"Um..." Xu Tianzhen forced a strange smile and asked Qian Yuhan, "Could you do me a favor?!"
"!" Qian Yuhan had already realized what was about to happen. He sighed helplessly and said, "I... can I say no?"
"No." A sly glint flashed in Xu Tianzhen's eyes. She pointed at Qian Yuhan's leg, which hadn't yet crossed the threshold of the Princess Mansion, and chuckled. "You haven't left yet, so you're still my guest. 'When in Rome, do as the Romans do'—those were your words. You can't go back on them now."
"Yikes—" Qian Yuhan drew in a sharp breath and opened his mouth several times, only to stop himself. At last, even his usually calm face—which stayed composed in any situation except when facing Evil Soul Masters—showed an expression of barely holding it together.
"The favor you want me to do is within my abilities, right?!"
"Of course. I swear on my title as princess." Xu Tianzhen blinked and nodded, looking a little guilty.
"..."
Qian Yuhan fell silent for a moment, then accepted his fate as if he'd given up. "All right, all right. Today, I, Qian Yuhan, will risk life and limb to keep a gentleman company."
"Wrong, wrong. Risk life and limb to keep a princess company." Xu Tianzhen laughed and corrected his slip of the tongue.
After the old emperor, Xu Kun, had struggled to accept the bleak reality, he lay groaning over the imperial desk in Wenhua Hall, staring at the enormous pile of memorials that could be summed up in six words: "Your Majesty, we're broke. Send money!"
A servant who had been waiting outside hurriedly pushed open the hall doors, trotted up in front of Xu Kun's desk, and dropped to one knee. "Your Majesty, the princess has come to the palace."
"Tianzhen? What's she doing here?"
At that, Xu Kun sprang upright from the desk. He was just about to ask the servant where his daughter was when, from somewhere in the distance, he heard Xu Tianzhen's unmistakable voice shouting from outside the hall. "Why are you stopping me?! Don't you recognize your princess? Move aside, now!"
"Father! Father! Are you there? Your precious daughter has come to see you again!"
"Your Majesty..." The servant glanced tentatively toward the door, his expression clearly asking for Xu Kun's decision.
"Since she's already here, I can't exactly refuse to see her. Let her in." Xu Kun sighed, tidied his disheveled beard, and casually closed the half-read memorial before tossing it aside.
A few seconds later, the heavy golden nanmu doors of Wenhua Hall were kicked open from outside with a loud bang.
Xu Kun's eye twitched as he looked at the many dents of different sizes Xu Tianzhen had kicked into the doors over the years. He silently calculated how much it would cost to repair one. Maybe replacing it with a solid metal door would actually be cheaper...
"Father, Tianzhen's here to see you! How does it feel? Counting from yesterday, you haven't seen me for a whole day. Did you miss your daughter?" Xu Tianzhen barged into Wenhua Hall and gave a token dip of her knees as a greeting.
Then, without waiting for Xu Kun to tell her to rise, she brushed off her clothes and stood up. She walked straight to his desk with practiced ease, pulled a candied fruit from the drawer where Xu Kun kept his snacks, and popped it into her mouth. She mumbled around it:
"Father, you're already so old, and you still eat so many sweets. Aren't you afraid of getting cavities?"
"You..." Xu Kun slowly shut the little drawer, then asked in a seemingly casual tone, "I heard you had that boy from the Dou Ling Empire stay at the Princess Mansion for a meal today?"
"That's true, but..." Xu Tianzhen spat the fruit pit into the spittoon ten paces away, then pouted and explained with utmost seriousness:
"Father! He's not 'that boy from the Dou Ling Empire.' He has a name. It's Qian Yuhan."
"..."
Seeing Xu Tianzhen earnestly correct his "little mistake," Xu Kun felt an inexplicable pang of jealousy. For what felt like the umpteenth time that day, he sighed and rubbed his forehead in resignation. "Fine, fine. I know his name is Qian Yuhan."
"Tell me what you think of that..." Xu Kun paused, swallowing the words "that boy" before they could slip out. He changed course. "Tell me what you think of Qian Yuhan. What kind of person do you think he is?"
"He's wonderful. He's handsome, courteous, well-read, and cultured." Xu Tianzhen began counting Qian Yuhan's virtues on her fingers. With every compliment, Xu Kun's mouth stiffened another fraction.
