17 Untrustworthy

As they argued, Zhang Yong stepped out of his room to see what mess was going on outside. He walks towards Xue Qin and asks, "What is the problem here?" Xue Qin bows his head at him then explains, "Father, these group of people are trying to take away my fiancee." Zhang Yong looks at Wu Zhou and instantly notices Wen Qiang standing behind the rest of them. He turns back to Xue Qin then soft whispers, "It seems like the woman in red is here, the rumors about her return may have been true after all."

Xue Qin then asks his father, "What should we do about her then?" Zhang Yong stands up straight with his hands behind his back, "We must not allow her to live any longer." He orders his men to attack Wen Qiang. A group of armored men comes running whilst holding their arrowed tip spears aimed at her. Wu Zhou unsheathes his sword and yells, "Don't come any closer I'm warning you all!"

The King looks at his men, "What are you all doing?! Hurry and kill her off before she creates the same mess as she did three years ago!" Ying Pei steps in to prevent the situation from getting even more worse than it already is, "Your Majesty, if you dare try to kill an innocent person, then may the heavens throw you off your throne and punish you for your impurities and abuse of power! There are eyes watching you doing this. How can a King do such thing to his own people?"

He shouts back at Ying Pei, "She is a huge threat to my kingdom! She has once destroyed us and I will not allow it to happen again!" Ying Pei continues to talk, "Liu Wen Qiang is not the kind of person you think she is. She will never attack anyone unless she has her own reasons to do so. If she attacked your Kingdom, then you must've done something in order for her to recklessly attack your Kingdom! Your Majesty, you are looking down on your people!"

Suddenly, Wen Qiang speaks up, "Go ahead and kill me. Even though I don't have my inner core, I will make sure that this Kingdom surely falls down again at its worse... as well as the royal family." The King shouts for his men to hurry up and attack her. Out of nowhere Wen Qiang creates a vortex that appeared up in the sky, with lightnings flashing and thunders roaring angrily. Wu Zhou, Ying Pei, and Jia Yi eyes were filled with shock.

How was she able to do that without her inner core?

The King begins to rethink of his decisions, "Perhaps I should cultivate more and become stronger before I face off with this woman again." After the exposure of her magic, Wen Qiang collapses and coughs out blood. The vortex disappears in thin air. Xue Qin looks at them, "If you all don't want to lose your lives, then you best leave the palace immediately." Worried about Wen Qiang's health, Jia Yi tells the two, "Let's go back, I don't have the medicine to help cure her at the moment. She's very sick."

Wu Zhou looks back at the window where Da Xia was, "But.." Ying Pei puts his hand on Wu Zhou's shoulder, "If we couldn't help her get out today, there's always tomorrow. Let's not give up on our friend." Wen Qiang looks back at him, "I'm also hurt, do you care about that woman more than me? Don't you love me?" He sighs, "I do love you, don't get me wrong."

Xue Qin watches them leave out the palace gates. Zhang Yong looks back at his son, "Crown Prince, you must cultivate as much as possible or else you'll end up being nothing but a dog to that woman again." He bows his head at the King again, "Yes."

As Ying Pei they reached back home, Wu Zhou felt extremely frustrated. For some reason, Da Xia's existence couldn't get out of his head. Jia Yi helped Wen Qiang sat down then immediately went to her shelves full of medicine to cure Wen Qiang. Wu Zhou sits outside alone as he thinks about everything that's happened. He becomes pissed off as he remembers that the King wants to kill Wen Qiang again and that Da Xia was badly wounded on her neck area. Wu Zhou goes back inside and sits down.

Ying Pei finishes cooking and serves the food on the round wooden table for them all to eat. They all gathered and looked at each other as they sat down on the wooden chairs. Jia Yi breaks the ice, "Wen Qiang, may I ask you about something?"

Knowing what Jia Yi was going to ask her, she replied, "I don't have my core yet I used magic. You all know that I have a black core, with that, I can learn black magic through cursed books. I've already fallen down to the dark side, might as well keep it that way."

Jia Yi nods her head, "That's right, it's possible to learn cursed magic if your core is black..." Wen Qiang sighs, "I'm going to rest for awhile, I'm sorry if I confused you all."

The sky began to darken and stars were shining through the blackness of the sky. A beautiful crescent moon was like a splash of art upon the cloudy night sky. Jia Yi and Ying Pei had just fallen asleep while Wu Zhou stayed up. He looks out the window as sounds of snores appears from the background. The crickets sings melodies as he looks at the starry night.

Wu Zhou turns around to look at them sleeping sound-fully, "I can't wait any longer." Quietly, he opens the front door and leaves the house without anyone knowing. And through the quiet night, he flies on top of his sword to where Da Xia is.

Chen Zhang Yong turns his back at Xue Qin, "I am not wrong about Liu Wen Qiang. Son, she is a heavy threat to our kingdom and will once again destroy us. We must not let her stay alive any longer, let us prepare to have a war with her when the time comes." Xue Qin looks at his father's back, "When should we start preparing?" The King smiles, "Let us start the training tomorrow."

