Days passed by abhorringly slowly with the news of Li Feifei and Long Zheng's broken engagement kept within the small circle of five (including the "air," the Emperor's personal eunuch) so as not to ruin neither of their reputations.
Also, everyone aside from Li Feifei believed the annulment was only temporary so they didn't see the need to reveal it anyway.
Recently, Li Feifei had been using the excuse of befriending the female lead to venture out of the palace as she accompanied the 21st century assassin to various locations such as the cliché auctions and taverns to have fun and loosen up. They had encountered the occasional assassins as well, which only enlivened their uneventful lives more.
Surprisingly, the female lead and herself got along quite well. It was mainly due to the fact that the female lead found a companion in Li Feifei as a fellow female martial artist.
Most of the other women from this world were weak and delicate flowers only meant to be viewed and not touched, so both Li Feifei and Bai Ping naturally had no interest in befriending them.
Additionally, they were both transmigrators, so their conversations were able to flow quite well. Li Feifei didn't even bother trying to act like an ancient woman in front of Bai Ping because they had never interacted before anyway, thus there was no way Bai Ping would be able to tell that she was acting out of character.
And since she found a friend in Bai Ping, Li Feifei helped her in dealing with her half-sisters and detestable general of a father. She didn't use her status to suppress them. Actually, she had deliberately hidden her status the first time she met the half-sisters and allowed them to insult her with a smirk on her face the entire time.
So, when General Bai returned home to find his unruly daughters slandering the most favored member of the royal family he almost shat his pants as he slapped them across the face, causing them to break a few teeth, falling to the ground in tears and disbelief.
Even though he himself held only disdain for Li Feifei as she was only a spoilt young lady with no other redeeming quality aside from her numerous talents and beauty, the old general knew that they couldn't afford to offend her.
When he found out that she was on good terms with his useless daughter, he was naturally happy that he had another connection to the royal family but conflicted at the same time because he was currently in the Third Prince's faction. But it was always good to have a fallback plan, so he didn't stop the two from deepening their friendship.
General Bai was still unaware of the ambiguous relationship between Li Hao and Bai Ping.
In his mind, the only one he needed to get rid of now was that persistent Long Zheng.
Bai Ping wasn't a weak woman who needed help at every twist and turn, but she wouldn't disregard Li Feifei's efforts. Their friendship strengthened, and she was even more willing to convince Li Hao to let go of his foolish ambitions.
In the end, the male lead's whole life thus far had been spent aiming for the throne so it was naturally not easy to let it go just like that.
So, Bai Ping proposed to let the four of them--herself, Li Hao, Li Yun, and Li Feifei--all hang out and get to know each other more.
After all, Li Feifei had already let her know that in fact, Li Hao knew nothing of his two older siblings at all and only based his judgment purely on what he'd heard from his concubine mother. This caused Bai Ping to facepalm and have a minor migraine at how she had fallen for such a childish youngster.
Li Feifei sympathetically pat her shoulder and could actually relate a little bit. The only difference was that she hadn't fallen in love yet, but she did indeed have a childish devil clinging onto her in every world.
Even their son was more mature than his father ah!
When they had spoken about their past lives, Li Feifei had told her about the fourth world with Nile and Timothy.
001 couldn't do anything but let his figurative jaw drop at how his host smoothly spoke about a previous mission world to a resident of the current mission world! The worst part was that he could find any fault in her actions because they were both transmigrators and it technically wasn't breaking any rules at all!
Bai Ping had found that the universe was indeed profound. Her new friend was actually from a time way ahead of her own and even had a family of three, ah!
She only spoke about how Li Yun and Li Feifei reminded her of her own relationship with her older brother, as well as how he died and thus her journey to becoming an assassin in order to avenge him. In the end, she managed to complete her vengeance, but she died whilst doing so. Nevertheless, she was satisfied but it seemed that the gods had given her another chance as she was bestowed a new life in another's body.
Thinking back, maybe they had pitied her for her lack of a love life and threw Li Hao at her in this life. She was content.
Back to the reconciliation between the three siblings, the group of four had wandered listlessly in a forest, searching for treasure.
As the male and female leads, they naturally had the luck of the heavens (as opposed to Li Feifei's detestable 3 that had caused her to be too young to birth her child, not to mention the distance between the sperm donor and herself).
