After making pastes and powders for around ten minutes, Nick took her over from Kate and put his palm on YunYun’s chest again. Seeing the other three blushing, he finally got angry.
“What goes through those dirty minds of yours? I’m helping her to absorb the medicine and expel the poison with my Qi. We ourselves didn’t have this problem, because the poison we had consumed was already expelled with our sweat – check your stinky armpits if you don’t believe me!”
He snorted and pointed with his chin at the spot near the water barrels, “I think you want to wash up as well. Go and do it over there and don’t disturb me, so I can concentrate.”
The girls were stupefied by his verbal attack, because they were absolutely certain that this time they held the moral high ground. But his explanation made sense again, so they timidly washed themselves while trying to stand behind him.
After ten more minutes Nick was done.
“YunYun, stay in the tub for an hour or two more just to make sure the poison is fully expelled. The herbs won’t do anything bad, maybe your skin will become even smoother.” He tried to joke.
Then he went over to the bed and took off the main trophy off the emperor’s right hand. Afterwards, he sat by the window, panting. The last hour was too much of a stress. Killing the emperor turned out to not be that hard, just like killing his brother. But Nick did feel a bit guilty regarding YunYun – he should’ve guessed she might have problems with swallowing the antidote. Thankfully she was alive and will be just fine.
He sat there trying to regain his strength, but the fatigue was more psychological than physical. Clearly he only needed to rest for half an hour.
After a while Kate came over, sat near him and the two royal sisters followed her.
“What now?” She asked.
“Now I’ll catch my breath, then clean up and we’ll wait till the dark.” Nick answered with his eyes still closed, “Then I’ll bring you all out one by one and we’ll leave this damned place to never return again.”
“Mhm.” Kate nodded and looked outside the window. They were sitting on the floor, thus she could only see the sky, but it felt like it was a really beautiful day.
“How are we going to clean all this up?” Beata finally said something while looking at the mess on the bed.
“When YunYun comes out, we’ll empty one barrel of water into the bath tub, then stuff the whole mess that is on the bed in that barrel and cover it with a lid. That way the stench of blood won’t be as strong and no one outside should notice anything amiss.” Nick answered seemingly half asleep.
“You even thought of this?” Kate was shocked.
“Well, I had a little spare time while I was kneeling in front of the bed.” Nick grinned at her, “What were you thinking about then?”
“Bastard!” Kate wanted to be angry, but smiled back at the end.
“I know you’ve been though a lot, but please relax now and gather your strength.” Nick seriously said to the three of them, “The next step will be much harder and maybe even more dangerous as well.” And then closed his eyes again.
Few minutes later he heard splashes and to his big surprise saw YunYun getting out of the bathtub. Her long dress was all wet and it made hard for her to climb out and she looked rather clumsy during the process.
Nick instantly got up and dashed over to help her.
“How do you feel? Any numbness in your extremities?” He was genuinely concerned.
“I’m fine.” For the first time Nick heard her soft and pleasant voice.
After she got out, Nick finally could take a closer look at her. During the previous stressful situation he didn’t bother to even think about her looks and acted based on his instincts, but now, when this beautiful young girl stood right in front of him, he became speechless.
She was a tad shorter than him, with dark, long hair and almost black eyes, and the wet dress that was sticking to her accentuated her slender body beautifully. To Nick’s big surprise he realized that she was from the Eastern continent, and, even if he could’ve guessed it from her name earlier, now the eastern beauty in front of him with her awkward Mainland dialect directly proved her origins by her looks alone.
Nick was completely lost while staring at her – she was much more beautiful than the queen Hua who was renown for her exquisite looks throughout the country.
“I managed to expel the rest of the poison with Qi, while the antidote and herb bath did the main job.” She suddenly smiled and bowed her head that allowed Nick to ‘wake up’, “Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it.” Nick smiled back while blushing and replied in almost fluent eastern dialect, “Most important thing is that you are fine. Although I didn’t expect you to be from the Eastern continent.”
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“What? You don’t know who I am?” YunYun sounded surprised.
“How would I know? We only met today and you were almost killed right in front of me.” Nick was still blushed all over. Looking at this girl so closely made his head spin, “But now that you’re fine, it doesn’t matter anymore, although we were quite scared over there. Here, take these clothes, they are dry, but more importantly you’ll need them when we’ll get out of this place. I don’t know your size, but I’m sure you will manage somehow.”
Suddenly a pack of black clothes and a bag filled with black shoes appeared in his hands. YunYun was more shocked about the fact that he didn’t recognize her and his knowledge of the Eastern dialect than the sudden appearance of the clothes.
“Girls, you come over as well. Pick the ones you feel most comfortable in, the looks don’t matter. Later I’ll explain our plan.” Then he turned to Kate, “By the way, your uncle bought all of these, so if you have any complains, you can bring them up to him personally later.”
