Xiao Zhi saw Yun Yi’s expression change dramatically and felt a flicker of confusion. Then he watched her force herself to stay calm, her cheeks puffing slightly, as she spoke again to the rectangular box-shaped magical tool—this time in a tone he had never heard before.
“Dad~ I’m just playing a short drama on my tablet. It’s called After the Tyrant Travels Through Time, He Falls for Me in the Retirement Home.”
Sickeningly sweet.
Thanks to her, Xiao Zhi’s arms broke out in a rash of goosebumps.
“There’s a show like that?” came the voice from the magical tool.
“Yeah, it’s super popular!”
“Send it to me. I’ll watch it during my break.”
“…”
After placating Yun Guoqiang, Yun Yi’s dark, thick pupils shifted slightly and landed on Xiao Zhi, scanning him from head to toe.
The delivery driver could see him. Old Yun could hear his voice. Yun Yi poked the back of Xiao Zhi’s hand with her fingertip. It was warm. Then she curled her finger and moved it upward to check his breath.
“How dare you.” Xiao Zhi brushed her hand away.
Even in the immortal realm, he was still the sovereign of the Great Yan Dynasty. He would not tolerate being manhandled by a mere immortal thief.
Based on his observations, this thief only knew low-level flame magic. As for the tool in her hand, it resembled a long-distance sound transmission device.
Yun Yi was irritated. The wretched emperor was on her turf and still dared to act arrogant?
“Hey, this is a socialist society governed by the rule of law. Feudal autocracy doesn’t work here.”
Xiao Zhi’s gaze was unruly: “What of it, this immortal realm? Summon those immortals to appear before me at once.”
He wanted to meet her father?
The snowball of resentment rolled larger and larger. Yun Yi grabbed him and stormed back into the garage.
The trunk lid he had ripped off lay quietly on the ground.
The scene was a complete mess.
Yun Yi jabbed her finger at the Porsche logo on the trunk lid: “It’s the base model, but this was a gift from my parents!”
“Pay for my car! Pay me back!” There was no one else in her private garage. She plopped down on the ground, looking exactly like those old folks in the news who fake falling down to scam people.
The Son of Heaven meets a swindler.
Xiao Zhi lifted the trunk lid, adjusted it a few times, found the right angle, and slammed it back into place with a clang.
Yun Yi was astonished: “And that counts as fixing it?”
Bang. His fist came down on the lid. The spot he had damaged earlier was now dented inward.
Xiao Zhi: “It’s done.”
“You—!”
“I have repaired it for you. Now you should return the imperial seal.”
The bandage Yun Yi had wrapped around him earlier was now seeping with blood. The wound on his hand had torn open again.
Yun Yi looked away from the red stain. “Fine. You win. In that case, I’ll give you back the seal.”
The emperor, stranded in a strange world with no idea where to turn, forcibly suppressed the tumultuous emotions surging within him and followed her upstairs.
This place was completely different from the imperial study.
Inside a transparent cabinet, various books were displayed. Some characters Xiao Zhi could recognize, but most were too simplified—as if the written language had been stripped down to its barest essence.
Xiao Zhi wanted to take a closer look at a book. He reached out—and hit an invisible wall.
Yun Yi, who had gone to get bandages, saw the whole thing: A country bumpkin who’s never seen glass before.
“That’s a barrier,” came her mysterious voice. “These are forbidden texts and secret manuals. Mortals cannot peek into the secrets of heaven.”
Xiao Zhi turned to look at her, quietly hiding his hand behind his back.
Yun Zhi hesitated for only a second before abandoning the idea of hiding her romance novels and comic books. What would a bumpkin know anyway.
“Here, sit here. Bandage yourself.” She invited the emperor to take a seat.
Her earlier pretense of profundity had worked. The emperor obeyed and sat down in the expensive gaming chair Yun Yi had splurged on.
No sooner had Xiao Zhi sat down than he felt something was wrong. A creaking, rattling sound came from above his head, and then the chair lurched forward!
The chair had grown legs.
Yun Yi placed her hands on the back of the chair and pushed him—chair and all—to the other side of the room.
She was deliberately messing with him.
