On the other side of the ancient castle,
In a spacious kitchen that might have once provided delicious meals for the princess sisters,
Ye Ziji was methodically going about his work.
The air was thick with the scent of dust, and the massive stone hearth had long since gone cold, covered in a thick shroud of gray.
Long-abandoned, massive spiderwebs hung from the corners and ceilings.
This place had been neglected and forgotten for so long that even the spiders no longer wished to stay.
Ye Ziji did not mind at all.
He snapped his hoof, generating a controlled, miniature whirlwind between his hooves.
The whirlwind whistled through every corner of the room.
Wherever it went, whether thousand-year-old dust or sticky cobwebs, it was instantly swept up and compressed, eventually forming gray dust balls that he casually tossed out the window,
Feeding them to the Everfree Forest.
Next, he began to channel the water element.
Clear streams of water appeared out of thin air, meticulously washing down the walls, the floor, and the massive hearth.
Grime and mildew quickly washed away, revealing the original, weathered texture of the stone beneath.
Finally came the repairs using the earth element.
The cracks born of age and erosion slowly mended under a faint yellow glow.
When the last trace of light faded, although the kitchen remained empty of any utensils or ingredients, it had returned to its proper state of neatness and cleanliness.
This was the last public room he had left to clean.
Looking around with satisfaction, Ye Ziji leaned lazily against a freshly cleaned wall and exhaled slowly.
He appeared to be resting, but his mind was racing, reviewing the “fruits of his labor” over the past half-day.
Every tile and relief in the throne room had been checked; there were no hidden compartments.
The suits of armor lining the corridors were solid, and there were no secret passages behind the walls.
The decaying bookshelves in the study held nothing but sawdust.
The broken chests in the storeroom didn’t yield a single scrap.
…
Under the guise of cleaning and repairing, he had meticulously searched almost every accessible area of this ancient castle.
Those few broken stones—the legendary Elements of Harmony capable of purifying darkness—were still nowhere to be found.
He had come up empty-handed.
Ye Ziji’s brow furrowed.
He ran through the castle’s layout in his mind, marking all searched areas in gray.
Ultimately, a striking, unknown region stood out clearly on his mental map.
Nightmare Moon’s bedchamber.
That was the only place in the entire castle he hadn’t set hoof in.
It was also the most dangerous and the least likely place he would be permitted to enter.
Reason told him that if Nightmare Moon had indeed obtained the Elements of Harmony, they were highly likely to be in her private pony-domain.
Or, perhaps they had been tossed into some obscure corner to gather dust as forgotten trophies.
But how could he get in?
With his current favorability, it probably wasn’t enough.
Even if it were enough, it would still be risky.
If he handled the process poorly or let slip even a hint of his true intentions,
The favorability he had worked so hard to build would likely plummet to zero in an instant.
But if he didn’t search there, where else could he look?
These questions bound Ye Ziji’s thoughts like invisible shackles.
Leaning against the cold wall, he found the situation a bit thorny to handle.
The whereabouts of the Elements of Harmony weighed heavily on his mind like a mountain.
Risk and opportunity clashed violently in his head, leaving him in a temporary dilemma.
After pondering for a moment, he suddenly let out a long, long sigh.
It was as if that single breath carried away all his inner conflict and worry.
Right after, he shrugged indifferently.
The serious expression on his face instantly dissolved, replaced by a sudden sense of ease and clarity, reverting to his usual lazy demeanor.
“Whatever, I’ll stop thinking about it for now,” he muttered to himself with a touch of easygoing detachment.
“Pondering won’t give me an answer anyway. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it… and if we can’t, well, we’ll worry about it then~”
Wasting too much mental energy on a temporarily unsolvable problem had never been his style.
Since the path to finding the Elements of Harmony was blocked for now, he might as well set it aside and do something more meaningful and effective instead.
He re-evaluated his situation and goals.
Finding the Elements of Harmony was important, of course, but that was to defeat Nightmare Moon.
Before that, as long as he could continue to stay here and steadily gain the queen’s trust, that was the most important thing right now.
For now, continuing to build up favorability was the safest choice. Visit g.com for the full chapter.
