The Emperor’s Runaway Lover

Seeing that the other man was about to start pulling at his collar, Fu Yucheng couldn’t bear with it any longer, but then Rong Yuan suddenly stopped.

He lowered his head, touched the two faint pinkish white scars on the other man’s neck, and whispered, “You didn’t have these before… Have you suffered a lot in the past few years?”

The two scars he just touched were the result of Bai Mo scratching him when he was a kid, back when they first met. Back then, that little brat was like a crazy wild cat, scratching him fiercely and drawing blood, and there were still a couple of small, pale pink scars left behind.

Rong Yuan spoke again. “Does it hurt?”

Fu Yucheng didn’t say anything, thinking what the fuck? This asshole acts crazy one minute and then gets all melodramatic and contrived the next, when will it be enough?

Rong Yuan sighed, an extremely strong smell of alcohol coming from his mouth and nose. “Do you hate me that much? I don’t want to be like this either… you made me like this.”

Seeing that he was really drunk, Fu Yucheng didn’t want to argue with him. However, after hearing this, he couldn’t help but sneer.

Rong Yuan gently stroked his slender neck, murmuring, “I shouldn’t—I shouldn’t have let you go. I regret it. I didn’t expect it to be like this, I didn’t know it would…  I should hide you so… so you won’t get dirty. However, even so, I don’t despise you… I’ve never used something that someone else had already used in my entire life. You are an exception, I admit it…”

Fu Yucheng got goosebumps all over, and he cursed quietly, “Are you fucking brain damaged?”

Rong Yuan didn’t say anything, just looked at him blankly for a while and then lowered his head to kiss him.

Fu Yucheng tilted his head to the right.

Rong Yuan changed direction.

Fu Yucheng tilted his head to the left.

“Why are you…?” Rong Yuan couldn’t help frowning after they went back and forth several times.

He closed his eyes and suddenly applied a little psionic power. The heavy S-class psionic field instantly suppressed the other man, making it impossible for him to move.

Fu Yucheng didn’t expect that the man would remember how to use his psionic power even when he was drunk, and he couldn’t help but cry a little inside.

Ordinary people without psionic powers would never be able to break free from Rong Yuan’s hold… If I escape easily, then wouldn’t I basically be telling him that I recovered my power?

At that moment, even though Rong Yuan looked very drunk, he couldn’t afford to take the risk. For the sake of everything he had been planning for a long time, he couldn’t do it.

However, he couldn’t continue anymore either… It was one thing to be willing to play around with that boy, Bai Mo, but Rong Yuan was a different thing altogether. He didn’t want this.

What should I do? Simply anger him? Or should I try to divert his attention? Before he could make a decision, Rong Yuan leaned back down to kiss him again.

Rong Yuan kissed him for a while, but he felt confused, as if there was something lacking. He raised his head, stared at the other man and thought about it for a while, then suddenly realized: that pair of beautiful, pale lips were pursed closed like clam shells.

“A-Cheng be good, open your mouth,” Rong Yuan groaned.

Fu Yucheng stared at him blankly.

Rong Yuan coaxed him patiently with a few more words, but there was still no movement.

“You! Don’t you know what’s good for you?!” Seeing his indifferent look, Rong Yuan suddenly got angry again and he grabbed Fu Yucheng’s jaw forcefully, making the other man open his mouth and moving down to kiss him.

Fu Yucheng bit the other man’s lower lip fiercely.

He bit for real, not holding himself back at all. Rong Yuan only felt a sharp pain and he couldn’t help but hiss. When he reached out to touch his lip with his hand, it came away covered in bright red blood.

Rong Yuan stared at the blood dripping from his hand and asked dully, “Fu Yucheng, you let that monster fuck you, but you won’t even kiss me? That monster, how is he better than me?! Even though you look like this, I don’t dislike you anymore, I admit it… How can you be so insensitive? How can you be so cheap?!”

