Before Min could give her order, she noticed her sister was loudly laughing while watching the huge monster running after her fiance in circles, and soon after the two stopped and started laughing as well.

What in the world was this?!

Then Nick touched fists with ape again and the same way touched the paw of the huge tiger. Then caressed neck of the golden doe and beckoned YunYun to follow him. At this moment YunYun jumped up and climbed all the way up to the ape’s thick neck, heartily hugged it and then dashed down to hug the tiger as well.

The crowd watched this spectacle stupefied. People were pinching themselves and each other, rubbing their eyes and even slapping their cheeks trying to wake up. It was the thoughtful tiger who helped them and loudly roared in the sky while trees behind him and water in the lake wildly trembled. The ape didn’t want to fall behind and roared as well while hammering his chest with his two large fists. The deafening sound the two made was enough of proof for everyone to realize this was not a dream.

But Nick and YunYun waved at them, ran towards the camp and the beasts reluctantly turned around and disappeared between the trees.

“Sister!” Few seconds later YunYun cheered, “What are you still doing here?”

Everyone still had those stupefied looks on their faces and even princess Min couldn’t say anything.

“Queen Hu probably asked her to wait for us.” Nick tried to help, “Princess Min, there is trouble - we need to rush to the capital. Are you coming with us?”

“Trouble?” Min finally got her ability to speak back, “Does it have something to do with those monsters?”

“Oh? Them, no. They are just some friends we met on the way.” YunYun was still in high spirits, “Remember I told you when I came the last time that we were trying to save Bambi? In the end we managed to save her even though she was gravely injured and it took us over twenty days.”

“F … friends? Are … are those rank six beasts?” Tao stuttered while still sitting on the ground and pointing towards the treeline.

“Yea! Bambi was rank five at first, but after she was cured she advanced to rank six as well!” YunYun carelessly explained. Nick was long used to these explanations which sometimes didn’t make sense, but for the surrounding people it was hard.

“Bambi?” Tao asked again.

“Yes, the doe. The big tiger is Snow and the ape is King Kong.” YunYun answered impatiently, “Sis, it’s really urgent, we need to rush to Xian. If you are coming with us, we’ll explain everything on the way.”

After few moments princess Min agreed to rush to the capital, but to her big surprise Nick’s and YunYun’s understanding of rushing was quite different from hers. For some reason the two didn’t intend to take carriage or horses but were about to run by themselves.

“What do you mean why?” YunYun was confused when her sister asked about it, “It’s obviously faster and we can train along the way!”

Princess Min and Tao could only sigh and join after giving instructions to the still stupefied members of the camp. In addition Min ordered the previous matter to not be disclosed under the threat of a death penalty, but already had an inkling that it will spread sooner or later – the matter was just too huge and too many people witnessed it.

“So when did you two became Qi masters?” Tao asked when they were already on their way.

“How did you guess?” YunYun was surprised, “We were previously fast so you had other hints, right?”

“YunYun, Qi masters can generally feel the faint Qi fluctuations in others. To be more precise, they can tell if one is not a Qi master.” Her sister explained, “You were just too excited before, otherwise you would have felt the subtle differences between people in the camp. Well, at least you should because everyone in our family is very sensitive to Qi fluctuations while, of course, not every Qi master has this ability.”

“Oh, it’s like that. We’ll have to test it later.” YunYun nodded, “Actually our advancement was quite bizarre and we both don’t remember how it happened. But we are really strong and fast now, let’s increase our speed! Hahaha!”

Princess Min and Tao became Qi masters several years ago and didn’t care about her showing off, but after couple of hours they realized they barely could keep up.

During the few stops they made, Nick and YunYun brought them up to date with the events and they both grew increasingly serious. As the future queen, Min was quite educated and knew about the Holy Order, but Tao didn’t even need previous knowledge and from the newly acquired information could understand the great threat that group presented.

Of course, at the moment it was still the current queen’s decision on how to proceed with this matter, although the four of them discussed the options and possible suggestions. Another problem was the Chu clan and even Min had no idea how to deal with them.

On their way they tried to avoid most towns and villages and traveled even through the night with as few stops as possible. This way they arrived in capital at least two times faster compared to the speed they would have had on horses. In the course of this marathon, Nick shared his ideas of training with Tao and the latter got some inspirations as well. Since they won’t be able to actually compete this summer, they agreed to test their abilities during the next year’s Olympic games in the Sun kingdom.

At first princess Min just snorted about it, but when YunYun explained how big of a deal these games where on Mainland continent and that princess Cira definitely will send a well trained squad of youths over as well, it would be too much of embarrassment if the Lethe kingdom as one of the allied kingdoms would send over only weaklings or even ignore the event. Thus, when princess Min started to feel a heavy migraine approaching, Tao came out to help and assumed the responsibilities of organizing preliminary competition and even train their elites after that.

The group of four arrived in the capital in the evening, but entered under the cover of the night. Even Tao was positive that no one in Xian knew YunYun and Nick have left the woods, therefore it was better to keep it a secret for now.

