The Emperor’s Runaway Lover

Suddenly, the boy’s voice got louder. Fu Yucheng felt shocked.

“Little Mo, what’s wrong?” He felt rather confused, and he had no idea which of his words had, once again, poked the sensitive heart of this teenager.

Bai Mo stared at the other, repeating the four words over and over again in his mind. ‘Go our separate ways.’

What did Fu Yucheng mean?

The boy took a deep breath, barely managing to calm down his emotions. “Yu-ge, about what you just said, what did you mean that we will each go our separate ways in the future?!”

He practically spat the words ‘our separate ways’ out.

“Oh, that.” Fu Yucheng raised his eyebrows. “You’ll be eighteen in two years. At that point, you’ll naturally have your own life. Could you possibly still want to stay with me forever? How would that be possible?”

As he listened to the man’s relaxed tone Bai Mo felt a chill settle into his heart..

As it turned out, Fu Yucheng was thinking of kicking him out once Bai Mo became an adult.

The boy wanted to say something, but he wasn’t able to.

He was silent for a long time before he finally asked, “What about you?”

“Me?”  Fu Yucheng shrugged. “I still have some very important things that I have to do. You’ll find out about it after we go our own separate ways. You’ll be safer that way.”

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“Enough!” Bai Mo raised his voice, unable to bear it any longer.

Then, he added weakly, “Stop saying that.”

The boy thought: I don’t need to be ‘safer’ or any such thing! I only need you. However, he knew somehow that this was something he couldn’t say out loud.

Fu Yucheng stared at him with a frown. “Little Mo, what’s up with you today? Did you eat something weird?”

The question dumbfounded the boy.

That’s right, what was up with him? There was nothing wrong with what Fu Yucheng had just said, Bai Mo could see that. However, his heart still felt unsettled, as if a hand was squeezing it.

And the guilty owner of the very hand that was crushing his heart was still staring at him innocently.

Bai Mo’s lips trembled very slightly. “Why can’t we keep living together, just like we are now?”

Fu Yucheng smiled, stretched out his hand and ruffled Bai Mo’s hair. “Kid, what a dumb thing to say.”

“I haven’t said anything dumb. We’ve been living like this for the past two years. We’ve been doing fine like this, right?” Bai Mo asked softly.

Fu Yucheng couldn’t resist rolling his eyes discreetly. “Come on, when you meet a girl you like in the future, I can tell that you’ll be running away faster than a rabbit.”

Bai Mo answered anxiously, “I don’t like any girl. I want to stay with you. We can keep living like this always, just the two of us, can’t we?”

Fu Yucheng didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, hearing such a childish sentence from a kid like this. “Beat it, you brat, if you want to be single forever go do that on your own! Since I, your brother, look like this, I have many girls chasing me. I’m not going to remain a single dog like you! In two years time I bet you’ll want the ground to swallow you up when you remember saying things this dumb.”

Bai Mo stared at the man, feeling cold inside and filled with an inexplicably bitter anger.

So it turned out that the reason Fu Yucheng wanted to dump him was because of that. Because he wanted girls.

But something like this was completely normal. Things had been this way since the beginning of time.

Fu Yucheng had taken Bai Mo in and he was willing to support him just until he became an adult. This had all just been charity, hadn’t it?

Bai Mo couldn’t ask for anything more.

Yet… and yet…

The boy was unable to say anything. He just looked at Fu Yucheng blankly, feeling a void in his heart.

“Really, you’re such a silly boy.” Fu Yucheng shook his head, speechless, and threw a towel over his shoulder. “Okay, I’m going to take a bath. Consider what I’ve told you carefully, don’t be so inflexible.”

A week later, it was finally the day, as Mo Ziwei had decided, for Fu Yucheng to go report for work at the Mo family fortress.

That day, Fu Yucheng finished packing up his luggage at the dormitory. He turned around and said, “Little Mo, are you done? Let’s go.”

Bai Mo slung his backpack over his shoulder and muttered, “Yeah.”

Fu Yucheng glanced at him, feeling that there was something wrong with this boy. When Bai Mo had just returned from his work on the windmills, he seemed to have been in a very good mood for the first few days, and he even talked more than usual. However, as of late, the teen had become more sullen than he had ever been before, and his expression seemed strained all day long.

