The Drunken Immortal Restaurant was the tallest and most expensive restaurant in the capital. Its architectural design differed from ordinary establishments; the entire structure was supported by a single trunk of a tree reportedly over a thousand years old, with multiple levels extending outward horizontally, forming a pagoda-like shape.
The bottom three levels served as the main hall. Regardless of status or wealth, anyone who could afford the price could choose their seating freely.
The middle three levels were designed for minor officials and nobility. They offered more privacy than the bustling, open main hall, with tables separated by screens, though passersby could still catch glimpses of the occupants within.
The top three levels were exclusively reserved for the royal family and high-ranking officials, partitioned into private rooms with a high degree of seclusion. The highest level, in particular, was said to offer a view of the entire magnificent landscape of Chang’an and was off-limits to anyone outside the imperial family.
At this moment, Bo Ruofeng and Fang Youcheng were having lunch on the middle level of the Drunken Immortal Restaurant. Bo Ruofeng was using his chopsticks at lightning speed, complaining as he ate, “I still wanted to go to the top level. I can come to this level by yourself. You, a dignified person, belong on the top level to match your status.”
“What do you know? This is what we call lively,” Fang Youcheng said with absolute conviction. “Up there are all private rooms. What fun is it just for the two of us to eat? I’m already sick of that in the palace. The middle level is great, lively without being too noisy.”
“You always have an excuse,” Bo Ruofeng muttered. He shoveled down two mouthfuls of rice, held the tip of his chopsticks in his mouth, and said with melancholic longing, “Still, I really want to go to the top floor. They say you can see the entire city of Chang’an from there. The top floor only receives royalty, and the only royal person I know is someone as handsome, highly skilled in martial arts, and kind-hearted as you.”
Fang Youcheng felt so uneasy from this exaggerated flattery that he quickly interrupted, “Fine, fine, I’ll take you next time, alright?”
Seeing him perk up and look like he was about to push his luck further, Fang Youcheng picked up a chicken drumstick and shoved it straight into his mouth. “Just eat your food! All those dishes couldn’t stop your mouth.” Nearly every signature dish on the menu had been ordered for their table, showing just how ruthless Bo Ruofeng’s intentions to fleece him were. Fortunately, the portions of the dishes at the Drunken Immortal Restaurant were modest, making it entirely possible for two growing teenagers to finish them all.
Fang Youcheng had little interest in the lavish spread, being accustomed to rare delicacies. Instead, he simply sipped the low-alcohol wine cup after cup, his eyes wandering toward the bustling crowd coming and going outside. From time to time, when his gaze met someone who recognized him, that person would be startled out of their wits, offer a hurried salute, and rush away while pretending not to notice. As for those who didn’t recognize him, they either walked away with their chins held high or nodded slightly and averted their gaze.
Having secured the promise, Bo Ruofeng beamed with delight and focused entirely on devouring his chicken drumstick. As he ate, he suddenly remarked, “It would be great if we could take the chefs from the capital back to the northern frontier.”
Fang Youcheng tilted his head. “Why? Does your family not have chefs?”
Bo Ruofeng pouted with deep envy. “Having chefs doesn’t mean having ingredients. Where we are, we guard the Tianyuan Pass year-round. Our supplies either have to be grown ourselves or shipped in from nearby small towns. As long as there’s meat to eat, that’s enough; where would we find such abundance with chicken, duck, and fish?”
Looking utterly puzzled, Fang Youcheng suggested, “Then just raise them yourselves. Raising chickens, ducks, and fish isn’t hard, right? Keep them enclosed and feed them daily. I see plenty of livestock in the capital. If all else fails, since you’re in the capital now, just have people send some over.”
