The Silly Alchemist

“Chen Pi, bring your mother in. I’ll conduct a more thorough examination for her,” Ye Lang turned to enter the residence. He seemed to have forgotten to introduce the three people to each other.

And that was how the three of them stood in awkward silence for a while. The seventh princess was the first to speak. She was an empire’s princess, she was used to events and mingling with strangers.

“How do you do, Alvin, I believe we haven’t met. I am Zhao Yazhu, betrothed to Ye Lang. She’s Ye Lang’s older sister, Ye Lanyu,” the seventh princess only gave a brief introduction but did not give away their status or identity.

She barely had her title as the empire’s princess now, so her identity right now was very simple- she was engaged to Ye Lang, she was the Ye family’s future daughter-in-law. That meant she and Ye Lanyu belonged to the Ye family.

Before Ye Lanyu married anyone, she too was part of the Ye family.

The seventh princess seemed to like identifying herself with the Ye family- she liked it a lot more than identifying herself as the seventh princess.

“Ah, you’re Sir’s family! Pleased to meet you,” Alvin didn’t expect them to be so unavailable- one was Ye Lang’s sister, the other was engaged to him.

“You don’t have to be so formal! How long have you worked with Ye Lang?” The seventh princess stopped Alvin from bowing, asking a question while regarding this man.

Ye Lanyu was also looking Alvin from top to bottom, making Alvin very uncomfortable.

“I’ve been working with him for a few months. I’ve been by his side since the day he gave me food, helping him deal with many matters. Sir’s a very clueless person, this you should know,” said Alvin, he wanted to avert their eyes by lightening the topic.

“This I know. We would never have let him travel alone, he got lost somewhere, that’s why he ended up alone,” said Ye Lanyu.

“Yeah,  he gets lost very often. Little Xin too, the both of them,” nodded Alvin in exasperation.

“Little Xin? Who?” they asked at the same time.

“Don’t you know? She follows him around, she never talks but is always there to protect and serve him,” Alvin was surprised. He didn’t expect Ye Lang’s sister and even future wife not know of Little Xin’s existence.

“Do you think she’s Tai Ya? That idiot brought Tai Ya back?” The girls looked at each other, suspecting Little Xin to be Tigress.

From what they could recall, Ye Lang would only let Tai Ya alone follow him around, helping him with chores. They were a little bitter about this because Ye Lang said he wanted to travel alone. He didn’t want to travel with them.

“Tai Ya? Sir calls her Little Xin, but I don’t know what her full name is. She’s awesome though, very strong. One punch and she can defeat a high-level fighter,” said Alvin. This deepened the misunderstanding.

“That should be Tai Ya,” nodded Ye Lanyu. Tigress was a strong teenage girl from the tiger race, who else could be stronger than her?

“Let’s ignore that for now. Tell us, how did that little prodigal son spend all his money?” asked the seventh princess.

“That’s complicated. Sir might say it’s ‘nothing much’, but it’s more like ‘everything much’ because he bought everything in every city we passed. I can let you take a look at our inventory, I have it here,” Alvin didn’t want to name every single item he bought because that would be too long.

“It’s all over the place! Why did he buy all these for? Are they useful? And he said he was doing good… Didn’t you stop him?” said the seventh princess, but she quickly continued, “it’s fine, even we couldn’t stop him, how could you?”

They never stopped him from making purchases anymore because they couldn’t. And if they couldn’t, nobody else could.

Alvin wanted to say something about him stopping Ye Lang but realised the seventh princess had said what he wanted to say. He felt a wave of understanding and relief.

Hence, he nodded, “…Yeah. I couldn’t stop him, but what he bought wasn’t useless. Most of it came in useful in the end.”

“Useful? Look at these, how is it possible? Tell me, how did you use them?” the seventh princess was curious because most of the list consisted of useless things- or at least useless to Ye Lang.

“Here! Beneath your feet, and everything you see around you,” Alvin pointed to the ground, then around. He waited, waited for their jaws to drop.

Anyone who heard this would be shocked.

Of course, they were both shocked, “You mean everything here? Does that mean he built this entire city?”

The seventh princess’ thought was bold, but that was normal. Ye Lang was reckless and bold in what he did. Anything you speculated about him should be bold too.

And she was right. This entire Miracle District was built by the materials he bought.

“Yeah, the sir designed this entire district, and we used his materials too. We were only here to use his materials to build the district according to his blueprint,” nodded Alvin.

“Ye Lang, what HAVEN’T you done,” muttered the seventh princess to herself. However, she said it with pride. She was proud of Ye Lang.

“He is my baby brother after all! He built his own city next to Sheng City!” Ye Lanyu was prouder, prouder than when she had her own results.

“We didn’t have a choice. If we didn’t build this district, a hundred thousand people would be homeless. Not only did sir give us a roof over our heads,  he even gave us tools to continue living,” Alvin’s tone changed as he spoke.

The tools he mentioned were the same tools he said were useless when Ye Lang first bought them.

“Even the richest person might not have the capability to build a city like this and even sustain the livelihoods of a hundred thousand people. It’s very normal for him to have spent all his money,” the seventh princess gave the list back to Alvin, looking around her.

What she said was true. So many people would have spent generations of inheritance and assets to build a district like this and make sure a hundred thousand people could continue surviving. Ye Lang’s bankruptcy was normal.