“Set up to capture Your Highness? Not quite.”
He wanted to say that Zhang Yang was being a little too self-important.
Judging by the troop formations alone, the four battalions below were clearly all elite forces among the rebels.
They naturally had more important things to do.
Why would they waste their time searching for a disgraced Princess who was of little value, and go to all that trouble to capture her?
She was imagining things.
“Then what are all these people doing?”
As soon as Zhang Yang asked, she saw Shen Zhi give her a look she couldn’t quite make sense of.
His eyes held too many emotions for Zhang Yang, whose understanding of human feelings was so meager, to decipher.
Shen Zhi let out a heavy sigh.
“They’ve probably won a battle and are returning to camp with their spoils.”
By his estimate, it was about time for things to reach this stage.
Thanks to a certain noble Princess, these rebels had paid very little to capture the city.
The wealthy families inside hadn’t even had time to pack up their gold and silver and flee before they were swept away in one fell swoop.
“They won a battle?”
“Your Highness is the one who lost.”
He had never had the slightest fondness for this noblewoman.
As luck would have it, she’d lost her memory, and Shen Zhi couldn’t be bothered to force himself to treat her with respect.
His words grew a little more brazen.
Yet Zhang Yang merely said, “Oh,” as if it had nothing to do with her.
That attitude made Shen Zhi furious.
“Does Your Highness feel no sorrow over your subjects being slaughtered?”
In Shen Zhi’s eyes, the question was pointless.
If the noblewoman had possessed even a shred of conscience, she wouldn’t have been brutally killed by the attendants and servants at her side, in a manner even more gruesome than dismemberment by five horses.
That alone showed how deep their hatred of her ran.
Yet Zhang Yang merely looked at Shen Zhi with those clear, innocent peach-blossom eyes and asked, “What does ‘sorrow’ mean?”
The emotion was unfamiliar to Zhang Yang.
“You—”
Shen Zhi was at a loss for words.
Seeing that Zhang Yang’s expression didn’t seem feigned, he had no choice but to remind himself over and over: the noblewoman before him had lost her memory.
She was a blank slate now, with no recollection of what she had done before.
No matter how sarcastic he got, he wouldn’t get so much as a rise out of her.
No emotional reaction, much less remorse, guilt, or sorrow.
As his thoughts churned, Zhang Yang had already turned away without expression, fixing her gaze on the sea of rebels below the mountain.
“Just tell me what I’m supposed to do now.”
After saying this, Zhang Yang added a qualification.
“Apart from feeling sorrow, I truly don’t know what ‘sorrow’ means.”
Why make life difficult for one another?
Shen Zhi was thoroughly infuriated by her few words.
If he weren’t afraid of alerting the rebel soldiers below, he could have leapt up and pointed at Zhang Yang’s nose to curse her out.
How could anyone in this world have such a thick skin?
He gave a cold laugh.
“What should you do? If Your Highness has even the tiniest shred of kindness left in you, then do more good deeds in the future, treat your subjects better, and do fewer things that outrage Heaven and the people. That would build more merit than anything else!”
That was what he said, but Shen Zhi didn’t think she’d get the chance.
For one thing, old habits die hard; a leopard can’t change its spots.
For another, whether she could go on being a Princess was still an open question!
The country was gone, so what the hell was there to be a Princess of?
Zhang Yang frowned and cut him off.
“What are you babbling about? Be specific!”
“Specific?”
“Tell me what I can do right now.”
She needed to focus wholeheartedly on advancing the Homestead Side Quest Plot and skip all the random plot text.
If she was interested in the story, she’d find a way to settle down and savor it later.
Right now, immediately, this very second, give her a quest and get the plot moving!
Zhang Yang envied her observation samples once again.
Why could Players skip the plot with a shortcut key?
Why did she have to listen to Shen Zhi prattle on beside her?
Zhang Yang’s words really lit the fuse.
Shen Zhi’s anger, which had just begun to subside, flared up again.
“What can you do right now? Go down there and get yourself killed, or rescue the captives from the rebel soldiers?”
“Go get myself killed? That won’t do.” Zhang Yang shook her head, then abruptly changed tack.
“But rescuing the prisoners might be worth a try.”
Shen Zhi looked like a duck with someone’s hand clamped around its neck.
His eyes bulged, and the last of his breath was squeezed out of him.
“What did you just say might be worth a try?”
“Rescuing the prisoners. It might be worth a try.”
As an NPC, she couldn’t see Red Name levels at a glance like Players could, nor did she know the numbers on their HP Bars.
But after spending so much time among Red Name mobs, she’d gradually worked out her own method.
By observing the strength of a target’s aura, she could roughly estimate their level and how full their HP bar was.
Without that skill, Zhang Yang wouldn’t have been able to pass herself off as a Player for sixteen years without getting caught.
“The people down there don’t have strong auras.”
“One person wouldn’t be much, sure, but there are so many of them!” This chapter was copied from g.com without permission.
Hadn’t this esteemed person just suspected she was pushing her to her death?
Why was she now so eager to go down there and throw her life away?
Zhang Yang turned her head.
“I’m not planning to kill them all.”
These Red Name Mobs that banded together were the most troublesome.
Once you killed a whole batch, another would soon spawn, one after another without end.
No matter how much stamina Zhang Yang had, she couldn’t wipe them all out before they respawned.
So—
“A frontal assault is out of the question.”
“I’m going to outsmart them.”
Shen Zhi: “…”
Forgive his bluntness, but did this honored lady even have a brain?
But seeing how utterly determined she looked, Shen Zhi forced the words he wanted to say back down.
He comforted himself that this might not be a bad thing.
This honored lady had been hacked up with an axe and still managed to recover completely, which showed that her Talent was indeed extraordinary.
Maybe she really could pull off something remarkable now?
Zhang Yang said, “Tell me their weaknesses.”
Shen Zhi: “…”
Zhang Yang: “What’s with that look?”
Shen Zhi gritted his teeth, grinding his back teeth nearly to dust.
“If I knew that, would I have let them fight their way in?”
Zhang Yang: “Fair point.”
These NPCs were no use at all.
Just as Zhang Yang was getting ready to act, Shen Zhi spoke beside her, sounding a little dejected.
“This army is definitely one of the rebel forces’ elite units. The Azure Dragon, White Tiger, Vermilion Bird, and Black Tortoise battalions are all here. They’re equipped for both offense and defense. Look at the way they march: their steps are perfectly in sync, and there’s no sign of disorder or slackness in their ranks. That’s enough to show they’re well-trained and disciplined. Your Highness, you’d better not take any risks.”
Zhang Yang: “Come to think of it, what are the Four Battalions?”
Shen Zhi: “…”
Who on earth had given her the nerve to boast about rescuing prisoners without even knowing what they were?
He took one look at Zhang Yang’s brain and swallowed the insult on the tip of his tongue.
“The so-called Four Battalions are the Four Symbols. The stars that correspond to the 28 Mansions can be assigned to the Four Battalions. But nothing is absolute. If a star’s apparition takes the form of a turtle, bird, reptile, or beast, it can also be assigned to the Four Battalions. That’s called an Aspect of the Four Symbols…”
Zhang Yang: “…”
To her, it all sounded like gibberish.
The words slid right through her mind.
“Oh, I get it.”
Come to think of it, Zhang Yang suddenly remembered that her status panel also had the words [Stars] and [Talent] on it.
What were those supposed to mean?
“Do ‘Stars’ mean the stars in the sky?”