Chapter 638: The Summons of His Majesty
Two days after he refused the invitational letter from four major families, yet another letter had been delivered to Bai Yunfei.
But this time, it wasn’t from the same four families. It wasn’t even from the Cheng either. This time, the letter came from a group Bai Yunfei never expected to get a letter from.
This invitation was from….the Royal Family!!
Delivered by the fourth prince himself, this letter was more of a ‘edict’ than it was an ‘invitation’!!
The current dynast of the Tianhun Empire, Wu Hong, was summoning him!
Bai Yunfei was shocked when he first received the invitation. It was only after he read the invitation several times again that Bai Yunfei was finally convinced this wasn’t some type of joke being played on him by Wu Yang.
The highest ruling figure of the entire empire was summoning him!!
He was baffled and confused. Could this be because of what happened several days ago in the Training Forest? Was even the Emperor himself getting involved in this?!
He didn’t even ask any questions of Wu Yang, who said that he had his own instructions from his father. He was only here to deliver the message, whatever meaning there was behind it, Wu Yang himself wasn’t aware of it.
This time, Bai Yunfei couldn’t simply ignore it like he did with the previous letter. There was no way to ignore a summons from His Majesty.
Bai Yunfei was also confident that there’d be no ‘trap’ waiting for him at the Royal Palace. Bai Yunfei was nowhere near strong enough to be warrant needing the Royal Family having to ambush him.
So….was this just an ordinary summons then?
……
It was with a curious head that Bai Yunfei left early in the morning the next day towards the palace. With Xiao Qi, he followed Wu Yang to the very heart of the Capital where the Royal Palace was.
The imposing awe that was the Royal Palace wasn’t something new to Bai Yunfei. He had walked by the northern corner of the palace several times now in his walks in the Capital.
“Instructor Bai, this is the Harmonic Heaven Hall, allow me to go in first to report to my father. I’m sure he’ll be here afterwards.” Wu Yang pointed to a glorious-looking palace in front of them to Bai Yunfei.
Bai Yunfei looked over to the glorious-looking palace and nodded. “I’ll go in and wait then.”
“Heehee, you really came, instructor Bai!!”
A happy giggle came a little far from the far right. Pausing briefly, Bai Yunfei turned to look towards the source of the sound, only to see a young girl wearing a silky skirt and robe come running towards him and Wu Yang.
Who else could it be but the princess Wu Ping?
“Princess Wu Ping, what brings you here?” Bai Yunfei smiled.
“This is my ‘home’!” Wu Ping craned her head to look at the palace when she got to Bai Yunfei. “Of course I’m here….heehee, Xiao Qi is here too!”
Her attention was immediately given to the little Xiao Qi on top of Bai Yunfei’s shoulders. “Hello there, Princess Ping’er.” He spoke.
Feeling slightly helpless, Wu Yang spoke to his sister, “Sister, didn’t I tell you not to come over? Father will be on his way soon. If he were to find out you snuck out from your Bright Duckweed Palace and not studying, he’ll chide you again.”
“Aiyah, that old granny is always going on about some boring old history of our empire. She wants me to memorize so many different people—how boring!” Wu Ping stuck hern ose up, “It’s not fun at all, I don’t want to learn something boring like that!”
Still, she seemed like she was slightly afraid of the scolding her father would give her. Glancing around the place, she spoke, “I was only here to take a look anyways! If father really does come, then I won’t be here when he is. But….”
She looked to Xiao Qi, “Xiao Qi, come play with me, why don’t you? I can take you to the imperial flower garden! Da Huang is over there too! I can take you to see Da Huang and we can play together.”
“Da Huang?” Xiao Qi stared strangely at the princess for a moment. With how many times the princess had been going on about this mysterious ‘Da Huang’, Xiao Qi was in fact a little curious about this figure. That and combined with his interest for the Imperial Palace, Xiao Qi had found himself piqued by the princess’ invitation.
Bai Yunfei smiled. “Haha, Xiao Qi can go with you for a while, princess Ping’er.”
With how he was going to be meeting with the ruler of the empire, Bai Yunfei was rather reserved as of late. Even before today, Bai Yunfei had spent a good amount of time warning Xiao Qi of the several things he could or couldn’t say to His Majesty when the time came. At the time, Xiao Qi was a little impatient at the lessons and was even considering not going, but then with the princess willing to ‘receive’ him, Xiao Qi decided it was better that he went to play with her.
“Okay then, I’ll go play for a while. Tell me if you need anything, Yunfei, and I’ll come flying.”
Xiao Qi nodded before he flew away from Bai Yunfei’s shoulder to land on Wu Ping’s. “Let us go, Princess Wu Ping.”
……
The Harmonious Heaven Hall was a very grand and beautiful palace. Maids adorned both sides of the palace gates along with several strictly-standing guards. Bai Yunfei and Wu Yang both sat on the chairs to the left and drank some tea to wait for the ruler, Wu Hong.
“Wu Yang, do you really not know what His Majesty has summoned me here for? Could it not be for what happened in the Training Forest a few days ago?”
Admittedly, Bai Yunfei didn’t feel very calm. Meeting with the ruler of the empire was very nerve-wracking, and Bai Yunfei didn’t even know what the king wanted to see him for. Since he had some time to kill now, Bai Yunfei wanted to make one final attempt to see if he could gleam any last-minute information from Wu Yang.
Wu Yang frowned. “I really don’t know, but I don’t think you should be too worried about it, instructor Bai. My father wouldn’t summon you here to the palace to exact punishment. Trash like Cheng Xin aren’t even people that my father would personally care for.
“However….” Wu Yang paused here to think, “The Minister of the Right came to the palace to see my father two days ago, perhaps it was because of you injuring his son. Father said he wanted to see you after that, so this summons might really have to do with that topic…..maybe father wants to mediate this problem between the two of you?? I don’t really feel that my father will help them punish you, instructor Bai. You are the instructor both the Royal Family and the academy have ‘invited’ from the Crafting School to teach the crafting class, so it’s hard to do anything against you.”
Minister of the Right? That was Cheng Xin’s father; did he come to the palace on behalf of his injured son? Were they trying to have His Majesty bring down ‘justice’ onto this matter?
Bai Yunfei was surprised. He had been waiting to see what the Cheng would do ever since he broke Cheng Xin’s arms in the first place. With each day that went by without any information, Bai Yunfei was even more surprised. The Minister of the Right of all people would definitely want to exact punishment onto the one who hurt his son, no matter just how special this person was.
The two continued to talk for a while after that before Bai Yunfei felt several people near the palace and turned his head towards the front gates. These newcomers had auras far more intimidating than anything else he felt, and the entire palace was washed over in the tides of their powerful soulforce. It felt a bit like the night sky with how deep and profound the soulforce felt, and Bai Yunfei felt a slight stifling sensation that made it slightly hard to believe.
But at the same time, the very first thoughts he had was to bend the knee, bow, and acknowledge his allegiance to the newcomer.
This was a special type of feeling and power that Bai Yunfei had never felt before.
As he was surmising to himself on just how surprising this was, every single guards near the gates bowed their heads in salute to the tall and straight figure walking past them.
This figure was a middle-aged man looking to be in his forties. He wore an expensive golden robe and had his long hair tied up behind his head. His face was clean and steadfast. His eyes bright like stars and his eyebrows sharp like swords. His firm face had a smile on it that made him look friendly, though his entire person demanded respect at the sight.
When hit with such powerful aura, Bai Yunfei thought about what people had meant when they talked about having ‘Kingly Disposition’.
So something like that really existed.
This person was a true and living example of such a phrase….