Chapter 33: Crossing the River, the Water Monster

At this moment, Fan Sisi no longer bore the imposing dignity of an empress. Her once-sharp phoenix eyes had turned red, and glistening tears left wet trails across her delicate cheeks.

Her tender nose twitched along with the trembling of her fragrant shoulders, making one involuntarily feel pity for her and want to draw her into one’s arms and cherish her.

“You are, at the very least, the ruler of a nation. How can you cry?” Chu Feng was the sort who could not bear to see women cry, so his voice softened as he tried to comfort her.

“Hmph! So you still know that I’m the ruler of a nation? Is there anyone who bullies people the way you do?” Fan Sisi said between sobs, tears continuously brimming in her eyes.

Chu Feng awkwardly rubbed the bridge of his nose and gave an embarrassed smile.

Fan Sisi gradually stopped crying and shot Chu Feng an angry glare.

Fan Sisi had finally realized that Chu Feng was someone Heaven had specifically sent to deal with her.

In the Great Chu Dynasty, she was a domineering and aloof empress whose word was absolute. No one dared even meet her eyes directly, much less do something as excessive to her as Chu Feng had done.

That made her so angry her teeth itched, yet there was nothing she could do about it.

With a cold face, Fan Sisi stood up from Chu Feng’s lap and returned to her seat. Then she extended a jade-like hand.

“Give it here.”

Chu Feng understood what she wanted. He pulled a finely crafted dagger from his robes and placed it in her palm.

When the dagger entered her hand, it still carried a trace of warmth. Fan Sisi carefully examined the dagger, and her gaze softened.

Clearly, this dagger was extremely important to her.

“That day, when you said you would let me go, I placed this dagger in your hand.”

“And I promised that if you ever needed it in the future, you could use this dagger in exchange for one thing that I would do for you...” Fan Sisi set the dagger on the table, then raised her eyes to look at Chu Feng, her gaze full of confusion.

“But what I never expected was that you only asked me to find people to impersonate merchants from the Great Chu Dynasty.”

“You wasted one promise from me just for a village of a hundred people, for someone completely unrelated to you. Was it worth it?”

Before coming here, Fan Sisi had already investigated the whole matter clearly.

She truly could not understand what Chu Feng was thinking. Did he really consider one of her promises to be so cheap?

Cheap enough to be spent on such a trivial little matter?

That was why Fan Sisi had personally come into Great Xuan Dynasty territory to meet Chu Feng.

“Wasted? Is it worth it?”

“In my eyes, things are not divided into great and small. There is only right and wrong, and whether I want to do them or not.”

“As long as I think it was worth it, that is enough.” Chu Feng smiled faintly and drained the tea before him in one gulp.

“All right, I’ve personally returned the dagger to your hand. Let everything from before be written off here.”

“You should leave at once. Farewell.” Chu Feng rose to his feet and turned to leave the carriage compartment.

Watching Chu Feng’s departing back, Fan Sisi’s expression turned complicated, and deep in her heart, she felt an empty hollowness.

Outside the carriage, Chu Feng leapt down lightly, smiled, and waved at Zong He before returning to his own carriage.

Shi drove the carriage around Fan Sisi’s carriage and continued onward.

Zong He stood rooted to the spot, his entire body tense the whole time. Only after the carriage disappeared from view did he finally let out a long breath of relief, his face still pale with lingering fear.

Too terrifying!

The moment Zong He realized he could not see through Chu Feng’s cultivation, he had already become certain that it had been Chu Feng who made the move just now and prevented him from approaching the carriage.

To control his every movement so easily... Zong He did not dare think too deeply about what Chu Feng’s cultivation level truly was.

“Elder Zong, let us return. Until I take Beimo City, I will not be able to rest easy for a single day,” Fan Sisi’s voice came from inside the carriage.

Zong He snapped out of his thoughts and nodded. “Yes, Your Majesty.”

He did not voice the guess in his heart. After all, for someone as young as Chu Feng to have reached a realm above Grandmaster was simply too inconceivable.

Zong He sat back on the carriage, and it turned around and headed toward the Great Chu Dynasty.

.........

After traveling by carriage for half a day, Chu Feng and his two companions found the road ahead blocked by a vast river.

Left with no other choice, they disposed of the carriage and decided to cross the river by boat.

After buying three tickets at the dock, the three of them boarded a large vessel.

Once all the passengers had arrived, the boat owner looked up at the time, ordered the boatmen to untie the mooring ropes, and set off.

The river surged onward in endless waves, crashing against the deck and sending up spray after spray.

Aside from Chu Feng and his two companions, there were more than a hundred people on board. Only a small portion were ordinary commoners.

The others were all dressed like scholars. Ignoring the churning waters, they stood at the bow in complete intoxication, admiring the scenery on both sides of the river.

From time to time, some of the scholars were so inspired on the spot that they began composing poems and prose.

Inside the cabin, after listening to a few of them, Chu Feng immediately lost interest and withdrew his gaze.

What kind of mess was that? If he kept listening, he felt as though even his ears would be dirtied.

The poems those scholars composed were all nothing more than endless piles of ornate diction. They were empty of substance and lacked the slightest bit of true artistic depth.

“Young Master, I think I’ve broken through to the late stage of the Third Rank!” At his side, Su Yanran opened her eyes and said joyfully.

During this period, under Chu Feng’s guidance, Su Yanran’s cultivation had advanced at astonishing speed. In just a few short days, she had risen from the late stage of the Fourth Rank to the late stage of the Third Rank. Reaching the Second Rank was only a matter of time.

“Not bad. At your current pace, you should be able to step into the Innate Realm within half a year.” Chu Feng nodded slightly, his expression utterly calm.

“Young Master, I’ll work hard!” Su Yanran said seriously, her eyes bright.

“Mm.”

After the ship had sailed for an hour, it stopped at a dock.

When the passengers saw that the boat owner had stopped before reaching the destination, they all looked at him with doubt.

“Everyone, please do not misunderstand. Since I took your fare, I will naturally deliver you to your destination.”

“It’s just that we need to switch to another ship here, so I must trouble all of you to move,” the boat owner explained.

After hearing that, the passengers nodded.

Led by the boat owner, Chu Feng and his two companions boarded another ship together with the others.

This ship was a full hundred meters long, and its hull was assembled from thick, sturdy logs, giving it the look of something nearly indestructible.

What surprised Chu Feng even more was that the outer surface of the ship was plated with layers of iron. The iron sheets were covered in dents and pits, as though they had been rammed by some gigantic creature.

After everyone had boarded, the boat owner piloted the massive ship and set out once again.

“Boatman, why change ships for no reason? Isn’t that troublesome?” one of the scholars asked curiously.

“It is troublesome, but I value my life,” the boat owner said with a bitter smile.

“Hm? What do you mean by that, Boatman?” The scholars on board all looked at him curiously.

Meanwhile, the commoners had crouched down in the corners of the ship the moment they boarded, their faces filled with fear and unease.

Chu Feng and his two companions were also drawn in by the boat owner’s words and turned to look at him.

“You don’t know this, but the waters here have not been peaceful recently. A water monster has appeared, and more than a dozen ships have already met with disaster in this stretch of water.”

“Everyone aboard those ships died in the jaws of that water monster,” the boat owner said fearfully, swallowing hard.