They had gotten news of an ancient ruin hidden somewhere within this forest from the times of their ancestors.
According to Li Yun, who was the oldest and most knowledgeable of the entire group, the four kingdoms used to be united as one. At that time, the people were extremely prosperous under one legendary ruler who had four powerful generals under him.
The five men were all the best of friends until they had a falling out due to one woman--thus stemmed the saying "calamitous beauty."
The ruler was naturally supreme and above his generals, so he had taken her in as his concubine. He already had an Empress and many more flowers in his imperial harem but this woman became his favored Honored Imperial Concubine as soon as she was admitted into the harem, to the extreme dislike of the other women.
But the trifles within the harem was nothing when compared to the conflict between such powerful sworn brothers.
In fact, one of the generals had met the woman first and introduced her to his small circle friends as his intended only to have the ruler swipe her away.
He had turned hostile against his emperor friend from that point on. The other three generals had tried to mediate between the two at first, but they also felt that bros before hoes was the ultimate law in the bro code so the emperor was undoubtedly in the wrong in this matter.
Despite that, they felt it was not worth it to dispel their decades of friendship and brotherhood over one woman.
However, that thought soon vanished from their minds the more they interacted with the woman. Don't ask how they came into contact with her, as their emperor friend was constantly outwardly displaying his affection for her, inadvertently giving everyone a chance to interact with her and find that she was to their tastes and likings as well.
In the end, they had a falling out. The emperor was schemed against and killed by the four generals as he was the one who owned her.
They agreed that after setting her free, they would then compete amongst themselves to see who could get her in the end.
The woman, who was distraught over her husband's death, couldn't bear to see the other four men about to kill each other for her so she killed herself to be buried alongside her deceased husband.
But even though the beauty was no longer in the way of their friendship, the four generals could never be friends again after such a conflict--not to mention they had even resorted to killing their old Emperor friend.
Thus, the noble group of four youngsters were currently out to find this shared tomb of theirs to raid the treasures buried along with the ancient Imperial Couple's corpses.
Now, in ancient times this sort of act was definitely considered desecration, but who were our female leads?
As transmigrators they couldn't give a rat's ass about customs.
Actually, Li Feifei didn't care much for the treasure as she was just too bored and had to find something interesting to do.
Bai Ping loved money and shiny things.
Li Hao was a henpecked boyfriend, while Li Yun was a doting older brother.
This group of four had no qualms in raiding an ancient tomb at all.
Additionally, they had no guards to accompany them thanks to Li Feifei's complaints that the fun would be taken away if the guards were around to limit her actions.
Concerning her new, bright, and curious nature, Li Yun had inadvertently linked it to her having become close friends with Bai Ping. He had read that when girls wreaked havoc with one another, they could raise hell so it wasn't much of a surprise that she had gone from the sheltered and quiet Li Feifei to the presently pleasure-seeking curious little princess.
Also, she rarely ventured out of the palace so it was normal for one to be curious.
But that didn't explain her fighting capabilities... Although he hadn't seen how she took care of the assassins from that day on the balcony, Li Yun already knew that General Long had no hand in their disposal.
Speaking of Long Zheng, he did want to join them but Li Feifei appealed to her older brother that this wasn't the time to be cultivating feelings between exes.
The moment she mentioned the two words, "cultivating feelings," Li Yun had already decided in his heart to keep that clingy general from getting anywhere near his little sister.
Even though this vigorous group of youngsters were undoubtedly the cream of the crop in the Kingdom of Li, they certainly didn't foresee that the ancients before them were exponentially much more ingenious than they were.
Thus, the current situation.
Li Feifei stared in a daze as her limbs were impossibly secured by thick tree roots to the ceiling of the ancient underground tomb of the first Emperor and Empress.
To her left was her unconscious and bloody older brother, while Bai Ping was struggling to get out at her right, and a wounded Li Hao was similarly struggling next to Bai Ping.
All of them had been caught off guard by the sudden "collapse" of the tomb as the tree roots suddenly gained minds of their own and attempted to grab onto them. As they had been connected with the walls and ceiling of the tomb, the moment they started moving, the tomb had inevitably fallen apart and Li Yun was injured in his attempt to shield the gigantic falling debris from Li Feifei.
