How would you feel if you were threatened by your meizi1, who had joined forces with another man?
Chu Murong's feeling was: "Imperial Sister, is it possible that the effects of your medicine have not yet worn off?"
Rong Yi immediately rolled her eyes at him and retorted, "You're the one whose medicine hasn't worn off! Instead of acting like a happy Emperor in the capital, you escape here, asking to be cursed."
Chu Murong screamed bitterly in his heart; being an emperor was not a happy thing at all. Besides, he didn't 'escape' here; he was 'banished' here by someone! A few days ago, Mu Hou2 Daren3 had the good intention of overpraising him, saying that he was more vividly blue than the indigo plant4 and much more capable compared to his Fu Huang5 Daren3. Because of these statements, his jealous and envious Fu Huang5 Daren3 announced that he, Taishang Huang6, would temporarily act on behalf of the Emperor in the administration of the Imperial Court, as the Emperor's body was not well, and drove Chu Murong out of the palace, under the pretext of the 'helping his sister in her search for a husband'.
After leaving the palace, the more he thought about it, the more he felt that he had been set up by his 'loving mother'.
He was even more certain of that idea when he was in this scene at that moment.
Mu Hou2 Daren3 must have expected Yi-er to return to the palace to oust him from the Dragon Chair after the medicinal effects had worn off, right? In order to save face, she had planned to drive him out of the palace so that he and Yi-er could settle it privately in the jianghu7. After all, the act of brother and sister destroying each other was a shameful thing, no matter what family they came from.
Chu Murong secretly repented and said kindly to Rong Yi, "Imperial Sister, it really was an accident."
"Even if it was an accident, what about the order to arrest me? Could that also be an accident? Don't tell me you accidentally stamped your seal on the wanted notice because of a slip of the hand."
"The eunuch is responsible for stamping the seal."
"Chu Murong!" Rong Yi snapped, reminding someone not to try to avoid the issue.
Chu Murong said, "I won't deny it if you want to accuse me of drugging you. But listing you as a wanted criminal is not my doing. Someone even announced that I was in 'poor health' a month ago."
"Really, not you? Don't tell me it was Mu Hou2?"
"How could you even think it was Mu Hou2? Is Mu Hou2 the kind of person who would openly frame someone?"
Rong Yi shook her head. "No. Mu Hou2 likes to play tricks." Her eyes snapped open at the end as if she had been greatly stirred, and she exclaimed, "Could it be Fu Huang5?"
Chu Murong couldn't bear to see the look on his meizi1's face as she struggled to accept this grim fact, so he comforted her: "Maybe Fu Huang5 became worked up because of Mu Hou2."
Rong Yi nodded in understanding at his words. "It's possible." Whenever Fu Huang5 was put into that condition by Mu Hou2, he would do something unbelievable. For example, when Mu Hou2 was so kind-hearted that she casually praised Prime Minister Nie by saying, 'The Prime Minister is doing a great job in taking care of the country and its people', Fu Huang5 made him bedridden for a month. Since then, his concern for the country and the people had diminished, and every time he entered the palace, his first concern was his own life.
At the same time, Chu Murong's heart was filled with many emotions. He didn't know what kind of virtue he had in his last life to be reborn as an emperor in this life.
Seeing that both siblings were deep in thought, Fu Chengfeng opened his mouth helplessly, "Please tell me the story's background first." If he let the two siblings go on like this, he feared they wouldn't get to the point until it was dark. After Rong Yi forced herself on him, nothing she did surprised him. But Chu Murong was the ruler of a country, so how could he let Rong Yi lead him down such an illogical and confusing path?
Fu Chengfeng's words brought Rong Yi back from the sadness of being tricked by both her parents. She glanced at Chu Murong and told the whole story in a very calm tone.
"On my fourteenth birthday, my Imperial Brother, the cold and handsome young man you are looking at now, very 'generously' gave me a Death Exemption Plate8 that he had made with his own hands—don't ask me why he would do that, and I don't know why he had such a strange idea—although I didn't like this piece of plate, it was the Imperial gift, I couldn't refuse it, so I had to take it. When I got up the next day, I felt physically ill; my internal force seemed to be frozen, so I was unable to use it, and my martial arts skills were greatly diminished. The most terrible thing was that my mind became less clear, and my memory of the past was very vague."
Speaking of which, Rong Yi's expression became very lonely, and her charming eyebrows added a bit of her sadness. She glanced at Chu Murong and continued: "Three days later, my memory seems to have been cleared, and there are large blanks in my mind. I told my Mu Hou2 about it. After asking my master, my Mu Hou2 said my health was fine, but I was too idle. I also found that I had become very lazy and had no interest in what I used to be interested in. Until then, if someone hadn't given me an inch and made me want to take a yard9, I might have been such an idle princess for the rest of my life."
"So I still get the credit." Chu Murong interjected very sheepishly.
"It would be a wonder if you had any credit in it!" Rong Yi honestly wanted to spit in his face.
At this time, Fu Chengfeng's face had turned livid. His gaze towards Chu Murong was filled with a murderous aura as if, at any moment, he might move his sword with a side stroke10 and have a life-and-death showdown with him. "What did he do after that?" Fu Chengfeng asked.
