“I"ll get up that tree to keep a lookout,” Tang Wulin told White Seven. He went to the big tree and began to climb. When he felt he was high enough, he looked around to make sure they were alone and then found a comfortable branch to sit on. He was hungry. All that marching and running had consumed a lot of his energy, and hiking in a world with such strong gravity didn"t help. So he took out a bing and a chunk of beef, folded the bing around the meat, and started stuffing himself.White Seven took her seat on a clean stone beneath the tree and gracefully drank a swallow of water from her bottle.
Why isn"t she eating? Tang Wulin wondered. Is she not hungry? Then the answer hit him. She doesn"t have anything to eat, because almost all the food that small town can provide today is in my storage rings. He thought he heard her stomach rumbling. He could have offered her something to eat, but he didn"t feel like being a gentleman today.
White Seven stole a glance at him, and just as quickly averted her eyes. She couldn"t bring herself to ask for food from him, partly because she was too prideful and partly because she feared he was still holding a grudge against her for not letting him sleep in their room. But soon her fear gave way to hunger. “Bring down your food to me!” she heard herself say as Tang Wulin started wolfing a second bing.
Tang Wulin didn"t so much as glance at her. She might be a highborn lady, but her manners are far from ladylike.
“Hey, you! Did you hear me? I said, bring down the food!” White Seven flared, lurching to her feet.
“My name is not Hey You. You can call me White Three,” Tang Wulin said, not unkindly.
“You said you were a gentleman. What kind of gentleman watches a girl starve while stuffing himself?” she shouted up.
“The bad kind,” said Tang Wulin, smiling. “I might give you some if you ask nicely.”
“Ask nicely?” White Seven snorted. “I have always had everything handed to me on a silver platter. If you think I"ll ask nicely, you must be crazy.”
Tang Wulin laughed. “I might be crazy, but you"re sick.”
White Seven didn"t understand what he was talking about. “I"m not sick!” she said angrily.
“Yes, you are. You have princess syndrome.”
The girl was infuriated. “Get down here! I"m warning you!”
“No,” Tang Wulin said, eating, wondering what she might do. Then suddenly pain flared up in his head, so sharp that he lost his balance and fell headfirst towards the ground, his bing slipping out of his hand. A spiritual attack? He quickly used his spiritual power to fight it and managed to land on his hands, and then he vaulted backwards onto his feet. He glowered at her.
“You were warned,” she said with a gloating smile.
“You really shouldn"t have done that,” Tang Wulin said, picking up his food. “Our partners.h.i.+p ends here. Now you"re on your own. I"m sure you"ll be fine, since you can always find everything you need on your silver platter.” And with that he started to stride off.
White Seven had never thought he would get so angry, but she would sooner die than entreat him to stay. She s.n.a.t.c.hed up her water bottle and hurled it at him. Tang Wulin whirled around and caught it with his left hand. “I wouldn"t waste water if I were you,” he said, throwing the bottle back at her feet.
At least give me some food before you go! she wanted to say, but she pressed her lips together stubbornly and said nothing, watching him disappear into the distance.
Talk about a spoiled girl! Tang Wulin thought sullenly as he walked. I hope I"ll never see her again. She is so willful! Gu Yue can be willful sometimes, but she is not thoughtless. The thought of Gu Yue slowed his pace. Why are you so distant to me these days? What"s on your mind? Why won"t you tell me?
…
“We"ll arrive at the next city soon,” Xie Xie said excitedly to Yuanen Yehui, who was sitting beside him on a bus. “The tour guide said there are portals leading to other worlds on this continent. Can you believe that?” Yuanen Yehui listened with a bored look on her face.
Xu Xiaoyan was sitting with Yue Zhengyu, and beside Ye Xinglan was Xu Lizhi.
The seat next to Gu Yue was empty, like her heart. “I wish the Captain were here with us,” she heard Xie Xie say. Where are you, Wulin? Are you so busy you can"t even call? She pulled out her soul communicator and stared at it, but in the end she didn"t dial the number. I shouldn"t have promised to enter the inner court with you. No, I should never have befriended you in the first place. She missed him more than she cared to admit.
…
Tang Wulin slid under a large bush on a plain, flat on his belly, and peered up through thick branches. Are those… clouds? he thought, alarmed.
Floating in the sky about 300 feet above the ground were a group of clouds, but unlike normal clouds, they came in seven different colors; red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, and purple. Although their shapes were slowly changing, they always looked like dragons. They were drifting across the sky, but never far away from the plain. Maybe these clouds are the reason why this place is called the Dragon Valley.
He could sense energy in the strange clouds, and somehow he felt an affinity with them, but he was not sure if it was safe to walk under them, so he grabbed up a stone, got back up to his feet, and threw it at one of the clouds.
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