Chapter 52

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“When you cultivate at the highest level, the Five Elements will be connected and the Six Harmonies will be matched, you will be able to borrow all the power in this world for your own use!” She raised her voice slightly and lifted her hand, pointing to the cloud in the sky, “You are a shark, born to manipulate the power of water – if you cultivate well, you will not only be able to call the wind and rain when the time comes, but you will even be able to manipulate it. The entire Seven Seas will be at your disposal!”

Sumo uttered an astonished gasp, with a dreamy expression on his little face.

She silently chanted an incantation, gathered power between her hands, and swiftly varied her gestures. In the clear sky, the small cloud was being manipulated by her, as she changed her gestures; it started to turn into various shapes in the sky: one moment it was a galloping horse, the next a camel, the next again a sailing boat… just like a ball of cotton being kneaded.

“Ah…” the shark child was watching from the porch, dumbfounded and speechless.

“Look, a bamboo pheasant!” Finally, Zhu Yan kneaded the cloud into the shape of the bamboo bird she had just finished eating earlier, and raised her finger to the sky, not without feeling smug, “How’s that? I made it look like one, didn’t I?”

Sumo’s mouth twitched, as if holding back a grin, and he grunted, “This is clearly a… fat goose.”

“Nonsense!” Zhu Yan was just about to say something when suddenly a darkness accumulated above her head.

The tormented cloud above appeared to finally be unable to stand the torture anymore and darkened abruptly. Dark clouds covered the sky, and in the midst of the storm a downpour came roaring, so heavy that it was like a bucket of water being poured straight down!

Zhu Yan was standing in the middle of the courtyard and had no time to dodge, so she got drenched in the direct shower.

“Hahaha!” She was standing soaked and dripping in the rain when she heard Sumo let loose a loud laugh from the porch.

“What are you laughing at!” She was about to lash out, yet with a quick turn of her head she suddenly froze again – it was the first time in so many days that she was hearing this child let out a hearty laugh, wasn’t it? This gloomy, isolated shark child had suffered so much before, with a constant, invisible look of wariness and hostility in his eyes, thorns all over his body. But this laugh was like a cloud breaking through a sunrise, so bright that it took people’s minds and hearts away.

When Zhu Yan looked at him, the anger that filled her stomach dissipated.

“Heartless, didn’t I do it to teach you?” She muttered, wiping her hair full of rain, and when she lifted her head again, the wailing dark cloud had long since fled out of sight.

“Here.” Sumo jumped down to the ground and passed over a handkerchief. The child’s eyes shone brightly, as if someone has lit a light in his tiny heart, and he looked up at her, his tone becoming slightly flustered, “All these… these things, you… are really going to teach them all to me? Can I really control the Seven Seas if I learn them?”

“Call me big sister,” she scratched the little shark’s nose, “and I’ll teach you afterwards.”

Sumo was slightly upset, “I’m seventy-two years old, so I’m obviously older than you.”

“Forget it if you don’t want to.” Zhu Yan hmphed, “Then I’m leaving.”

When she turned her head and pretended to leave, the corners of the child’s mouth twitched but no sound came out, as if some invisible force had set a cage inside him, shutting everything inside so tightly that it could not be released.

“Hey, seriously, you are really reluctant to say it?” She pretended to walk to the end of the cloister, seeing that he wasn’t moving, and finally drifted back in, giving him an irritated glare, “Stinky little brat!”

Sumo stood there, his lips opened and closed for a moment, his mouth shape appearing to calling her sister, but his voice was unable to produce a sound. Zhu Yan sighed, not wanting to embarrass him any further, so she poked his forehead and said, “Alright, alright, I will teach you! Today I’ll show you all the spells first, so you can get a general idea – then tomorrow you can choose the ones you’re most interested in to start with, okay?”

“Yes!” Sumo nodded vigorously, his eyes glowing.

Zhu Yan hastily wiped her head and face with a handkerchief, returned to the courtyard and began to practice the spells she had just learned from her Master’s handbook, from the simplest Paper Crane Transmission, Round Light Seeing Shadow, to the slightly more difficult Water Mirror, Confusing Heart, to the harder Fixed Shadow, Golden Soup, Sunset Arrow… they were performed one after another.

Perhaps it was because she had really improved by leaps and bounds over the past few days, or perhaps it was because of the memory of being too late to save Yuan that was so engraved in her mind, but this time, with so many and so complicated spells, she actually remembered every single one of them correctly, and drew the spells quickly, rehearsing them from start to finish in an instant! At the end of them all, it was the turn of the most difficult defensive magic: the Thousand Trees.

When she finished her seal, she pressed one hand to the ground and instantly countless large trees broke through the surface, turning the small courtyard into a forest!

Sumo watched all this with a dazzled expression on his little face – the shark child from the depths of the sea seemed to feel for the first time the surging power of heaven and earth, and remained breathless for a long time, stunned by the spells.

“So, how’s that, was I great?” She asked, wiping the slight sweat from the corner of her forehead with no small amount of smugness.

“Yes!” Sumo looked at her and nodded vigorously, with a heartfelt admiration in his eyes.

“Come, I’ll teach you.” She also felt exhausted after rehearsing all the spells at once, so she pulled him over and took out the volume of handwritten notes that her Master had given her and flipped it open, “Let’s start with the most basic Five Elements of Birth and Death…”

Sumo listened very carefully and studied meticulously, even taking out a pen to transcribe those ancient scripts from the handwritten book into Kongsang writing anew for easy recitation.

