The carriage escape plan worked without a hitch. Not even teenage girls like the threat of capital punishment.
We managed to find a place to hide away on the mountain, albeit lower, but from what Lianfeng calculated, the shooting meteors happened against the backdrop of Hanyue's small moon body.
He brought up the force field to hide all of us. Bodyguards and I.
"I need a favour." Lianfeng stared at the streaks across the skies while the fire crackled sharply, illuminating our positions.
Aha. Start with a small favour and work himself up. Knew he had some ulterior motive. Oh well, I am no saint. The usage is mutual.
"What favour?"
"Can you just pull me into service? At least, I will get five years off from the pressure to be engaged."
I sat up immediately.
"To Wenyi?"
"It isn't only her... there are already a few trying. Father is getting suffocated by those matchmakers. Rejections have to be very diplomatic. Once I hit 18, excuse of youth doesn't work, especially with the golden dragon summoned," he sighed.
Summoning into royal service was a way of escaping - no engagements are allowed in royal service until those five years are up.
It meant only loyalty sworn to me. Sadly it meant a certain death may await for him. Calamity, ala Zaixing can come at any time. If it was Cangtian, I might do it, just because I can.
Lianfeng wise, I don't know him well enough. Whether he would hinder or help.
"At eight, poisoned and became a vegetable. At 12, poisoned again. There's only so much poison this body can take. Being a prince's companion is not easy. You will become a pawn, or worse, a scapegoat, to use against me. To many commoners, a prince's life is the ultimate lifestyle. To us, kill or be killed. My father only has my royal uncle, by the same mother. Of all his siblings, six of his brothers died by challenge and two executed as traitors. I am the only son of my mother. With two half siblings of powerful princes. No backing and a vegetable. Death is easy for me. But you, you have a bright future ahead. As a friend, I would advise you to think again."
Yeah, the two older brothers of Ji Feng were not going to keep me, or this body, alive.
While not a threat for crown prince position, royal father had declined to name a successor. So Ji Feng was stuck as the weakest link in a three corner fight. The youngest.
In fact, all three are survivors. From the time they were first formed in their mothers' belly in the first trimester.
Most of father's concubines always had mysterious miscarriages whenever a male foetus was declared. Easy to spot intrigues in the harem, and the mothers of those two brothers did not even need to lift a finger.
Always one non-son bearing concubine playing against the other for the most common reason possible - the 'if I can't bear a son, neither can you'.
Ji Feng's mother sacrificed her life during childbirth in exchange for his - she used all her ling qi to preserve him from the poison in her body. Sad beginning for a prince. She was said to be one of the greatest beauty in Lingyu Kingdom - no doubt, since her son inherited the face I am wearing now.
Lianfeng shifted nearer to me. Just keep away, boy. I am not even sure what the purpose is for Ji Feng - whether his existence is to set off a set of calamity domino rally with Zaixing around.
"I don't want to marry. The person I like cannot be married to me."
"Rubbish. I can use the Prince's right to grant a decree. Just tell me whoever it is. That is, unless you like one of my half sisters, royal relatives... or a married woman...," I trailed off.
Not looking good.
Maybe this nerd likes them, cougars, older and more matured.
None of my half sisters could step out of the palace, let alone out of the capital. The royal relatives - not one of their daughters can step out of the capital. Women in the royal social circle were to be married off for alliances between other kingdoms. Like three of Ji Feng's elder half sisters.
Clear Dragon Pond was three big cities and two regional cities away, an estimated 1000 kilometres, around the distance from Beijing to Xi'an one way. Even the flying carriage took one and a half hour to arrive and that's faster than the airplane on Earth. None of the royal or aristocratic daughters can sneak out that far.
"Never mind." He looked away. Frustration was almost smellable. Guess I outlived my use.
"How long are you going to stay in Clear Dragon pond?"
Probably counting down to the days that he did not need to suck up to me.
"A year. Father said that I need to recuperate. After that, I won't know. Back to the palace to be poisoned again, I think," I shrugged.
"You are weird. You sound like you are almost happy to return to a killing field. Why not stay for longer? You can tell your father that you want to cultivate further. Five years would be good."
Square one again - he really seemed keen on being summoned, just a different place.
True, I could make the request.
Aside from that, no one really fancied Clear Dragon Pond or Youdu city, a small regional city. Mountainous, rural, not very strategic and only one mid ranking sect of no threat with sparsely populated area a few hundred miles from a big city. Even legendary beasts saw fit to boycott the area.
Unlike Xifengguan in the midway to the Capital, where the three top cultivation sects reside in, Xuanlong was inconsequential, in the sense of power held. The only problem was that I still had to make trips to the Capital, aka the bloodiest of killing fields, to play the sick, dying vegetable of a prince.
"I can't tell him that. They will know I have restored my cultivation system and then assassins will come at a faster rate. That's a time bomb."
"What's a time bomb?" Lianfeng looked confused.
Whoops. No bombs in Jinshi.
Just scary ling qi induced explosions. Who needs a bomb when they can fire out ling qi like X-men mutants on drugs?
Sometimes I wondered if Zaixing allowed me to keep my memories to torment me.
"There's another thing, you can train in something else. Those without cultivation can still get a summoned beast to train. Just need someone with cultivation to summon it for you. It's a substitute system. The peasant farmers learn it from us. They use it to fend off the mo beasts from their land. Now and then, there's a competition on the best trained summoned beast - non cultivated and cultivated categories. Popularity of this competition is spreading to other cities too," Lianfeng said.
Mo beasts were different from ling beasts and the mystical beasts (who were said to escape the heavens). They had red auras around their bodies , unlike the blue of the ling beasts and the yellow around the mystical ones.
They were more horrific than having a lion entering a garden on Earth. Bloodthirsty and supernaturally strong - villages could be massacred in a night.
No one, not even from Ji Feng's memory, knew where they came from. Those who went to investigate were never seen again. They could appear anywhere on the outskirts, favouring the wild woods at any time.
"Really, so who can summon one for me?" I asked.
"I can, but you have to be with me in the same cave for seven lunar days," Lianfeng pointed confidently to himself. "Asides from them, it will help to increase my cultivation. We just need to arrange for an auspicious time."
Win-win. Jinshi's version of Roman Venatio arena as entertainment - setting ling beasts against other ling beasts. Lianfeng gets to improve his cultivation. Then again, it won't be a high level ling beast since he only exited seclusion recently.
"Come for the class tomorrow, Elder Xiao from Huofeng sect is coming to talk about summoned beasts," Lianfeng cheerfully added. "That's their specialty."