Chapter 20
Chapter 20
“Your Majesty.”
Rong Li stepped forward and bowed when Siran Ming and Zhiyu Jiang emerged from the room. As she raised her head, she cast a glance at the foolish-looking Zhiyu beside him.
Siran nodded, then told Zhiyu, “Wait here for me.”
Once they were somewhere private, Rong lowered her voice.
“Your Majesty, Miss Qingwan has learned of your fall from the cliff. She has already sent riders at full speed to meet us.”
Miss Qingwan?
Siran paused. He did not know the name.
“Understood.”
***
“I told you to wait, yet you ran off remarkably quickly.”
After asking along the street, Siran finally found Zhiyu at an old man’s candied-hawthorn stall, staring at the treats with naked longing.
“Do you want one?” he asked.
Her eyes sparkled. “I do.”
“I have no money.”
Siran spread his empty hands.
Zhiyu blinked. “That woman in black who follows you has money. She bought all the storybooks and snacks.”
He drew himself up indignantly.
“How can you covet another person’s money? She worked hard to earn it!”
The old vendor watched them argue in front of his stall and lost patience.
“Are you buying or not? If you aren’t, stop blocking my stall and driving away my customers!”
Siran gave him an apologetic smile, then dragged the reluctant Zhiyu away.
The old man’s weathered face reddened.
Such a handsome young gentleman, and dressed so well. What a pity he was penniless.
“I want that!” Zhiyu pointed at a nearby sugar-figurine stall.
Siran hauled her back.
“No money.”
“Then what do we do?” Her head ached from the problem, and she looked ready to cry.
He pointed at the signboard of a shop behind her.
“Find a way to get some.”
Perhaps because of her amnesia, Zhiyu could no longer read. She continued staring at him blankly.
Siran felt helpless.
How had he ever considered a fool like this a rival? It lowered the dignity–and intelligence–of the emperor of the Yong Kingdom.
“Do you have anything you could exchange for money?” he asked softly, coaxing her.
Zhiyu tilted her head. Her eyes suddenly brightened.
“I think so. I don’t know whether it’s worth anything.”
She searched all over herself, pulled out a rather ordinary piece of jade, and shoved it against Siran’s face.
He batted her hand away and inspected the jade.
“Only this? Nothing else?”
Zhiyu shook her head. “Nothing.”
Siran secretly rejoiced.
This had to be the keepsake Shengsheng mentioned.
According to her, pawning it would put that ridiculous plot back on course.
Rong had told him that Shengsheng was merely a palace maid he had impulsively brought home from the Zhu Kingdom. But Siran knew himself. Unless he had truly been captivated by her beauty, why would he ever keep a woman at his side?
Apparently, his older self knew how to cherish his woman.
What an excellent husband he had become.
Whatever he imagined next brought a flush to the face of the sixteen-year-old within him.
Love filled the scheming young man’s heart with the sweetness of candied fruit.
Zhiyu watched him, then glanced up at the sky.
It was not particularly hot.
***
Shengsheng Zhou contemplated the two people standing before her, both laden with packages.
So they really had gone out and enjoyed themselves.
Still, the required plot had happened. That was what mattered.
“Shengsheng, don’t be angry. I bought all of this for you.”
Zhiyu edged closer with the gifts, looking like a miserable puppy begging forgiveness.
Strangely, Shengsheng’s first thought was:
*My daughter has finally grown up?*
Shengsheng Zhou immediately rejected the thought.
If she treated the heroine like a daughter, the World Law might strike her dead with lightning.
Then the smile she had been preparing abruptly stalled.
“You bought these?”
Zhiyu Jiang nodded furiously. “I did!”
Siran Ming silently set down his own packages and took a seat nearby. He stared fixedly at the sleeping bird, as if he had never seen one before in his life.
Shengsheng’s eyes narrowed.
“Where did you get the money?”
With tremendous pride, Zhiyu recounted how she had pawned her jade pendant and used the proceeds to sweep through every food stall on the street.
When she finished, she beamed at Shengsheng, plainly waiting for praise. Had she possessed a long tail, it would have been wagging furiously.
For a moment, Shengsheng did not know how to react.
The heroine had completed the plot segment on her own, without any intervention.
But in the original novel, Zhiyu had treasured that pendant so deeply that she refused to part with it even in death.
Now, because amnesia had made her greedy for snacks, she had pawned it for spending money.
How would she feel when her memories returned?
Shengsheng glanced at the culprit, who had lowered his head and was pretending not to exist.
She began calculating whether everything she owned would be enough to redeem the heroine’s pendant.
In the original story, Siran had sent someone to recover it after reuniting with Rong Li.
But the wise and decisive male lead had now lost his memory–and worse, he was the villain who had encouraged Zhiyu to pawn it. Shengsheng would have to retrieve the pendant herself, then arrange for Siran to return it to her.
That evening, Shengsheng looked at the two people clinging to her from either side. A vein pulsed in her forehead.
“What is it this time?”
Zhiyu pouted. “I’m afraid of the dark. Shengsheng, will you sleep with me?”
“And what about you, my dear Your Majesty?” Shengsheng turned a smile devoid of warmth on the man above her. “Are you afraid of the dark too?”
Siran rested his chin atop her head.
“You are my wife. We ought to sleep together.”
The farce ended only when the bird awakened and swept a teacup off the table with one wing.
Shengsheng successfully drove both oversized pets out and won sole possession of the room.
She sat at the round table and poked the bird after he returned to his nest.
“You understand people, don’t you? How did you get so clever, darling?”
The bird shifted, trying to escape her marauding finger. He failed. Shengsheng pinned him in place and covered him with kisses once again.
Fusheng Duan had never felt so powerless.
Had he known what awaited him, he would rather have let the cobra bite him.
He could do nothing now but wait for the ancestral power in his blood to fade.
The thought of the cursed key beneath Moonbank Lake brought mockery into his eyes.
At least he had obtained it. The process hardly mattered, did it?
He might as well use this interval to vacation in the Yong Kingdom. It spared him from constantly guarding against Xunlan Liu’s harassment at the palace.
He wondered whether Xunlan was satisfied with the double Fusheng had left behind.
When all her kisses failed to provoke a reaction, Shengsheng smiled, assuming he had finally accepted her affection.
“Look at you. You’re far too lazy. Back when everyone called me Tail, the last person I knew who was this lazy ended up being forced from a man into a woman. Laziness makes a man’s most precious parts shrivel up and die, you know. You mustn’t follow his example.”
She stroked his soft feathers and delivered the warning with grave sincerity.
The previously unresponsive bird shot into the air and drove his sharp beak straight into Shengsheng’s forehead.
She froze.
Why such an extreme reaction?
Could the bird actually be female?
Now that she considered it, she had never properly checked his sex.
A green, predatory light appeared in Shengsheng’s eyes as she stared at the bird hovering before her.