Seeing him suddenly start going crazy again, Fu Yucheng’s psionic field fluctuated violently, and he had to suppress himself a lot. He added more fuel to the fire and said, “He’s better than you in every way, and I’m happy to fuck him! What is it to you? Yeah, you’re right, you made me lose my power and threw me to Earth. I was helpless and had a difficult life in the Twilight Belt. When I first met Bai Mo, I saw that he had potential and I wanted to latch onto him. Afterwards, when he grew up a little, I tried to please him by any means, and I gave him everything…”

Rong Yuan suddenly snarled, “Shut up! You— Have you no shame?!”

Fu Yucheng wanted to anger him on purpose, so he went on nonchalantly. “Yes, I have no shame. I took the initiative to get into his bed. At first, he was not very open and would shrink away from me… Then, after he’d had a taste, he would pester me every day, practically wagging his tail. He was so cute… Do you still want to hear the details?”

Rong Yuan stared at him without blinking. “You— Shut up! You lied… You lied to me! How can you be so shameless?!”

Fu Yucheng smiled indifferently. “Why, isn’t this all you had guessed? You’ve spied on me, you knew he liked me, you’ve seen me walk around with him, saw him hug me and carry me to the hover car, and even insulted me over it… Yes, I’ll tell you all about it today. It all went exactly how you thought. The first time, he did me too hard and I couldn’t walk… And I did it all voluntarily, do you have a problem with that?”

“Shut up! You bitch!” Rong Yuan’s eyes were red, on the verge of losing control, and he slapped Fu Yucheng again viciously!

Fu Yucheng was struck so hard that his head spun to the side.

He closed his eyes, feeling the violent fluctuations in the other man’s psionic field dissipate. The hold Rong Yuan had over him had completely disappeared. Then, Fu Yucheng pressed his tongue against his broken lip and asked expressionlessly, “I already admitted everything, what are you still unsatisfied with?”

Rong Yuan stared at him, his chest rising and falling rapidly. “It’s fine. That monster is going to die soon anyway…”

Fu Yucheng said indifferently, “He’s an Imperial Knight and he has not made any big mistakes. You’ll have to kill him yourself. Aren’t you worried others will get disillusioned with you?”

Rong Yuan sneered. “Him? He is not worthy of being personally killed by me.”

Fu Yucheng raised his eyebrows and said, “Oh? You are both S-class manipulators. Even if he is a little younger than you, his chances of winning aren’t that low1… Besides you, who else could defeat him?”

Rong Yuan’s voice was soft and calm. “But he’s just one man.”

An idea flashed through Fu Yucheng’s mind. It seems that Rong Yuan intends to, almost certainly, use the other Imperial knights to overwhelm Bai Mo.

As for the moment… It was very likely that it would be during the ceremonial hunt for the pledge.

Earlier, he had already heard that Rong Yuan planned to add a large-scale ceremonial beast hunt to the pledge in the Tower of Light. It had made him think something was off. As far as he remembered, Rong Yuan had always been an extremely pragmatic person, so why would he create additional ceremonies?

Now it would seem that, even back then, Rong Yuan already had plans to murder Bai Mo.

However, he was still an Imperial Prince, and Bai Mo was a very high profile figure. Naturally, he didn’t want to cause a commotion. During the Imperial ceremonial hunt, if there was an accident and one or two knights were to die, well, it’d be just an accident.

Overwhelming an S-class manipulator… Does that mean that, in addition to the six Dark Knights, the six Light Knights would also be present?

That means that… my plan is safe.

Fu Yucheng looked down and thought about it while Rong Yuan was still staring at him blankly.

Under the moonlight, the evening breeze grew colder.

After an undefined amount of time, the Imperial prince suddenly lost his energy and he asked quietly, “How… how did we end up like this? A-cheng, can’t you… just treat me like you used to?”

Fu Yucheng smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “What do you think?”

Rong Yuan closed his eyes and said, “What if… I spare him, in exchange for you coming to me?”

Fu Yucheng sighed and stood up. “Since we’ve known each other for so many years, you should know that your proposal is simply ridiculous.”

Rong Yuan leaned back on the rattan chair, staring at the other man’s figure as he gradually walked away.

In the Magnolia Pavilion, the evening breeze blew.

