Legend of Fu Yao

“I was wondering where you had been. So you were just hiding here and snacking.” Zhangsun Wuji smiled as he helped her with the fire. “Are you not afraid that Feng Jingrui will hire someone to assassinate you?”

“Does he even have the ability to do so?” Meng Fuyao pouted. “It’s much more likely that he killed Hua Yan and his wife.”

“What exactly did Hua Yan tell you that night?”

“Nothing much,” Meng Fuyao said as she fell into deep thought. “I asked him why he crossed his own national borders to find me, and he said that he was being chased, while Feng Yu Chu died along the way because of a serious injury. As he escaped from the northern borders, the first territory he entered was mine, and he recalled how he met me once before. Since I was the only person who was powerful enough in the area to protect him, he came straight looking for me. But I feel that he still had things that were not said. For example, the object which the assassins mentioned was what Feng Jingrui was after.”

“He could not possibly tell you everything when he has only met you once,” Zhangsun Wuji commented and added, “Fuyao, what exactly is your plan? Send him back to the city or just help him to take revenge?”

“It’s not up to me right now.” Meng Fuyao smiled. “You also know that from the moment I ordered my people to kill them in front of the residence, Feng Jingrui will never let me away. Unless I step back and not care about Hua Yan’s life, and allow him to die in front of my residence, I’ll definitely become Feng Jingrui’s enemy. Since it was meant to be… I might as well strike first and gain the upper hand.”

“So you deliberately showed your strength today as a warning sign, and even sowed discord among the brothers.” Zhangsun Wuji laughed. “You’re indeed an expert at stirring trouble.”

Meng Fuyao just gave a casual grin. Suddenly, she cheered. “It’s done!” After dousing the fire and brushing the ash away, she dug out a few black objects inside and raised them high above her head, and respectfully offered them to Zhangsun Wuji.

“Your Highness the Crown Prince, please have a taste of this unrivaled, extremely sweet and fragrant… baked sweet potato!”

Baked sweet potato…

Stunned, Zhangsun Wuji raised his eyebrows and stared at the black objects. He knew what a sweet potato was, but he had never had the opportunity to eat such things that usually belonged to the diet of commoners. Furthermore, when he inspected sites after disaster struck, the sweet potatoes he saw were cut into slices and cooked with porridge in the pot. They were obviously yellow, so why would they look so ugly now? How could he eat them in this manner?

Seeing his expression, Meng Fuyao kept her hand and gave him a despised look. “Sigh, does the high and mighty Crown Prince not know how to eat such food of the commoners?”

Carefully, she peeled away the burned and black skin of the sweet potato, revealing a bright and radiant yellow color of the flesh. The sweet aroma unique to a baked sweet potato immediately wafted into their noses. It gave them the warm and fuzzy feeling of cooked food, and the distinct smell caused their stomachs to rumble.

“Does it smell good?”

“Yes…” Zhangsun Wuji smiled. “I didn’t think that it would be so fragrant.

Immediately, Meng Fuyao gave him the baked sweet potato as though she was presenting a treasure. Zhangsun Wuji gently smiled and opened his mouth. After a moment of hesitation, Meng Fuyao blushed and forcefully stuffed the sweet potato in Zhangsun Wuji’s mouth.

“I will fill you to bursting point!”

Zhangsun Wuji bit down on half of it and slowly ate. As he chewed, he looked at her with a radiant beam. “Mmm… so beautiful…”

“What’s so beautiful…” Meng Fuyao’s mouth was filled with yellow and black contents, and she could only ask in a muffled voice.

“I’m saying that… the commoners indeed have beautiful delicacies.” Zhangsun Wuji smiled and gazed at her, and his eyes were soft. Suddenly, he reached out his hand and lightly brushed it across her lips.

The long finger scooped a small piece of golden sweet potato. Zhangsun Wuji raised his finger and smiled at Meng Fuyao until her face turned red. Then, he placed that piece of sweet potato – which was stained with the fragrance of her lips – into his mouth and ate it.

“Thank you for letting me have… such a beautiful taste.”

His tone was charming and gentle, and each word felt like a tease. Was he referring to the simple but beautiful taste that belonged to a commoner’s sweet potato, or the natural fragrance of those bright and radiant red lips?

In an instant, Meng Fuyao turned scarlet.

He’s an ancient person… An ancient person like him… actually knew what an indirect kiss was?

Or was His Highness a natural flirt?

Meng Fuyao started shifting away, as she made up her mind to distance herself from this Crown Prince who looked very dangerous yet tempting, charming and beautiful. How could he create an atmosphere like this just by eating baked sweet potatoes…

Just as she moved away, out of the blue, there was a loud sound in the sky. A light appeared above their heads, and then there was the sound of an explosion.

When she looked up, she saw countless dark red arrows which were lit on fire. They created huge arcs of bright light and had unique whistle sounds. Cutting viciously across the sky, the arrows aimed straight for the second floor, where she and Zhangsun Wuji were staying in!

The dark red arrows cut across the night sky like shooting stars and aimed accurately at Meng Fuyao and Zhangsun Wuji’s rooms. In an instant, there was a raging inferno, and the second floor immediately became a sea of fire.

“They took action! They attacked!” Meng Fuyao jumped, and she seemed more excited than scared. Continuously stomping her feet and rubbing her fists, she exclaimed, “How unexpected! They indeed chose to attack!”

“Why are you so smug?” Zhangsun Wuji did not move, as though he did not see the fire at all. Slowly and calmly, he peeled a sweet potato for himself and happily munched on it while facing Lord Yuan Bao. “Feng Jingrui did not start the fire, and I bet that tonight he’s definitely ‘not around.’ The real culprit will definitely be one of those people from the Eternal Sky Clan, who are ‘seeking justice’ for their brothers who were killed’.”

