Chapter 37 - 35

Zero woke up early in the morning as to examine the changes of his body. He looked at the full-length mirror as he confirmed, the third princess said to him last time when he woke up from coma that his eyes were originally black as coal and his hair was plainly raven black but now he had a scarlet red eyes and a raven black hair with silver white fringes.

What did truly happen to him?

He must seek the third princess as to affirm what he heard from them a week ago. Did they knew his identity? What connection did he had to the Circus?

'Right. The Circus, I need to find informations about them.'

The young man was about to clothe himself in order to go to the library to seek an information. The Xiu Royal Family had their own private library inside the main palace and it was a very useful source to look into as it was a thousand years old library as the compilation of informations dated back from the earlier ancestors of the royal family.

He was in deep thoughts until he was awaken from a loud shout of a maid, just right outside his bedroom door. He used his qi perception to see the happenings outside. The qi perception could detect heat energy as his visual were full of variation of colors, a red color for a maid who was on the floor weeping, green with a tinge of yellow was splashed on the wall outside as colors of green were spreading on the floor, there was a body stature composed of orange color turning into yellow shade near the weeping maid and gray spiky things with a hint of blue shade was plunged on that body stature.

Heat energy represented the red color that he saw and it was normal for people to have heat energy because they were alive. He could see as well a orange color which represented a dead 'object' due to the heat energy slowly leaving and splashes of green and other colors which meant other additional objects/stuff.

Zero hurriedly walked out from his room, knowing that a crime happened just outside his door. Why didn't he know it? It was just near him and outside.

"What happened here?"

The weeping maid suddenly went back from reality as she ran away from the young man, going to report the scene to the head guard but it was no use as the King himself went to the scene with his two daughters, the First Princess and the Second Princess.

"Your highness and your majesty!" Greeted the young man and the maid. Xiu Jia just smiled at Zero in responds while the first princess who was Xiu Meihui had a cold expression as she didn't even glance at the young man.

The king opened his mouth as he asked questions, "What happened here, Zero? I was in the study room as I heard this servant's shout."

Even though the study room was a hundred meters away, King Xiuwei would totally heard it as he was an Immortal realm martial practitioner.

"Your majesty, I just opened my door to see what happened outside as the maid awaken me from my sleep." He would not say that the maid disturbed him from checking himself up, that would not be a good thing.

Footsteps were suddenly heard as the crown prince with several palace guards neared their location.

"What happened here, your majesty?" Xiu Changming asked the king.

The dead person was a maid and from the looks of its uniform, she was a personal maid. Ice spikes impaled on her body as she was beheaded. The head was nowhere to be found because it only left the lifeless body. The identity of the personal maid was not yet determined.

"Who brought a mine stone? Use the mine stone in order to know the statistics of the body," the crown prince commanded the palace guards with him. One of the palace guards stepped up as he had a mine stone on him.

"Suyin

Sex: female

Time of death: 7:45 am

Cause of death: impaled by an unidentified power"

The mine stones of the palace guards, not only could identify dead bodies' statistics but it recorded the people who were inputted on it. Because the mine stones that were being used by the palace guards were from the royal household, it would be convenient that every servants working inside the palace would be inputted in every mine stones that the palace guards had.

'Suyin? Isn't it Xiu Ying's personal maid?' Zero thought.

"Suyin? Where did I heard that name?" The second princess wondered but suddenly her smiling expression had turned sunny.

"Oh, right! It's my dear sister's personal maid!"

Witnessing the unfolded scene while looking at the ice spikes, the king sighed, "Changming, as a crown prince, I let you handle this. I'll go now to look for the third princess, she would be sad if she know this."

"Now they left, let's see what truly happened!" The excited voice of Xiu Jia stated as she wanted to examine the dead body.

"No, second older sister. Don't bother yourself to these disgusting things." The crown prince disapproved and turned his attention to Zero.

Truthfully, Xiu Changming doesn't like Zero, he hated this young man as he made his younger sister obsessed with him and he was not someone he wanted to be with Xiu Ying.

'Xiu Ying deserves best, she deserves a less dangerous person.'

"Guards! Apprehend this two suspects."

The young man didn't resist as he knew that the crown prince was venting his hatred towards him, he would clashed with him sometimes, this method was familiar with Zero. He was framed, too, last year for stealing a jewelry of the third princess and the crown prince was upset to this as Xiu Ying defended him. It was just truly a child's play to Zero.

Currently, is this situation part of a scheme of the crown prince or a serious matter?

The young man doubted the former as he knew that the crown prince wouldn't sacrifice a life unless it would be the young man's life. By looking at the scene, a culprit was easily drawn from the young man's head, he just needed evidences to prove his point.

While being escorted by the palace guards to the dungeon prison, suddenly the maid who were accompanying them, cried and her body spasmed. The maid's body was slowly turning into ice as she cried for help.

"Don't touch her!" The crown prince warned the palace guards who were about to apprehend the servant.

In the last moments of the maid, she coincidentally stared at Zero while she mouthed something and because her throat was frozen, she wasn't able to voice it out but the genius young man was able to lip read her words. A tear fell from the maid's eye and it shattered onto the ground followed with her body cracking.

"Hide! It will explode!" The young man shouted as he used a shield from his spatial storage while pouring a bit of fire energy on it. The palace guards summoned their qi energy to build up a wall for the crown prince.

Ice spikes shot out from the explosion and it attacked their shields. The ice spikes that went to impale into Zero's shield melted in a blink of an eye.

After the explosion, the young man withdrew the shield and the palace guards did as well.

"Almost there," Zero whispered to himself but he felt a glare from the crown prince.

"You planned this. Guards, seize him!"

The young man inwardly sighed at the obviousness of this crown prince. Even though he was known as a remarkable heir to the throne, he would usually be stupid infront of Zero, just to sent him away from Xiu Ying.

---

In the dark monitoring room, Zero crossed his legs as he comfortably rested himself at the dark room with a small lamp of light on the top of his head that sometimes would sway and a wooden table infront of him with nothing on it.

He didn't know if how many hours did he spent here or might be days. Fortunately, he could went on without eat as he was now at the Median realm Middle stage, the world energy here at this place was scarce as he was not able to easily advance from the next cultivation realm unlike when he was at the black space.

But still food was a delicacy. How many hours or days were they planning to starved him?

The young man tried to summoned or called out the black space but it was useless as it didn't responded to him, he couldn't recall what did he do to encounter that black space, might be just a luck of chance.

'I'll try to summon it again.'

He closed his eyes as he begun sensing the small hint of world energy on the surroundings. The four energies would went in his body but the most fastest of them all was the fire energy as it was being absorbed by his body with no difficulty while the others were a little bit slower.