Well, they'd only met for the second time, and she was already speaking up for an outsider. He'd raised his daughter for nothing.
By rights, the Sun Moon Empire was the one getting the better end of the deal. So why did it hurt so much?
Just as Xu Kun was about to lose his composure and say something, Xu Tianzhen suddenly reached around from behind and hooked an arm around his neck.
Huh?! What was she doing?
Was this girl trying to strangle him and murder her own father?
That was what Xu Kun thought, but he didn't struggle. After all, a three-ring Soul Elder couldn't strangle an Eight-Ring Soul Douluo like him with her bare arms. She could sit there and squeeze him all day, and it still wouldn't work.
"Father, I'm sorry!" Xu Tianzhen lowered her head and whispered into Xu Kun's ear so softly that her voice was barely audible.
"?!"
Xu Kun: "Huh?!" Ancestors above! Had the sun risen in the west today? His little menace had actually apologized to him! Was he dreaming, or had he not woken up yet? Something was wrong. Something was very wrong!
"You—you—you..." Xu Kun turned his head with a tremble and carefully examined his daughter, who seemed to have undergone a complete change in temperament, with an utterly unfamiliar gaze.
After a long moment, he opened his mouth and cautiously asked:
"Tianzhen, have you... run out of your allowance lately? If you need money, just tell Father! My private treasury isn't so destitute that I can't even give you spending money."
"?!" Xu Tianzhen abruptly released the arm she had "wrapped" around Xu Kun's neck. (In her eyes, it had really been a hug.) She stared at him in disbelief. "Father, is that really all you think of me? That I'd only act like this if I ran out of money?"
"Uh..." Xu Kun had wanted to answer, "Yes. What else did you expect?" But he was afraid Xu Tianzhen would burst into shrill, kettle-like sobs.
In the end, Xu Kun wisely gave in. "No, why would you think that? I was just curious, so I asked."
"By the way, you just apologized to me. What brought that on?"
"It's just... I feel like you have it so hard, Father. You spend all day out in court, matching wits with that bunch of ancient schemers until your hair turns white, and then you come home and have to clean up the messes I leave behind. I feel bad about it... I should be making things easier for you, but instead I'm always throwing tantrums and insisting on going to Shrek, making you so angry you get blisters at the corners of your mouth... I've made up my mind..."
"I'll listen to you, Father. I won't go to some other questionable academy. I'll study at the Sun-Moon Royal Soul Engineer Academy." Xu Tianzhen's voice grew quieter with every word, while Xu Kun's brows furrowed more and more.
Something was wrong. Very, very wrong!
As the saying went, where there was something out of the ordinary, there was bound to be a demon!
He had raised his daughter himself. He knew exactly what her temper was like. How could she have changed her entire disposition after just one day apart? There had to be something seriously wrong here!
Thinking of how Xu Tianzhen had invited that boy to lunch at noon, then come to apologize to him in the afternoon, Xu Kun suddenly understood: that boy must have said something to his daughter.
But the result of their meal...
Had unexpectedly turned out... pretty well.
At that moment, Xu Kun's heart held three parts joy and a much larger helping of jealousy.
He was happy that his child had grown up, realized how immature she'd been, and learned to understand how hard life was for her old father.
But he was jealous that after raising his child for so many years, one meal with that boy had brought about a greater change than all his efforts. No matter how much he said, it might not compare to a casual remark from the other boy.
For some inexplicable reason, it made him furious... You know what I mean?!
In the end, his jealousy and his curiosity about what the two had talked about over their meal made Xu Kun look at Xu Tianzhen very seriously. "Did he tell you something?!"
"He did!" Xu Tianzhen nodded frankly and repeated every word of Qian Yuhan's earlier advice without leaving anything out.
"Fine, I understand. Go back for now. I want to talk to him. Someone, go bring—"
"Father, you don't need to send anyone to find him."
"Hm?!"
Before Xu Kun had finished speaking, Xu Tianzhen had already raised a hand and pointed straight at the hall doors. "I brought him with me. He's waiting outside."
"Fine. Show him in." Xu Kun said nothing more—he truly had nothing left to say—and simply nodded expressionlessly at the servant standing nearby.