Afterwards he left the stupefied girls and went over to the opposite window to calm down and analyze the situation. Looking at YunYun was way too distracting.
While the girls were changing, Nick carefully poked his head out and looked outside the window. Turns out they were almost at the height of an eight storey building.
‘This won’t be easy’ he thought to himself.
He wouldn’t care about climbing down alone – he scaled the kilometer high cliff near Rolum after all. But this time he will have to carry a person and, more importantly, he will have to be extremely fast. He considered the option to first go one floor down and proceed from there, but they didn’t know if there was currently a guard stationed or a servant, or maybe it was guarded by a rune formation. The last time in the Holy Order he got lucky when the grand elder’s blood unlocked both rune formations in his room, but there was no guarantee it would work here.
This was also the reason why he didn’t look for any hidden door in this room. The tower definitely had more floors above this one, but Nick didn’t need to take the risk and find the way there, even though he knew that the door had to be somewhere on the only wall without a window. He got what he came for and now all that was left for them was to escape successfully. Greed is a sin after all.
‘Wait! It’s not like I’ll leave empty handed! I did get some new stuff!’ In all this rush he forgot about the second wristband that was now on his left hand. He immediately took a look inside only to be overwhelmed by the huge amount of items stacked in it. The storage space that was in the size of the room they were currently in was almost full!
‘I guess I’ll have to take it slow this time again.’ Nick sighed, but then his sad face turned into a grin.
“We’re done.” After few minutes he heard Kate’s voice and was pleasantly surprised by the view when he turned around.
‘Clayton sure has a good taste.’ He smiled inwardly while looking at the four ‘ninja chicks’ in front of him, dressed all in black. They only lacked face masks and short swords on their backs and could easily get a part in any Hong Kong movie.
“Alright, let’s clean this place up. It’s starting to stink.”
They did exactly as Nick said earlier – emptied one of the barrels into the bathtub and stuffed all that was on the bed inside of that barrel. Afterwards Nick took all their clothes and put them in his wristband. His old one was not as full as the emperor’s, but there were many unnecessary things inside. While scratching his head, he tried to quickly understand the order, but then swore to himself to ‘tidy it up in the near future’ – he had more important thing to urgently ‘clean’.
“YunYun, you should be quite skillful with the sword, correct?” He asked.
“Yes.” She nodded in confusion.
Nick took out his steel dagger and passed it to her, “Please get this thing off my head.” He pointed at the remains of his wig, “I had no other choice but to glue it on, but now it’s annoying, itches a lot and probably looks ugly as well.”
“Hahaha, it does indeed.” Kate giggled and both princesses joined her.
“Sigh, just cut it off and don’t bother with my own hair – it’ll grow back anyway.” Nick said a bit dejectedly. He did all of that to save them, but the girls were still making fun of him. Although he didn’t care about his appearance that much.
YunYun took the dagger and skillfully shaved off everything that was directly above his scalp and soon a youthful monk appeared in front of the smiling and giggling girls. Nick took back the dagger, checked the results with his palm and said to YunYun in satisfaction, “You are really good with the blade, thank you!”
And then cleaned up the floor around himself while missing the sight of YunYun blushing.
When he was done, they sat down on the floor in a small circle and Nick explained their plan.
“The main thing that you have to understand is, we can’t leave immediately and even more – it’s not possible to manage it in one or two nights.” He opened with the bad news and saw the disappointed faces around him. Conny’s lips even trembled, but she managed to hold back sobs.
Nick continued, “It was already not easy for me to get in, but now imagine me carrying all of you down from the tower. If I was a Qi master it might have been a different question …”
“What? You’re not a Qi master?” This time YunYun was shocked even more compared to when Nick ‘did those things’ to her earlier.
She was absolutely certain that this young boy was a genius who managed to become a Qi master at a young age. Otherwise it wouldn’t be possible for him to infiltrate the castle and more importantly save her the way he did! The amount of Qi and finesse that he used while guiding it was not possible for a Qi practitioner like her. And she was considered a rare genius back home! This didn’t make any sense!
“No.” Nick shook his head and smiled, “Sorry to disappoint you.”
“He has been crazy about practicing since he came to the palace few years ago.” Beata explained while smiling as well, “He and our youngest sister Zia were training from the sunrise till sunset without any holidays. If I’m not wrong, they were running on the water before the age of ten and he was scaling the steep cliffs behind our palace last year, maybe even a year before that.”
YunYun looked at Nick in shock – that was not possible!
Beata noticed her expression and giggled, “That’s not the good part yet. All that training is designed by himself as well. Up until now he hasn’t had any teachers.”
This made even less sense to YunYun.
“Let me tell you, when he was seven, he designed dresses and special shoes for the five of us and we shocked the whole capital …” Conny finally relaxed and jumped in as well.
“Stop, stop, stop!” Nick waved and interrupted while blushing deep red. Even if they were praising him it felt really embarrassing, “Let’s gossip after we get out of this mess, alright?”