Rong Yi: "He took control of my mind."
"It was to instil some good ideas in you." Chu Murong corrected.
Rong Yi kicked him hard without hesitation. "You took advantage of my vague memory by telling me, 'I am your dearest brother whom you respect me so much', 'You are stupid because you do not like to study', 'Your martial arts are mediocre, and it is only due to your luck that you have been able to live until now', and 'You are the most unworthy one in the family, but we still love you'. How dare you still have the face to say that this kind of thinking is a 'good idea'?"
Sweating profusely, Chu Murong argued bitterly, "Judging by your condition at the time, what I said was the truth."
"...... Who put me in that state?" Rong Yi asked rhetorically.
Chu Murong: "That was an accident."
"......" I want to 'accidentally' chop him off with a knife for real. Rong Yi snorted coldly and pointed out, "All accidents are intentional."
"Imperial Sister, you are too paranoid. The truth is actually like this." Against the pressure of being cut by two sharp gazes, Chu Murong explained, "My harem simply cannot afford to keep idle people, and after I found out that you were planning to choose another new consort for me, I administered some medicine to make you become gentle and refined——at least that was my original intention. I hoped that you could stop for a few days, and when I found a way to appoint those girls you had chosen for the trial marriage to someone else, I would cure you. However, despite all my calculations, I hadn't reckoned on my hands shaking when I dispensed the medicine, not to mention the fact that this shaking caused the medicine's effects to change so drastically. After you became an idiot, I also regretted it too. That's why I've been trying to find a way to help you regain your memories so that you can be a human being again.
Regain your memories...... be a human being again......
The corners of Rong Yi's mouth twitched furiously a few times, and she said grumpily, "If you just cut me down with a knife, I'll be a new person in no time, so why do you have to go to such lengths?"
"Cutting my meizi1 with a knife is harmful to my virtue."
"......" Poisoning your meizi1 is not harmful to your virtue?
Seeing the two siblings arguing again, Fu Chengfeng, eager to learn the truth, hurriedly asked, "How did the effects of the medicine lift later?"
Rong Yi raised her eyebrows and replied, "I'm not sure either. I didn't have any strengths back then and felt particularly useless. I was so ashamed of myself that I decided to leave the palace and find the number one husband in the world."
"You were clearly idle in the palace, jumping up and down and almost breaking your leg, and were kicked out of the palace by your parents." Chu Murong was quick to expose his own meizi1's shortcomings.
Rong Yi smiled instead of being angry at his words. Her beautiful eyes seemed to laugh as if she had heard a great, joyful event.
Seeing this reaction, Chu Murong immediately shuddered. He had watched this girl grow up and knew all too well what that smile meant. It meant——she had found something to amuse herself again. Without thinking, Chu Murong knew that this 'amusement' had something to do with him. For an emperor who had been her amusement since childhood, he no longer knew what optimism was.
A noob translator, きつね, translated this noob translation. Please read this chapter at xin-shou.site. If you read this in another location other than the site stated, it has been taken without the translator's permission. Please don't support this kind of act.
But this time, Chu Murong had miscalculated. Rong Yi did nothing earth-shattering. She just smiled and asked him, "Did you leave the palace voluntarily?"
She was good at poking people's sore spots. Chu Murong snorted coolly and countered, "Of course, I did it voluntarily. I am currently conducting a private inspection of the people."
The smile on Rong Yi's face became even brighter when she heard what was being said. "I have already inspected them for you. Your people are in such dire straits."
"Ai." Chu Murong sighed and said in a serious tone, "O Imperial Sister, after experiencing so many things, why are you still so pessimistic?"
Hearing these words, Fu Chengfeng broke into a cold sweat. If Rong Yi's outlook on life were considered pessimistic, no one would dare say they were optimistic.
Compared to Fu Chengfeng's confusion, Rong Yi was much calmer. She smiled and patted Chu Murong's shoulder, saying, "O Imperial Brother, after going through so much, why are you still so blindly optimistic?"
Chu Murong almost spat out a mouthful of black blood. He should have known that he was no match for her. After being her amusement for many years, he should have known that 'silence was golden'.
Fu Chengfeng tried his best to hold back his laughter. He coughed a few times before asking Rong Yi, "Do you remember everything now?"
Rong Yi nodded. "I remember everything. I feel especially alive right now." Her eyes sparkled as she said this as if she wanted to do something to pass the boring time.
In amusement, Fu Chengfeng pulled up the corners of his mouth and asked, "Then you should also remember the things you did to me, right?"
No sooner had he finished speaking that Rong Yi's face turned red to the roots of her ears, and she stammered, "That was...... at that time...... I was in my out-of-control phase. It was an accident."
This idiot actually wants to play dumb. The corners of Fu Chengfeng's mouth slightly twitched as he said with particular seriousness, "All accidents are intentional."
Ugh... Why does that phrase sound familiar? Rong Yi was too ashamed to show her face, so she lowered her head, unable to face the 'victim'.