However, the strange thing was that this child, who looked incredibly intelligent, was very slow in learning the magic, and even though she patiently repeated it over and over again, he couldn’t remember anything. It was as if Sumo was also a little surprised, and in the end just stared blankly at the scroll of handwritten notes, his azure eyes going hollow.

“It’s alright, everything will be a little slower when you first start learning.” Zhu Yan forced herself to hold down her impatience and said to the child, “Let’s go eat dinner first… we will continue again tomorrow!”

However, on the second and third day, no matter how much he was taught, Sumo could not remember even the first mantra.

“Hey! Are you listening or not?” Zhu Yan, who was characteristically hasty, finally became impatient and hit him with a popping chestnut on the head, “Something that simple, just seven words, even the parrot has learned them, how can you still not be able to remember?” The child did not avoid her hand and let her hit him, clenched his teeth and suddenly said, “But I… I just can’t remember! The words on this… all seem to be moving.”

“What?” Zhu Yan was taken aback for a moment.

“I don’t know why… I just can’t remember!” Sumo lowered his head and looked at the first page of the handwritten journal, a sense of frustration running through his eyes as he murmured, “Those words, I can see them clearly at a glance, but when they reach my mind, they immediately turn into a complete void. It’s like… it’s like there’s something in the way, blocking them.”

“…” The more Zhu Yan listened, the more she frowned, and couldn’t help but dab his forehead and scold angrily, “How is that possible? It’s only seven words! It’s only seven words! Are you sharks all particularly dumb as children because of your slow development?”

Sumo shuddered suddenly, then raised his head and glared at her.

Zhu Yan froze for a moment and subconsciously sealed her lips. This child was so psychologically fragile due to the inhuman torture he had suffered in his childhood that just one word could cause his eyes to return from clarity to gloom. What a miserable wolf cub…

“Hey, forget it, I’m scared of you!” She muttered, “You can practice on your own.”

She left the child behind and went into the courtyard on her own. The maid followed her with trepidation, not daring to get too close for fear that the young Lady would suddenly flip out again.

There was a loud noise coming from outside, as if the housekeeper was welcoming some guests.

“Who is it?” She asked casually.

Grandma Sheng laughed on the side, “It’s probably the Lord Governor sending someone to bring greetings again.”

“Bai Fenglin?” Zhu Yan was stunned for a moment, “What is he doing here?”

“During the period when the Young Mistress was in a coma, the Lord Governor personally came several times! Each time, he sent many valuable medicinal herbs and tonic products… Alas, you wouldn’t be able to use that many even if you lived for a hundred years, Princess!” Grandma Sheng smiled, her face wrinkled, “The last few days were probably because the situation outside was tense and hectic, that’s why he didn’t come to visit personally anymore, but he still sent people to bring things over every day.”

“Why is he so patronizing all of a sudden?” She thumped inside, feeling a little uncomfortable, and muttered, “It’s not adulterous to be so fawning over nothing!”

Grandma Sheng smiled as she looked at the young Princess of the Red Clan who had grown into a flower, “When a lady is beautiful, a gentleman is willing to become a hero. A girl as beautiful as the Princess, naturally every man would want to make courtship to her…”

“Humph, I was injured after my accident in Yecheng, he must be worried that I will complain about him in front of my father, so he is just trying to curry a good will.” Zhu Yan, however, was thinking too simplistically and gave a cold snort, suddenly remembering one thing, and could not help but turn her head and ask, “By the way, where is my father? I’ve been sick for so long, why hasn’t he come to see me?”

“The King he…” Grandma Sheng froze for a moment.

“What’s happened to my father?” Although Zhu Yan was broad-minded, her inner thinking was extremely fine, and in an instant, she immediately felt that something was wrong, and stared at Grandma Sheng, “What’s wrong with him? Why did he leave me here as soon as he arrived in Yecheng and didn’t come to see me for so long?”

Grandma Sheng coughed and said, “The King actually came by.”

“Huh?” She couldn’t help but be taken aback, “When?”

“It was the third day after the Princess returned with her injuries.” Grandma Sheng said, “That was when the Great Priest sent the Princess back, and also notified the King who was in the Imperial Capital to come.”

“Really?” Zhu Yan was a bit overwhelmed by the response for a moment, “What about… Father?”

“His Majesty watched by the sickbed for a day, and after seeing that the Princess was in good health, he hurriedly got up and left.” Grandma Sheng said with some embarrassment, “Saying that he had important business to attend to in the Imperial Capital and could not delay his stay here for too long.”

“What?” She was a slightly dumbfounded, unable to speak for a moment.

Although her father had a thunderous temper, he had doted on her since she was a child. Once, she fell off a horse and twisted her foot, but he was so anxious that he couldn’t eat for two days. What kind of a big event would make him unable to wait even for a moment like that?

Zhu Yan’s heart was troubled, and after thinking about this for half a day, she was unable to figure out what to do, so she gradually became more and more impatient.

“What the hell is the emergency!” With a stomp of her foot, she could no longer bear it and rushed out, straight to the housekeeper and grabbed him by the arm, “Tell me! Why has my father gone to the Imperial Capital again? What is going on there? Why was he in such a hurry?”

“This…” the housekeeper was sorting through a pile of greeting gifts sent by the Lord Governor’s House, when he was suddenly seized up, he couldn’t help but turn pale, “Young Princess, this servant doesn’t know either!”

“Nonsense!” Zhu Yan, however, was not so easily deceived and shouted angrily at him, “You are Father’s most trusted confidant, so even if Father doesn’t give an explanation to anyone else, won’t he give you a few words of clarification? Tell me! What is he doing in the Imperial Capital?”

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