However, Fu Yucheng was too lazy to think about the mind of a teenager. They were always filled with all sorts of immature thoughts and didn’t like outsiders prying.

Carrying their simple luggage, the two reached the Mo family fortress through one of the bridges connecting the outer fortresses to the one in the center.

The narrow, archaic covered bridge, made of metal, was guarded very heavily, with practically one sentry at every step. However, after entering the Mo fortress, the scenery suddenly opened up.

The Mo fortress was different from the rough, gloomy outer fortresses. It wasn’t just huge, it was also built in an extremely exquisite and grandiose style, and some precious greenery, uncommon in the desert, was visible all around.

A butler1 was already waiting for them at the end of the bridge and greeted them with a smile.

Obsequiously, he led the two of them to the staff dormitories on the 32nd floor. “This is the suite the fortress master arranged for you two to live in. If you need anything, just let me know.”

The staff dormitories in the Mo fortress were, naturally, very different to the dormitories for factory workers located underground at the outer fortresses. They walked into a spacious, well lit suite with a large living room, two small bedrooms, an independent kitchen and a bathroom.

To the east of the living room was a huge floor-to-ceiling window. When they walked up to it to look through, it displayed a grand view, a vast and magnificent brown rocky desert stretching all the way to the horizon.

“What do you think? It’s not too bad, is it?” The butler smiled. “By the way, since you’ve just arrived today, the two of you can rest in the room for the day, or you can simply walk around to familiarize yourself with the grounds.”

“Yeah.” Fu Yucheng looked around, throwing his suitcase onto the living room’s sofa. “I want to go check out the training camp, could you please lead the way?”

He glanced at the boy next to him. “Little Mo, are you going to rest here today? Or do you want to follow me to the training camp?”

“I’ll go to the training camp with you,” Bai Mo muttered.

The butler smiled and said, “Alright then, I’ll lead you two over there.”

The training camp spanned from the 25th to the 30th floor of the Mo fortress, and each of the six floors was divided into six areas. The second area, called the cold weapons2 training camp, was the one Mo Ziwei had put Fu Yucheng in charge of.

Although heat weapons were definitely more popular at this time, with all sorts being developed one after the other, when someone fought in a giant, manmade celestial body like the Dyson Cloud, or among extrasolar level space carriers, using heat weapons was out of the question unless you wanted to kill yourself together with your opponent.

In a place like that, the only sort of heat weapon allowed were high energy infrasonic guns. However, their killing power was very limited, and, as such, cold weapons came in handy.

Nonetheless, current cold weapons were also different from cold weapons from the past. This was true especially regarding the ones used by manipulators, which were all ‘sentience weapons’ with a small content of blue gold, fickle and unpredictable.

Each of the twelve royal knights of the Rong family was a master in ‘sentience martial arts’.

Fu Yucheng and Bai Mo walked into the martial arts area and saw hundreds of guards inside the enormous training hall, wearing heavy exoskeleton armor, shouting while sparring in pairs.

Standing by the side of the training zone was a tall and athletic mixed-race beauty, frowning as she watched over the movements of a pair of guards. She was not wearing any exoskeleton armor, and she was carrying a Damascus steel blade covered in a cloudy mottled pattern. She seemed to be an instructor.

Fu Yucheng stood nearby. After looking at them for a while, he couldn’t resist saying, “When you swipe your blade horizontally, you should tilt it a bit more.”

The mixed beauty rolled her brown eyes, swiftly glanced at him, and then gestured with her chin at the young butler next to them. “Who’s this?”

The butler coughed lightly. “Miss Song, this is Mr. Fu Yucheng, the new head instructor of the second training camp. Mr. Fu, this is the deputy instructor of the second camp, Miss Song Lan.”

Song Lan raised her eyebrows, gave Fu Yucheng a once-over, and her smile suddenly dropped as she snorted. “So after all the time Mo Ziwei took to pick up someone, he ended up choosing someone like you, a useless pretty boy?”

Fu Yucheng smiled. “I dare not.”

Song Lan huffed coldly, and slowly circled the man while holding her knife. Suddenly, she shot out like lightning.