In all honesty, he didn't have to protect her as she would have taken out the Sword of Oblivion to slice the former ceiling to keep it from falling onto her. But alas, she didn't foresee him suddenly jumping out in front of her to block her from harm.
As for how she would explain the existence of the black sword, it was very simple. They were in an ancient tomb filled with countless treasures. All she had to say was in the heat of the moment she felt something on the floor and picked it up. That item just so happened to be the blasted all-powerful Sword of Oblivion!
A-pei!
She wasn't the male or female lead so that was naturally not actually possible but what would they know!
But it's too late for regrets as Li Yun was knocked unconscious by the direct hit of the heavy ceiling while she herself only had minor scratches.
On the other hand, Bai Ping and Li Hao had put up the greatest fight trying to escape from the roots clutches in the beginning so their wounds were more severe but not life-threatening.
Thinking back to her side mission, Li Feifei was slightly worried about Li Yun's current condition.
'Hey, 001, he's not dead, right?' She couldn't even turn to check if Li Yun was still breathing. All she knew was that his back must have suffered greatly and that he was currently dripping blood onto the floor beneath them.
His eyes were closed, and due to the heavenly effect of his long lashes forming a fan across his closed lids and his peerlessly beautiful face that was strangely left untouched he appeared to have only been taking a nap. But Li Feifei knew better and was even more aware of how heavy of a hit he'd taken in her place.
[He's still alive. Host, you are lucky (scoff). If he died, then you would have automatically failed the side mission ah.] 001 completely blamed Li Feifei for their current situation.
After all, if she hadn't been so insistent that they venture into the tomb to "bond as family" then Li Yun would still be perfectly fine. Why did she have to choose something so dangerous of all things in order to clear up a simple misunderstanding between siblings!
'Oh, that' s good,' Li Feifei ignored 001's sarcasm and chose to pretend as if he'd never said it in the first place.
Bringing herself back to the matter at hand, only her toes and fingers were free to move about as they wished. Well, technically she was wearing shoes so her toes weren't actually free.
She debated whether or not she should try cutting herself out with her sword. Debated, because she wasn't even sure if she could angle the long sword to cut behind her with just her small fingers.
"Well, fuck. What the hell," she muttered to herself so quietly that no one else could hear her cursing.
What were they supposed to do in this situation?
Li Feifei was only stressing herself out because she didn't know how she would pass the time idly waiting for something miraculous to happen.
Yes, something miraculous was bound to happen. After all, the divine couple was there right next...
Her mouth gaped open in incredulity when she turned to her right only to find that Bai Ping and Li Hao as well as the roots that had fastened them to the ceiling were no longer beside her! Only she and Li Yun remained and they had no way to free themselves!
No, the male and female leads did not loosen themselves from the tree roots. Due to their protagonist halos, they were coincidentally the only two who were pulled into the "vents" of the ancient tomb and Li Feifei assumed they were on their merry way straight to the treasure vault.
As someone who was ruthlessly left behind, Li Feifei wanted to cry but had no tears.
On the bright side, since she was alone, she could attempt a variety of ways to get herself free.
It took many tries, summoning, storing, and re-summoning the Sword of Oblivion at every possible angle before she managed to cut one arm free from the roots. By then, most likely over two hours had already passed but after her arm was free everything else was smooth-sailing.
Then, she effortlessly hacked apart the roots that had detained her older brother who was finally showing signs of waking up only after she had already solved their dilemma.
But, this was to her preference. It would have been awkward to explain how she could summon her sword without going even more out of character than she already was.
The ceiling wasn't too far from the ground, so the fall wasn't that frightening and catching him before he could worsen his injuries wasn't hard.
"Fei-er..."
Li Yun mumbled as his lashes trembled.
"Yun-ge! Wake up! Are you okay?" Li Feifei had put Li Yun's head to rest comfortably in her lap as soon as she freed him from the ceiling.
Before Li Yun opened his eyes, he felt warm droplets falling onto his cheeks as they rolled down and traced the contours of his face.
He furrowed his brows and slowly opened his dark brown eyes with hints of gold only to find himself dazedly faced with the worried gaze of his dear little sister as she but her bottom lip in an attempt to hold back her tears. He felt his heart constrict at the pitiful sight and instantly panicked.
"Gege is fine. Why is Fei-er crying? Is Fei-er hurt anywhere? Where does it hurt?" He anxiously threw towards her an onslaught of questions, causing Li Feifei to laugh.
