The Empress’s Gigolo

The heavy rain fell on the dense leaves, gliding along their surfaces. There wasn’t a single dry spot in the entire forest.

Not only did the rain not cool down the air, it actually made everyone feel very hot and humid.

This had already been going on for some time.

It had never been easy to travel in the mountains during the rainy season.

Ren Baqian and the empress huddled inside a teepee made out of branches.

It was a temporary structure made just to shelter from the rain.

Sitting on the animal hide that covered the ground, Ren Baqian complacently said, “My craft is still pretty good.”

The empress glanced at the small space. With both of them sitting inside the teepee, there was almost no space left. Such temporary shelters could easily be made, even by children, and she didn’t know what he was so pleased about.

“Although it looks very simple, it takes skill to make it so that no rain seeps through.” As Ren Baqian spoke, he felt water droplets dripping on his neck.

However, he couldn’t say this out loud.

He couldn’t take the slap to his face.

The empress kept silent, (TLC. Not sure if this should be a period or if the rest of the sentence is missing.)

She had already felt a few drops of rain falling on her back just now.

It seemed that there wasn’t much difference between staying here and staying outside.

Looking up into the distance, their vision was blocked by the dense forest. Even though they were at high ground, their vision was still obscured.

Although they couldn’t see anything, they knew that the Ya family village was just about a day away.

It took less than two months to reach the Sixty Thousand Mountains back then. After they lost their mounts, it took everyone three and a half months of walking in the mountains to reach their current location.

At present, it was already August. According to their plans, their wedding was supposed to be held five months ago, yet everyone was still trekking in the mountains.

However, now that the dynasty was making preparations for their already delayed wedding, it would be held four months later.

Two hours later, the sky cleared after the rain and everyone set off again.

They saw the figures of people standing on top of the mountain ahead when they walked out of the forest. When those figures saw people coming out of the forest, they immediately cheered.

After an hour, everyone congregated at the foot of the mountain.

“Little sister, you are finally back.” Qi Ziting said as he held his crutches. His loud voice could be heard from far away.

“Your Majesty!” Beside him was Xi Wanya, who had been transferred over from the Protectorate of the South.

There were about eight Cardinal Heaven experts behind them. Besides Ba Man and Xiong Yue, whom he had previously met, the rest were unfamiliar faces.

As for the winged cavalry, all of them were unfamiliar to him. He thought that they probably came from the Ya family village.

Qi Ziting led many of the winged cavalry to search for those herdsman, but didn’t expect them to go around and launch a surprise attack on the empress before eventually being tamed by Ren Baqian’s nuclear bomb. After communicating through the radio, Qi Ziting ascertained that the empress was fine and brought everyone back to the village to await their return.

“Greetings, Your Majesty!” Everyone cupped their fists.

“We are still a day’s journey away, yet you have come out here to greet me.” The empress looked up into the distance.

“The sooner I get to see you, the sooner I can feel relieved.” Qi Ziting looked at her before turning to look at the trailing winged cavalry warriors. There were still around 200 of them remaining.

This was one third less than what they used to be.

However, after experiencing the attack that they had been through, it was already a miracle that there were still so many of them remaining.

“I didn’t expect that they would actually mount a sneak attack on you. Previously, talking over that speaking device wasn’t very clear. I’ll explain to you their attack strategy later on.” Qi Ziting had always been very excited whenever they talked about fighting.

Even though the empress simply got attacked this time around.

After hearing what Qi Ziting said, the winged cavalry warriors behind him uniformly shifted their attention to Ren Baqian.

They couldn’t help but say that this Principal Ren was always giving others surprises or even frightening them.

“Your Majesty, I’m relieved to see you,” Xi Wanya said after Qi Ziting was done talking. “You have spent so much time in the mountains that even your wedding was delayed… Please return to the imperial court as soon as possible.”

