Chapter 27: Chapter 27: Surfacing
Translator: Exodus Tales Editor: Exodus Tales
The crowd within the ancestral hall dispersed.
Indeed, today’s arrangements were a bit unexpected; some felt sympathy for Li Yunzi, while others took pleasure in her misfortune.
“I actually thought madam would just let Li Yunzi marry some servant to prevent that incident from causing an uproar and losing our family’s dignity. Who would have thought she’d end up as someone’s concubine? How pitiful,” Mu Qing lamented, with hints of sorrow in her voice.
Yet this lamentation was overly false, as her pale pink cheeks were nearly bursting with vivid joy.
Li Yunzi had outshone many of the family’s outstanding women, and now she had fallen to such a fate.
“After all, as the concubine of a city lord, if she serves well, she might even live better than us docile ladies.’
“She definitely wouldn’t be lacking in that regard, after all, she could even arch her back for a lowly beggar…”
“Don’t speak so loudly, she’s coming this way,” Li Kongxi said.
Nowadays, the young women of the family all clustered around Li Kongxi and Mu Qing.
Li Yunzi walked alone, descending the hall’s steps. That flock of twittering female relatives all moved with grace, and naturally, Li Yunzi overheard their words.
Li Yunzi glanced at those ladies who were kicking her while she was down, her face still incapable of distinguishing joy from anger.
But those ladies couldn’t help but inch closer behind Li Kongxi and Mu Qing.
Who knew if Li Yunzi would go mad?
But, she didn’t do anything drastic. She walked through another door of the ancestral hall, not to return to the Li Imperial Palace, but to head towards the army camp.
Seeing her back, Li Kongxi couldn’t help but huff coldly.
But the moment she thought of their starkly different fates, Li Kongxi’s face brightened again.
A stone bridge, a few withered willows, Li Yunzi stood on the bridge, gazing at the silver and red carp swirling the water below into murkiness.
Before long, a burly commander clad in silver-black armor approached. Commander Cheng saw Li Yunzi on the bridge and hastened his steps.
“Yunzi, are you waiting for me here?” Commander Cheng asked.
“Yes, I have a matter for which I hope Commander Cheng can assist me,” Li Yunzi nodded, her eyes bright and clear, seemingly unfazed by the ultimate humiliation in the hall.
“Your father is easily influenced by the young madam after all. Since he hasn’t objected to this affair, despite your significant contribution to the city-state, you will be sent into the enemy’s jaws for a false truce. Sigh, let’s go, Yunzi. I will help you escape. Travel far, find a true kind man and live a good life. Don’t come back. This Li Family doesn’t deserve you,” said Commander Cheng, filled with pity and helplessness.
Even if Li Yunzi hadn’t come to him, Commander Cheng was prepared to help her escape.
Hearing these words from Commander Cheng, Li Yunzi felt a touch of warmth in her heart.
There were indeed people who cared about her welfare.
“Uncle Cheng, Yunzi hasn’t thought about escaping.”
“Not escape? Do you want to suffer that humiliation? After all, you are a daughter of a family, and you are still young. This Li Family is not worth trading your life for a pitiful truce. Don’t worry about the war at the frontier; even if it costs my old life, I will never let those beasts from Lingxiao City step a foot into our territory!” Commander Cheng said somewhat passionately.
“Uncle Cheng, do you know why the Wutu riots can never be quelled, no matter how many people are killed, and why those unarmed rebels still crazily charge into battle, recklessly?” Li Yunzi asked.
Commander Cheng frowned.
He didn’t understand Li Yunzi’s thoughts; she was in imminent danger, yet she still worried about the stability of the Ancestral Dragon City-State??
“Wutu is barbaric and primitive; its people have not been enlightened. Our Ancestral Dragon City-State is blessed with fertile and vast lands, which they have long coveted. Fueled by certain individuals, they attack ravenously like wolves and tigers,” Commander Cheng said. Li Yunzi shook her head and replied, “The Wutu Rebels are endless…” “You should be worried about yourself, Yunzi.”
