The Empress’s Gigolo

After seeing Lin Qiaole in her current state, the winged cavalry warriors became more friendly.

“So, you are Librarian Lin!”

Even though Ren Baqian had already mentioned this before, after seeing this little girl with a pair of A’s, everyone felt more familiar with her.

After all, the sight of her sleeping and drooling while being tied to a chair had already been etched into their minds long ago.

The only thing that they were puzzled about was how she had reverted to her old self in just one night.

Both her figure and her looks had regressed.

Seeing that Lin Qiaole was in so much grief since her bosom shrank back to an A cup, Ren Baqian decided to take her out for a treat.

He reserved an entire dessert stall.

In reality, she didn’t need to turn her grief into appetite. She hesitated for three seconds after seeing the desserts before suddenly forgetting all about her C cup bosom.

After wiping out all of the desserts, Lin Qiaole got back in the car with that sobbing look on her face again and asked, “What should I do? They are gone…”

“Are you planning to finish another dessert stall?” Ren Baqian looked at her.

After his words landed, her eyes immediately wandered around as she replied, “I just feel very distressed!”

“Let me tell you, I used this trick when I was five!” Ren Baqian grinned.

When he was five, there was one time when his father forgot to pick him up from kindergarten. All the other kids had gone home, and he was the only one left, so he cried nonstop. It was a kindergarten of the armed forces. When a soldier working in the kitchen saw him crying terribly, he gave Ren Baqian a Chinese pear.

Young Ren Baqian found it very delicious and wanted more of it. He didn’t know other methods of getting it and simply continued crying again.

When his father came to pick him up, Ren Baqian hadn’t managed to get a second pear yet.

This incident left him with an extremely strong sense of loss.

When he saw Lin Qiaole acting like this, he immediately recalled that incident.

She was using the same trick that he used back then!

After spending two days on Earth, Ren Baqian finally returned to Dayao after stockpiling a lot of White Rabbit Creamy Candy and urging the winged cavalry warriors to take good care of Lin Qiaole.

Lin Qiaole had already fallen once. Problems would definitely arise if she were to come in contact with that herdsman again. He could have met up with the other herdsmen after escaping, and it was better to leave her on Earth.

Of course, asking the winged cavalry warriors to take care of her was simply a casual remark.

If there was a place for her to sleep and White Rabbit Creamy Candy to eat, Ren Baqian reckoned that Lin Qiaole would still be there as long as it wasn’t the end of the world.

Upon returning to Dayao, he saw that the forest had already been cleared. All of the trees had been piled up together with the bodies that were exhumed. Everything was burned to ashes in a huge fire.

Seeing that he had returned, the empress checked behind him and didn’t see Lin Qiaole.

“Where is she?”

“She stayed behind on Earth,” Ren Baqian explained to her.

“So, she reverted to her original self. It seems like there was a time limit for her ‘transformation.’ I feel that this could be related to the jade-waisted slaves that she ate.”

Upon speaking of them, the empress didn’t seem too pleased about it. Each jade-waisted slave was a person’s life. At that point, what difference was there between eating a man and a demonic butterfly? Regardless, all of them had been her people.

However, she wouldn’t blame Lin Qiaole for this.

The blaze had burned half of the trees and corpses. A portion of the troops stayed behind to keep watch while the others headed to the next destination.

Three days later, the empress ordered Xi Wanya, the Protector General of the South, to immediately set off for the Sixty Thousand Mountains. He was tasked to lead the inspection of the conditions of the mountain villages.

In addition, she transferred ten men over from the Ministry of Revenue and planned to give them two years to record the conditions of the villages in the Sixty Thousand Mountains.

After this was settled, she wanted to establish an administrative system for the household registry. In the future, the establishment and migration of all villages in the mountains needed to be registered. This was to prevent such occurrences from happening again, where millions of people had disappeared undetected.

The empress had another plan, which was to establish two new protectorates. One would be the Yun Protectorate and the other would be the Protectorate of the Ancient South.

The first one would naturally be for governing the Yun Nation, while the second one would be responsible for the Sixty Thousand Mountains.

In the past, everyone thought that the dangers in the mountains revolved around calamities and fearsome beasts. After this incident, they realized that there were other enemies hidden within.

