Chapter 216 “Little Phoenix’s Might”
Bypassing a series of courtyards and corridors, the scenery eventually changed to that of brick and mortar instead of the usual red scarlet walls making up most of the palace ground. To call this the Royal Hospital of the palace was pitiful. It’s more like the menial quarter of the eunuchs and maids.
“The Royal Hospital is a place of routine and order. Since your cultivation is still shallow, you aren’t allowed to work with the medicines yet. And as it so happens, we just got a shipment of seeds from the outside today. They need sorting. Organize them all into their respective types and kinds for tomorrow’s planting.”
To think this woman is that shallow. I’m capable of refining fifth rank Dan pills and she’s saying I’m not experienced enough? This Manager Meng definitely has a thing out for me, Ling Yue theorizes.
Coming up to this point, Manager Meng had led her to a pile of sacks on the floor carried here by the servants.
There are yellow seeds, black seeds, red seeds, simply any color one can imagine. Worst part of all were their sizes. Smallest down to a sesame, the largest up to a pebble size. Just looking at this abhorring mess with no order will dazzle anyone till they spin.
It’s one thing to separate all these seeds, its another thing entirely to do it in one day. This Manager Meng was asking for the impossible here.
This opinion didn’t fall only with Ling Yue either. Even those who carried the sacks in here were whispering it up about how the new girl must have offended the manager by not offering the usual gift money.
“Manager Meng, your meaning is that I only have one day to separate these seeds for planting? Shouldn’t this be done by the servants?” Indifferent in her voice, she questions the woman.
“Are you the manager or I? If I want someone to do it then they will do, no arguing. If you don’t like my assignment then you can get out of the Royal Hospital. Not even the dowager or queen can save you this time. All of you over there, get out of here. None is permitted to help.” Ling Yue’s questioning not only didn’t help her, it only made Manager Meng even more annoyed. In a fit, the woman ordered the maids and eunuchs to leave.
Just like that, the vast working area of the outer courtyard has turned into a no man’s land, leaving only Ling Yue and the sacks of seeds on the floor.
Frowning, she only had this to say about the woman, “Damn old hag.”
As a fluent reader of the Red Mist Codex, she can easily recognize the seeds with a glance. Issue was the numbers. With so many sacks, there’s at least a couple of hundred seeds in the yard. One day’s worth of time was simply not enough.
Now it made a lot of sense as to why Manager Chou would hand herself off to Deputy Manager Meng. The old man wants to make things difficult for her through another’s hand.
One was a disgruntled old snake who’s in disagreement with Longyu, the other a narrow-minded money monger. With such a combo leading the Royal Hospital, it makes her wonder how many alchemists and physicians have been scourged by these people.
No, this won’t do. No matter what I won’t let those two shady cheapskates get what they want today.
It’s impossible by herself, this much Ling Yue knew, and there’s no other outside who would dare come to her aid at this point. No other choice, she can only summon Little Squeak and Little Crow out for help.
Since both fellas are able to communicate with herself, it didn’t take much to teach them what to do. Sadly, Little Squeak’s first reaction after being pulled out of the pocket dimension was to feast on the colorful seeds before him. The damnable twerp thought they were food!
Fortunately fate punishes those who are naughty. Hard and tasteless upon his first bite, only then does Little Squeak realizes the seeds aren’t meant for eating.
“You can’t eat them Little Squeak. Come, this here is a fig seed, that over there is a snake vine seed, and the one next to your leg is a cassia seed…” Patient in her lesson, she teaches the two animals the names one by one.
and nowhere else.
Unfortunately for Ling Yue, little Squeak fell into the lazy group family. With a favorite pastime of eating snacks, it didn’t take long for the little fox to start snoozing on her shoulder.
Thankfully there was still Little Crow. Using her jet-black eyes, she stared intently at whichever seed Ling Yue points to and jotted down the names of each seed in her mind.
With the lesson done, she immediately flapped her wings and flew over to a sack of her choosing. Then using her beak, Little Crow began pecking through the seeds like an obedient child.
Back when she was first born, Little Crow had no ability to fly whatsoever; therefore, one of the great achievements she recently did was to learn how to fly at low altitude.
Following her little friend’s lead, Ling Yue likewise too began sorting a sack of her choosing using the spirit smoke.
An hour later, their efforts only yielded a single sack.
Watching their gains on one side, Little Crow tilts her head like she’s contemplating something. Then all of a sudden, she sends out a joyful chirping call and flew up to a nearby branch.
Vibrating her vocal cord for the first time in this manner, Little Crow issues out a flute like whistling sound from her lung.
Among all the birds in existence, the phoenix race had the closest voice resembling nature itself.
Sure, Little Crow may be young and have the outer appearance of a black ugly bird, but her lineage was still that of a phoenix. The unspeakable might unique to her kind cannot be denied as it echoed across the entire palace.
There are plenty of rare birds kept in captivity here in the palace. Now that they heard Little Crow’s summoning call, a commotion instantly broke out and every single one of these birds took to the sky for the source.
No matter the race or lineage, all birds in existence comes equipped with a hereditary rule: the king of birds can only be the phoenix race. As such, no matter their circumstances, all birds are inherently forced to respond down to their soul.
Due to this reasoning, a very strange and freaky spectacle occurred above the palace today.
Countless birds, large and small from a brightly colored peacock, the tongue savvy parrot, or the mighty eagles given to Da Xia as tributes, there were no exceptions right down to the snow chickens used inside the royal kitchen. All had rushed out for the Royal Hospital.
Facing this giant riot without any premonition, the helpless eunuchs and maids in the palace were scared witless because they thought the birds had all gone mad from a plague.
Then again, the spectacle was already on the low side. If Little Crow was a bit bigger and had a louder voice, it wouldn’t have simply stopped with the palace. Likely the whole city would be in an uproar by then.
Raising a eyebrow at Little Crow’s maneuver, Ling Yue didn’t quite understand what the girl was trying to achieve. But her confusion only lasted for a brief moment until she noticed the oddity in the sky.
No longer clear with blue and white, a massive mass of darkness was quickly looming over to their location like a cloud.
In that moment, Ling Yue’s head had forcefully shut itself down because she couldn’t comprehend the image, “So-so-so many… So many birds!”