NOVEL NEXT Chapter 29: Cute male lead…or villain?
In the afternoon of the next day—two days after their previous meeting—Rian Azure once again graced Ren Xiyang’s door.
“Prince Rian,” Ren Xiyang greeted.
“Good afternoon, Earl Rosewood.” Rian walked familiarly into Ayden Rosewood’s suite. A Royal Guard carried a box and placed it on the table, before leaving, conscientiously closing the door for them.
Rian cast the sound-blocking spell before giving Ayden an amused look. “I hear your servants are aflutter about their meetings with you,” he said.
Ren Xiyang made a noncommittal sound. It wasn’t as though the meetings were a confidential closed book exam. “And this is?”
Rian opened the box, revealing a crystal ball inside. “I recall that you contacted the Capital Investigators via a crystal ball. During the meeting with my Imperial Mother last night, she confirmed that she will be attending the funerals, and that I’ll be leaving immediately after with her.”
Rian’s excuse for being here was to follow the Capital Investigators. But the Capital Investigators were now wrapping up their investigations around the Rosewood summer manor. The six assassins were being transported back to the Capital, and the scope and focus of the investigation had now changed from the murders themselves to those behind the murders—the Cordovans and their ‘unknown’ benefactors. So Rian’s excuse was fast disintegrating beneath his feet.
Rian touched the edge of the box. “Thus, we need to calibrate your crystal ball with mine.”
“My crystal ball is in the main study.”
“Which begs the question, why hasn’t Earl Rosewood moved into the study yet?”
“The investigators occasionally frequent the room,” Ren Xiyang said. He could tell where everyone was in the Rosewood manor if he wanted, and as he became familiar with various people, he could also distinguish between different heat sources.
Rian’s eyebrows raised slightly. “A very useful ability. I suppose you know when I go to sleep as well.”
“I’m not that curious,” Ren Xiyang said drily. He wasn’t interested in people’s personal actions. He only tracked heat sources by their proximity to him—it was a defensive reflex.
Rian closed the box again. “Then we’ll do so later.” He stood up, walking over to stand by an open space in the room.
Ren Xiyang turned on the sofa to watch him.
Rian clasped his hands together in a cute manner and smiled. A plethora of icy flowers appeared, glinting in the light around him. From the clear ice to the white clothing and bright eyes, Prince Rian Azure exuded a sense of sweet innocence, the kind of innocent that would make readers want to reach out and squeeze his cheeks.
“Am I a handsome male lead now?”
Ren Xiyang analysed very seriously. “If you were much taller, yes.”
The ice cracked, just like Rian’s expression.
Rian huffed. “I’ll definitely grow taller soon. Haven’t you noticed that you’re even shorter than me?”
“But I’m not a male lead, so does it matter?”
Rian couldn’t fault that. In the novel, Ayden Rosewood was so unimportant that he didn’t appear at all. “But suppose you were. Then, what would your entrance be like?”
Ren Xiyang stood up, facing Rian. He crossed his arms and a wall of fire flared up behind him. His clothes and hair fluttered in the created wind, and the bright light from behind made his face look menacing.
Rian: “…” He focused inwardly. A moment later, the delicate ice flowers became a wall of knife-sharp ice shards. His eyes became shadowed as his smile took on a dark tone.
The two faced off, fire and ice, hot and cold.
Ren Xiyang’s eyes took on a look of amusement. He extinguished the flames first, unable to continue being so wasteful with magic.
Rian smirked slightly as he let his own ice wall dissipate back into water vapour. “One would think you were a villain of this world,” he said as he went to take a seat once more on the sofa.
Ren Xiyang also sat back down. “I’m no doubt the villain in some eyes,” he said.
Rian gave him a deep look. “I heard you’re changing the laws in Rosewood fief.”
“Since you’ve heard, do I really need to say anything else?”
“Your fief may become the location that criminals go to avoid execution.”
Ren Xiyang leaned back on his sofa. “This doesn’t mean there won’t be any punishment.”
Rian’s eyebrows raised. “Oh? Will you cut off limbs instead?”
“Then I would create a disabled population that the fief would need to support instead,” Ren Xiyang said drily.
Rian’s eyebrows raised a little more. “Oh? You’ll put them to work instead?”
“If they work, it would be for community service, not punishment. I don’t need unskilled work,” Ren Xiyang said.
“Then what would you do instead?”
“I don’t know.”
“Oh,” Rian said very pointedly.
Ren Xiyang huffed slightly. “Prince Rian, my expertise is agriculture, not on prison reform. However, death is not the answer. What if you convict the wrong person?”
“Criminal investigators can view suspects’ memories.”
“But did you know that memories can be easily fabricated and false? They are not reliable. False memories form naturally. They could also be planted.”
Rian’s lips thinned.
“And…if you kill often, if the common people see death often, then it becomes normalised.” Ren Xiyang’s eyes darkened.
The zombie apocalypse was chaotic. People killed zombies, but they also killed each other. Death was everywhere. To survive, you had to numb yourself to it. And given how the leaders were like, the culture that sprung up was repulsive. To gloss over dead bodies, to be callous when sacrificing others to ensure your own survival, to lord over someone else’s misfortune. More than one ability user joked about using others as zombie bait.
Ren Xiyang couldn’t stomach having public executions as spectacles. He wanted to be as far away from what it was like in the zombie apocalypse as possible.