Inside the room alone, Da Xia sits by the little desk and opens a bamboo book to read quietly. She was ordered to not leave the room until Xue Qin allowed her to do so.

Wu Zhou climbed over the palace gates and goes up onto the rooftop, gently walking over to the room he last saw Da Xia at. Cautiously, he looks around for any guards before entering into the huge royal room she is in. Slowly, he opens the wooden windows apart and goes inside. Taking light footsteps every time he moved, he fianlly saw Da Xia, reading a book all to herself.

He quickly goes over to her and gently taps her left shoulder. Startled, Da Xia gasps in shock and turns around ready to scream but Wu Zhou placed his index finger on his lips to tell her to be quiet. Seeing that it's just Wu Zhou she whispers to ask him, "What are you doing here?!" He takes the index finger off his lips and tells her, "Obviously I came to rescue you out of this palace. The King and Crown Prince aren't good people."

Da Xia begins to remember the words Xue Qin had told her, 'Wu Zhou is a monster in disguise! He will manipulate you, take advantage of you, and then kill you off!" Her eyes begins to shake as he looks at Wu Zhou.

Wu Zhou kneels down and places his hands onto her shoulders, "You need to believe me, please. I don't want to see you to get hurt because of them." Her mouth opens to speak, "But Xue Qin told me that you-" He cuts her sentence off, "Who cares about what he says! Everything that comes out of that disgusting mouth is pure lies! Trust me Da Xia, please. I know them better than you think do."

They begin to hear footsteps approaching towards the room. Wu Zhou hurriedly carries her out the window and away from the palace. The two stops at Mountain Tian Xing to rest for awhile before going back home together. Da Xia's eyes moves to look at Wu Zhou once again, "Is it true? All the things Xue Qin says about you..that you manipulate, take advantage of many, and kill them? That you're a monster in disguise all along?"

He gives a look at her, "Do you think I'm stupid?" She looks at the open field of tall, swaying grass, "Sometimes, you kind of are.." Wu Zhou replies back to her, "I know I may be 'stupid' sometimes but I'm not THAT stupidly wicked to do such things like that. I don't have such a heart to do that." Da Xia lets out a smile after hearing him. He continues to talk to her as she's listening, "I am serious about what I said earlier. You really can't trust the King and Crown Prince. Together, they've done such horrendous things. I've witnessed it all, from them murdering the Queen AND Empress Dowager, then later on putting the blame on innocent royal members and having them executed publicly. There's many things that they've done and got away with."

Da Xia's eyes widens in shock as she hears him, she then puts her hand on her neck to softly touch her wound, "The King..choked me. That's why I have this wound. And every time someone came in, he would go from evil to purely nice..a two faced King.." Wu Zhou stands up while looking at Da Xia and then takes a deep breath, "So it was the King who laid his hands on you...I'm going to put them all in the end when I get the chance to."

She stays quiet. Wu Zhou looks at the sky then back at her, "Let's head back home before the royal people catch us here." Da Xia nods her head and follows him behind.

Xue Qin enters the room and immediately notices Da Xia's disappearance. His heart drops and he yells for the royal guards for search for her throughout the palace. "Find her, inside this palace or not and bring her back to me, this is an order." his fists were curled into a tight ball. The royal guards bowed their heads then rushes out separately in search of Da Xia.

Inside out the palace and throughout the deepest part of the nearby woods by the palace, she was no where to be found. The royal guards runs back to Xue Qin, "Your Highness, we cannot find her in this dark night." Xue Qin put his hands behind his back, "Continue searching for her tomorrow morning, I will not back down until she is back with me here." They bowed their heads once again, "Yes Your Highness!"

The next morning, Jia Yi, Wen Qiang, and Ying Pei wakes up in shock to see Da Xia sleeping on Wu Zhou's bed as he slept on the ground. Wen Qiang kicked Wu Zhou's legs to wake him up, "What the hell happened?! Why are you on the ground and WHY is SHE back!?" Da Xia wakes up to Wen Qiang's yelling and Wu Zhou slowly opens his eyes. Wen Qiang continues to talk, "Now the royal family could be chasing after us!" Ying Pei agreed with her but responds back with, "Well, at least we have Da Xia back now. Since we're altogether now the best we can do is hide ourselves and run away from the royal people. If needed, we'll fight back to defend ourselves."

Jia Yi finishes cooking breakfast then goes grab medicine to help treat Da Xia's neck wound. She asks Da Xia, "In the palace alone, how was it?" They all turned to look at Da Xia for an answer.

Da Xia replies, "It wasn't easy. I felt very uncomfortable, especially around the King. He was always acting weird, really two faced. Xue Qin... the more I stayed by him, the more I felt that he is also changing into someone else I don't know anymore." She look at them all, "Ah! I remember Xue Qin telling me that the King was planning to start a war soon!"

After hearing Da Xia mentioning about war, they all turned to look at with other, feeling uneasy.