“Lingxiao City-State has been eyeing our Ancestral Dragon City-State for a long time. Now that we are constrained by the Wutu Riot Army to the east, there’s no way they would discuss peace with us. The so-called proposal of me becoming a concubine for the sake of peace negotiations is just a pretense. They just want us to let our guard down on the western front, then suddenly attack us, catching us unprepared,” Li Yunzi calmly said.
The more frantically one struggles in a quagmire, the deeper one sinks. Not long ago, Li Yunzi had felt somewhat lost because she didn’t know who her real enemy was.
Now, she was gradually seeing things clearly.
One by one, they surfaced, their grim smiles revealed, unable to contain their joy as they came rushing forward to trample her mercilessly into the mud.
But, can they really have their way?
“Is that so?” Commander Cheng asked in surprise.
“Uncle Cheng can call back my former Army Guards to turn the tables,” Li Yunzi said.
As winter was close at hand, the Ancestral Dragon City-State hadn’t seen a drop of rain for a month, and even the always fertile Li Chuan Great Plain began showing signs of sparsity and drought. Without the nourishment of the three great rivers, it might have long been covered with dried-up grass reaching the skies.
Zhu Minglang remembered when he first arrived at the Ancestral Dragon City, it was a verdant and fertile land. After staying at the Dragon Taming Academy for over a month, the vast land outside the city seemed to have changed its clothes.
A vast expanse of withered yellow grassland, forests littered with fallen leaves, and the mountain range at the far end of the plain had somehow turned into a continuous range of undulating silver-white, imbued with a desolate grandeur…
“Achoo!”
Li Shaoying wrapped himself tightly in a woolen coat, but still couldn’t withstand the bitter cold wind from the sky, his nose reddened by the freeze, his snot almost flowing out.
Zhu Minglang glanced at him, not understanding why this guy was also mingled into this field trip.
However, seeing him riding a Flying Bird Pseudo-Dragon alongside Nan Ye, Zhu Minglang roughly understood why.
At this moment, they were all in the high sky, sitting on the backs of Flying Bird Pseudo-Dragons, holding the reins in their hands.
The withered yellow and desolate plain stretched out beneath their feet, but the wind was like an ice blade, painfully scraping against their cheeks and ears. Li Shaoying obviously had not spent much time in the sky and didn’t know what protective measures to take.
There were a total of thirteen Flying Bird Pseudo-Dragons, each carrying a student.
Among these students, there were true Dragon Shepherds who already possessed a dragon, and there were also students like Li Shaoying and Nan Ye who were still under the rank of Dragon Gate.
Two teachers led the group, one was Teacher Ke Bei, responsible for the students’ safety, the same man Zhu Minglang had met that day. The other was the class instructor Duan Lan, who was in charge of using a spell to make clouds and bring rain.
Besides the thirteen students and two teachers, there was also one teaching assistant, and that assistant was Zhu Minglang.
Duan Lan, Ke Bei, and Zhu Minglang were all sitting on an Eagle Beast Dragon.
The Eagle Beast Dragon had a back as broad as a lion’s, a chest and a head like that of a giant eagle. Over five meters in length, sitting on the back of the Eagle Beast Dragon was like sitting in a plush armchair with a fur blanket laid over it, a first-class experience!
In fact, Zhu Minglang had not expected that someone who had come to do odd jobs would be assigned as a teaching assistant.
“The Azure Dragon can even manipulate wind, clouds, and rain? I feel like the Azure Dragon is the real Dragon Leader,” Li Shaoying said.
He wore a simple long coat with no patterns or decorations, which when compared to the slightly more extravagant attire of other Dragon Trainer students, indeed seemed rather plain and humble.
There was nothing he could do about it; this was one of the best pieces of clothing Li Shaoying had. If his Bull Spirit hadn’t suddenly exhibited characteristics of a dragon, he’d still be home herding cattle..
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