“So this is Starfruit Lake…”
Jiang Miao spun around at the lakeside, her gaze sweeping from left to right.
The lake stretched beyond sight, with rows of sturdy fruit trees standing neatly in the water. Enormous starfruits hung down to the surface, their skins beaded with water droplets.
She swallowed.
These things were free for students, and supposedly one fruit covered all your vitamins A through G…
It wasn’t that she was greedy—she was simply broke.
Tuition: ten million. Materials: five million. Housing: two million. Plus miscellaneous fees…
She had already burned through the twenty million Jiang Qingyue had given her, and even Nan Xi’s savings were nearly depleted.
A thought flashed through Jiang Miao’s mind.
Twenty million. Not a coin more, not a coin less. Just enough to pay every fee the academy required, leaving her penniless but not starving.
Once she paid, there’d be no backing out. The Royal City would be rid of one eyesore of a deposed Crown Prince, and the academy would gain one destitute poor student.
Hah. How loyal he was to the New King, sweeping up the mess so thoroughly.
Scumbag.
She gritted her back teeth, deciding that sooner or later she would lock Jiang Qingyue up and avenge the imprisoned former Queen Mother.
Nan Xi followed at her side, her gaze passing over the gold-roofed buildings along the lake and the bushes trimmed into geometric shapes. “Miss Jiang, the flowers by the lake are edible. The roots of the grass over there can be boiled too. The leaves from the fruit trees make a good salad once blanched. Since we’re here anyway, let me pick a few dozen starfruits to take back—I can make one fruit eight ways.”
Jiang Miao, starving, was just about to nod—
“You starving ghost!”
A curse in the World Language exploded from the right front.
Jiang Miao turned her head.
A person lay sprawled in the mud by the lake.
All ten of his fingers were caked with black mud, grass scraps and fruit pulp wedged under his nails, as he desperately dug a crushed starfruit out from under a pair of boots.
He shoved each piece he dug out into his mouth, chewing while reaching for the next.
The boot ground down on the fruit pulp twice more, juice seeping from the sole and mixing with mud as it trickled into his palm.
He was like a young beast whose tail had been stepped on, still frantically clawing for food.
Jiang Miao found the figure familiar and took two steps forward.
The blond-haired one who’d been stomping the fruit crouched down, seized the man’s chin, knuckles pressing into both sides of his jaw, and tilted his face upward.
Jiang Miao saw him clearly.
Mud and fruit juice smeared most of his face, but the sharp, elegant line of his brow bone showed through the grime.
Deep-set eyes, a straight nose bridge, thin lips with a beautiful shape, the corners of his mouth curving up ever so slightly by nature.
Devastatingly handsome.
But those eyes were empty. No light in his pupils, no focus—like two dried-up wells with nothing at the bottom, not even an echo.
Jiang Miao had once seen those eyes full of light.
At the engagement banquet a year ago, Duke Pengmu had tried to humiliate him, sending ten gaming experts to challenge him in succession.
He had sat at the end of the long table, the back of his neck resting against the chair, ten fingers loosely folded on the tabletop, a polite, easy smile never leaving his lips.
The first opponent was eliminated in three minutes. The second, third, fourth… by the tenth, his opponent’s face was green as he slammed down his pieces.
He never said a single word from start to finish, only offering each opponent a courteous nod.
The original owner of this body had watched from the side, jaw dropped from the very first round, chin in her hands, staring at him the whole time.
Her mind had been full of thoughts of tearing his clothes off, forcing him to write her a foolproof strategy for starting a war while they did it.
Lu Shengzhou. Prince of the Country of Blan. Her Primary Husband.
The favored son of heaven whose name had spread across all seven kingdoms while still young—the highest-ranking, most powerful, most dazzling of her five fiancés.
Now, a fool kneeling in the mud, digging up rotten fruit to eat.
“Sure, he’s gone stupid, but that face is still something else.” The yellow-haired thug rubbed his thumb along Lu Shengzhou’s cheekbone, tracing a circle on that patch of clean skin with his fingertip. “Lu the Fool, picking Starfruit by the lake is dangerous, you know. Come with us big brothers, we’ll pick them for you… heh heh heh…”
“No… no…”
Lu Shengzhou slapped his hand away and pushed himself up off the ground.
The moment his feet steadied, the yellow-haired thug’s boot tip had already hooked his ankle—fast and precise, coiling around like a snake to trip him.
Lu Shengzhou pitched forward.
Jiang Miao had never moved so fast in her life.
She pushed off the ground, knees nearly hitting her chest, cutting across in three strides, arm outstretched to catch his waist.
