A moment passed, and after Audley finished listening to Kevin's narration, his throat was so shocked that his throat felt dry, as if seven or eight dynamite packets blasted out a piece of gold star in front of his eyes.

"Mrs. Donna Sect!?"

"How could she?"

Audley pressed his temples blankly.Even though Donna and Xie Yuduo have been at odds for many years, she also has complaints about the military, but she doesn't seem like a person who can collaborate with the enemy and treason...

Kevin said helplessly: "Your Excellency..."

The silver-haired young man's eyes darkened as he pinched the ruby between his fingers.

As the head of a noble family who has seen strong winds and waves and has been exposed to more undercurrents, he can detect the bad situation more deeply than Kevin.

"...It's okay, you're doing well."

Audley closed his eyes, and then regained his composure.He supported Kevin on the shoulder: "Next, you immediately take this diamond to the military to explain the situation, and let them check if there is any abnormality in the diamond."

Audley turned around and called, "Horn!"

The butler of the Lance family ran over in small steps: "Yes, Your Excellency."

Audley pushed Kevin: "Take this kid to Lieutenant General Luther and take care of him. Then find someone to drive me an aircraft and four guards."

Kevin's heart was beating wildly, he turned his head in a panic: "Lord Lance, you want to..."

"I'm going after Mrs. Donna." Audley patted Kevin, "Don't worry, I'm just testing the situation."

Horn heard some ominous premonition from his tone, and looked at his master worriedly.

But years of well-trained old housekeeper did not ask questions, but turned around and left with Kevin who was still in a daze.

Audley also took two steps in the opposite direction, and suddenly squeezed his wrists hidden under the white silk gloves, "...and, Horn."

The silver-haired young man turned his face coldly, and opened his lips: "Don't talk too much in front of the lady, tell her that I will be home later."

White Emerald Palace, Queen's bedroom.

One of the most famous main rooms in the palace has not been used for a long, long time since Empress Dowager Sylph voluntarily moved out fifty-two years ago.

Even so, the robots and specialized cleaning personnel in the palace still clean it up every day, mopping the floor and cleaning the table, opening the windows to dry the quilt, and keeping it ready to move in at any time.

Now, there is finally someone in this bedroom.

Crown Prince Lai An sat on the sofa indifferently, with his spine straight and his eyes straight ahead: "...So, how long are you going to be angry?"

"Angry? Do you think I'm angry with you?"

Jiang Jianming lay sideways on most of the sofa, his head resting on the crown prince's knee, and his eyes were full of lovelessness, "I'm just too tired to speak."

The luxurious thick robe of deep red, bright gold and snow white just now covered him like a blanket.Lai An's palm touched him through the robe, from the spine all the way to the waistline, down and down.

Just after walking down from the top, Jiang Jianming really wanted to grab His Royal Highness and teach him a lesson.

I didn't expect that as soon as my mind was relaxed, I would die first. The brain was starved of oxygen under extreme stress, and this trip was too exciting.

Lai An was too tense for his body, and Jiang Jianming was carried into the empty bedroom by the crown prince to inhale oxygen in a dazed state. When he regained consciousness, he was forced to lie on the sofa again and was not allowed to get up.

"It's okay to be angry," and His Royal Highness the Crown Prince said seriously, "But from today onwards, you will be my Crown Princess, and naturally the future queen."

"...I know." Jiang Jianming said softly.

In fact, he is still in a complicated mood now, he is used to worrying a lot and giving up a lot.Thinking about his current situation again, he couldn't bear to drag His Highness into too deep a trap.

But it was amazing, when Lai An held his hand firmly, at the highest point where the crowd and the brilliance gathered, he really had a trance feeling... that this person could lead him all the way to the end of the darkness.

Lai An added: "If Lin Song is not going to marry, you should live here."

Jiang Jianming was helpless: "Then how can it be done, what if His Majesty's heart springs up one day?"

Lai An: "Lin Song said she wouldn't."

Jiang Jianming: "..."

"Of course, there are still some basic duties of a princess..." Lai An said quietly, her moving palm fell on Jiang Jianming's waist, and she stopped, "You have to fulfill it."

His Highness just thought about it for a while, and quickly determined the scope of the "obligation".

Lai An said in an affirmative tone: "In front of me, you have to be good and listen to me more."

Jiang Jianming blinked in surprise, then grabbed His Highness's clothes and laughed.

He laughed for a long time before saying, you are so cute.