He quickly made up his mind.
His gaze swept once more over the freshly cleaned kitchen and the equally tidy but empty hallway visible through the doorway.
A new plan quickly took shape in his mind.
“Now that the castle is mostly cleaned up and many of the broken areas have been repaired, it still feels like something is missing…”
He tapped his chin with a hoof, lost in thought.
Right, decorations!
There were no decorations here.
It was empty, like a magnificent but soulless shell.
He thought of the ornaments that had long since crumbled to dust under the ravages of time—the exquisite tapestries, the grand curtains, the soft carpets, and all kinds of furniture and decor.
These things were essential to make a castle feel lived-in.
“My elemental magic can repair walls and floors, and even restore the ruins back to a fraction of their former glory. But it can’t conjure up intricate and exquisite decorations out of nothing.”
Ye Ziji knew the limits of his abilities well.
He could rebuild the skeleton, but he couldn’t flesh it out.
So, where would these things come from?
After a moment’s thought, a bold yet perfectly logical idea surfaced in his mind.
“Maybe I could go to Ponyville and buy some?!”
The moment the thought appeared, its immense feasibility became obvious.
Going to Ponyville for supplies would allow him to legitimately serve the Queen, further improving her living conditions, while also providing him with an excellent excuse to leave the castle.
“And I can also drop by to see how Fluttershy and the others are doing.”
Remembering the friends he had forcefully “entrusted” to others, he couldn’t help but feel a bit apologetic and curious.
This plan was a perfect way to kill two birds with one stone.
It would build favorability, allow him to gather intelligence from the outside world, and solve quite a few of his immediate problems.
At this thought, a confident smile returned to Ye Ziji’s face.
He stood up straight, smoothed down his mane, and prepared to present this brand-new, seemingly foolproof plan to his Queen.
“Absolutely not!”
When Ye Ziji happily returned to the throne room with his perfectly reasonable “shopping plan,”
He had already prepared his speech and intended to ask her for her preferences and suggestions on decorations.
However, when he stepped briskly to the foot of the throne and proposed his plan “to go to Ponyville and purchase some essential decorations to make Her Majesty’s castle more perfect, comfortable, and livable,”
What he received was not the expected permission, but a flat, bone-chilling rejection.
The word “No” pierced through the newly established, relatively harmonious atmosphere of the hall like a sharp arrow.
Before the smile on Ye Ziji’s face could fully bloom, it froze in place.
???
Atop the throne, Nightmare Moon’s previously contemplative, calm expression had vanished without a trace.
In its place was a complex mix of anger, disappointment, and a sense of betrayal.
Her slit-pupil, teal eyes turned incredibly sharp, locking onto Ye Ziji like a hawk’s, as if trying to pierce his skin to see the truest thoughts in the depths of his soul.
The slight attachment to “companionship” that had just begun to bud in her heart instantly morphed into a deep, bone-chilling fear of abandonment the moment she heard the words “leave the castle” and “go to Ponyville.”
A second later, she masked this fear with even more intense rage.
“Thou art going to Ponyville?!”
“Dost thou think Us blind to thy schemes?!”
Her voice trembled slightly with anger, each word spat through clenched teeth.
She slowly rose from the throne, her tall figure casting a massive shadow that completely enveloped Ye Ziji.
A powerful, suffocating magical pressure erupted from her, causing the temperature in the entire hall to plummet by over ten degrees.
“Ye Ziji! Dost thou intend to flee?”
she demanded sharply, taking a step forward.
“Dost thou intend to break the oath thou hast just sworn to Us?”
She pressed closer, her voice growing even shriller.
“Dost thou intend to…”
Her words cut off abruptly, as though she had forced herself to swallow something more hurtful and revealing of her inner vulnerability.
She fell silent, merely glaring at him with eyes burning with cold fury.
Her gaze was filled with the pain of betrayal, and the despair and rage of being abandoned once more.
Faced with this sudden, thunderous rage, Ye Ziji’s reaction was unexpectedly calm.
He didn’t even take a step back, merely standing his ground and letting the powerful pressure wash over his body.
