Change (1)

My eyes slowly fluttered open. The sensation of a jackhammer was pounding hard on my brain. The incessant chirping of loud cicadas was driving me insane. Along with my last recollections of Zaixing's challenge.

Looking around drowsily, there was a huge wad of softness weighing me down, like burial soil. My eyes could see the thick folds of the blankets. They were stacked as thick as a mattress.

My scalp was itching so badly that the temptation to scratch was growing stronger while I attempted to move my arms under the weight. 

I could hear snoring at the side of my bed.

The person raised his head slowly and repositioned himself towards me.

The face was that of Xuanyi by my bedside. He looked absolutely wrecked.

His eyes have black circles like a panda while his cheeks looked slightly sunken in, giving his face a haggard, sallow look.

Had I not lived, his punishment would be death.

How long did I lose consciousness for? I wondered about the odd dreamscape event.

My forearm and hand finally freed itself to do a nice satisfying scratch of my now oily, sticky long hair. Gross but oh soooo good.

Xuanyi suddenly bolted.

Before I could say anything, he just had to bloody yell, sending my ears ringing. 

"XUANJING, GET THE SECT ELDERS! HE IS AWAKE!"

Just shoot me dead. The tinnitus in my ear was sending signals to my brain to reciprocate with not one but ten of those psychological jackhammers pounding away tirelessly into an intense migraine. They won't have aspirin or Tylenol to soothe my now screaming cerebrum in pain. My head grew so heavy, like my eyelids. 

"Heh, stop," I muttered with my dry, parched lips. 

Xuanyi's hand touched my forehead quickly. "Fever is gone."

The door swung open. A loud pitter patter of footsteps. Plenty of murmuring. If I wasn't wrong, there was a crowd of onlookers. Lianfeng rushed to my bedside. It has been a while since I saw him. 

"How are you feeling? Do you need anything? Oh goodness, we were so worried about you." He went off like a train as he grabbed my wrist to feel for a pulse. 

Then promptly smacked the back of his hand against my forehead. Owww, that hurts. 

Was he trying to knock me unconscious again? I frowned.

My limbs were too weak to smack his hand away. More noise. More footsteps approaching. It's a conspiracy- they were trying to murder me using my pulsating migraine as a weapon.

"Good thing, you woke up. And if you did not awake by the third day, we would have sent you back to the capital for treatment."

Yes. Great idea. If I didn't die here, I should return and perish in the Capital city at the hands of schemers who already have 101 plans on how to ensure Ji Feng's untimely demise through a variety of colourful poisoning methods.  

My stomach growled as Tianjin and Tianxiang appeared in front of me with three of the elders. One was Master Jianfa. He seemed oddly interested in my sword, judging from how he was staring at it. Yet fearful to touch it. Did Yotoruki do something to him? 

Lianfeng stood aside as his father peered at me like exhibit A at a zoo. 

"Color still pale."

Thank you for pointing out the obvious state my body is in. The dry, scratchy feeling of my thirsty throat was irritating. The saliva was not forthcoming to coat my throat while I coughed painfully. The cough was just a rasp.

"Get him some water," Tianjin ordered.

A half-filled cup was placed in front of my face. Maybe inventing the straw could be good for my next investment scheme. Using my elbow, I turned to the side, and Tianjin extended his arm to help me up. I drank a bit of water as the liquid rolled down and seared away at my now very painful throat with each swallowing reflex. 

*COUGH* 

Ah, shit. If only there were lozenges around to relieve the searing pain. I sighed, wishing for a pharmacy on Earth to just appear nearby. 

Like father, like son. Tianjin smacked my forehead with the back of his hand, inducing an instant splutter of the water out from my mouth. Blood rushing to my now stinging forehead would have made it a little warmer. 

"Fever has subsided," he announced.

By covering me under so many thick blankets, that was surprising. I should be overheated by now. 

"How is Xiaohua?" I enquired after the troublemaker. 

Lianfeng raised his eyebrow at me while the other elders muttered. 

"Don't worry about him. He is fine. Just in recuperative seclusion."

Who said I was worried? Lock that troublemaker up.

Couldn't give two hoots if he was dead.

As a victim of his mishap, my right to answers of why we all got involved stands. I gave them a weak grin. Facades still had to be kept. 

"Should we place the third prince in recuperative seclusion, too?"

OH HELL NO. I don't want to be near Xiaohua. There is a strong temptation to smother him if he is vulnerable. 

"I don't need that," I said. "I want to feel the wind, see the trees and hear the birds chirping."

****

The cicadas are chirping away, proclaiming their insignificant existence with loudness. My eyes gazed out from my window to the garden, where a few disciples were practicing their martial arts moves. One waved to me and I returned a wave.

I have wasted three weeks in Jinshi on these adventures. Zaixing had thrown me into a deep blue ocean of knowing very little about this Kingdom, and expected me to navigate by instinct. 

If there is a nefarious reason for my continued existence here, my grand-mastery of procrastination can doom me before time. My old travel-bug habits from Earth have not died out. Call me an adventurer but plane travel has made it easy for me to visit over 50 countries in my short lifespan there. 

A knock on my door. It better not be Lianfeng. That guy cooed over me as though I am some helpless invalid. That bugs me.

"Third prince, are you in?" 

It was Ye Jian.

"Come on in."

Ye Jian walked in with a long scroll under his arm. Something I had asked him to obtain on my behalf. 

"Got you the map of Jinshi," He said as I stood up and gestured to my table. 

He came forward and started unrolling the map. 

"Jinshi is rather big… so the map is still limited to what our Kingdom knows about the others," he explained.

The map barely looked any different from Earth except for the shapes of countries and the borders.

The oceans were fewer than earth's the Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Southern (Antarctic), and Arctic Oceans. There was only three.

The continents were fewer, just 3, but larger and more land bound.

Lingyu's boundaries were considered large, with the other smaller kingdoms scattered around. I was not even at its borders.

Ye Jian uttered a chant. The map immediately went into a holographic 3D mode. The mountains started growing around the flat keys.

There were floating islands over both land and sea in some kingdoms. Not really surprised by that somehow.

Miniaturised cities came to life as the farmlands started to appear, with villages scattered around them. 

"What is that?" I pointed at a small dust cloud on the map nearest to our location. It was moving back and forth along the borders. 

"Barbarian tribes at the border a province away. No homeland of their own. Tends to terrorise and pillage the border towns and villages," Ye Jian said. 

"Aren't our own troops able to wipe them out?" I mused out loud. 

"Can't. They flee over the border and that Kingdom isn't really friendly to us."

My ass about unfriendliness.

If history taught me something other than sleeping through the teacher's droning lessons on Earth, those tribes are being used to test the waters of our defences.

Ji Liang, that bastard, was probably aware of this problem and planning to use it against me in the future. 

Maybe there should be a change.

If Ji Liang was serious about confining me to this area, then I would be in position to make the decisions. After all, the administrative boundaries do cover the border province, two other provinces and ours here at Xuanlong.