My Little Ghost

Volume 1.3.2 — The Transmission

For the next two days, Bai Bing Wen basks himself with spiritual force, taking time to stabilize his cultivation while he’s still surrounded with so much spiritual energy. He dedicates himself to closed-door cultivation, telling his servants that the only person allowed to knock is the fourth Imperial Consort, Lady Ji Wen.

With no idea how the little ghost is doing, Bai Bing Wen opens his eyes and sighs with content, feeling his cultivation’s stability. He has moved two lights forward, the fastest he’s ever done, grateful for the fact that he’s been sent to a time in this world when the spiritual energy is abundant. At this rate, he can advance a level higher if he’s given a bit more time.

But seeing no signs of Ji Feng Huang coming back to check on him or update him of whatever’s going to happen, he starts worrying a bit. He really doesn’t want to deal with the palace people as much as possible but if he stays cooped up in his room for a few more days, he’d be growing roots.

“Warm bath,” he tells one of the servants as soon as he walks out for the first time in two days. He notices it’s a bit dark outside and with no watches or phones to look at, he really cannot tell what time of the day it is exactly but he guesses it must be past six in the evening. He waves a hand to call on another servant. “Did the fourth consort drop by?”

The manservant, bowing his head, looks around before fishing out a piece of parchment from the inside of his robe. “The madam sent this yesterday and warned us not to disturb you, Your Highness. She says you should know what to do when you see it.”

Bai Bing Wen’s eyes narrow, giving the manservant a once over. He realizes that this man isn’t one of the Crown Prince’s servants but this doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s sent by Ji Feng Huang. Nevertheless, he can’t just walk around the palaces to search for the consort so he would settle for this and see where it gets him.

He walks back to his room, looking at the yellowing parchment. When he opens it, blue sparkles fly from the parchment and he immediately senses Ji Feng Huang’s essence on it. Characters form in the air with Ji Feng Huang’s stored spiritual energy, as if telling Bai Bing Wen a message.

The problem is, despite the Crown Prince’s memories in his head, he still has no idea how to read the characters of the ancient world.

Slapping his forehead, he resorts to talking to the ring again. “Can you translate this to something I can understand?”

The same blue sparkles glow around the ring, blending with the golden ones. They float in the air, stagnant for a few seconds before they blend with the golden sparkles and attach themselves onto the characters above the parchment. In a matter of seconds, the characters have been rearranged to something that Bai Bing Wen can actually understand.

“I hope you are doing well. I am currently in the royal infirmary. I don’t know what happened but the night we came back from our stroll outside the palace, I suddenly fell sick but it’s not too serious.

I am writing this letter with the use of my spiritual cognition and the servant who sent you the letter has been under my spell so he wouldn’t remember anything. If it would take five days for the servant to see you, the message would fade for I cannot hold onto the spell I’ve put the servant under for a longer time due to my health.

I hope you are doing well, Xiao Bing. Please stay inside the Golden Flower Palace. If you’re hungry or you need anything, try visiting the Emperor’s palace with a grand announcement so that everyone knows where you are going and steal some food from there. Do not ask the servants anything that you will be using for consumption.

Be safe always.

—Your Little Ghost”

After reading the last character, the message disappears and the golden and bluish sparkles return to his ring. He feels heavy beats in his chest thinking about it. Could it be that the poison he’s supposed to suffer from transmitted directly to Ji Feng Huang while he was trying to soak himself in that tub? Isn’t the hairpin supposed to dispel that, too?

He hurries on, digging into the Crown Prince’s bulk of clothes in an odd-looking golden chest. When he finally finds some that aren’t too thick and aren’t looking too indecent, he quickly puts them on, not caring whether or not he’s wearing them correctly and in order. He doesn't even get to pick which colors to wear.

“Your Highness, your warm bath is ready,” the servant announces right outside his door.

Bai Bing Wen walks out in hurried steps, attaching a concealment talisman on Ji Feng Huang’s sword. He needs to make sure no one in the palace sees him holding an unfamiliar spiritual weapon and an exquisite one at that.

When the servant looks up in surprise to see him dressed, Bai Bing Wen lets out a sigh. “Keep it warm for me. I’ll be back after taking a walk.”

