Ming Feizhen at the Strategy Helm
The first day at Yan Manor went by without any hiccups. The only complaint I had was regarding Tang Ye.
“Miss Yan, this one is not educated in tea ceremony, go, painting, music, flower arrangement, calligraphy, antiques, or, I mean, this one is illiterate! He does not recognise the first character. He does not know anything when it comes to literature!”
Miss Yan was far too friendly. The fact that she invited Tang Ye to join her, like, six times made him question if Shifu was a walking aphrodisiac who could woo women without even being physically present. In just a single day, Tang Ye had gone from a know-it-all to completely illiterate.
“Ah, I get it.” Miss Yan clapped.
“What do you get, Miss?”
“I get that you are fooling me.”
Tang Ye saw a gaze so sharping that his true qi almost poured out of him. “Fooling you? What do you mean?”
Tang Ye’s alternating rosy and pale skin complexion was a sign that he was fighting to suppress his true qi; he could not figure out why he was sweating and struggling to control his true qi. If he did not control it, he could have hurt Yan Qingluo.
Yan Qingluo smiled. “You look educated. Since you claim to be illiterate, you must be the scion of a venerated martial artist and skilled.”
If one were to see how innocent she now looked, they would think she was possessed a moment ago when she flashed her piercing gaze, but she maintained a mysterious air about her.
Tang Ye shook his head. “This one is plain and ordinary. In fact, he is a weakling. You flatter him.”
“You’re fooling me again. I heard Father say that the roads are currently rife with danger, so you two must be capable of defending yourselves for you to be travelling.”
Finally calming his internal energies, Tang Ye replied, “Miss Yan, this one has no particular skills. He is merely bold and foolish enough to take the risk.”
Since he had gone that far, Tang Ye decided to go all the way with the scumbag-male-lead script. “This one has no goals and nothing better to do with his time. He is lazy and uninterested in hard work. Dying on the side of the road in a few years from now would be peaceful end. It would be in your best interest to not tell anyone you know him. This one must be on his way now.”
With that, Tang Ye hurried off.
It was not until Tang Ye was no longer within sight did Yan Qingluo blink. After a long silence, she muttered under her breath, “What a coward, hmph. The imperial court is hopeless.”
***
“Miss Yan is no ordinary lady,” was the first thing Tang Ye said when he got back to their room.
Eating a pastry and reading with sunglasses on, Ming Feizhen mumbled, “Of course not. She’s already asked you to join her twelve times already in a single day. If she keeps it up, her maids are going to lose several kilos of weight.”
“That’s not what I meant.” After taking two steps, Tang Ye lost control of his true qi. The burst of true qi sent a shockwave through the room, spilling water from Ming Feizhen’s bucket.
“Hey! Watch out for my pastr-, aaaah! It dropped into the water!” Ming Feizhen, with his heart shattered, stared at his food that was desecrated with his foot tub water and the water in the tub that had crumbs of his food, unable to determine which was more heartbreaking. He pulled his feet out of the water and yelled, “What the hell was that?! Hey, what’s wrong?”
Tang Ye’s eyes were bloodshot red. Forcing himself to promptly suppress the two energies in his body had induced qi deviation. While he now had an enormous internal energy reserve and potency, his ability to resist it was nigh non-existent, so he was prone to putting himself in danger. If it could not be reined in, then it was only a matter of time before there was another walking catastrophe in the world.
Hearing Tang Ye’s low roar, Ming Feizhen slapped the former. “Snap out of it.”
The surge of energy that Tang Ye felt gush into his body calmed his mind down.
Drying his feet from his chair, Ming Feizhen asked, “Seriously? What’s so special about her that made you lose yourself?”
Tang Ye shook his head. “No, she’s no ordinary woman. She’s definitely part of the martial world.” He paused to take two breaths and then continued, “I have not dared to utilise my true qi recently in case I lose control, but she has been seeking me out in a manner that makes me suspect it was deliberate. I’m certain that she caused me to lose control.”
“You just realised that?” Still focused on drying his feet, Ming Feizhen elaborated, “Besides his unchangeable expression, Yan Buer has a tongue sharper than a sword. Imagine him getting married, having a daughter and being nice to her. When I watched them converse, I thought they were twins.”
Ming Feizhen mindlessly tossed aside the towel and stood up. “They’re unrelated. I’m sure she’s only acting as his daughter.”
“What should we do?”
“Nothing new. She’s not on my shifu’s side, that’s for sure. That’s all that matters.” After picking up the book he was in the midst of reading, Ming Feizhen slouched back into his seat and yawned. “My shifu and Yan Buer wouldn’t team up. That Yan lass is undoubtedly plotting something, but there’s no reason to get tangled up with her when we aren’t acquainted. Is there any need to fear her if she’s not with my shifu?”
Tang Ye could not imagine Yan Qingluo giving Ming Feizhen trouble, so he no longer considered her an urgent hazard.
“The main priority right now is finding Hong Jiu,” stated Tang Ye.
“Now that’s what I’m talking about.”
Tang Ye glanced at the cover of the book Ming Feizhen was reading and spotted “Black and White Reflection”, the only difference compared to previous ones was the edition, which was presumably the latest edition.
“Hangzhou is a hot mess right now, so nobody will know who we are if we take advantage of the chaos. As long as the brats from the capital don’t come here, we’ll have plenty of options.”
“Are you sure they won’t come?”
“Ha, I told them to head to Luoyang first. What do you think? If I’m wrong, I’ll let you take my head.”
***
“We’re heading to Hangzhou?” queried Su Xiao.
Bai Lian glanced over. “We can start heading over now, right?”
“Zha Pi said that Big Brother Ming wants me to lead a group over. Do you think there are enough people here?”
Bai Lian swept her gaze over the ambitious Lord Zi, the giddy Bu, the swordsman Feng Qizhi holding his sword, the Ling Jialian who resembled a swordswoman, the teacher Lian Zhuiyue, and the student Brother Cheng, then bobbed her head. “Should be. Ming Feizhen told us to hurry, so he must urgently need us.”
“Uhm. Let’s head off to Hangzhou!”
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