The Half-Spirit Princess - Chapter 4

I couldn’t let him take the medicine!

Sweat poured down my face. Fighting the terrible discomfort, I scrambled through the window and onto the roof on all fours, racing over blue-grey brickwork and green roof tiles and barely keeping up with the bat spirit.

Then an arrow struck him out of nowhere. He dropped to the ground with a splat.

The man who’d shot him wore black robes and carried a longsword that glowed a faint, eerie blue. Tall and straight as a pine, he advanced slowly on the wounded bat spirit, his sword tip brushing the ground.

The bat made a last stand, but the man knocked him down in a few moves. Clutching his chest, he spat out blood.

Realizing he couldn’t win, the bat spirit shuffled forward on his knees and appealed to his captor’s feelings. “Have mercy, my lord! My wife is waiting at home. If I die, she won’t be able to live on her own!”

From the rooftop, I sneered. Why couldn’t she? She was the chancellor’s daughter. All she had to do was go home.

When the man remained unmoved, the bat spirit began to weep and knock his head against the ground. “My lord! Someone took my spirit core. I only wanted this medicine to keep myself alive. I never meant to hurt anyone! My lord!”

Before he could finish, the man’s sword whipped upward. Cold light flashed, and the bat spirit’s head flew far away, hit the ground, and rolled a little before stopping.

My heart clenched.

After a moment, the severed head and body sizzled into white smoke.

When the body had disappeared completely, a golden pill lay quietly on the ground.

The man stepped forward and reached for it.

I timed my leap from the roof. Just before his fingers touched the pill, I snatched it first.

I landed opposite him. A little surprised, he gave an amused click of his tongue. “Interesting. There’s another one.”

By the moonlight, I saw his face clearly and nearly fainted.

Wasn’t this the husband His Majesty had chosen for me, the one I’d met earlier that very day? What was he doing at the Wei residence?

And what happened to being a civil official?

What happened to not knowing martial arts?

In that split second, inspiration struck. I suddenly wanted to exchange a few moves with him.

Moonlight hung like gauze, and cherry petals filled the courtyard. I leaped into the air, sending a length of white silk flying from my sleeve through the drifting petals at Qi Zhao.

He sprang up to meet me. His moves were clean and swift as shooting stars. For a mortal, his fighting strength was actually a match for mine.

He nearly sliced my silk to pieces.

Enough of that. I was in a hurry. Time to leave.

Just as I prepared to run, the poison I’d inhaled began acting up again. My legs weakened. I felt like a lone boat in raging waves and could scarcely stay upright.

With his next move, he flicked away my face covering.

Surprise rose in his eyes. “You?”

I didn’t answer. While he stood stunned, I leaped up, cleared the wall, and escaped.

…

I went to Fuliu Lane in the west of the city.

When I pushed open the gate to the courtyard at the end of the lane, the smell of decay filled my nose. Once lush with plants, the courtyard had withered into desolation.

I hurried inside.

Large webs already covered the bedroom. It was damp and cold, like an animal’s lair.

There was no light. Relying on memory, I felt my way to the bed and lifted the quilt.

Underneath lay a spider half as long as a person, shriveled and curled into a ball.

The hopeless sight brought tears rushing to my eyes. “Leyun, are you dead? Leyun, why didn’t you wait for me? I brought you the medicine!”

I sobbed so hard I couldn’t catch my breath. After I’d been howling for a while, a woman’s faint voice came from my arms. “Who… walks in… and asks… if someone is dead?”

I stopped crying at once. “Leyun, you’re not dead! Thank goodness.”

I wiped away my tears, took out the pill, and crushed it into powder with my spirit power, letting it dissolve into Leyun’s body.

Within moments, her body filled out again. A little later, she resumed human form.

“Thank you, Xiaoya,” Leyun said.

I held her hand. “Don’t be afraid. I’ll find your spirit core. You’ll be well again soon.”

Leyun nodded.

I lit a lamp, tidied the room, then started a fire in the kitchen and cooked a bowl of sweet tofu pudding with sweet potato for her.

Leaning against the bed, she ate the pudding I’d made, a smile on her pale face. “Our pampered little princess is quite good at a servant woman’s work, too!”

I added oil to the lamp and looked back at her. “When I was little, Mother used to take me into the mountains every so often for a stay. We lived in the cave where she’d cultivated her powers. She’d arranged it like a home, with everything we needed.”

“Mother is so lazy. Every time we went, I had to wait on her. I wasn’t even as tall as the stove then, and I still had to cook for her.”

Leyun giggled. “Why did she take you to live in the mountains?”

“She said that if Father ever found out she was a spirit and couldn’t accept it, she’d take me back there to cultivate. I needed to get used to mountain life in advance. Being a wild spirit in the woods is quite a step down from being a princess in a princely residence.”

As we chatted, the mood grew easier. I tried to sound casual as I asked how she’d lost her spirit core.

Leyun was silent for a long while, as though she didn’t want to tell me. I was about to change the subject with a joke when she spoke. “Xiaoya, my mother came back.”

I was surprised. “What? Didn’t you say she was killed protecting you when you were little?”

Leyun shook her head, tears collecting along her lashes. “But I went to look below that cliff several times and never found her remains.”

“She was just badly injured and couldn’t come back for me. A month ago, she returned. I was so happy…”

Thinking back, Leyun had gone out to sell her tofu pudding as usual every day that month. Nothing had seemed wrong. I blurted out, “How come I didn’t know? You never told me…”

Her expression suddenly turned blank. I waited quietly for her to go on, but she only looked exhausted. “Xiaoya, I’m tired. Go home.”