MTL - Starting Off With A Blacksmith Workshop - Chapter 268 magical performance

She was born into a powerful family of the nobility, a blue-blooded aristocrat as capable as any man. He rose from humble origins up the military ranks, an iron-blooded knight with high ambitions. A transaction for power severed her from her childhood sweetheart. A tardy encounter was the beginning of his and her vow to meet life and death under heaven, standing shoulder to shoulder.

Political intrigue, dynastic succession struggles. He trampled through it all in the toil of becoming emperor.

Old enmities became new disputes, concerning life and death of entire families. She entered once more into the palace, changing the entire political climate of their world.

Meeting once again, they had become strangers. The peach blossom were all fallen, no more than a golden age grown cold.

- Description from Novelupdates

I despised her. I despised how she schemed to get married to me. I despised her because of her arrogance.

“Li Rui, you don't know how many times I have wished to kill you.”

But all of this was my illusion. Everything was a mysterious trap of lies. A trap that was laid to trap me.

“Rui, I want to protect you from this whole world. I will not ask you to love me.....just don't hate me. Hmm....”

The story of a lover that was never destined to get the girl he loved but his fate led him to her.

[Beef buns: Can effectively replenish physical strength, enhance fitness, and are safe to eat.]Hungry Tain Lin looked at the cow dung in front of him and couldn't help but fall into contemplation.Is this cow dung or a beef bun?To eat, or not to eat? This is a question.

“The missing ingredient is a test subject with Royal Blood...”Raven Kyzer, a Commoner boy, grew up in an orphanage along with his twin sister, after losing their mother at a young age, having never met their father.After being discovered to possess Royal blood, the twins are abducted by the Church of Persona. Raven is used as a test subject in an ancient form of Forbidden Magic, known as the Homunculus Ritual, while his sister goes missing in the clutches of the church.The Homunculus Ritual is conducted to turn Raven into a powerful but mindless Monster, a loyal weapon for the church with no sense of free will...but something goes wrong, the ritual fails to destroy Raven's mind and he escapes the clutches of the church.Furious at being turned into a Monster, Raven swears revenge against the church, determined to make them pay for what they did to him, as well as to rescue his sister from their clutches.But there's only so much he can do by himself, even with the new powers he gained through the Homunculus Ritual...that's when he has a fateful encounter with the nation's most wanted criminals, a group known as The Irregulars, who, like Raven, have their own reasons to despise and go after the church, as well as the corrupt Nobility that oppresses the Commoners.With their goals aligned, Raven decides to join The Irregulars, taking the first step on his long, arduous path to revenge...