“Have you seriously never left the capital?” Bo Ruofeng put down his chicken drumstick, picked up a cloth napkin to wipe his mouth, and sighed upon seeing Fang Youcheng’s utter confusion. “Figures. Raising livestock is nothing like what you think. Take raising chickens, for example. You have to build coops, clean up the droppings regularly, mind the temperature and ventilation, and prepare their feed. If you’re not careful and an avian plague hits, they die off by the large numbers. The soldiers go there to fight wars, not to skip military training just to raise chickens all day, right? Besides, chicks cost money. With no wars in recent years, the court has cut back heavily on military provisions, leaving the soldiers hard-pressed even to support themselves. As for having things sent from the capital, the journey is long, and the shipping costs far outweigh the money it would take to raise them locally. Are you going to foot that bill?”
Hit with this massive wave of reality, Fang Youcheng was momentarily stunned. He paused, looking at the dead-serious Bo Ruofeng with hesitation, wanting to speak and then holding back repeatedly, before finally choking out, “You won’t be able to poach the chefs from the Drunken Immortal Restaurant anyway. This place belongs to the Eldest Princess.”
Lost in thought, Bo Ruofeng didn’t even seem to register what he had said. After a moment, Bo Ruofeng leaned in, threw an arm around Fang Youcheng’s shoulder, and said, “Whenever you have free time, why don’t you come home with me to visit?”
“What?” Fang Youcheng couldn’t quite follow how the conversation had made such a massive leap, shifting from fine dining to raising chickens, then to military provisions on the frontier, and finally jumping all the way to visiting the northern frontier.
Bo Ruofeng was by no means joking. He still remembered the bald monk’s warning that a great disaster would originate from Fang Youcheng, that he had accidentally transmigrated to this realm precisely because of the crown prince sitting before him, and his previous idea of trying to avert the disaster to see if he could find a way back.
First and foremost, that meant keeping the crown prince from going down a crooked path.
His world was truly too far away from this one, separated by the age of weapons, the information age, the holographic age. Even the humans here were still trapped on Earth, having never ventured into outer space. This place was so backward that he couldn’t return using any of the scientific knowledge he was familiar with.
Therefore, he offered this tiny flicker of hope to the youth beside him: “Come home with me to take a look. No matter how big Chang’an is, it’s just a city. Southern Yao isn’t only Chang’an. One day, if you come with me to the northern frontier, it might just be much better than listening to those dry, boring lectures in the Imperial Study.”
Fang Youcheng didn’t understand all of that. He only knew that the person before him was inviting him to visit his home as a friend. Those phoenix eyes suddenly lit up, dazzling like the blazing sun. Excitedly grabbing Bo Ruofeng’s wrist, he confirmed, “Is that true?”
“Naturally true.” Bo Ruofeng seriously envisioned his home. “If you come back with me, there are plenty of fun things there. I have a six-year-old sister who is soft, fair, tender, and exceptionally cute. She wears two little hair buns, looks just like a freshly steamed bun, and calls me older brother in the sweetest voice. I have an older brother three years older than me with a gentle temperament who treats me wonderfully. We can go horse racing and hunting together. My father’s voice might be a bit loud, but he means no harm. Not only is my mother a heroine among women, but she’s also extremely nimble-handed and makes delicious pastries.”
He chattered on about the ordinary, comforting things of his home, entirely unaware of the deep envy and anticipation filling Fang Youcheng’s eyes.
Fang Youcheng gave a solid slap against his palm. “Then it’s a deal!” His strength was so great that the slap echoed loudly against the tabletop. But Fang Youcheng didn’t care at all, completely immersed in the prospect of going to the northern frontier. “I’ll go back and look for a map to plot out the route.”
That said, the reality was that Fang Youcheng could not independently decide to leave the capital.
After finishing lunch, Bo Ruofeng patted his tightened waistband where he had overeaten and suddenly said, “When I first entered the capital, I saw an old woman setting up a stall at the city gates selling sweet tofu pudding. Her tofu pudding is exceptionally delicious. You didn’t eat much earlier, why don’t we go check it out?”
Still basking in the excitement of leaving the capital, Fang Youcheng shot him a sidelong glance at those words. “If you want to eat, just say so, don’t use me as an excuse.” Despite saying that, his tone clearly carried a much greater sense of familiarity than before, sounding more like playful nagging than a reprimand.