The peerless Imperial Prince, stirred by the cool autumn night breeze that carried with it the fragrance of the magnolias, gradually woke up. He had been very drunk that night, indeed, but afterwards he had sobered up a bit, and he hadn’t spoken just nonsense.

He stared at the empty path blankly. Fu Yucheng had left a long time ago.

You came here to find your teacher? You won’t be able to find him anymore.

""

And now, you already know… that I’m going to kill Bai Mo.

However, you still won’t beg me for anything.

That means Bai Mo is dead.

If you have him run, I’ll kill him for defecting. If you have him stay, I’ll have the Light Knights overwhelm him. There’s no third option.

This time, I won’t repeat my mistakes. I won’t stupidly wait for you to beg me. I want you to see him die, and after that you’ll only be able to rely on me, for the rest of your life, forever and ever. 

As for everything else you’ve been doing over these years, and the grievances you might have suffered… as long as I destroy the Twilight Belt, it’ll be as if they never happened.

Fu Yucheng left the prince’s bedroom and walked along a winding corridor to the northwest corner of the palace. Not long after he walked out, he suddenly sensed something and looked ahead.

On the other side of the long corridor stood a tall man in his thirties. He had a slender figure and wore rimless glasses, and he looked like a gentle university professor.

Yao Ning,2 Light Knight. Once the empress’ confidant, now completely marginalized.

Fu Yucheng breathed a sigh of relief and continued to walk forward.

When he got close, Yao Ning whispered, “I received the information. In two weeks, at the ceremonial hunt during the pledge, he’ll mobilize all the Imperial Knights and the military of the entire Ninth Ecoregion. You should hurry up and go, or it will be too late.”

Fu Yucheng walked past without looking at him and nodded imperceptibly. “Got it. You be careful, too.”

“Yeah,” Yao Ning replied softly.

The two passed each other without looking back.

Fu Yucheng pondered the entire way.

Just a moment earlier, in the Magnolia Pavilion, Rong Yuan seemed to have sobered up slightly after a minute. Therefore, Fu Yucheng was unsure about the nonsense he’d told him… and about whether or not to believe it.

However, Yao Ning also gave him that information, which made him think it was 80% likely to be correct.

Back in the day, Rong Yuan had defeated him by surprise when he was in his prime, which seemed to have made him feel confident, blindly so. And after Fu Yucheng lost his mental power, he seemed to think of him as a fragile butterfly that could just flutter around in his palm, unable to make a splash.

This noble prince wants Bai Mo to die right before my eyes during the grand ceremonial hunt. He wants to show me his power, he wants to show me that I had been relying on the wrong person, and he wants to make me beg for mercy.

Unfortunately, he has miscalculated a little.

The one he has to deal with isn’t Bai Mo, eye-catching as he may be. His real opponent is me.

This time, I’ll have this S-class Imperial god of war, this noble Regent Prince, taste this long-coming defeat. And then, he’ll come to understand how the wheel of fortune turns.3

Fu Yucheng lowered his eyes slightly.

He took everything from me, now it’s time to get it back.

Fu Yucheng kept pondering all the way back, slowly making his way to their residence.

At that time, it was four in the morning, and there were no hover vehicles on the wide road, just a couple security drones flying mid air emitting a low humming noise.

The little white house was dark, looking very lonely under the empty moonlight, but it made him feel relieved.

While he thought about that, Fu Yucheng casually stepped into the hallway, and suddenly his feet stopped.

The warm yellow light at the entrance hall automatically turned on. There was a person sitting on the sofa in the living room, with eyes dark and quiet, looking at him in silence.

Fu Yucheng licked the injury at the corner of his mouth without thinking and then smiled drily. “Little Mo, why did you come back early?”

Footnotes

In the raws, 40/60%.Going by meaning, his name literally means ‘good-looking and peaceful’ pretty much.In the raws the (dated) expression used is the heavenly law and the circle of samsara (from Buddhism). I tried to get a more western expression so that it’d be understandable without having to study eastern religions. I always try to translate so that there’s no need to read the footnotes to get the meaning.