“I know! I’ll return after resting a few days at the Ya family village.” The empress waved her hand. Even without anyone telling her, she knew that she had been away for too long this time.

As of now, it had already been 13 months.

It would take around two months for them to return to Dayao.

The next day, after Qi Ziting learned about the whole story, he tried to threaten Ren Baqian into throwing a nuclear bomb along the journey just for fun.

Ren Baqian got so annoyed that he wanted to smash the iron fist of socialism on Qi Ziting’s head.

Apart from Qi Ziting, Xi Wanya and the other Cardinal Heaven experts who came from far away were also anticipating seeing him do it.

Fortunately, even though they were rude, they still understood the severity of things and didn’t dare to inappropriately make demands like Qi Ziting.

Ren Baqian felt that he would be a fool if he were to detonate a nuclear bomb as if it were fireworks.

“I want to see it too.” The empress looked at him with excitement. Previously, she was in the cave during the explosion, so she wanted to see for herself what it looked like.

However, when he saw her eyes, Ren Baqian decided to be a fool without hesitation.

“Okay then! I shall display the fireworks to Your Majesty!” In the past, just to make Yang Guifei smile, Zhuge Liang set a bonfire to toy with the feudal princes. Why wouldn’t Ren Baqian do it to please the empress?

In any case, the nation had already given them to me. If there’s a first time, then there will be a second. Besides, I won’t have any use for them when we return and still need to find a place to keep them, Ren Baqian comforted himself.

The crowd stood on the mountain with their eyes fixed on Ren Baqian.

He slowly opened the box and took out a cylinder.

“It’s this thing? I can’t see anything unusual about it.” Qi Ziting looked at it carefully, grabbed it from Ren Baqian, and fiddled with it before tossing it back to him.

Ren Baqian smiled and took it back. He then turned around and threw it into the distance. The cylinder descended in a parabola and dropped to the bottom of the mountain.

Everyone raised their spirits and waited, but there wasn’t any reaction from the cylinder. They doubtfully looked at Ren Baqian.

He took out two pairs of sunglasses from a bag and handed one of them to the empress before wearing the other pair himself.

“This thing is interesting.” Qi Ziting suddenly grew curious.

When Ren Baqian suddenly felt something vanish from his face, his sunglasses were already in Qi Ziting’s hands.

“Is this guy a bandit?” Ren Baqian groaned.

If Qi Ziting were not his elder brother-in-law… he would have given him a taste of the empress’s holy warrior.

Ren Baqian retracted his hand into his sleeve, which was holding the detonator, and did not dare to let Qi Ziting see it.

“It’s best not to look directly at the explosion,” he warned. Everyone raised their spirits because they knew it was about to begin.

Looking at this group of Cardinal Heaven experts that were staring with such focus at where the bomb landed, Ren Baqian felt that it should not blind them from this distance. Without further ado, he pressed the detonator.

As if the sun was growing from the ground, a spot of light began to swell. As it grew larger and larger, the glare of the light brought sharp pain to everyone’s eyes.

Boom! With a huge explosion, the whole mountain shook, making people wonder if it would collapse.

A huge gust of wind blew past.

An enormous mushroom cloud rose into the sky.

When everyone regained their vision, they saw a mushroom cloud in front of them that was slowly taking off.

They looked down again, only to see that the blast area no longer looked the same.

The soil, trees, rocks, and everything else were gone.

The only thing left was a huge crater. The mountain forest in the distance that was hit by the shockwave was also destroyed. There was a burning flame at the edge of the crater as well.

Without saying a word, everyone jumped down the mountain to observe. The air was full of heat coupled with an inexplicable smell.

The closer they got, the more they felt the astonishing power of the explosion and the heat of the flames in front of them.

Especially in the middle and the edge of the crater, the layer of soil had been scraped away. They couldn’t believe that this little thing did so much damage.

Feeling a sense of horror, everyone looked at the pit and then back at Ren Baqian.

It was no wonder that the empress chose him as her husband!