Her soft laughter combined with her previously distraught teary face made for quite a comical sight, even if she was supposed to be a beauty.
"Fei-er is okay. Yun-ge was unconscious for so long, Fei-er got scared Yun-ge wasn't going to wake up ever again."
At that last line, she looked as if she was going to cry again so Li Yun immediately rose from her lap to console her by embracing her and patting her small back.
"Don't you see? Yun-ge is perfectly fine. As long as Fei-er is not hurt, how could Yun-ge come to any harm? Silly."
An awkward cough resounded from the depths of the tomb, which alerted the two siblings.
Li Yun's gaze abruptly sharpened as he called out with a low tone, "Who's there?"
"Eldest Imperial Brother, Second Imperial Sister," Li Hao uncomfortably called out. His tall silhouette could be made out from the shadows as he headed towards their direction.
"It's me, Li Hao."
Actually, he was there from the moment Li Yun had opened his eyes, and Li Feifei already knew. But the dazed Li Yun who had just barely awoken was still unaware. That's why she put on a show of affectionate siblings to show what this younger brother of theirs had been missing out on by alienating himself from them all those years.
Breaking free from her brother's grasp, Li Feifei happily ran up to Li Hao and checked him for any injuries. Seeing that he didn't have anything as major as Li Yun, she let out a relieved sigh before pulling the idiotic younger brother of a male lead in for a hug.
Li Hao, the male lead who lacked any familial affection for the past fifteen years, felt his heart warm at the caring gesture of his older sister. If he knew she wasn't truly as sinister as his concubine mother had made her out to be, would he have been happier all those years he'd spent in solitude?
The past few days, Bai Ping had opened his eyes and his time together with his older siblings already made him feel remorseful for holding such dark emotions towards them in the past.
With his newfound knowledge of his siblings, he naturally figured out his mother's schemes as well. All he felt was bitterness towards her actions.
"You guys disappeared, so Fei-er was so worried!" When she let go of Li Hao, Li Feifei kept her face lowered to hide the satisfied smirk on her face.
The amount of tofu she was eating was just too great ah!
Then, she erased the smirk before replacing it with another worried expression as she tilted her head to look around behind Li Hao, "But where's Ping-er?"
The male lead's unconsciously softened features turned solemn, "She wasn't with you?"
Shaking her head no, Li Feifei's face also turned grim as she was "worried" for her best friend. In all actuality, Bai Ping was the female lead so she definitely wouldn't have died or anything.
Sure enough, light steps could be heard from the opposite end from where Li Hao had just come from.
Everyone's heads turned warily towards the darkness as the steps neared.
"Li Hao? Feifei? Is it you guys?"
A soft female voice echoed throughout the tomb.
It was Bai Ping.
Her previously flawless face was now marred with small scratches, but it didn't deter from her natural beauty. As she was only thirteen, Bai Ping had a large pair of peach blossom eyes, her pupils were a dark brown and almost black, coupled with small heart-shaped red lips and a cute button nose. Her figure was actually slightly taller than Li Feifei, who was two years older than her, and her chest was already quite large for her age but obviously still developing. Their size seemed to be enhanced further by her slim waist and long slender legs that could now be seen due to her dark, ocean blue dress having been ripped on the side up to her upper thigh. Her previously tight long braid of luminous black hair that reached down to her lower waist was now loose and her right fringe of bangs messy and in disarray.
After confirming that it was indeed Bai Ping who had called out to them, Li Yun immediately averted his gaze out of propriety while Li Hao immediately ran over to drape his own oversized out robe over his little lover.
"Ping-er! Are you hurt anywhere?" He asked attentively.
Bai Ping shook her head and held out her hands to show him that she was fine.
In the end, the four people couldn't find the vault even with two of the protagonist halos combined. It turned out that Li Hao and Bai Ping had only been brought to empty hallways.
But it didn't really matter to them because they were just out to have fun anyway and they were all pretty well off already.
Besides, the main goal of the trip had already been achieved. Li Hao had put away his grudge and ambition to be happy with his family and Bai Ping.
Li Yun was bedridden for two weeks, but he was happy because his little sister had personally taken care of him throughout the entire duration and even his formerly resentful Third Imperial Brother occasionally visited with reddened ears before fleeing after making sure he was healing alright.