After Being Mistakenly Taken for a Fellow Traveler by Emperor Long Aotian - Chapter 23
The Emperor seemed completely taken aback by Zhou Xun’s awakening. He stiffly turned his head to meet Zhou Xun, who was still rubbing his eyes.
As their eyes met…
Zhou Xun watched in horror as the Emperor’s hand trembled, and the small knife adorned with gold and jade slipped straight downward!
“Ahh—ahh—!!”
A piercing scream echoed through the hall of the palace, followed by a loud thud.
It sounded like someone falling backward, crashing onto the bed.
The eunuchs and palace maids responsible for cleaning outside the hall: …
“What is the Emperor doing…” Xiao Dengzi looked towards the chief palace maid, Lu Yao, hesitating to speak.
Lu Yao glanced at the hall and whispered, “Xiao Li Gonggong is inside, so it should be fine.”
Zhou Xun paused for a moment before crawling towards the Emperor. The Emperor lay on the bed, legs apart, still screaming, “I’ve lost it, I’ve lost it.”
Zhou Xun said, “Your Majesty.”
“I’ve lost it, I’ve lost it, ahh!” The Emperor continued to wail, covering his face with his hands, “I’ll bleed to death if it’s pulled out—”
Zhou Xun: …
He picked up the knife from the bed and, as he did so, the Emperor bounced up. The Emperor covered his face, yelling, “It can’t be pulled out, it’ll bleed—”
Zhou Xun: …
He held up the knife in front of the Emperor, trying to suppress his laughter. “Your Majesty, there’s no blood on it.”
The Emperor blinked through his fingers, “Blood…where’s the blood?”
Zhou Xun glanced at the Emperor’s lower body and replied honestly, “The knife pierced through the bedsheet just now.”
The Emperor: …
Clutching himself, he rolled on the bed a couple of times in a fetal position, wearing an expression of “I’ve survived a disaster.” Finally, he let out a sigh.
Zhou Xun still held the dagger, observing the Emperor’s expression, pondering what he was thinking.
“…I still don’t have the courage,” the Emperor lay back on the bed, murmuring as if he had lost his soul, “I overestimated myself.”
Zhou Xun: …?
He looked down at the dagger in his hand—no mistake, it was the same one the Emperor had used last night to carve the character “morning” on the bedpost.
Recalling the Emperor’s actions just now…Zhou Xun suddenly had a strange thought.
Did the Emperor just…want to…
Castrate himself??
But why would the Emperor want to do that??
Zhou Xun: …
He looked at the Emperor with a gaze that said, “What on earth are you trying to do?” However, what he didn’t expect was…
Under his gaze, the Emperor’s expression and body seemed to shrink even more.
He rolled onto his side and covered himself with the blanket, muttering, “I… I…”
After several repetitions of “I,” Zhou Xun, looking at the trembling lump, had to take the initiative: “Your Majesty, what were you trying to do with the knife just now?”
The Emperor: …
“To sever the bonds.” After a long while, the Emperor’s muffled voice finally emerged from under the blanket.
Zhou Xun: ??
“What… bonds?” He felt his eyebrows twitching uncontrollably.
The Emperor spoke in anguish, “I committed a terribly dreadful mistake, too dreadful. I… I must atone!”
Zhou Xun: …
He crawled towards the Emperor, who extended a trembling hand from the blanket. “Don’t come closer!” the Emperor said in a strained voice.
Zhou Xun stopped.
“I dare not… I cannot face you!” the Emperor wailed.
Zhou Xun: …
The Emperor cried out, “Wuwuwu, I’m not a true hero, I dare not face the bleakness of life… Why, why is it like this!”
Zhou Xun: …
The Emperor continued, “The first time I realized my dream of traveling through time, the first time I experienced great friendship, the intertwining of two sources of happiness, which should have been an indescribable dreamlike and happy scene, but why, why is it like this!”
Zhou Xun: …
“Wuwuwu ahhh! Kill me!”
Could it be that His Majesty…
Zhou Xun lowered his head and looked at his disheveled clothes, suddenly understanding.
Zhou Xun: “Your Majesty, could it be because you feel…”
The Emperor: “Must you force me to say that word?”
After handing over the knife, Xiao Li Zi hid in the outer chamber. It was indeed difficult for Zhou Xun to extract useful information from the Emperor’s ramblings.
…So, after finally figuring out what the Emperor had misunderstood, Zhou Xun found himself at a loss whether to feel embarrassed or speechless.
In the end, relying on his extremely strong mental resilience, Zhou Xun dared to approach and attempted to pull off the blanket covering the Emperor’s head…
He was unable to pull it off?
“You did not… last night…” Zhou Xun’s voice paused for a moment here, then he continued, “…engage in any intimate acts with me.”
After he said these words, the head of the Emperor finally emerged from under the blanket, which Zhou Xun couldn’t lift no matter how hard he tried.
The Emperor, with his disheveled hair, looked at Zhou Xun with surprise. “So, we’re still friends?”
Zhou Xun: “…Yes, friends.”
“That’s good.” The Emperor breathed a sigh of relief, freeing himself entirely from the blanket. “I told you, no matter how deranged I may seem, I could never harm you. I… I couldn’t do it…”
Zhou Xun: …
The Emperor, under his scrutinizing gaze, continued, “It’s not a matter of whether I can or cannot do it, it’s simply impossible, and it also concerns the 404 error!”
Seeing the Emperor emerging from the blanket, Zhou Xun couldn’t help but feel a bit bemused. In this situation, shouldn’t it be himself hiding under the blanket? Zhou Xun couldn’t help but feel a bit amused and perplexed by the reversal of roles.
