The response in the council was silence. However… that was a response in and of itself.
The internal conflict had been bubbling up for a while, and this was the first time it was suddenly thrust out into the open. And yet, the result wasn't the carnage everyone was expecting—that spoke volumes…
Because it meant none of them were yet as desperate as the Imperial Wind Lineage.
The Imperial Wind Lineage Patriarch couldn't help but laugh when he heard the silence. He laughed so uproariously that the winds howled and the pillars that held up the ceiling in the depths of darkness shook as though they might collapse at any moment.
His laughter was entirely without amusement, but it lacked despair as well. It was more filled with madness—the madness of a man who could only watch the empire his Ancestors had built slowly collapse within his own hands.
It was the worst sort of fate.
