CHAPTER 71 - BLOWN AWAY BY AIR-LARIOUS ANTICS

🙞❤︎🙜

Contrary to my fears, nothing bad happened. In fact, the others at the farm treated Prince Baiyu’s presence as something of a lark.

Fengying warned me several times not to let him into my rooms, no matter what pretext he used. “Mark my words, he’ll try everything.”

“Why? He’s been in my rooms before.” He'd even stayed overnight several times.

“He’s never lived here.”

“As a guest! He’s here as a guest. He’s not moving in permanently.”

“He’ll definitely try to move into your rooms.”

I thought she was joking, but the next day I was making potions inside my room when a gust of wind blew a fine silk handkerchief on the floor beside me. Just as I was about to pick it up, Prince Baiyu appeared at my window.

“That’s mine,” he said. “Can I come in?”

Today he was dressed in the simplest clothing that I had ever seen him wear, dark blue cotton pants and a short robe that only went down to his knees.

“Sure.” I picked up the handkerchief and gestured for him to enter.

He had barely taken two steps inside when I heard shouting from the courtyard.

“Stop!” Fengying appeared moments later, her cheeks flushed from running at full speed into my room.

“What is it?” I asked her, concerned that something had gone wrong. We were all on high alert because of the Emberstone.

“Your Highness, this is hardly appropriate behavior!” she said to the Prince.

“She gave me permission to enter.” Prince Baiyu smiled. He gave me an arch look.

Fengying walked over to my table and bent over to whisper in my ear. “My lady, I thought I told you not to let him inside your room.”

“This flew into my room, and I was just giving it back to him.” I held up the handkerchief for proof.

“The prince’s element is wind,” she said.

Was she implying…?

I looked at Prince Baiyu’s expression. He looked like the cat who had got the cream.

“Really, what’s the big deal?” I asked them.

“May I stay?” he asked.

“No!” said Fengying. Once again, she bent down to whisper in my ear. “It’s not appropriate.”

“I’m sorry, it’s my fault for neglecting my guest. I’ll accompany you for a walk,” I said as tactfully as I could.

I must’ve done the right thing because Fengying nodded in approval. Putting all the Herblaw things away, I waved them both out of the door, then changed into sturdier boots.

Due to the current situation with the Emberstone, we were all supposed to stay inside the farm, so we could only walk to the rice fields and back. This time of the year, the trees surrounding us were a riot of brown, red, and orange colors. The air was crisp and cool, and the fallen leaves crunched under our feet.

“The vegetables are growing well,” I said.

“It looks like you’ll have another good harvest,” said the prince. Unlike Shuye, he was never too interested in my plants and simply said a few polite words about them now and then.

“Yes, especially since I remembered to put the [Lightning Rods] this time,” I said.

“That’s what these metal poles are for?”

“Yes. Sometimes there are lightning storms that damage the crops, so I put these up on every field.”

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

I got up and we continued walking. At the nearest rice paddy, we stopped again, and I saw that everything was fine. The water level was at the appropriate height, which was no surprise since we checked it every few hours during the day. We walked to the farthest rice field which was also doing fine.

“It must be satisfying to grow your own food,” he said.

“The clans don’t grow food, right? Since you guys don’t eat,” I said.

“Not at all. A lot of my fellow clan members have married humans, so we have quite a few farmers, though we buy a lot of food from the city,” he said.

“How many humans do you have in your clan?”

“Over a hundred.”

“That’s a lot more than I thought!”

We took our time walking back and chatted about food, humans, and cultivation for a while. When we got back to the house, I asked him to stop playing his tricks.

“Tricks? What tricks?” He raised his eyebrows and smiled at me.

“Just stop it, okay? You’ll give my housekeeper a heart attack,” I said. “I don’t know why you’re so desperate to stay in my room anyway.”

“Oh, I’m sure you know why.” He smirked at me.

I shook my head and gave up. He was obviously enjoying this too much. “Fine, but I’m keeping my doors and windows closed from now on.”

“That’s unfair! You’re supposed to give me a chance.”

“You’ll live.”

***

The next few days followed the same pattern. Prince Baiyu tried a whole host of underhanded strategies to get into my room, from pretending to be lost, to just outright “accidentally” tripping over his own feet and crashing through my door.