The Emperor’s mental resilience was indeed remarkable. Upon realizing that it was all a misunderstanding, he quickly revealed a transcendent and relieved expression from the depths of his heart. Then, he turned to Zhou Xun and asked, “So, how did I end up here with you last night?”
Zhou Xun thought for a moment and replied, “Your Majesty must have drunk too much, so you ended up in the wrong room.”
The Emperor nodded happily. “Ah…”
—After all, it couldn’t be worse than getting drunk and doing something regrettable. After understanding the worst-case scenario, his mindset had improved.
For some reason, Zhou Xun felt like he could see bubbles of such sentiments popping up above the Emperor’s head.
Zhou Xun pursed his lips, feeling a sudden urge to “intentionally” tease him.
He continued, “Then, Your Majesty hugged me.”
The Emperor immediately sat up. “It was an embrace born out of great friendship, right?!”
Zhou Xun nodded. “Yes.”
The Emperor then lay back with an expression of resignation. As he moved, Zhou Xun added, “Then you said you wanted to tell me a secret, which was…”
“The Emperor is the descendant of the Dragon.”
“The Emperor is the descendant of the Yellow Emperor.”
“The Emperor is…” Zhou Xun furrowed his brows, temporarily unable to recall the phrase. “The successor.”
The Emperor: …
He looked like he was about to crack.
“I…” Zhou Xun heard his pained muttering, “I’ve really *fallen off my horse, haven’t I?”
Fallen off the horse? What horse? Zhou Xun pondered for a moment, where was there a horse?
Ignoring him, Zhou Xun continued honestly, “Then Your Majesty sang a few songs.”
The Emperor: …
He looked like he had cracked.
“They were…”
“Please, don’t say anything else!!” The Emperor buried himself in the blanket again, letting out a soul-wrenching cry, “I’m dead!!”
Zhou Xun: …
The Emperor weakly said, “I want to be alone… Did I say anything else?”
Zhou Xun shook his head.
The Emperor tucked himself into the blanket, isolating himself, while Zhou Xun watched the Emperor tuck himself in.
They say that drunk people speak the truth, or nonsense. However, the Emperor’s reactions both when he was drunk and upon waking up, as well as his response to the words Zhou Xun repeated, reaffirmed a certain fact for him.
The words spoken by the Emperor about his identity when he was drunk were true.
Descendant of the Dragon, descendant of the Yellow Emperor… So the Emperor is really a deity?
—The Emperor claimed he wasn’t an ordinary person, but was it true?
—Where did the Emperor come from? What kind of world is it there?
These thoughts rolled on his tongue, ready to be revealed, but ultimately he swallowed them back, returning them to his heart.
What could a deity do in the mortal world? Probably transcend tribulation. Anyway, it wasn’t something he could concern himself with.
The Emperor spent some time isolated in the blanket, feeling like he was suffocating.
He cautiously peeked out to breathe, while secretly observing Zhou Xun with a sense of post-crisis relief and awe.
But at that moment, their inquisitive gazes met.
The Emperor: …
…For some reason, why did he feel like there was a hint of awe in Zhou Xun’s eyes as well?
The Emperor: …
Both of them were completely unaware that, for some inexplicable reason, they harbored a considerable amount (or even a lot) of awe towards each other at that moment.
“Now…” The Emperor spoke up. “What time is it?”
Zhou Xun glanced at the sky and replied, “It’s almost noon.”
“Noon?? Noon??” The Emperor sprung up from the bed like a salted fish, hastily grabbing his boots to put them on. “Xiao Li! Xiao Li!”
Xiao Li rushed in from the outer room in a hurry. Upon seeing the Emperor, he first discreetly glanced at the Emperor’s lower body, then breathed a sigh of relief.
The Emperor: …
“Xiao Li! Why didn’t you wake me up earlier?!” The Emperor cried out in a tone reminiscent of “I woke up late and missed the 8 AM lecture, and there are dozens of messages from my roommates saying ‘the teacher just called your name’ on my phone,” tears welling up, “My morning court… My country…”
“Your Majesty must have been confused from sleep,” reminded the attendant, Lu Yao, who came in with them. “Today is a rest day, no morning court.”
The Emperor: …
He revealed a happy and dazed expression of “Thank goodness, someone answered” happiness.
“You may leave now,” the Emperor said coldly.
All the attendants were pushed out, leaving only Zhou Xun and the Emperor in the room. Zhou Xun watched as the Emperor stiffened for a moment before burying himself under the covers.
“Great!!! No work today!!!” Zhou Xun said, feeling relieved.
Meanwhile, in Qingzhou, at the home of Doctor Zhang.
On a day when even firewood was scarce, someone came to the small courtyard. A sharp-faced woman stood outside the door, trying to persuade and reason with whoever was inside, but no one came to open the door, which eventually frustrated her.
“You, as a woman, what’s the use of keeping medical books anyway? Sooner or later, you’ll get married!” the woman scolded. “Your grandfather is dead, and as a woman, you shouldn’t cling to it. Just give the medical books to your cousin. And don’t treat those medical books as treasures. Your grandfather killed people with them. You’d better give them to your uncles, and they can find you a good marriage. You—”
Before she could finish her sentence, the tightly closed door opened.
Out stepped a young girl. She was slender and delicate, with a subtle air of stubbornness and coldness in her features.
She was holding a basin in her hands.
Before the woman could say anything, she was splashed all over with water from the basin.
“Get lost!” the slender girl said coldly. “Get out of my yard!”
**Fallen off the horse” is an English expression that means experiencing a setback or failure, often used to describe someone who has experienced a loss of confidence or competence after encountering difficulties in a particular endeavor or situation. It originates from the literal act of falling off a horse while riding, which can be physically and mentally jarring, leading to a loss of confidence in one’s ability to ride effectively.
YOU MAY ALSO LIKE