He tilted his head slightly in confusion, then reflexively raised a hoof to scratch the back of his head.
Meanwhile, thoughts churned rapidly in his mind.
*Holy crap,*
He couldn’t help but complain wildly to himself:
*Am I serving a queen, or am I babysitting an extremely insecure filly who was abandoned by her parents?
Looking at this queen, who clearly possessed world-destroying power yet was currently puffing up like a cat whose tail had been stepped on, he felt no fear at all.
Instead, a helpless sense of amusement rose within him.
Inside the throne room, the atmosphere was freezing.
The dark magic radiating from Nightmare Moon billowed and roared in the air like a living thing, condensing into a visible black mist that pressed down in waves upon the figure below the throne.
Her anger was real.
Her accusation was sharp.
Her fear of abandonment transformed into a powerful pressure capable of shattering the courage of any ordinary pony.
Yet, in the face of all this, Ye Ziji simply shrugged indifferently.
He felt no fear of the mind-rending magic, nor was he intimidated by the queen’s fiery, wrathful eyes.
Calmly and unhurriedly, he took a step forward.
This step brought him closer to the throne, placing him completely within the attack range of that dark magic.
He stopped, looked up, and quietly gazed at the furious queen on the throne.
His gaze was as calm as water, devoid of any fear, defense, or flattery.
He just stood there, unguarded and silent, leaving himself entirely open to her judgment, perfectly composed as if to let her decide his fate.
This silent posture was, in itself, the most powerful counter.
It spoke without words:
*I hear your anger.*
*I feel your pressure.*
*But they have no effect on me.
Because I have done nothing wrong.
Now, the choice is yours.*
In this moment, time seemed to stretch.
Nightmare Moon’s fury was like crashing into an invisible, soft yet unyielding wall.
The fear, begging for mercy, or fierce resistance she had anticipated never came.
There was only a calm that felt utterly foreign and disorienting to her.
*This fellow!*
Lacking an outlet, her anger began to gradually recede.
The churning dark magic slowly subsided along with it.
Looking down at those clear, dark eyes reflecting her own furious face, she felt a sensation called “powerlessness” for the very first time.
She realized that all her threats, intimidation, and cold methods were completely futile and ineffective against this subject.
As the pressure in the hall gradually weakened and retreated back to the throne, Ye Ziji knew his moment had come.
Seeing the rage in her teal eyes slowly turn to confusion and dissatisfaction, he finally spoke.
He didn’t explain why he wanted to go out, nor did he refute her previous accusations.
Instead, in a casual tone of discussing daily chores, he picked up where he left off, uttering a sentence that caught Nightmare Moon completely off guard.
“Oh, by the way, Your Majesty. Besides the castle decorations, while I’m out, I also need to purchase some mattresses, blankets, and pillows.”
This sentence instantly shattered all the tension from their standoff.
Nightmare Moon froze, her Alicorn brain temporarily unable to process this sudden leap in conversation.
Mattresses?
Blankets?
Pillows?
What on earth was he talking about?
She instinctively wanted to demand an explanation, but Ye Ziji seemed to have entirely anticipated her reaction.
Before she could speak her confusion, he beat her to it, cutting her off with a perfectly natural tone.
“After all, since I’m going to serve you in the long run, I’ll need to settle down here, won’t I?”
“I can’t very well sleep on this cold floor every night from now on, can I, Your Majesty?”
His words were natural, his expression open, as he looked calmly at Nightmare Moon on her throne.
She was completely dumbfounded.
So he wanted to go out not to flee, nor to abandon her, but to…
better prepare himself to stay?
He was going to set up a room where he could stay long-term?
In order to…
better serve her in the future?
He…
wasn’t leaving?
In an instant, all her previous anger, suspicion, and fear seemed incredibly absurd and laughable.
A powerful rush of emotion, mixing shock with a hint of guilt, surged in her heart.
Looking at her subject below, who wore an expression that practically said “isn’t it obvious?”, she found herself unable to utter a single word of rebuttal—and she couldn’t help but feel a twinge of embarrassed irritation.
*This guy!*