Two days later.

They were nearing their destination.

The leading troops hooted like an owl. It started off long and drawn-out and gradually became fleeting.

After 30 minutes had passed, the winged cavalry came and reported, “Your Majesty, the person who was deployed to scout this area hasn’t shown up.”

“Find him!” The empress frowned. This wasn’t a good sign.

After searching for the entire afternoon, they found an odd forest several kilometers away, but the person who was sent here for reconnaissance was nowhere in sight.

This meant that the scouting winged cavalry warrior had probably already fallen into the hands of their enemy.

At nightfall, they discovered something that gave everyone a bad premonition.

The jade-waisted slaves didn’t appear in that odd forest.

“Your Majesty, I reckon that the herdsman of this forest has already received news and escaped,” Ren Baqian said.

The empress stayed silent for some time before looking at Qi Ziting and saying, “Brother, take your men and stay here for another day. I’ll head to another place.”

“If the demonic butterflies still don’t appear tomorrow… then destroy this forest,” she added.

Every herdsman had a forest like this, and the jade-waisted slaves would appear there every night. Combining these two occurrences, they started to suspect that the forests could be the butterflies’ source of food or a condition for their survival.

Even though they weren’t sure of the actual situation, they were certain that these forests held a significance that was extremely important to the herdsmen and their jade-waisted slaves.

“Understood!” Qi Ziting nodded. “You be careful as well. You are the empress. Others can afford to run into danger, but you can’t!”

That same night, Ren Baqian and the empress took 600 men and proceeded to their next destination.

A week later, just as they were about to cross a mountain ridge, Ren Baqian suddenly saw that the sky ahead had cleared up.

As if the sky had cleared up after a storm, the colors of a beautiful spring day had returned.

“Wait up!” Ren Baqian was riding on the crow general’s back and looked down at the foot of the mountain behind him. It was gloomy everywhere and had a lack of color.

He then looked ahead at the scenery that was full of vitality.

“We are finally out!” Ren Baqian burst out into laughter.

“I couldn’t even lift my mood in that wretched place.”

The others started looking more relaxed as well.

After they had stayed in that gloomy place for so long, even their minds were getting hazy.

It was just like how an ordinary person would feel better during good weather and have a stronger fighting spirit, but would feel inexplicably more downhearted during a rainy day. People would somehow be affected by the weather.

“Continue on our journey,” the empress ordered. The party subsequently started urging their mounts to go down the mountain.

Thump, thump! As they reached the foot of the mountain, they felt an abrupt tremor from the ground. The sound of a series of collisions suddenly burst out from the woods ahead, and the trees in the distance started to topple.

“Raise your guard!” the soldiers ahead immediately shouted.

As the trees fell, a huge monster charged out of the forest.

It was a seven meter tall beast that looked like a rhinoceros with three horns on its head.

Ren Baqian felt that it looked more like a dinosaur than a rhinoceros.

This fearsome beast dashed out about 200 meters before turning back and bellowing at the forest.

Soon after, an even larger beast appeared.

A ten meter tall silverback gorilla uprooted a huge tree and threw it at the rhinoceros.

“Sss… It’s King Kong!” Ren Baqian took a deep breath.

He didn’t expect to run into a conflict between beasts just when they departed the mountain.

However, the fight ended very quickly. With bystanders looking at them, these beasts didn’t fight to the death. The rhinoceros escaped with the silverback gorilla also choosing not to give chase. It merely roared a few times at them and slammed its gigantic fists on the ground, creating a pit with every strike.

After this intimidation effort, the gorilla finally retreated into the forest.

“Your Majesty, how strong were those beasts?” Ren Baqian asked after pondering for a bit. Judging by that gorilla’s might, he reckoned that its fists would crush him and that even mastering the [Yang Boosting Technique] would be useless.

“Visually, I would estimate it to be at the initial stage of the Cardinal Heaven level,” the empress simply replied faintly and wasn’t too surprised.

She then called one of the winged cavalry warriors over and asked, “What is our location?”

“Your Majesty, it’ll take us slightly more than a day to reach the valley.”

“Lead the way!”