The servant gapes at him, probably thinking about how to preserve the warmth of the bath. But Bai Bing Wen is too busy thinking about something else to care about his careless orders. And as soon as he’s out of the Golden Flower Palace, he feels just as lost as he felt when he first woke up in a different world.

“Now what,” he grumbles to himself, cursing the Crown Prince in his head for not even knowing where the consorts live. “Where are you? Are you safe?” he says in the air, not expecting anything or anyone to answer.

But as soon as the words leave his mouth, the ring on his finger pulls on his hand with a gentle force.

“I am screwed. I am crazy,” he tells himself, letting the ring lead him to wherever it is taking him.

Standing in front of a grand infirmary with the imperial guards standing watch outside, he finally understands that it’s probably easier for Ji Feng Huang’s own spiritual energy and essence to find their owner. Bai Bing Wen fixes his belt, walking the few steps up to the entrance where two guards block his way.

“I am here to see the Lady Ji Wen,” Bai Bing Wen announces firmly.

The two guards glance at each other before one of them walks in while the other is left blocking Bai Bing Wen.

“Do you not know who I am?” Bai Bing Wen asks with an impassive face, trying to establish an intimidating approach. The imperial guard is a few centimeters shorter than him, at least.

“Your Highness, forgive us. But we received an imperial decree from the Emperor to not let anyone go into the fourth consort’s chamber.”

“This is not the fourth consort’s chamber. This is the Imperial Infirmary. And I am the Central Empire’s Crown Prince. Am I not allowed to see my father’s consort?”

“The Emperor deems it inappropriate for a man of age to visit a sick lady in bed. He ordered us to stand guard against anyone who dares disobey this command.”

Bai Bing Wen almost resorts to violence when he hears this. Is the Emperor jealous of him or something? Is he accusing his son, whom he’s known to not be interested in women, of inappropriate affairs with his consort?

Or is it really the Emperor who sent out this order?

“Tell the consort I’m here to see her,” Bai Bing Wen says, cursing himself mentally for rushing into this place without anything in his hands. For the first time, he’s failed to calculate his actions and just promptly did what his instincts told him to.

All because Ji Feng Huang is sick.

“The consort is unconscious, Your Highness. The Emperor has given us permission to resolve conflicts with violence if it calls for it so, please, don’t let us end up with blood.”

“And you would not hesitate to hurt the Crown Prince of the Empire you’ve sworn to serve?”

“I will not hesitate to use my sword to follow the Emperor’s orders.”

“Is it really the Emperor’s orders you are following, soldier?”

The imperial guard doesn’t answer right away but with the way his hand grips tighter around his sword, it’s almost as good as confirming Bai Bing Wen’s suspicions. At this, he feels the pounds in his chest getting heavier. Because if these people are not sent by the Emperor himself, then it only means one thing.

Ji Feng Huang is in an even worse danger than his sickness suggests.

Dropping all sorts of pretentious decorum, Bai Bing Wen removes the concealment talisman on the Frostbite and prepares to fight. “If you’re going to resort to violence, then pray to the heavens that you won’t hurt yourself.”

Blue sparkles glow around the Frostbite and a golden light shines from the sword’s grip as Bai Bing Wen infuses his spiritual energy into it. The imperial guard quickly swings his sword at Bai Bing Wen first, not with the aim to hold him off but to kill him, and they start exchanging swings after swings while trying to oppress the other.

Bai Bing Wen notes vaguely in his head how no one else is even around the infirmary gardens. No rounding guards, no waiting servants. If this doesn’t scream suspicious, then he doesn’t know what is.

“What did you do to her?” he seethes through gritted teeth as they get stuck in a bottleneck.

The imperial guard tries his best to hold on to his sword as Bai Bing Wen keeps oppressing him with their one-level cultivation gap. “H-how... You’re not... s-supposed to have... s-skills,” the imperial guard says through struggled breathing.

Bai Bing Wen is almost tempted to scoff and give the imperial guard a smug smile, but even that, he doesn’t have the leisure time in doing. “Get out of my way or I’m going to remove you myself,” he growls with a deep voice, infusing more spiritual power into the sword.

