHOOSH—FLASH!

Wrapped in the silver spatial current of the talisman, the four battered, bleeding prodigies were swept five miles down the subterranean river channel in the blink of an eye, bursting out into the rushing rapids of the Mist-Dragon River three miles outside the southern walls of Cloud-Mist City before Elder Gu Shan’s spiritual sense could lock onto which tunnel they had taken!

Up on the high, lantern-lit balcony of the Pure Maiden Holy Temple, Elder Gu Shan returned ten minutes later, bowing his head in frustration before Princess Gu Ling and the two Imperial Princesses.

“Forgive this old servant, Young Mistress, Your Highnesses,” Elder Gu Shan reported grimly. “Those four masked villains burned their own blood essence and used an ancient spatial-water talisman to flee through the subterranean river conduits. However, all four of them suffered severe internal injuries and broken bones from my Nine Silver Meteors palm and the Royal Guards’ sabers. Moreover, Royal Protector Captain Zhao recognized the battle auras of two of the fleeing men!”

Beside Gu Ling, Imperial Princess Huang Mei’s dark eyes flashed with cold, regal authority as she stepped up to the balcony rail.

“Speak, Captain Zhao!” Huang Mei commanded. “Which two dogs dared join an assault on our royal persons?”

“Reporting to Princess Huang Mei!” the Half-Step Martial Emperor Royal Guard captain bowed low. “The deep-sea water aura and the ghost-lantern soul qi belonged without question to the two pardoned warlords marching along the western highway—Sea Devil Long Chen and Soul Eater Qin Wu!”

Hearing this, Princess Huang Hua snapped her peacock fan shut with a sharp smile, exchanging a triumphant look with her sister Huang Mei and Gu Ling.

“Long Chen and Qin Wu were pardoned by Royal Father on the strict condition that they march their forces straight north to the Rimefrost border under General Bao’s supervision,” Princess Huang Mei declared coldly, her voice carrying across the courtyard so every guard and temple acolyte heard her clearly. “Yet tonight, they deserted their military column, sneaked into Cloud-Mist City with two accomplices, and attacked the Imperial Princesses and Envoy Princess Gu Ling of the Gu Clan! Captain Zhao—send an express Eight-Hundred-Mile Dragon Warrant to General Bao at Iron-Blood Pass and to the Ministry of War in the Imperial Capital tonight! Declare Long Chen, Qin Wu, and their two accomplices guilty of high treason, strip their military commands, and place a hundred-thousand-spirit-stone imperial bounty on all four of their heads!”

“Yes, Your Highness!” Captain Zhao saluted and flew off toward the royal relay station at once.

Standing quietly on the balcony as the cool night breeze brushed her pale-lavender robes, Princess Gu Ling placed her slender hand gently over her lower stomach—where the warm, heavy fullness of Alaric’s seed still rested peacefully inside her womb—and turned with a soft, devoted smile to walk back down into the inner sanctum where her Master was waiting on the velvet cushions.