The Crippled Son-in-law? Try Immortal Emperor

005

The shadow of the Lin clan's inner archive building stretched like a dark claw across the stone pavement. Lin Feng slipped through the narrow wooden window frame, his broken staff clasped tightly in his pale, trembling hand.

His heart pounded violently against his ribs, driven not by fear for his own life, but by desperation. He needed to find where they were holding Nina, to see if his little girl was still breathing.

If he could just find her secret cell and rescue her tonight, he would finally be free to tear this entire estate to the ground. He pressed his back against a cold wooden shelf, holding his breath as footsteps passed outside.

Suddenly, a freezing, razor-sharp edge made of pure, condensed starlight was pressed directly against his throat. The temperature in the dark aisle plummeted instantly, frost creeping over his tattered collar.

"Do not move a single muscle, thief," a cold, pristine voice whispered directly into his ear. Lin Feng turned his eyes slightly, meeting the gaze of a woman wearing a high-tier veil.

It was Lanying, the exiled Holy Saintess of the Zenith Empire, her silver robes shimmering faintly in the darkness. Her high-tier spiritual pupils flashed with a sudden, intense light as she looked deep into his body.

The Saintess gasped softly, her starlight blade trembling against his skin as she retreated a frantic step in shock. "You... your meridians! You possess the coiled power of the Primordial Dragon Core!"

"Who are you?" Lin Feng hissed, his voice sounding like a freezing wind from the deepest underworld as he gripped his staff. "Speak quietly, or I will collapse this entire floor onto your head."

"You're the son-in-law," Lanying whispered, her beautiful eyes wide with absolute, unyielding disbelief. "You're Lin Feng. The entire city thinks you were dissolved into liquid sludge inside the Ashen Pits five days ago."

"What I am is none of your business," Lin Feng muttered, turning his back to look for the maps. "Leave this place before I decide to test my core on your starlight magic."

"I am not your enemy, Lin Feng," Lanying said hurriedly, stepping into his path to block him. "I have been tracking the dark energy anomaly from the warehouse explosion, and it led me straight to you."

"I am looking into the regional elites who secretly funded the corrupt priesthood that stole my imperial throne," she explained. "And my investigation led me to a world-shattering truth about your past."

Lin Feng stopped dead in his tracks, his entire body freezing as a sudden, terrible premonition gripped his soul. "My past? What do you know about my past, Saintess?"

"Six years ago, during the Divine Blessing Ceremony," Lanying began, her voice turning deeply solemn and filled with pity. "The unique, magical poison that slaughtered your first wife, your parents, and your entire bloodline..."

"Do not speak of that night!" Lin Feng growled, his knuckles turning pure white as his fingernails cut into his palms. The memory of the blood-slicked ceremonial hall flashed before his eyes like a burning nightmare.

"You need to hear this, Lin Feng!" Lanying insisted, grabbing his tattered sleeve with desperate urgency. "The poison used that night was Ashen Ghost-Rot. It is a forbidden substance exclusively refined by Patriarch Lin!"

The words struck Lin Feng's mind like a physical blow, making his vision blur as his heart stopped beating. "What did you say? Patriarch Lin? The leader of this clan?"

"Yes!" Lanying cried out softly, tears of sympathy welling in her eyes. "Patriarch Lin orchestrated the total slaughter of your original family because your pure bloodline was required to initiate his forbidden immortality rituals!"

"He then played the role of a savior, forcing Muyao to marry you," she revealed, her voice shaking with deep resentment. "It was a twisted plot to keep the sole surviving child, Nina, close by until her rare Aether-Heart physique matured for harvest!"

"Her heart, which is the absolute core ingredient for his immortality potion, will be fully ripe for use at the Grand Ascension Ceremony," Lanying added urgently, her grip on his arm tightening. "And that ceremony is planned to take place in just two days."

Hearing this, Lin Feng finally understood the sudden, unnatural sickness that had plagued his daughter since the day he entered this cursed family. It was never a natural disease; her very life-force and blood essence were being systematically, cruelly drained by the man he called father-in-law.

The absolute, crushing truth shattered the final boundaries of Lin Feng's suppressed, calcified psychological limits. "Patriarch Lin..." he choked out, a raw, terrifying sound tearing from the deepest depths of his fractured soul.

A primitive, golden-dark fury exploded from his chest as he furiously raised his two hands to the heaven, strong magic hovering wildly around his palms. A terrifying dark tornado instantly manifested above the archive, tearing through the sky and causing immediate panic.

The massive, violent vortex flanged roofing tiles into the air, throwing several patrolling guards off their feet and making the entire estate shake. Lin Feng’s eyes turned entirely blood-red, his skin splitting as his god-like power threatened to erase the city.

"I will kill them all!" Lin Feng shrieked, his voice vibrating with a madness that threatened to rip the world apart. "I will turn this entire empire into a mountain of ash! Xue'er... my family... they murdered them!"

Before his power could completely alert the entire continent, Lanying lunged forward and threw her arms around him, hugging his burning, trembling body tight. A subtle, electric spark of romantic warmth rippled between them as she pressed her chest against his.

"Lin Feng, stop! Calm down, please!" Lanying screamed through the roaring wind of his aura, tears streaming down her face as her heart beat frantically against his. "If you unleash everything now, Patriarch Lin will panic and use Nina as a shield!"

"If you sacrifice your vengeful soul to bring down the heavens right now, your little daughter will not survive!" she cried out, her embrace tightening with genuine, deep emotion. "The strongest figures will shield themselves using others while she dies!"

The mention of Nina’s name acted like a bucket of freezing water, shocking his fractured mind back into reality. The terrifying dark tornado slowly receded, the black clouds in the sky outside thinning back into the winter night.

Lin Feng fell to his knees on the broken wood, gasping for air as a single tear of pure blood rolled down his pale cheek. "My family... they died because of a lie. And I brought my daughter straight into the wolf's den."

Lanying knelt beside him, her gentle hands resting on his trembling, tension-filled shoulders as she looked into his eyes. "We can make them pay, Lin Feng. But we must be smart. We must use their own greed against them."

"I offer you an ironclad alliance," the Saintess stated fiercely, her own eyes burning with a desire for justice. "I will use my high-tier medical contacts to secretly smuggle life-sustaining pills to Nina to keep her stable."

"And in return, you will act as my invisible blade," she proposed, her voice turning ice-cold. "You will help me purge the corrupt priesthood backing Patriarch Lin from the capital, stripping away his political immunity."

Lin Feng slowly looked up, his blood-red eyes fading back into a freezing, bottomless black void of absolute, calculation-driven patience. "Keep my daughter alive, Lanying. That is all I ask of you."

"And the Lin clan?" Lanying asked softly, watching him stand up and lean back on his weathered wooden staff.

"I will play the cripple a little longer," Lin Feng whispered, a dark, terrifying smile playing on his pale lips. "But when the Grand Ascension Ceremony arrives, I will ensure their path to immortality becomes their eternal execution ground."

Suddenly, the heavy footsteps of a major guard patrol echoed from the ground floor, their torches illuminating the broken stairs below. They had magically traced the sudden, intense source of the tornado directly to this exact point, their weapons drawn.