Fu Yucheng had been ready for a while. Abruptly, he sharply leaned back as the Damascus knife in his opponent’s hands swept where he had been a moment ago, cutting off a few strands of his hair.

Song Lan was momentarily taken aback, but then, without hesitation, she continued attacking swiftly.

Fu Yucheng dodged from side to side while inwardly praising the skills of this mixed, athletic woman.

When the fight was in full swing, he pulled out the blue scimitar he carried at the small of his back and swept forward with a vicious slash.

“Good timing!” Song Lan yelled out, continuously pushing and sweeping with the Damascus knife in her hand, moving effortlessly like a dragon.

Sadly for her, Fu Yucheng moved faster. Turning the blade around slightly, the scimitar tapped her wrist skillfully. Song Lan only felt a slight pain in her wrist before she unconsciously let her own blade go, her hand unable to hold it any longer.

Her mind went blank. As the deputy instructor, being disarmed in public at the martial arts hall was extremely embarrassing, a complete humiliation.

In a flash, Fu Yucheng’s scimitar took a bizarre, oblique angle, picking the Damascus blade back up and returning it to Song Lan’s hands.

This back and forth only took an instant. Not a single person present in the hall, except for Bai Mo, had seen it.

He thought that Fu Yucheng was going easy on her.

Song Lan squeezed tightly her beloved lost-and-found blade, her expression doubtful. Of course, she realized that Fu Yucheng was not trying to shame her in public.

The mixed beauty stared at Fu Yucheng for a long time, her expression finally relaxing, and she said simply, “My skills are not the best.”

Fu Yucheng said sternly, “Your skills are exceptional, Miss Song, I am very impressed.”

Song Lan looked at him, and suddenly, she stretched out her hand. “In the future, I will ask you for advice, instructor Fu.”

The two shook hands firmly and smiled at each other.

Bai Mo stared at the two hands, feeling dazed.

At this moment, someone exclaimed, “Instructor Fu, you are amazing!”

Everyone turned to look at the source of the voice. It turned out to be Mo Ziwei’s younger brother, the lively, baby-faced boy, Mo Ziran.

Mo Ziran was only fifteen or sixteen years old. At that moment, he was wearing full exoskeleton armor as well, and he was looking at Fu Yucheng with admiration. “I have never seen Song Lan-jie accept instructions from anyone besides you, instructor Fu! You are my idol!”

Song Lan reached out and knocked him on the forehead. “Ziran, young friend, didn’t you say yesterday that I was your idol? You change your heart so easily!”

Mo Ziran touched his forehead, a little embarrassed. “Song Lan-jie, instructor Fu is my new idol, but you are still my number one idol.”

Song Lan shook her head, dumbfounded. “You kid, you’re such a smooth talker. No wonder your brother threw you into the training camp.”

Upon hearing his brother being mentioned, Mo Ziran’s smile froze slightly. “Let’s not talk about my older brother. Song Lan-jie, please teach me that trick you just did.”

Suddenly, Bai Mo asked, “Yu-ge, can I also come here to train?”

Fu Yucheng glanced at him, surprised. “You want to learn this stuff?”

Over the past two years, save for using the kitchen knife for cooking, the kid hadn’t touched a single blade. Fu Yucheng thought that his childhood at the laboratory might have left him with some traumatizing memories and that he didn’t want to practice these killing techniques anymore.

The boy stared at him and nodded very seriously. “I do.”

He wanted to be stronger. Not as a killing weapon in the Royal Laboratory, but for himself.

He wanted to be strong enough to be in control, strong enough to protect others, strong enough to not be so powerless anymore.

Lifestyle upgrade, but I suspect Fu Yucheng will manage to turn it into a pigsty within a week. Or he would, without Bai Mo around.

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Footnotes

生活管事 literally regular life/survival/lifestyle steward, but steward sounds strange because he seems to be a young servant and lifestyle probably means just taking care of living arrangements in general.Cold weapons refer usually to melee weapons and opposed to firearms, linked to the concept of the 18 weapons of wushu for which different lists exist, source. It’d make more sense to translate as melee except as you can see from the list it can include distance weapons and given that this novel has the whole psionic/soul weapons thing it might also mean literally cold effects, so we’re sticking with cold in the translation for now.