I gathered from the others’ reactions that this was considered all in good fun, so I tolerated it and replaced the door with a new, thicker one made of hardwood.

Since the kids and I were all stuck on the farm, we couldn’t go fishing, foraging, or hunting, and they were getting antsy, so I asked the prince to provide them with bows and arrows.

Unfortunately, as simple farmhands, they did not have the same combat abilities that I did. They could farm and craft, but their System menu did not include combat.

“Hey, I’m pretty good at this!” said Kharli. “Look, I hit the target ten out of ten times.”

She pointed at the wooden archery target painted with concentric circles of white and red that we had nailed to a tree.

“Watch me, I’m going to hit ten out of ten and get closer to the bull’s eye,” boasted Lari.

Alas for him, he only managed to hit the target five out of ten times, but that was still better than Mo whose arrows all went awry.

“Nevermind,” I said as I patted her shoulder. “It’s only the first day, and you’ll all get better the more you practice.”

“So we can go hunting using this instead of traps?” asked Kharli.

“Yes, I like the Horned Rabbits,” I said. “They taste nice. But this doesn’t use the Hunting skill so you won’t get exp.”

“Wouldn’t traps be more efficient?” asked Lari.

“Hmm. It depends on whether or not you're a good archer, I guess,” I said.

“I bet I could get a lot of rabbits with this,” said Kharli, holding her bow aloft.

“You probably could,” I said. “We’ll go when the Emberstone is returned to the temple.”

“Rabbit stew!” said Lari.

“Practice until your arms feel tired, but don’t exhaust yourselves,” I said. “You’ve already been shown the correct stance. Don’t fall into any bad habits, okay?”

They nodded and we continued training. I was using a [Training Dummy] from the Cash Shop, and Mr. Bear was right there with me casting [Fireball]. I wanted to test how fast and efficient my puppet was.

I always thought of Mr. Bear as a “he” instead of an “it” for some reason.

My archery was really coming along, and I could now shoot ten arrows a minute with reasonable accuracy. I could always hit the big red circle on the stomach of the [Training Dummy], but I sometimes failed to strike the smaller one on its head.

Mr. Bear, on the other hand, was slower than me, with a rate of fire of eight spells per minute, but he was always 100% accurate. We trained for an hour, and he never missed. However, ten minutes in, he ran out of [Spell Stones] and I had to add more to his inventory which could only hold a maximum of fifty stones.

“That is one deadly stuffed toy!” said Kharli when we finished our training.

“Mr. Bear is the best!” I turned off his [Exhibition Mode] and picked him up.

As we were back to the house, a System notification popped up.

[Investigate the Emberstone: Quest Complete

Reward: Exp]

I checked the quest information tab and saw that the temple must’ve finished its work.

[Investigate the Emberstone:

Deep in the forest is a mysterious stone. Explore the surrounding area and uncover its secrets. (Done)

Check the Emberstone glade for clues. (Done)

Go to the Temple of the Fox Clan and ask them about the stone. Bring five slices of double-fried tofu as an offering. (Done)

Circle the Sacred Tree of Life nine times. (Done)

Ask Prince Baiyu the true reason why the Emberstone was lost. (Done)

Send the Emberstone back to the Temple of the Fox Clan. (Done)]

Now for the reward! I clicked on the button and was presented with two choices.

[Choose Reward]

[1. Farming Exp]

[ 2. Astrology Book]

Oh, I remember this one! Inwardly chucking at the sly antics of the Adventure Incarnate developers, I picked [1. Farming Exp]. I was quite saddened when my farming didn’t level up.

Then came the expected message.

[Congratulations! You have received a coupon for a beginner Astrology Book.]

Astrology was a new skill that the developers had created last year, and it had been so unpopular that they resorted to giving people free starter books to get players to try it out. I was one of the many who didn’t like Astrology.

As my good friend GodIAm said, “I play to get away from school and studying. The last thing I want to do is read books in the game!”

… Come to think of it, all of the books that I got from the Cash Shop were all blank. Was that significant? I was never a big reader back on Earth, but I had to admit it was curious whether or not the Astrology Book would be blank, too.

Maybe I should go to Wukan.

Wukan was a town released during last year’s expansion that heavily featured Astrology. I decided to visit it in order to use my coupon, but only after the autumn harvest.