Under the teasing pressure of the woman he called Mother's gaze.
Zuo Guangshu's face immediately turned red, and he stammered.
But after stammering for quite a while, he still failed to stammer out anything coherent.
Princess Yuyun of Great Chu simply stared at him, tilting her head and rising onto her toes as she peered this way and that, her voice carrying a trace of disappointment. "There aren't any marks, though."
Zuo Guangshu was embarrassed and annoyed. "Mother! What are you talking about?!"
As though she had discovered a whole new world, Xiong Jingyu exclaimed, "Ho! So you really do understand already!"
Then she put on a sorrowful sigh. "Ah, the child has truly grown up. Yet Mother has grown old."
"Old, my foot." Zuo Guangshu said irritably. "For a Divine Presence cultivator, living several hundred years..."
His voice came to an abrupt halt.
He realized that he had said the wrong thing.
For a Divine Presence cultivator, living only a few decades was perfectly normal, too.
Like his father.
Like his elder brother.
Transcendent power also meant transcendent responsibility, and transcendent burdens to bear.
Some people could not live peacefully until their natural lifespan ran out because they gave that peace to those behind them.
"Speaking of which." Supporting his mother by the arm, Zuo Guangshu said, "I remember that the Phoenix-patterned Sleepflower Ant's favorite food is the Golden-feathered Fengxian Flower, isn't it?"
"It is." Xiong Jingyu readily played along. "They're famous flowers from Qi. Every year, we have to spend a great deal of money to buy some."
"We've been buying less in recent years?"
"It seems their output has been insufficient too. There isn't much they can allocate to our side."
"I remember we had a set quota, and we never paid any less each year."
Xiong