Laughing heartily, Bo Ruofeng hooked his arm around his neck and pulled him up. “Let’s go, let’s go. Trust me, the tofu pudding there is fantastic.”
After settling the bill, the two of them walked downstairs with arms linked like brothers, completely unaware of an elegant young scholar heading upstairs and passing right by them in the opposite direction.
The crown prince? Watching the two youths in red walk away, Duan Qingzhang thought his eyes were playing tricks on him. By the time he hesitated, the two had already descended to the lower floor.
The ground floor was far noisier than the upper levels. In particular, the main hall on the first floor had hired a storyteller to recount tales of strange phenomena. Catching a couple of words, Bo Ruofeng’s curiosity was piqued. Abandoning his immediate plans to get tofu pudding, he grabbed Fang Youcheng and made him stay in the crowd.
Fang Youcheng had little curiosity and lost his patience after listening to just a few sentences. In particular, the dense crowd pressing in from all sides made him extremely uncomfortable. Losing his initial relaxed mood, he furrowed his brows and pulled a dark face as he evaded the flow of people. Tugging at Bo Ruofeng’s hand, he urged, “Let’s go, let’s go eat your tofu pudding.”
After being urged a few times, Bo Ruofeng reversed his grip to hold the other’s wrist. “Don’t rush, don’t rush. Let me finish listening to this, it’s almost at the climax.”
“Tsk.” Fang Youcheng turned his head away in displeasure, looking around the room.
At that moment, his gaze locked onto a group of people seated in the main floor’s hall.
That group looked far too bizarre. Unlike ordinary commoners who acted casually, every single one of them wore a solemn expression. Nor did they look like officials gathered to chat and socialize. Three or four individuals sat there in silence, leaving the tea on their table completely untouched while occasionally exchanging murmurs.
Among them was a woman with a slender figure and a sharply tapered chin, sitting quietly right in the middle of three burly men, with a strangely styled sachet tied around her waist.
That sachet looked somewhat similar to the tribute sent over earlier by Northern Yue. Am I overthinking this? Wondering to himself, Fang Youcheng quietly released his grip, crept over toward the corner surrounded by potted plants, and stood there eavesdropping.
Over by the storyteller, having listened with unfulfilled interest to the end, Bo Ruofeng turned around only to find that Fang Youcheng had slipped off to the corner at some point. Puzzled, he pushed his way through the crowd toward that spot. “Hey! Why’d you run over there? Let’s go get our tofu pudding!”
That shout startled the four people sitting in the corner, causing all of them to snap their heads around. Though Bo Ruofeng found those individuals strange, he didn’t think there was anything odd about calling out to Fang Youcheng, as he hadn’t used a name or an official title, just a casual remark. Thus, he met their gazes openly and even shot them an annoyed glare.
However, those four followed his line of sight toward Fang Youcheng in the corner. The woman, whose face was half-concealed, stiffened all over as if recognizing Fang Youcheng’s true identity. She hurriedly stood up, bumped into her table and chairs, spilled her tea, and moved with frantic abruptness.
As she stood up, the three burly men sprang to their feet as well. The four of them hurriedly bolted toward the exit.
Why are they running? Bo Ruofeng found this group’s reaction thoroughly suspicious, acting precisely like thieves with a guilty conscience. Standing in place, he scratched his head in hesitation. Since he didn’t know any of them, he had no intention of interfering.
However, Fang Youcheng’s brows knitted tightly as he suddenly surged forward and grabbed the woman by the arm. The woman raised her hand, using her other arm to push him away. Somehow managing to deflect brute force with soft momentum, with a single push, a shift of her lotus steps, and a swift pivot, she retreated several paces.
The three burly men closed in, shielding her behind them as the woman made a hasty getaway.
Trapped by the three burly men while watching the woman sprint away, Fang Youcheng shouted, “Bo Ruofeng, stop her!”
Without waiting for the command, Bo Ruofeng had already shoved through the crowd, lunging forward to grab the woman’s shoulder. As though she had eyes on the back of her head, the woman slipped past like an eel. Abandoning the front doors, she leaped straight out a window onto the street, bolting toward the crowd in an attempt to slip away.