When the imperial guard loses his balance, Bai Bing Wen sends him flying back against the infirmary’s door with a solid kick to the chest. Just as he’s about to breathe a sigh of relief and run into the infirmary, though, a few more low-level cultivators in masks and red robes jump down from the roof of the infirmary, blocking his way once more.

Sensing the danger, a layer of frost forms from the grip of the sword towards Bai Bing Wen’s arm and all over his body. The coldness gives him a brief sense of comfort before forming an armor around his body.

“Ha. You attempt to protect me like this yet you can’t even protect yourself. I’m so pissed off,” he grumbles to himself, throwing the Frostbite to his right hand. He’s been using his left hand all this time in a petty attempt to spite the people here who think that being left-handed is unethical. He reaches out his now empty left hand in the air and commands the useful ring with a simple, “Make me another one.”

With blue sparkling specks of dust gathering on his left hand, another sword forms with the help of the frost. Not long after, a perfect replica of Frostbite is created.

“Good job,” he tells the ring.

He runs to initiate the attack, relying heavily on the protection that Ji Feng Huang is providing him. He has no idea what’s going on with his little ghost inside the infirmary, but he’s not going to stop until he sees him safe.

“Kill formation,” the head of the red-robed cultivators announce, and just as soon, the cultivators jump to stand in formation.

Bai Bing Wen pauses for a few seconds, accommodating the expected dizziness as a result of the formation. As soon as the hairpin takes effect in dispelling the illusionary effect of the formation, he starts moving again, mass releasing his superior aura to oppress the rest of the cultivators who are two levels inferior to him. The others who remain standing are visibly surprised, seeing that the formation has no effect on him.

“This isn’t right,” one of the red-robed cultivators exclaims, throwing a binding weapon at the fast-moving Bai Bing Wen.

Before the binding weapon touches him, a golden film of protective layer bursts out of Bai Bing Wen’s body, sending a good half of the cultivators fighting him flying away.

“Trap formation,” one of them commands again, this time leaving three of them fighting and more or less seven others standing to create the formation.

But despite their hardest attempt to create more and more formations, Ji Feng Huang’s hairpin keeps his spiritual cognition sober so he doesn’t get affected by these. When only three of them are left with the energy to still fight, Bai Bing Wen is almost at his wits’ end in fighting but he still doesn’t give up.

“Call the others,” one of them orders, while another one uses qinggong to jump to one roof and disappear into the darkness.

“Oh, come on,” Bai Bing Wen complains to himself, carefully jumping away from these people.

They all stare at him with caution while Bai Bing Wen tries to calculate his options. It’s now too late to pretend to be stupid since they’ve seen him fight, so he reckons he only has one last choice left.

He has to trust the abundant spiritual energy of this world by making it disappear.

So he quickly wounds the tips of his index and middle fingers using Frostbite, forming a few characters in the air. “Trap,” he whispers, blowing the air with infused spiritual energy and directing the force towards their surroundings. He borrows the environment's force by sending his own to trap everyone with spiritual force within his area of effect, leaving all of them paralyzed of their spiritual energy. He figures it's not so bad to teach these people how proper, effective formations are formed.

“What’s going on?” one of them blurts out, kneeling on the ground weakly.

Bai Bing Wen takes this as his cue to trick the enemies. Without an active spiritual force, Bai Bing Wen is at least at an advantage because he’s learned martial arts without relying on spiritual energy. But together with the loss of spiritual energy, he also loses the ring’s effect, the hairpin’s protection, and Frostbite’s power.

“You clearly did not think this through,” he quietly admonishes himself, preparing for another fight.

But instead of fighting back and using the advantage of their number, the cultivators in red all weakly kneel to the ground, and they all suddenly turn into ice. Not long after, they break into tiny little pieces.

Bai Bing Wen feels before he sees the presence of someone behind him.

“I told you... to stay inside the Golden Flower Palace, you stubborn idiot.”

As Bai Bing Wen turns to look at the weak Ji Feng Huang whose face is now too pale with a pained frown, Ji Feng Huang loses his balance and for the nth time since he came here, Bai Bing Wen catches him in his arms before he falls.

And for the first time in his life both in here and in the modern world, Bai Bing Wen is worrying so much for someone who’s not even his family member.

This Ji Feng Huang is really something else.