“I know that Feng Jingrui will push the blame of this attack on the Eternal Sky Clan.” Meng Fuyao giggled. “Anyway, Xuanji is in a mess now. Rebellious forces collude with Princes, and Princes collude with court officials; those serving in the capital get chased out, while those outside the borders stare at the city like it is a piece of fat meat. Since Feng Jingrui will definitely not become the Emperor, why won’t he stir up more trouble in this situation? If both of us died, wouldn’t it be even better for Dahan and Wuji to attack Xuanji? Feng Jingrui might even be able to have some gains out of this chaos.”

“So Feng Jingrui ordered this killing without any hesitation since he does not have to be responsible for Xuanji.” Zhangsun Wuji stuffed a peeled sweet potato into Meng Fuyao’s mouth. “Fuyao,” he said.

“Yes,” Meng Fuyao mumbled as she quickly munched on the contents in her stuffed mouth.

“Do you intend to kill Feng Jingrui right now?”

“No,” Meng Fuyao replied. “It’s easy to kill him, but it will be troublesome to hire people to kill him. Since we’re on the lands of another nation, we shouldn’t be so high profile…”

While Zhangsun Wuji was still wondering why she became so humble, she suddenly added, “We can wait for those in hiding to surface and expose themselves as we travel to the capital. Then, we can gather all those problematic and harmful ones, and then kill them all at once.”

… It was indeed King Meng’s style.

“So…” Zhangsun Wuji smiled. “It seems as though we are going to be chased and killed soon.”

He described the precarious and difficult situation in such a simple tone, and Meng Fuyao listened on nonchalantly as well.

“Oh,” she placed her cheeks in her palms and seriously thought about ways to run. “How should we escape? Escape with 3,000 other people? That’s not giving enough face for Xuanji.”

“I think,” Zhangsun Wuji spoke and smiled. “Just now Feng Jingrui mentioned something about beautiful sceneries of mountains, rivers, and springs. That sounds like a decent idea.”

Meng Fuyao’s eyes lit up quickly, and she praised the idea. “Ah! I have not traveled in so long!”

She wiped her mouth and looked up at the second level. Then, as she heard the barks and the calls of revenge coming from outside, she said, “We should at least fight for a while before we ‘disappear’.”

As she rolled up her sleeves and tied up her hair, her eyes gleamed. “My hands are itchy!”

“Wait.” Zhangsun Wuji suddenly stopped her and took her hand. After taking a careful look at her fingers, he said, “Your fingernails grow very quickly. Trim them first, or they might break during the fight, and your fingers will hurt.” In a swift movement, he pulled down Meng Fuyao onto a chair. Taking out a small and golden nail clipper from his clothes, he gently started trimming her fingernails.

Meanwhile, the fire raged above them, and chaos surrounded them. While countless armed members of the Eternal Sky Clan surrounded the area aggressively, the two of them calmly trimmed the fingernails in such a precarious moment.

Zhangsun Wuji was very serious in the trimming. He held the tip of Meng Fuyao’s fingers and did one finger after the other. From Meng Fuyao’s perspective, she could see his clean and bright forehead, his slightly pursed lips, his high nose bridge, and the golden-red reflection of the fire on his face which seemed bright and radiant. Yet, his expression was unusually focused. It seemed as though the neatness of the fingernails in front of him mattered a lot more than the possibility of people surrounding them to kill them.

Chaos was around them, but that place was calm and peaceful. Only the breathing and trimming sound could be heard. After a while, even the crisp and tiny clips seemed to have a lively rhythm to them.

It was the most beautiful moment.

Meng Fuyao sat cross-legged in front of him. The pile of fire beside her was still emitting warmth, the aroma of baked sweet potatoes had yet to drift away, and Lord Yuan Bao slept between them with his stuffed stomach. Suddenly, she felt calm and warm in this moment, even though the future was unpredictable and danger laid ahead of them in all directions. It resembled a moment years ago in the previous world when she had accompanied her mother back from the hospital. When they had seen the stall selling baked sweet potatoes along the street, they had spent a dollar on buying one, and the mother and daughter munched on it by the road. While they were eating, they smiled and each other. It was as though they had not just been sharing a sweet potato, but also the warmth in winter – the feeling derived from pushing through hardships together, and the telepathy of people who would accompany each other for the rest of their lives.

Nineteen years later, she was in another world and sharing sweet potatoes with another person once again. It might be a different setting with different characters, but the feeling remained similar.

Meanwhile, the clipper continued making crisp clicking sounds as Zhangsun Wuji slowly trimmed… She went into a daze again, as she recalled how her mother always cut her fingers back then. After her mother had fallen ill, she had always been the one cutting. At that moment, she would never have imagined that many years later, in another world, a royal man who had never served others would quietly and gently cut her fingernails under the brightly-lit night sky.

Then, she heard that person say solemnly and slowly, “Fuyao, I hope that I can bake sweet potatoes with you every winter, and then cut away these overtly long fingernails for you.”

Meng Fuyao sighed internally and patted his hand. As she stood up, she replied, “I think it’s much more practical that you come and fight with me now. Let’s go.”

Both of them leaped onto the roof and looked down. The 3,000 guards who were arranged to live in another area by Feng Jingrui, because of a lack of space in the current accommodation, were rushing towards their room. Then, they saw soldiers who “came worriedly”, rushed out of their base in an extremely efficient manner, and lined themselves on the paths that would lead the 3,000 guards to the residence. It seemed as though the soldiers were actively extending help, but they actually blocked the paths of the guards. With so many people hogging up the small alleys in the rural city, it was impossible for the guards to move.