55 Killing a character or not? (1/1)

There's someone who wants this story to be darker. So I think of killing someone close to the protagonist, but I'm very hesitant to do this because this character is very important to the point that if I killed this character. I need to rewrite all of the chapters after the prologue.

That would take a lot of time before I can re-post it.

This Character is Zhu Songtian, and there are two consequences that the story would take a hit if I killed him.

1. No one would be able to watch over the eastern border that connect to many big empires that wants to swallow the Great Phoenix Empire, so Tian Xiulan needs to watch over it in his steed.

2. That's mean no Lemon scene and the whole event at the start of volume 2 need to change.

If possible I don't want to kill him there's a lot of work awaiting me if I do that. So, If no one can convince me, I'm not gonna kill him for the sake of the story to be darker.