Half a beat too late.
Momentum took them both down, backs slamming into the mud with a dull thud.
Lu Shengzhou’s tall frame collapsed entirely on top of her, his chest pressing against her ribs, forcing the air from her lungs in a whoosh.
Lu Shengzhou propped himself on his elbows and looked down at her.
He froze for a second. Then he suddenly smiled.
His brow relaxed, and for an instant, those eyes like empty wells actually lit up.
He got up, then pounced on her again, gently, his nose brushing past her ear, a muffled laugh rumbling in his throat.
He thought it was a game.
Jiang Miao gritted her teeth under his weight, ribs aching.
After playing around a couple of times, Lu Shengzhou suddenly went still, staring straight at her face.
His mud-smeared brow furrowed slightly, as if trying to recall something he couldn’t quite remember.
Then—his whole face lit up.
Like a single shaft of light splitting through the clouds after thirty days of overcast skies.
“Mumu! Mumu!”
He flung himself back onto her, arms closing around her in a tight squeeze. His chest vibrated with that garbled, repetitive cry of excitement that only a three-year-old could make.
Jiang Miao was nearly squeezed breathless.
But she didn’t push him away.
He still recognized her.
He was calling her by the original owner’s former name—Jiang Mu.
After the New King usurped the throne, he had renamed her Jiang Miao and decreed that no one was ever to speak the old name again.
Whoever spoke it died.
Yet this man, gone mad, who remembered nothing, who understood nothing, had looked at her once and called her “Mumu.”
Strange. In the past, he and the original owner couldn’t go three sentences without fighting.
He was gentle as jade with everyone else, but to Jiang Mu alone he was cold as the ice that sealed a lake in December.
Now he didn’t remember any of that—yet he still remembered who she was.
Lu Shengzhou got up and pulled her to her feet.
Then he clapped his hands and spun circles around her, his steps so chaotic he nearly tripped over himself, chanting over and over: “Mumu! Mumu! Mumu!”
At over 1.8 meters tall, his shoulder smacked into a low tree as he spun. He didn’t seem to feel it, and kept spinning.
Jiang Miao steadied him, pressed him to stand at her side, and turned to the yellow-haired thug. “How did he go mad?”
The thug flicked the hair off his forehead and looked her up and down. “Not a maid?”
“A student.”
“Ha—a poor student.” The thug snorted, his gaze sliding back to Lu Shengzhou, drifting from the side of his neck down to his waistline. “He fell into the sea. When they fished him out, his brain was broken. His brother dumped him at the academy, said he should start over from the beginning. Stupid as this—what’s there to learn? Clearly they’re just leaving him to fend for himself. Didn’t even leave him a single attendant.”
As he spoke, he reached out again, his fingertips going for Lu Shengzhou’s wrist. “Might as well learn a thing or two in bed.”
Jiang Miao yanked Lu Shengzhou behind her.
The blond guy froze for a moment, then a flicker of interest lit up in his eyes. “Oh—? The poor girl playing hero?”
The lackeys around him immediately closed in, boot tips forward, shoulders lowered, like hyenas catching the scent of blood.
“Do you know who we are?”
Nan Xi quickly opened her Astrarium, looked it up, and leaned in close to Jiang Miao’s ear. “Kingdom of Wilin nobles. The blond hair is a birthright bloodline marker. The one in charge is Fu Chengwang, head of the Chengwang Gang—a bully crew at the school.”
Jiang Miao frowned.
How could the Seven Nations Alliance Academy still have bullies?
Unless someone smarter was backing them.
Who would need a pack of bullies to do their dirty work?
As far as Lu Shengzhou was concerned, the most likely candidate was his brother.
Dump him here, let people trample him, grope him, grab his wrist and toy with him—and no one would care.
She glanced down at her side.
Lu Shengzhou was crouched on the ground, picking up Starfruit petals one by one with mud-covered fingers, threading them onto a thin vine, clumsily winding it around and around.
He was humming something under his breath, the tune broken and halting, like a nursery rhyme whose lyrics he’d forgotten entirely.
He knew nothing. The Country of Blan didn’t want him. School wasn’t for studying—it was a place to fend for himself or die.
Just now, when that hand had grabbed his wrist, he’d still been smiling.
The sour ache in Jiang Miao’s chest suddenly flared hot—burning upward.
She opened her Astrarium and contacted Lu Shengzhou’s brother.
It rang twice on the other end before being picked up.
She put it on speaker.
“Hello, Lu the scumbag.”
Her tone was hard and domineering.
“This is Jiang Miao.”