Just now, when Yun Yi had bandaged Xiao Zhi’s wound, he had memorized her method. Following his recollection, he unscrewed the iodine bottle lid, picked out a cotton swab from the sealed bag, and applied it with practiced ease.
He lifted his gaze an inch from the wound and saw her lowering her eyes, focused on writing and drawing.
“The little beast on the imperial seal—is it a dragon?” she asked.
“It’s a kind of strange creature.”
“…That’s the same as saying nothing.” Yun Yi’s brush hovered above the paper, unable to come down. “It looks a bit like a qilin, but the pattern is hard to draw.”
Xiao Zhi watched her frustrated expression and was suddenly reminded of himself as a child, drawing the same thing.
In truth, he had never seen a real lion. He had only heard an old eunuch say “a lion is like a big cat,” so day after day he had lain by the corner of the palace wall, copying the stray cats basking in the sun on the walltop.
His childhood had been soaked in ink, stroke by stroke, spent in loneliness.
Yun Yi held up an oversized eraser brick and sent an SOS signal to Xiao Zhi: “You write the characters on the imperial seal.”
Xiao Zhi had already noticed that she had been carving and drawing on that large white object for quite some time.
At first, he thought this was one of her immortal arts: transforming objects through form.
As long as the immortal thief could return to him an imperial seal identical to the original, he would pretend none of this had ever happened.
But then—
“It’s done!” Yun Yi handed it to him.
The moment Xiao Zhi took it, he was utterly deflated.
The object in his hand was soft. Rough. Shoddy.
Clearly fake at first glance.
“This is your good faith?” Where was his imperial seal?!
Yun Yi touched her nose. “Since you don’t believe I have the real seal, I had no choice but to make a fake one.”
She exhausted herself explaining to this ancient man the concept of “rubber stamping.”
She was a study content creator. She usually drew journals and posted them on social media, so of course she made her own custom stamps.
“Your handwriting is beautiful. Hurry and write,” she urged.
Sometimes, it was truly frustrating. Xiao Zhi had arrived in the immortal realm, surrounded by nothing but bizarre, grotesque sights, with nowhere to vent his anger.
He decided to see what this immortal thief was truly capable of. Taking the strange pen, Xiao Zhi wrote the four characters “Emperor’s Treasure” on the bottom of the rubber stamp.
Yun Yi’s eyes lit up. He really was an emperor—from memory, he had reproduced the exact same seal face as the original.
If this guy were a modern person, he definitely would have gone to calligraphy tutoring classes as a child.
Yun Yi breathed on her carving knife.
Xiao Zhi grew tense along with her: “Can you do it?”
Yun Yi’s gaze was firm: “Of course!”
The air filled with the faint smell of uncertainty.
Yun Yi had a tutoring-class level of painting and calligraphy skill, and her carving technique was inherited from several uncles at the archaeology research institute.
The moment a drop of sweat fell, Master Yun declared the “counterfeit forgery” work complete.
Xiao Zhi reached out.
But the girl got there first, swiftly stamping the impression onto what Xiao Zhi recognized as “Censor Xiao’s” notebook.
Xiao Zhi was displeased: Who was the emperor here, after all?
“Yes! Copy and paste—exactly the same!” Yun Yi was intoxicated by her own superb forgery skills.
“Transform this back into the imperial seal at once, and I may show you leniency.” Xiao Zhi pinched the rubber stamp. The texture was far too soft. Aside from the identical impression, it was completely different from his precious seal.
Yun Zhi blew on the stamp ink on her notebook: “Why don’t you use this semi-finished product for now?”
“My imperial seal is jade, worth an entire city. You won’t use your magic to turn this thing into the seal?” Handing him some floppy object to placate him? Was this how you treated a refugee?
Her forearm ached from carving. Yun Yi was unhappy. “You wretched emperor, don’t push your luck.”
In the small study, a silent rage at being toyed with began to churn. This damned immortal realm was no different from the mortal world—full of deception and pretense.
Xiao Zhi’s brow furrowed: “I will make you—”
Before he could finish, Yun Yi snapped her notebook shut and glared at him fiercely.
The gaming chair was suddenly empty.
In broad daylight, the man in the dragon robe had vanished into thin air.
