"You're awake?"
The voice of Nan Gongyang echoed.
YU Yao heard the sound and immediately raised her head. She saw that Nan Gongyang had already entered the room without her knowledge, sitting on a chair and sipping tea at the table.
Is she too absorbed in thought? She didn't notice when he entered the room. It seems that Nan Gongyang's martial arts should be very high.
Si Qin had turned pale with fear early on. She had just been reporting to her master about the matter of the Marquis' son, and now he appeared behind her in a blink. This was too shocking.
She felt that the Marquis seemed like a ghost. He entered without making a sound.
YU Yao was surprised for a moment, but soon regained her composure. Then she walked towards him, "Did you go to Damu Pavilion today?"
Si Qin looked at Nan Gongyang guiltily, and seeing that the Marquis did not look at her, quickly slipped away.
Nan Gongyang furrowed his eyebrows slightly, conveying a sense of seriousness, "Master Huicong told me something."
He didn't want to say more about it.
There's no need for her to worry.
YU Yao originally wanted to ask what it was, but seeing that he didn't want to talk about it, she didn't ask either.
"Where is the food? I'm hungry!" she said to him.
Nan Gongyang smiled faintly, "I had someone make sweet and sour fish for you. It's kept warm in the small kitchen. I'll have someone bring it to you."
"This is a temple. Eating meat is not appropriate, is it?" YU Yao furrowed her brow and looked at him.
"No problem. We are not members of the temple, so we don't need to observe those taboos!"
Nan Gongyang's eyes flickered with a subtle glint, his gaze resting on her still flat abdomen.
"You are pregnant, and your nutritional requirements will not keep up with a vegetarian diet!" he said seriously.
YU Yao was unaware of the tricks behind the meals and felt reasonable, so she didn't say anything.
The food was brought by Yuan Chun, consisting of four dishes and one soup, two of them meat and the other two vegetarian.
After seeing what the dishes were, she was taken aback.
Sweet and sour fish, sweet and sour pork ribs, vinegar stir-fried shrimp, fish-flavored eggplant, pickled radish old goose soup.
YU Yao: (...)
"Why are they all sour?"
Thinking of the events that happened during the day, she couldn't understand anything, but this man was hinting to her that he was jealous.
She cast her gaze towards the man across from her and said, with anger, "You can have these all to yourself!"
Subsequently, she turned to leave.
Nan Gongyang coughed lightly twice, awkwardly hurried to hold her and apologize, "I'm sorry. I just couldn't stand seeing you in that way from the Prince today."
This explains why all four dishes were sour.
YU Yao was still angry, speaking seriously, "I haven't even met him alone, let alone talked to him. How can he look at me like that be my business?"
This stubborn man, tomorrow I'll cook a table of pickled cabbage for you, see if you can eat it down.
"Xiao Yao, I'm not angry with you or blaming you. I just..."
Nan Gongyang's brow furrowed slightly, unsure of how to describe that particular feeling.
The thought of his wife being cherished by another man, especially one as prominent as the Crown Prince, made him feel very uncomfortable and distressed.
There was also an unvented anger bottling up inside him.
At this moment, the system suddenly appeared, "Host, Nan Gongyang's popularity has increased to 83."
YU Yao was slightly stunned, looking at Nan Gongyang with her eyes. How could the popularity increase to 83 when it was only 78? Or had it directly broken through to 83?
Could it be that because of the Crown Prince's antics, Nan Gongyang felt a sense of crisis and realized how much he cared for her?
Nan Gongyang's eyes were filled with gentle waters, and he reached out to embrace her, speaking in a low voice, "Yao Er, if... if one day he uses force to force you... how will you respond?"
"Hmm?" YU Yao looked at him curiously, "I am already your princess, and even if he is attracted to my beauty and has thoughts about me, he cannot act so openly, right?"
"If it got out, for a crown prince to be thinking about his uncle's daughter-in-law would be indecent. A prince with such morals could not ascend the throne, could he?"
She genuinely didn't take it to heart. The Crown Prince is currently only infatuated with her beauty, and will eventually come to his senses.
"It's unlikely he would do so before ascending the throne. I'm talking about the future..."
Nan Gongyang looked as if he wanted to say more but held back, mainly because of a precedent in Jing Dynasty that made him worry.
He was afraid that he might become the second Qin Wang, and Nan Gongmo would be the Martial Annihilation Emperor.