Lai An doesn't understand what he's laughing at, but it's a good thing that Jiang Jianming is no longer depressed and no longer angry.

So His Highness's expression also became joyful, and he pulled Jiang Jianming's finger, which was playing with his dress, to his lips, and kissed the fingertip.

At this time, the door was knocked.

This is the queen's bedroom, and it is impossible for outsiders to approach without permission. Lai An looked at Jiang Jianming with a questioning look.

The latter immediately sat up: "It's Miss Diana from the Lance family. She said she wanted to ask me for something, so I asked her to come here."

The door opened, and Diana walked in cautiously holding the hem of her skirt. She was startled when she saw Lai An, and quickly slid to the corner like a little rabbit: "Your Highness, Your Highness..."

Jiang Jianming beckoned Diana to sit down: "Don't be afraid, no one wants to eat you, why do you want me?"

Diana sat down dawdly, and said in a low voice, "The information you asked me to pay attention to last time..."

Lai An turned her head sharply: "What?"

Jiang Jianming frowned first, then suddenly remembered - after looking up materials in the library that day, he asked Diana to help him pay attention to whether there was any strange information about crystal particles or alien creatures during the holy battle!

He leaned his upper body forward suddenly: "Is there anything!"

Diana glanced hesitantly at His Royal Highness the Crown Prince next to her.

Jiang Jianming took Lai An's arm and brought him over: "It's okay, Your Highness will listen to it too."

Diana nodded, her expression a little excited: "Well, I really found a very strange phenomenon, how did you guess it?"

As she spoke, she inserted a chip she brought into the wrist phone, and a light blue virtual screen popped up.Diana swiped the floor and stretched the screen so that Jiang Jianming and Lai An could see it clearly.

"The strangeness I found is actually related to the Crystal Chaos Tide."

When it comes to her professional field, Diana is no longer shy and stammering, and said seriously: "First of all, you should have a basic understanding of Crystal Chaos."

"I know." Lai An replied, frowning and looking at Jiang Jianming, "Why did you start checking this again?"

——The so-called Crystal Chaos Tide, in a broad sense, refers to the large-scale outbreak of the Crystal Disorder Disease; in a narrow sense, it refers specifically to the period of despair that began in the seventh year of the old imperial calendar and lasted for nearly forty-six years.

In that era, Crystal Disorder Disease was like a demon who didn't know when to come, hovering around everyone.

Even if you don't get involved in the area where the crystal particles are rich, the crystal particles in the human body will spontaneously change from an orderly state to a chaotic state. When this chaos exceeds the threshold that the human body can withstand, it is acute or chronic crystal disorder.

And because the crystal disorder is contagious, the chaotic crystal particles will affect the rest of the orderly crystal particles, so a vicious circle, year after year.

...that was real hell.

No one knows whether they can see the sun tomorrow if they close their eyes and go to sleep tonight.

No one knows whether he has already suffered from a terminal illness when the meal in front of him is finished.

Patients with acute crystal disorder will die tragically in excruciating pain.Patients with chronic crystal disorder have suffered more mental torture: they have to face the approaching death.

But the physical torture will be lighter, and they will choose to kill themselves before the condition deteriorates completely, so as to avoid the continuous pain in the later stage.

It wasn't until the fifty-fourth year of the old imperial calendar that the first generation of crystal particle tranquilizers were developed, which marked the end of this crazy era.

"... Crystal Chaos."

Jiang Jianming's heart sank inexplicably: "Is there any problem?"

Diana brushed back her silver hair in the diamond tiara, and her fingers danced across the screen as rows of new windows and data charts popped up.

"Well... where to start, let's look at this first."

She dragged across one of the windows.It was a line chart that was too monotonous, and it didn't even mark what the horizontal and vertical axes represented. It could only be seen that the data in it showed an upward trend of acceleration.

"——The data of the dead of Crystal Chaos Tide?"

Jiang Jianming and Lai An looked at each other and spoke almost at the same time.

Apparently, both of them have seen this chart countless times, and even took the image to heart.

"Yes." Diana nodded and poked the screen twice.

The vertical and horizontal axes and scales emerged. This is a statistical map of the number of crystal chaos deaths between the fifth year and the fifty-sixth year of the old imperial calendar, that is, the crystal chaos tide era and the two years before and after.

Obviously, the later the year, the more serious the crystal chaos tide, and the faster the increase in the number of dead.

"We're going to look at this next."

