Hearing this, Jiayin raised the little wooden horse she had been clutching in her hand and examined it. It was quite cute, somewhat resembling the Heavenly Crystal Horse in her own space. That horse had been a gift from her cousin—Ao Jun, the third son of the West Sea Dragon King.
He had said that someday it could become a horse that could run and fly, covering ten thousand miles in a day. But he hadn’t mentioned that the prerequisite was to infuse it with a soul—that is, an artifact spirit.
Jiayin just thought her cousin was humoring her.
“Then can Cousin carve dragons?” Jiayin asked Fang Zhiyuan.
Fang Zhiyuan nodded, then shook his head. “He can, but he can’t. Carving a dragon could get your head chopped off! Dragon designs are for the emperor’s use only. Us common folk can’t have such things in our homes.”
Jiayin frowned, looking unhappy. She pouted and said, “I don’t belong to the emperor. What do you mean dragons belong to the emperor? Dragons belong in the sea and in the sky!”
Fang Zhiyuan was utterly confused by her words. “Of course you don’t belong to the emperor. If you did, you’d be a princess.”
Jiayin’s eyes widened. Had he really figured out her identity? This little brother was so smart. She was indeed the princess of the North Sea Dragon Palace!
Then she asked, “You said the emperor’s daughters are also called princesses. Is the emperor also a dragon?”
Fang Zhiyuan nodded. “Of course he’s a dragon. He’s the True Dragon Son of Heaven—isn’t that a dragon?”
Jiayin nodded. So they were kind of from the same family. She could go visit and claim kinship sometime.
The three adults listened to the children’s innocent chatter and didn’t stop them. After all, there were no outsiders here, and they weren’t saying anything taboo. They all watched the children with doting smiles.
They continued poling the wooden plank for over another hour without encountering any villagers who had left the village earlier. Li began to feel something was wrong.
“Husband, did we take a wrong turn? How come we haven’t run into anyone from Fangjia Village yet?”
At first, it had definitely been correct—there was only one road out of the village, since it was surrounded by mountains on three sides. But after that, there were many forks, and the water surface had widened. Add to that the rain blocking the sun, and they had no idea which direction they were heading. They had just been keeping to the middle, guided by the slopes on either side, to avoid running the plank aground. Which direction they were actually going was hard to tell.
The water was getting deeper now. Judging by how much of the bamboo pole was submerged, about half of it could go into the water. That meant the water was at least over a person’s height deep. And this bamboo pole was over three times a person’s height.
Suddenly, they spotted a wooden basin floating nearby—an ordinary washbasin. Fang Youwei used his bamboo pole to pull it over. Li reached out and picked it up, examined it, and saw that it was undamaged. She set it on the plank.
“It’s still in good shape, not damaged at all. It must have floated out from someone’s home,” Li said.
Old Madam Yang shook her head and pointed to the right. “Not necessarily. Don’t you see that thatched roof over there? It probably floated out from a house.”
Li looked in the direction her mother-in-law was pointing and indeed saw a faint thatched roof. She hadn’t realized there was a house here, and it was already submerged, with only a tiny bit of thatch showing above the water.
Given this sight, their own house at the foot of the mountain was likely in grave danger too.
The rain kept falling. Though not as heavy as before, it was still a steady drizzle, and the water level kept rising.
The old lady sighed. “Ah, if only we had run up the mountain from the start. At least we could have found a cave to hide in, lit a fire, and cooked a meal.” Now they were just drifting on the water with no solid ground beneath them.
Fang Youwei shook his head. “The mountain is too dangerous. With the rain not stopping, a landslide could happen at any moment. We’d all be buried underneath.”
Jiayin listened to them talk. When they finished, she asked curiously, “Isn’t rain good? Didn’t you say there was a long drought? Rain brings water.”
“It’s not that rain is bad—it’s that it can’t keep falling. Drought makes crops yield nothing in the fields, but continuous rain also ruins crops. We can’t even plant because the land is all underwater,” Old Madam Yang explained patiently.
Jiayin understood a little but not completely. She knew that crops meant food, but she didn’t understand why both drought and flood were bad. Were crops really that delicate?
She scratched her head and asked, “Will everything be fine once the rain stops?”
Old Madam Yang nodded. “Yes, once the rain stops, the sun will come out. The water won’t rise anymore and will be dried up by the sun. As the water level slowly recedes, the farmers can go back to planting.”