Especially today, Master Huicong especially reminded him to cherish the woman in front of him, saying that if he didn't, he would live a lonely life and regret it for the rest of his life.
This further set his heart pounding.
YU Yao glanced at him sideways, "What if the future happens? Can he dare to snatch the wife of his subject? If the news gets out, the spit of the common people can drown him. Moreover, I'm not that important to him, and why would he go to such lengths?"
She's not a seductive fox spirit from the fairy world, luring men's souls.
"But as the protagonist, you're not much different from a fox spirit!"
The cold and abrupt voice of the system suddenly echoed in her mind.
YU Yao's face turned dark, and without hesitation, she closed the system in a small house.
Seeing that Nan Gongyang was still looking worried.
YU Yao pretended not to see that and didn't want to continue this topic with him.
She did not eat those dishes but had vegetarian food at the temple instead.
After dinner, they wandered around the temple, all the way to the waterfall at the back of the mountain.
Seeing the fish swimming in the water, she suddenly wanted to eat grilled fish.
The vegetarian meals at the temple really had no meat or fish, so now seeing fish, she couldn't resist the temptation.
Nan Gongyang saw her greedy look and smiled faintly, taking the initiative to catch two fish from the water to grill them.
It smelled quite good grilled.
She never knew that Nan Gongyang had such a skill.
This scene was seen by the Crown Prince, who had been strolling around idly, his face fell, and he stalked away with a dark expression.
YU Yao didn't notice the Crown Prince, but Nan Gongyang noticed. There was an almost imperceptible flash of light in his eyes, and he gently curved his lips.
The next day, the masters from the temple came to find them, suggesting that they try not to light fires in the back mountain and avoid killing animals in the temple as much as possible.
Although it was expressed in a roundabout way, it was roughly that message.
Both of them were quite embarrassed and kept saying they wouldn't do it again.
YU Yao was afraid to go to the back mountain to catch fish and eat it, so she stuck to the vegetarian meals provided by the temple.
Nan Gongyang felt pity for her and also for the child in her belly, and secretly held a grudge against the Crown Prince.
Not long after, it was reported that the Crown Prince had poor appetite, as if he couldn't get used to the vegetarian meals provided by the temple.
Everyone simply thought that the Crown Prince had grown up in luxury and was used to delicacies, so naturally he couldn't get used to the vegetarian meals in the temple.
The Crown Prince wasn't just finding the vegetarian meals in the temple hard to eat; each dish had been added an excessive amount of vinegar, which was enough to make one's teeth ache. Anyone would find it hard to stomach.
The Crown Prince's fiancee was also affected, and she secretly cursed the temple's vegetarian meal cooks, wondering why they would send such terrible dishes without even tasting them themselves.
The Crown Prince knew it was Nan Gongyang who played the trick, his face turned black but he didn't say anything. He just told his subordinates to redo the dishes.
After staying in the temple for two days, the Water and Land Rituals officially began.
The lecture hall of Wan'an Temple.
"Thud!"
A single bell rang, echoing throughout the area, and all around fell silent.
A quarter of an hour later, an old monk dressed in robes, quietly walked onto the stage to deliver a sermon.
"Based on the three laws as the unity, and the law of enlightenment as the path. Open and named, changing and expanding further. The law, although divided into three parts,..."
Everyone in the audience, except the old monk on the stage, stood to listen, including the Crown Prince Nan Gongmo with a serious expression on his face.
The Crown Prince's fiancée, Third Prince, Third Prince's wife, First Princess and King Jin were all here.
As for YU Yao, she hadn't gone to listen to the sermon at all; instead, she was leisurely wandering around the ancient temple with her music and painting attendants.
She didn't want to listen because she didn't think a cultivator needed to listen to a monk preaching about Buddhist sutras. It was ridiculous.
Secondly, she also wanted to take this opportunity to deal with the people sent by Zhaomin Marquis to confront her.
She had been with Nan Gongyang every day and had never acted alone, which caused that person to delay their attack.
YU Yao no longer wanted to wait. She didn't feel safe sleeping at night until she removed the potential threat.
Nan Gongyang was worried about her being alone, so he wanted to be with her, but she had tricked him into listening to the old monk's sermon.
If Nan Gongyang followed her, the person hidden in the shadows wouldn't have come out.