Diana dragged out another window and explained in her soft voice: "Your Highness the Crown Prince should know that our new empire has always attached great importance to the problem of crystal chaos, and there will be statistics on the number of crystal chaos patients every year."

"Ordinary people can't see this kind of data. I asked my brother to help me, so I worked hard to get it."

"If you make a graph of these data..."

She tapped the screen quickly, "Look, that's it."

A very long line chart appeared, and Diana selected a certain area, which was from the first year to the twelfth year of the Xindi calendar.

Then clip and drag.

The expressions of Jiang Jianming and Lai An suddenly changed.

Diana pasted this small line chart to the front of the line chart of the dead in the Old Empire Crystal Chaos that she saw first.

That is, the period from before the outbreak of the Crystal Chaos Tide to the official outbreak.

The direction of the two broken lines almost coincides completely.

Suddenly, Jiang Jianming's ears buzzed, and he felt that the blood all over his body was frozen into ice.

He pinched his palm in disbelief, "How is it possible, at least after the second holy battle, there are enough real crystal mine resources for making tranquilizers... Why is the patient data still rising!?"

Lai An turned to look at him, and said to himself: "Now in the books of the empire, the victory of the second holy battle in the fifth year of the new emperor's calendar is regarded as the turning point for the reduction of crystal chaos. Three years ago, the leader taught me the same way."

The crown prince pointed to the chart: "But the real turning point is the twelfth year of the new imperial calendar, not five years."

Jiang Jianming said hoarsely: "When ordinary people are in it, it is difficult to accurately detect when a disease that lasted for hundreds of years will disappear, so..."

Lai An narrowed her eyes and said coldly, "So the emperor is lying, she wants to hide something from the people."

Diana raised her face, her eyelashes were trembling like butterfly wings, and she was obviously at a loss on her delicate face.

"I don't know what's going on, but," she trembled, "it was very possible back then...in fact, it was only one step away from the second eruption of the Crystal Chaos Tide."

Only one step away?

In the early days of the new empire, was it only one step away from the hell that had been sealed in history?

Jiang Jianming's heart was beating like a drum for a moment, and amidst the turbulent pushing and pushing, he suddenly thought: Which step is missing?

Judging from the broken line chart of patients with crystal disorder, the number of patients after seven years in the new imperial calendar has been significantly suppressed, so the variable lies in this year.And that year...

The room was eerily quiet, as if the flow of time had stopped.

until his hand was held.Jiang Jianming turned his face away and saw Lai An's calm emerald eyes.

"At that time, the tranquilizer hadn't been developed to the second generation. Only one major event happened in the twelve years of the New Emperor's Calendar."

The crown prince said in a deep voice: "The fifth and last holy battle."

Jiang Jianming clenched his back teeth——

At first, he just wanted to find out the reason why the Great Emperor and Lai An of that year had to go to Crystal Nest desperately, so as to prevent Yin Beidou from turning into a shrinking strategy... that's all.

Unexpectedly, what was revealed unexpectedly was a more treacherous corner of Miyun's history.

According to what Diana said, in the early days of the establishment of the new empire, there were already signs of the outbreak of the second wave of crystal chaos, and the gate of hell was slowly opening.

At that time, Emperor Kaios led 200,000 imperial elites to Crystal Nest.

The emperor did not come back, and neither did the two hundred thousand people.

Then, the crystal chaos tide stopped!?

"Not only the last holy battle, but also all the expeditionary fleets that were speculated to have arrived at the crystal nest," Lai An said meaningfully, "the whole army was wiped out, very tragic."

"What do you think?" Jiang Jianming's throat was so dry that it was difficult for him to speak normally. His dark eyes looked straight at the crown prince, and finally turned to Diana, "what does this mean?"

"I really don't know..." Diana rubbed her arms fiercely, pursed her lips and hugged herself tightly.She looked dazed, which was the instinctive anxiety after pushing open an unknown giant door with her own hands.

"How could this be?" she muttered in a low voice, "Why has no one mentioned it before, doesn't the empire know? Your Majesty..."

"Dididi"

The sudden ringing of the bell made Diana tremble with fright.

Jiang Jianming fixed his eyes on his wrist phone, took a deep breath, cleared his throat: "Sorry, take a call."

"ginger!"

Bemaner's delicate face appeared on the opposite side, with thin cold sweat hanging on her forehead, she spoke hastily.

"I saw Kevin was taken to find Old Marshal Chen by several Jin Riluns. The atmosphere was very strange. It seemed that something had happened! Where are you now?"