The clock on the wall ticked on.
Yun Yi stood frozen for a long moment. Her lips moved, her voice soft, as if questioning the air itself: “What were you going to do to me? Torture? Beheading? Execute my father too?”
The more she spoke, the louder her voice became: “Hey, I hate people who don’t finish their sentences!”
The last words were practically a shout: “Go back to being emperor of your Yan Dynasty. Don’t come back!”
.
Xiao Zhi was engulfed in surging fury, trapped in boundless darkness.
His palm was clenched tightly around the fake imperial seal. The soft, floppy texture pressed against his skin. So the events of the immortal realm had not been a dream after all.
He stood there in a daze for the space of a breath before realizing he was walking through the low, narrow corridor of the secret dungeon. He felt his way along the wall and emerged.
A sky full of stars. A white jade disc hung high in the heavens.
Xiao Zhi narrowed his eyes. His heart sank. He distinctly remembered that before he had entered the immortal realm, the moon hanging in the sky had been a silver hook. How long had it been? And yet the mortal moon had already turned full?
Silence surrounded him. The palace attendants and guards were all gone.
Only the sound of his own footsteps echoed down the long palace path. Xiao Zhi pulled his sleeves tighter. The air seemed colder than before.
This place was closest to his bedchamber. The emperor drifted in like a ghost. The palace lanterns cast their dim yellow glow. The incense burner emitted the scent of ebony. The room was warm as spring.
He stopped.
The dragon bed had a hollowed-out depression—like the shape of a person.
Someone was lying in his bed? A hundred thoughts raced through Xiao Zhi’s mind. Had he miscalculated? In less than an hour away from the palace, had the imperial city already changed hands?
On one of the display shelves stood an ancient bronze sword. Xiao Zhi silently drew it.
He stepped forward, images swirling through his mind.
Xiao Qian. The secret dungeon. The little thief.
His imperial brother Xiao Qian had repeatedly defied the late emperor—appointed crown prince twice, deposed twice.
Xiao Zhi’s knuckles slowly tightened around the sword hilt.
Never mind. In his position, the crime of killing one’s brother was ultimately less dangerous than the threat of losing power.
The bronze sword sliced through the air. Thud. The slashed silk bedding sent threads flying.
Something was wrong.
“Your Majesty…!”
“Your Majesty! This humble officer has failed to protect you in time!”
Two trembling voices reached his ears.
Xiao Zhi spun around sharply, leaped into the air, and thrust the bronze sword straight at one of them.
The young eunuch’s eyes rolled back, and he fainted. Kneeling beside the eunuch was the imperial guard commander, his face set with the resolute expression of a man ready to die. Dying by his master’s hand—this would be a perfect end.
The palace attendants prostrated themselves, each fearing for his own life.
Beneath the dragon bed’s silk coverlet—hidden among the layers—were several pillows.
A red flower bloomed on the young eunuch’s left shoulder, as if weeping tears of blood: “This servant has committed the crime of deceiving Your Majesty. I beg the emperor to sentence me to death.”
With that, he braced himself and lunged toward a pillar.
“Wang Delan.” The emperor called his name coldly.
The young eunuch shuddered at the sound and crawled back to Xiao Zhi’s feet: “This servant is here!”
Ah? The emperor actually knew his real name!
“Your Majesty, this servant deserves death! Deserves death!”
“Who granted you permission to die?”
“Ah.” So he didn’t have to die? But he was dying. His shoulder throbbed with pain. Yet joy overcame terror. This young eunuch was ready to lay down his life for the emperor.
“Explain yourself. Properly.”
.
At Xiao Qian’s residence.
Several dark figures cut across the sky and subdued the night-watch palace attendants.
The grand hall doors suddenly burst open. The emperor swept through.
Xiao Zhi glanced at the empty bed and said, “Come out.”
“Tch.” A shadow emerged from the corner. Xiao Qian pulled his black robes tightly around him and yawned. “My little emperor brother visits late at night. Have you come to reminisce with your elder brother?”
The guards stepped forward, swords pressed against Xiao Qian’s throat.
Xiao Zhi: “Imperial Brother, were you plotting rebellion?”
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