Bo Ruofeng snatched a pair of chopsticks from a nearby table, channeling his internal energy to hurl them forward, embedding them deeply into the damp soil directly in front of the woman. Sure enough, her pace slowed as she looked for another direction to escape. Seizing the momentum, Bo Ruofeng chased her out to the street just as Fang Youcheng knocked down the three burly men and vaulted out the window. Together, they formed a pincer movement to trap the woman.
Realizing she was cornered by the two of them, the woman’s eyes flashed with a hint of youthful panic. Wearing a cloak that revealed only her lower face, she swiftly pulled out a veil from her tunic and put it on, clearly wishing to conceal her identity.
Seeing this, Bo Ruofeng grew even more suspicious that she had done something shameful.
With the woman between them, Bo Ruofeng’s eyes met Fang Youcheng’s. In a split second, with tacit coordination, they simultaneously launched their attack.
However, bending down with an unbelievable posture, the woman evaded their simultaneous attacks from two different directions, slid toward a nearby vendor’s stall, grabbed a tablecloth, and whipped it back to sweep it over the two of them. A cloud of colorful cosmetic powders filled the air, and tearing off the sachet at her waist, she mixed the medicinal powder inside with the flying cosmetics and scattered it outward.
Mere cosmetic powder could never hope to stop him. Bo Ruofeng charged right through without a second thought, only to be hit the moment he inhaled the dust, coughing violently with tears streaming down his face. His moistened eyes blurred into a milky white, blinding him to his surroundings.
Not just him, Fang Youcheng, who had similarly underestimated his opponent, along with other passing pedestrians caught in the crossfire, were blinded like the rest, trapped in that tiny patch of ground as a chorus of harsh coughs and angry curses rose up.
Having successfully pulled off her ambush, the woman darted swiftly into an alley through the smoke and dust, disappearing from view.
Taking advantage of the coughing and weeping crowd, the three burly men quietly slipped away. Reaching the depths of the alley to regroup, one of them lowered his voice to ask, “Holy Maiden, did he discover something? What do we do now?”
“He didn’t see my face,” the woman replied, her breathing calming down as she tucked herself away securely, regaining her composure. “Don’t panic. The plan proceeds as usual, we’re returning to the Prime Minister’s Residence.”
As the crowd gathering to watch the commotion grew larger, fearing someone might recognize their identities and blow the matter out of proportion, Bo Ruofeng, whose vision was recovering a little faster, grabbed Fang Youcheng’s arm, hoisted the other over his shoulder, and supported him as they made a swift exit from the marketplace.
In a quiet corner, the two of them stood back-to-back, attempting to tidy themselves up.
Bo Ruofeng pulled up the front of his robe to wipe his face clean before voicing his inner confusion: “Did that woman steal something from you? Why are you chasing her?”
Fang Youcheng was furious, rarely ever finding himself in such a disheveled state. The medicinal powder had made his eyes water continuously, and the tears mixed with cosmetic powder had caked around his eyes, making them feel impossible to wipe clean. Filled with frustration, he grumbled, “I overheard them speaking in a very strange accent, and the pronunciation of a few words was incomprehensible, sounding very much like the Northern Yue language. That woman seemed to be the highest-ranking among them. It was only suspicion at first, but who told them to run away out of a guilty conscience? A Northern Yue accent, recognizing me, and running away out of guilt! Put those three suspicious points together, and even a fool knows it’s no good. We had to take them down first and ask questions later!”
“Fair point.” Bo Ruofeng carefully retraced the events, nodding in agreement. “Especially that woman. She was terrified of us seeing her face. Why?”
He turned around to face Fang Youcheng. As the two looked at each other’s multicolored faces, they burst out laughing, pointing mockingly. “Your Highness, Bo Ruofeng, your face!”
The laughter cut off abruptly. Realizing what had just happened, both of them instantly dropped their smiles, put on poker faces, turned their backs to one another, and continued scrubbing their faces in silence.