The Empress’s Gigolo

Ren Baqian only woke up four hours later.

Before he opened his eyes, he could already feel himself in the embrace of a soft and gentle figure

It was very soft.

Bits of warmth radiated from this embrace and passed to him, dissolving the chill in his body.

At the same time, everyone was also feeling the heat from the blaze and sweating profusely.

Ren Baqian adjusted his body and tried to find a more comfortable position. Next, the empress casually put him down on the ground.

When he opened his eyes, all he saw was the dusky sky.

The sky here was always different from other places.

The sky elsewhere would make a person feel warm. It was clear, azure, and opened a person’s breadth of mind.

It was the complete opposite over here.

This made Ren Baqian surmise that the air in this valley was hovering over something. Similar to the haze on Earth, it made the sky look different

This was probably one of the reasons that caused the hallucinations.

“Wipe off your mucus!” The empress cast a glance at him.

Ren Baqian sniffed and realized that his mucus was almost flowing into his mouth… His nose was very clogged up, and he almost couldn’t smell anything.

“I seem to have caught a cold?” Ren Baqian asked subconsciously with his head full of questions. He also couldn’t believe that he had actually fallen ill.

He actually caught a cold after practicing this set of martial arts?

Even though it was slightly colder, he was just practicing martial arts!

He was simply practicing martial arts!

He was simply practicing martial arts!

The characters in novels always trained in icy caves and fiery mountains, yet it had never been said that they fell ill before.

Imagine the old Yuan Ying freak sitting inside an icy cave, snivelling and trembling as he cultivated…

This was scientifically unachievable!

Ren Baqian stood up and walked around. His body felt very cold even though he was close to the fire.

His head was hurting a bit.

His body didn’t feel too comfortable either.

This made him more certain that he had indeed caught a cold.

He then turned to the empress with a puzzled look.

“What happened? “The empress got a little worried when she saw the look on his face and wondered if anything had happened to him.

“I actually caught a cold?” Ren Baqian reiterated.

“I have seen it on television before. One will have a runny nose when he has a cold, and it’s just like what you are going through now. However, this doesn’t seem like a serious illness?” The empress nodded with a serious look on her face.

“The problem doesn’t lie in the symptom… Your Majesty, have you ever had a cold?” Ren Baqian put on an exaggerated look.

The empress looked at him coldly.

Her answer was evident.

Ren Baqian rolled around on the ground, and he was very surprised that he had caught a cold. This made him feel like he wasn’t that different from an ordinary person at times. Perhaps the Earth Yin Spring could be the cause of this?

After pondering for some time, he decided to let this matter rest.

Ren Baqian walked toward the crowd and tore two legs off of a three-horned lion looking beast that the others had prepared. He carved a few lines across the meat, sprinkled some seasoning on it, and grilled it over the fire.

“Was this beast cleaned with water from the spring?” Ren Baqian asked as the thought suddenly struck him.

“It was cleaned outside the valley at a brook around half a day’s journey away,” someone immediately replied.

Ren Baqian nodded and looked at Lin Qiaole as she slept soundly on a piece of rock. It seemed like drowning in the Earth Yin Spring hadn’t affected her at all.

This made him feel more at ease.

However, he understood that Lin Qiaole was different from him. She was a Spirit Wheel expert with the form of a little girl.

After the animal legs were grilled, they smelled a little sour and pungent and weren’t at all appetizing.

After taking a bite of it, Ren Baqian’s eyes lit up. Although it didn’t smell nice, it tasted extremely delicious, fresh, and tender.

It could be considered the animal version of durian or stinky tofu!

“Your Majesty!” Ren Baqian handed a leg to the empress.

“It’s okay, I’ll eat this.” She looked at the thing in his hand with disdain and took out three slices of cake from the sack beside her.

The cake slices were as big as a washbowl!

Furthermore, there were three of them!

In between laughter and tears, Ren Baqian said, “It doesn’t smell good, but it tastes fantastic.”

The empress frowned and took the leg from him skeptically. Even though she didn’t smell it intentionally, the sour and pungent odor still hit her senses.

She disliked it a lot.

However, she still trusted that Ren Baqian wouldn’t lie to her about how it tasted. She knitted her eyebrows and took a bite of the meat. Next, she immediately relaxed her eyebrows and said, “Pretty good.”

“What beast is this?” Ren Baqian asked.

“This is a mountain willow! It doesn’t smell nice, but it tastes pretty good,” Ya Sheng explained before adding, “Its strong smell lingers even after you finish eating it.”

Ren Baqian felt indifferent about it. After having experienced the baptism of the stink bomb, this was child’s play.

After he was done eating, he realized that the smell was exactly like what Ya Sheng had described. His entire body was engulfed in that sour and pungent scent. The empress frowned as she couldn’t avoid this either.

Such smells had always been the natural enemy of women.

After the meal, Ren Baqian felt slightly better and began to perform the 14th radio callisthenics.

“How about we just head back? Previously, I had already gotten Zi Donglai to help you find a support tool,” the empress said softly. One could tell from her words that she was concerned.

“You belittle me, Your Majesty! This Earth Yin Spring isn’t that big of a problem for me!” Ren Baqian smiled very casually, which was a rare sight.

The empress didn’t try further persuasion after seeing this and merely said, “Be careful!”

Ren Baqian entered the water once again and did the same action as well.

In fact, this set of martial arts only had eight moves. He needed to master this move before he could proceed to the next one.

The empress continued to stare blankly at him from the shore. Shadows circled around Ren Baqian’s body and yelled at him, but this didn’t seem to disturb him at all.

This time around, he lasted about the same amount of time as the previous attempt. Seeing that he was on the verge of collapse, she pulled him out of the water and hugged him to give him warmth, only placing him on the ground after he had awoken.

He would then eat to replenish his energy before going into the water again. It was all rinse and repeat after that.

The next day, Ren Baqian finally managed to last slightly longer in the water, enduring an extra quarter of an hour. He had also started to practice the second move. He had to hold his belly and move it forward, backward, left, and right before tapping twice on alternating sides of his belly.

The empress was finally at ease now and took out a comic book to read.

One day later, the empress received a piece of news that made her put her comic book down.

“Your Majesty, we discovered another village in the vicinity… It looks exactly like the one from before…” Gong Zheng reported this information to the empress while looking solemn.

The empress also became solemn after hearing this.

A second village.

“Have you verified it?” the empress asked.

“Yes, the people there are exactly the same as those we saw in the other village. Their expressions are rigid, they don’t show any reaction, and they are all in their thirties or older.” Gong Zheng nodded.

“How many of them?”

“Slightly more than the previous village—roughly over 200 people.”

“Kill them all! Broaden your search at the same time and see if there are any more of these villages!” the empress replied in a deep voice.

She thought that the previous village was a rare case, but it now seemed otherwise…

What worried her more was that this matter had never been heard of. Yet, they had already come across it twice in this region of land where the presence of people was sparse.

Would there be even more of these cases in this region?

Were those villages always here or had they moved from other places?