Before long, Qian Yuhan, who had left this very hall in the early hours of the morning and had been back less than twelve hours earlier, entered one of the Sun Moon Empire's most prestigious halls under the servant's guidance. For the second time that same day, he met with the emperor of the Sun Moon Empire, the most powerful nation on the Douluo Continent in all but name.
"Greetings, Your Majesty." Qian Yuhan bent at the waist, treating it as a sufficient greeting.
(According to his current identification papers, he was still a citizen of the Dou Ling Empire, so there was no need for him to kneel before the emperor of another nation. What if he ran into the emperor of the Dou Ling Empire? Well, he could just switch to his Heaven Dou Empire or Star Luo Empire papers! Did you think Qian Yuhan had spent a fortune buying four different sets of identification because he had too much money in his pockets?)
"Mm." Xu Kun replied blandly, though his sharp gaze kept circling around Qian Yuhan.
In the end, the five things floating through Xu Kun's mind—
Eleven years old, forty levels, possessed a Ten Thousand Year Soul Ring, suspected Ultimate Attribute, had an attribute that countered Evil Soul Masters, and had killed an Evil Soul Master despite the difference in rank—
Each one of them was enough to make him a treasured asset.
Together, they successfully outweighed that little bit of dissatisfaction in his heart and made him very sensibly compromise once again for the empire's bright future.
But... even swallowing his anger still left him furious!
No, he couldn't let this go. He had to think of a way to vent his anger!
Come on, brain, think!
After thinking it over and trying to unlock the hidden potential of his brilliant mind through sheer effort, Xu Kun finally came up with a way to vent just a little: he could give this boy noble status in the Sun Moon Empire and make him a citizen of the Sun Moon Empire.
That way, as one of his subjects, the boy would have to bow whenever he saw him.
Heh heh heh. This emperor of his was wicked to the core!
Xu Kun thought it, and then he did it. He sighed and said, "Well... you don't need to use those Dou Ling Empire identification papers anymore. Use ours, from the Sun Moon Empire!"
"People from our Sun Moon Empire who study at the Sun-Moon Royal Soul Engineer Academy get discounts on tuition, books, and other expenses. This benefit for our own people isn't available to students from the other three empires."
As soon as he finished speaking, the servant left the hall at Xu Kun's signal to prepare Sun Moon Empire identification papers for Qian Yuhan.
Qian Yuhan simply replied, "All right," as calmly as could be, as if the Dou Ling Empire printed on his papers had nothing to do with him.
(In truth, it really didn't. Qian Yuhan had been born in Angel Holy City. Back when he left the Douluo Continent, Spirit Hall was still a church... Shocking! According to his place of household registration, he was the last surviving citizen of the Spirit Hall Empire.)
"Yuhan, thank Father!" Seeing that Qian Yuhan barely reacted at all, Xu Tianzhen hurriedly reminded him in a soft voice. And this seemingly casual gesture dealt yet another terrible blow to Xu Kun's heart as a father:
"Listen to that—Yuhan. What an intimate way to address him! It hasn't even been long, and she's already shortened his name to just the last two characters... Sigh, someone's snatched my little cotton-padded jacket and put her on!"
"Thank you, Your Majesty."
The more Xu Kun thought about it, the more upset he became. The more he looked at this brat, who had bewitched his daughter so thoroughly in just two or three days that she didn't know which way was east or west, the angrier he got.
Taking the attitude that out of sight meant out of mind, he put on a stern face and waved them away.
"Enough. I still have a mountain of memorials to read. If there's nothing else, you can both leave."
"This daughter takes her leave." Xu Tianzhen dipped her knees, then bounced toward the door with Qian Yuhan in tow.
"Wait! One more thing!" Xu Kun shouted.
Qian Yuhan and Xu Tianzhen: "?"
Qian Yuhan and Xu Tianzhen turned around in unison and looked toward the emperor by the desk, who seemed to be on the verge of boiling over.
"Hah—" Xu Kun drew a deep breath and ground out:
"The Sun-Moon Royal Soul Engineer Academy is the most prestigious academy in our Sun Moon Empire. You're young, so seize this precious opportunity to study. Make sure you apply yourselves at the academy. Understand?"
"Don't spend all day with your minds on anything but your studies and waste the best years of your lives."
"Understood." Qian Yuhan nodded succinctly.
Before you continue