Ji Li smiled brightly but still put his hand on his brother’s shoulder. Although the only person that could hear them in their proximity was Shixuan, who was also curious, he couldn’t just let Qianyu scream and shout out of excitement anymore.
Slowly looking at Qianyu, he said “Little monkey, why are you so excited? Do you not know, we had barely spent a little over half a month for our mission. They expected us to finish after three months, then fix things and use the extra time to prepare ourselves. Now that we go back, don’t we naturally have much more time at hand? We can visit the city as much as we want, so calm down now”.
What Ji Li didn’t say was that they’d have to get good grades in the tests he will be writing for them to check upon their knowledge. If they got bad grades, then forget about going out of the inner palace city, they might as well never leave the Eunuch Palace Complex.
The carriage slowly drove towards the entrance, where there were several large gates and some smaller ones. The smaller ones were used for people on feet, the larger ones for carriages and more. Naturally there were several gates depending on the importance of the individuals, and Ji Li’s carriage didn’t even need to wait and straight up entered the special gate.
The people on the side all had envious gazes, as some of them had waited for several hours and might not enter the city before it was dark. They could only blame themselves for not being special enough, or just acting too low-key.
Inside the capital, the first they saw was a gigantic market with way too many people on each side of the road, barely enough space to fit one and a half carriage, clearly only because the roads were astronomically larger than anything they have seen before.
The market generally only had some things that were used by commoners, it had food stalls and such, such a thing was available in every and all cities. The largest difference was of course the variety, yet a true cultivator would barely find anything useful.
Good for Ji Li, for he didn’t plan to buy anything expensive and was not ready for that at all, he only wanted to eat well and have fun buying some small toys or such, of course he would just pretend he was buying the things for his little brothers in the trainee yard.
Qianyu opened the door as they had already approached the main road and stopped. He went out and waited as Ji Li also left. Looking at the several guards in the back, he signalled for them to step forward. Qianyu only threw them small pouches he took out from his sleeve as he said “You may go back now; you mission ends here.”
These guards weren’t needed anymore, but they kept the other guards, as a sign of their importance… and most importantly, to act as servants. Their sleeves didn’t have a large space, so they used these guards to carry their stuff and take care of the carriage.
Shixuan went down as he gave the carriage reigns to one of the remaining guards, ordering him to take care of it, while the other guard would be following behind them, and so he did, positioning himself loyally behind Ji Li and his brothers.
Ji Li watched as all was unfolding, and he was happy that he taught them properly, not needing to do anything and just waiting to go out. Honestly these were all small things he could be doing on his own, but his rank made it difficult, as he would have to act mighty.
After everything finished, Ji Li just took a few steps and saw the crowd that formed around the carriage. It wasn’t too unusual for a carriage to stop on the side of the road, but for the Eunuch Palace’s carriage to do so, meant that there was something going on.
At least that was what they thought, but they all stepped back when they saw that the eunuchs that came out were pretty young and just looking around, guessing that some closed up eunuchs just came back and looked around the city for the first time.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
That was true, as Ji Li slowly moved and let out his inner child, not caring too much for his image. In this setting, no one would recognize him and his brothers wouldn’t care, it would make even more sense if he behaved like a child than a serious and cold eunuch, or else someone really might misunderstand the motives he was here for.
Ji Li just looked at the stalls that served a lot of food, such as dumplings, soup, rice, rolls, sweets, a lot of sweets, much more sweets, and other stuff. His eyes were full of stars as he soon went to the closest stall and bought some chicken on a stick.
The smell was wafting into his nose as he already started to enjoy the sensation. He slowly took a bite off of it and couldn’t remember how suddenly the whole stick was empty! It was just too delicious that he ate without knowing how fast he did so.
Shixuan and Qianyu also wanted to eat, but they waited for their brother’s nod. There might still be some danger, and even if not, their foodie brother knew best how to judge things. When they saw how fast Ji Li ate, they forgot to wait and just bought half the store empty.
Their hands full of chicken sticks, they first offered Ji Li while also eating and moving about. The money wasn’t problem. If they wanted, they could buy the whole stall every day for a full year and still not worry nor care for the expenses.
Ji Li and the others ate very quickly. The brothers changed their eating habits long ago when they saw how Ji Li could chew and gulp in less than a second, having learned the technique, which was basically just biting while putting the food into your mouth.
The problem was the way to make it soundless, as they knew just how much Ji Li hated the sounds of someone munching and slurping right in front of him, although they didn’t know why that irritated him so much… most people did it, and although it wasn’t the best manners, it wasn’t like they always kept the manners high among each other.
To eat and use the technique without sound, they had to take one large bite to separate the outside and what they could eat at one point, chew three times real quick, and then take a large bite again, while gulping down everything, hiding the gulping sound over the sound of biting.
Ji Li wasn’t fully against eating sounds, as long as they were very subtle, soft and not annoying in any way possible. The brothers had to learn that the hard way… as whenever they made too many mistakes, they would not be offered any food by Ji Li and had to eat outside alone.
The trio quickly left the chicken stall and followed along the road deeper into the market, buying food at each and every stall they passed. Their fingers started to get oily at one point, but Ji Li used his talent to grow and freeze some flowers, that excellently cleaned their hands.
His Talent was of course hidden, and he acted like he was searching something in his sleeves, while he was actually doing the ability and cleaning his hands. Naturally he put the flowers into pouches and gave it to the others, enjoying the clean hands while they ate.
Hygiene is always important, no matter if they were just eating, they might as well eat civilised. Soon they stopped eating any greasy food, so they had to switch flowers to clean the different messes the sweets left on their hands after eating.
Their technique of eating and their movement surprised the onlookers quite a bit. The eunuchs all kept indifferent faces while they were eating, but they never stopped, so they assumed the face wasn’t because the food didn’t taste well, but because they were already trained very well.
The guard following had slowly started carrying wooden boxes filled with food, smiling wryly internally as all he knew Ji Li already for a small time and experienced horrifying things by his side, knowing too well that the cute and inexperienced eunuch was just an image Ji Li built for these people to make them keep quiet and just accept the situation.
Ji Li followed further into the market and the food stalls soon were left behind as he saw many different shops, ranging from small tools for various things to accessories for the hair and other things. He looked around but wasn’t too interested in anything that was presented to him there, although he saw some hidden gems that might be worth a higher price, nothing was useful to him.
The variety of things to buy weren’t too good looking and he just followed along until he stopped in front of a small stall that also had some accessories, but they were different. They were small, kitted silk accessories made in various shapes and forms.
The owner was an old man that sat crossed leg a step away from the stall on a chair, not advertising anything or calling out people to buy his accessories, making his stall relatively empty. There were still some people that came, but when they saw the prices, no one looked any longer and kept going, thinking that the old man was too shameless.