Fu Chengfeng's words slightly satisfied Chu Murong's desire for revenge, but the pleasure only lasted for a moment. He pulled Rong Yi behind him the next second and said, "Yi-er, don't be afraid. If you said it was an accident, then it was an accident. Isn't he just a man? It's not even a big deal. Let Elder Brother take care of him for you."
Rong Yi was moved and asked tearfully, "Really?"
Chu Murong: "Of course, it's true. A gentleman doesn't go back on his word."
"Imperial Brother, you are too kind to me. Since you are so generous and willing to help me bear this, I have decided not to be angry with you. Isn't it just a little poison? It's no big deal." After Rong Yi finished speaking, with a heartbroken face, she pushed Chu Murong towards Fu Chengfeng and tearfully said, "Big Brother Fu, I owe you for what has happened between us. One for one, I will give you my Imperial Brother, and then we will be even."
Spat up blood.
Spat up a lot of blood.
The above happened in the minds of Fu Chengfeng and Chu Murong.
Chu Murong was petrified, Fu Chengfeng turned to stone, and the world fell silent.
"Brother Fu, let's just laugh off our grievances." Chu Murong squeezed out a very stiff smile from the corner of his mouth.
Laugh, laugh, laugh out loud. Fu Chengfeng finally forced out a smile uglier than crying with a sorrowful heart and squeezed out a word from between his teeth: "OK."
Seeing their reactions, Rong Yi shrugged her shoulders in disinterest and said, "This is no fun."
Fu Chengfeng and Chu Murong had another fit of spitting blood in their heads. A revolutionary friendship soon developed between them.
At that moment, the sound of horses' hooves suddenly came from the distance. The two of them immediately returned to normal, preparing themselves for a fight and had a mutual understanding to stand in front of Rong Yi, sheltering her.
Rong Yi, however, didn't accept their actions and squeezed forward through the gap between them, saying, "My martial arts have been restored."
"You can't use your internal force as you wish yet." Chu Murong explained, "This happened because you killed someone with Qinglong, and its spirit awakened the internal force in your body. However, this awakening is contrary to your body's natural state, so you must properly regulate your body so that it can fully adapt to it, or else you will fall into an uncontrollable state if you rashly use your internal strength." Speaking of 'uncontrollable', Chu Murong paused momentarily before continuing: "During the uncontrollable state, it will amplify all your emotions, and your energy will be more vigorous than usual. When something stimulates you, you will do irrational and extreme things. For example, what have you done to Fu Chengfeng."
Hearing this, Rong Yi had a sudden insight and said to Fu Chengfeng: ''So that's why I did that to you. It was all because you stimulated me."
"......" Black lines filled Fu Chengfeng's face. How could these two siblings make light of what had happened to him?
As the three of them talked, the sound of horses' hooves came closer and closer, and in the blink of an eye, a cavalry line of eighteen appeared in front of them. Rong Yi immediately recognised the leader as Qin Mu'an.
The cavalry stopped five metres in front of the trio.
Rong Yi stepped forward and smiled slightly at him, saying, "Qin Gongzi11, I trust you have been well since we last met."
Qin Mu'an waved his right hand vigorously, and the seventeen horsemen behind him immediately spread out around the three of them, each holding a unique weapon.
Rong Yi had not expected Qin Mu'an to skip the pleasantries and go straight for the kill, so she was slightly taken aback. Then she noticed that the weapon in the cavalryman's hand seemed to be something she had seen before, but she couldn't exactly remember what it was. But in her subconscious, it was an awfully powerful weapon that even an expert like Fu Huang5 could not avoid.
Fu Chengfeng and Chu Murong also noticed the weapon in the cavalryman's hand and simultaneously let out a startled cry, "The Terrifying Dragon's Leaf!" Then they looked at each other, their hearts sinking to the bottom at the same time.
The Terrifying Dragon's Leaf was created by a master of hidden weapons. By activating the mechanism, one could instantly unleash countless leaf-shaped concealed weapons. To this day, no one has been able to escape from it.
But the Terrifying Dragon's Leaf had been extinct for a hundred years, so why had this weapon appeared in the hands of Kaoshan Wang12's cavalry? And they all had one. Could it be that Kaoshan Wang12 had found the master of hidden weapons?
Footnotes Full List
- younger sister
- mu=mother, hou=empress
- title of respect towards superiors
- from the Chinese idiom: the colour blue is made out of indigo but is more vivid than indigo, which means that the student surpasses the master
- fu=father, huang=emperor
- retired Emperor/father of the reigning emperor
- lit., rivers and lakes—people who wander from place to place and live by their wits, e.g. fortune tellers, quack doctors, itinerant entertainers, etc., considered as a social group
- (historical), a plate given by the Emperor that allows one to be exempted from the death penalty
An example of Death Exempted Plate
Image Credit | The rightful owner via Setn.com (古代「免死金牌」真的有用？功臣爽領 最後下場卻超慘, Feb 23rd, 2022) - Chinese idiom: be insatiable
- Modern idiom: to use a sword with fast, flexible and unexpected movements
- a son of nobility
- king
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