Rian gazed at Ayden. For him, death was normal. War and capital punishment and famine and disease had always been around in Sedaveria. But the air around Ayden had gotten colder again, just like it had during the carriage ride to Redmond town.
Rian curled his lips up and said lightly, “Are you saying I should look forward to being wrong?”
Ren Xiyang looked up. “Yes.” The air temperature stabilised again.
Rian gave an exaggerated huff. “Very well then, Earl Rosewood. Now, what I actually wanted to talk to you about was the plague-curse, and what I need to do once I return to the Capital.”
Ren Xiyang nodded slightly.
“The diplomacy routes are currently under the hands of my parents. Once my Imperial Father uncovers Angio’s involvement in the death of your family, it would be clear that certain people in Angio wanted to destabilise Sedaveria. Appropriate diplomacy between appropriate parties will follow. However, diplomacy isn’t guaranteed. The plague-curse was developed once. It could be developed again by another party. There could be another person or persons who are in similar situations to myself or you who could cause unanticipated changes. Multiple lines of defence are required,” Rian said.
“Yes.”
“So, I’ve informed the King and Queen about the nature of pathogens. My Imperial Mother has told me that the healers in the Capital Hospital have begun to study it. However, they’re not particularly fast.”
Ren Xiyang understood perfectly well how slow research could be.
“However, you already know about it.” Rian leaned forward slightly. “How did the plague spread in your world? How did you manage it? You’ve read the novel, you know what we tried.”
Ren Xiyang’s eyelids lowered. Manage it? They barely were able to survive, let alone manage it. The management of plague-curse in the novel was a lot better than in his world. But he gathered his thoughts and began to speak.
“The plague spread through exchange of fluids in physical skin contact with an infected. Aside from trying to keep groups isolated at the beginning, body armour and special tear-resistant clothing was developed…”
Rian listened seriously, transforming Ayden’s words to their current context. “Since the plague-curse curse has a magical element, we would need curse-magic resistant clothing…”
The two scoped out multiple methods that could be used to prevent or manage plagues. Eventually, they moved to the desk to write up a summary of their ideas, which Rian then used a spell to duplicate.
Afterwards, Rian had a Royal Guard carry the box with the crystal ball to the main study room.
The Rosewood’s crystal ball was displayed a podium near the desk. Ren Xiyang’s hands passed through the protective wards around it and plucked it from its place.
Rian cast the necessary spell to link the two crystal balls, and the two tested it out. Everything worked smoothly.
Before Ren Xiyang put the ball back on the podium, Rian stopped him.
“Don’t leave it here, put it in your actual study room.”
“Hm,” Ren Xiyang acquiesced.
“I know you have a meeting soon, so I won’t keep you,” Rian said.
Ren Xiyang nodded. He had some meetings squeezed in before dinner. He didn’t ask why the prince kept such tabs on his employees that he knew that.
They once again planned to meet in two days, before parting.
As the employee meetings with the Earl continued, the servants became increasingly busy.
Some servants had been put on probation, but some had been promoted instead, like Mrs. Cooks to manage the feeding of the entire Rosewood estate, or one of the farmers to manage the other farmers in Earl Rosewood’s stead. Some of them had been tasked with finding yet more people for Earl Rosewood to recruit for various new tasks, such as planting timber trees and increasing tree cover.
The clothes Rian had bought for Ayden Rosewood arrived after they had been tailored: many red pieces of clothing, some black pieces, white shirts, socks, gloves, and new boots. For the servants, this meant they needed some workers to embroider the Rosewood emblem onto them.
And soon after the funeral invitations were sent out, Solicitor Carmine came to the Rosewood summer manor again to organise the actual funerals themselves—the Rosewood cemetery was on the edge of the Rosewood estate. Both Solicitor Carmine and Ren Xiyang were too busy to really talk about the development of new laws, and the servants were no less busy. In addition to their usual tasks and their tasks given by the Earl, the servants also had to carry out the funeral-related tasks given by Solicitor Carmine and to prepare of the Rosewood summer manor to receive an influx of visitors.
The days passed quickly. There was another charity lunch at Redmond town, this time with much more food prepared and many more attendees, as expected.
Ren Xiyang and Rian also met a few more times. Rian learned a lot about some of the technology and medical knowledge that existed in Ayden’s old world, such as x-rays and vaccines and common medicines like antihistamines and fever-reliving medicines. He in turn taught Ayden more spells, from healing spells to general purpose-type spells. Together, they developed and shared their plans for the Capital and the Rosewood fief, both related and not related to the plague-curse.
On the day before the funeral, various nobles from faraway places arrived at the Rosewood summer manor.
If they had expected to speak to Earl Rosewood, they were sorely disappointed. At most, Earl Rosewood would greet them briefly before handing them off to a servant to take them to their suite for the next day. Some of them didn’t see Earl Rosewood at all.
And they couldn’t meet with Prince Rian Azure either, because the prince was meeting with the earl!
Rian knew that this day was the last day in which he’d see Ayden Rosewood for a while, and he didn’t want to let go of this last chance. He domineeringly took up Earl Rosewood’s entire afternoon and dinner, which coincidentally was the time when many nobles from distant locations arrived.
(Ren Xiyang didn’t mind, because it meant he didn’t need to greet random people.)
And then, that day passed, and the day of the funerals arrived.
In a universe where a System exists:
Rian: You could be a villain, Ayden!
System: YES! YES! He’s supposed to be the villainess! Wait, what are you doing—mffff!!
Ren Xiyang: *dusts off his hands*
~and the System was never heard of again~