Just before the midnight they were already reporting in front of the queen Hu.

Queen, of course, met them in annoyance with words ‘what took you so long?’, but Nick’s explanation turned this annoyance in to a deep fury. But she became calm soon after and the more he explained, the calmer she became. At first Nick thought it was a mark of her strong willpower, but it turned out that the fury just transformed in silent and sharp killing intent, except this time it was not directed at him.

At some point, when he reported in detail about the plan of Chu clan had towards YunYun, he felt temperature in the room plummet to almost freezing degrees. At this moment even Nick’s cold resistance became useless and he got chills all over.

As expected, queen wanted to analyze the Holy Order’s materials using her own intelligence personnel, but when Nick let her see the contents of both wristbands, she quickly changed her mind and agreed that the king Alexander Maxwell will do a better job. It was obvious that even if she undertook this already annoying job, it will take few months for at least ten people to go through everything, therefore the logical choice was to let someone else do it and give her a detailed report after.

“Queen Hu, we planned to travel around the eastern continent for the whole summer, but this event changed our plans. Do you have information if there are any ships leaving towards the Mainland continent?” Nick was eager to return as soon as possible.

“Hmpf!” Queen snorted, “What’s the big deal? This is a special case and you can just take one of our fastest ships and go back.”

“Thank you, your majesty!” Nick was overjoyed.

“But before that we need to think of a way to deal with Chu clan.” Queen held her chin and said with her brows furrowed.

“Can’t you announce them being rebels and clean up their estate without anyone escaping?” Nick was confused. Military might was on the side of the royal family in addition to other important clans and no one would suspect queen was accusing wrongly an established aristocratic clan just for fun. In addition she was deeply respected between her subjects as a fair and magnanimous ruler and her popularity was not worse than that of the king Alexander Maxwell in the Sun kingdom, may be even higher.

“It is obvious I can dispose of them, but we need to find out what their plans were. Did they set their eyes on the throne? Why did they target my daughter? How deep are they with their cooperation with the Holy Order – are they part of it or it’s just a cooperation partners? How strong is the Holy Order on our Eastern continent and do I and the king of the Styx kingdom have to be weary or even afraid?” It looked like queen had more questions than answers after Nick’s report.

“But how could we even help you there? You have your own intelligence organization and spies who could gather information for you.” Nick shrugged.

“During the last few years all the people I planted in Chu clan had mysteriously disappeared and we have hard time getting reliable ones in. All we get from there is only superficial information that doesn’t lead us anywhere.” Queen explained and then grinned widely, “But Chu Ranqing is a very passionate woman who cared about her son greatly and if, let’s say, his murderer would appear in Xian, she might slip up and make some mistake.”

YunYun’s eyes widened, “So you want to use Nick as a bait? But what if that crazy woman attacks and murders him?”

“We will have people around to protect your fiance, don’t worry.” Queen replied while still grinning.

While YunYun was stunned speechless, Nick scratched his head and voiced an alternative option to the original one that was putting his life on the line.

“Queen, what if we did it a bit differently? I have an idea, but it will require few of your best men to go into exile or missions to other countries for few months, may be a year. But I’m pretty certain the Chu matron will go into uncontrollable frenzy and you might get some valuable intelligence. In addition, you are obviously bored and want to have fun, so it might serve as entertainment to you as well.”

“Me too! I also want to have fun!” YunYun stomped her foot and pouted. Nick probably made another interesting plan, but only wanted to include her mother in it.

“Of course, you are included.” Nick smiled back.

“Let’s hear it!” Queen agreed to at least think about it, but the more Nick explained, the more excited she became. This plan was not really needed, but it was incredibly entertaining and she couldn’t just wait to see Chu Ranqing’s face, or rather – watch it for a whole day.

“But there are three things we need to prepare.” Nick pointed out after he finished his explanation, “First, you will have to provide us with experienced Qi master whom you can trust unconditionally, who will teach us how to lie through our teeth in front of many experts and we will need at least a day to practice. Although I am confident in my ability to lie, YunYun also will have to play her part and we can’t take any risks. Second, you will have to drag the whole process out for the whole day and dismiss everyone only after dark. And that leads to the third part – your people will have to follow and monitor Chu matriarch’s actions especially close during that night since she would be most furious and then there is the highest chance for her to make a mistake.”

Then Nick thought for a bit and added, “Of course, if I was you, I would just clean up the Chu clan right after and with the sunrise there won’t be such clan in Xian anymore.”

Queen was listening to the whole plan excitedly and the last three or even four points were logical as well, but for some reason it felt like this kid was ordering her around!

‘Damn it! He has no respect for the queen or the royalties! He is casually behaving since the first time he entered these grounds! Good thing he hasn’t met my mother or he … wait! That’s a great idea! He said he needed an expert we can trust to teach him!’

After this thought queen felt especially elated. This arrogant kid will soon learn his lesson!