147: Chapter 147 Luckily, I wasn't the transmigrator.

The stone slab was clean now, bearing only a yellow sign personally carved by The King in Yellow.

Xie Feng felt this matter was very strange, but he couldn't quite put his finger on what was strange about it.

It seemed to be a loop.

"Old Zhou, you must keep this stone slab safe. If this thing gets passed down to the sixteenth generation, it'll end up back in my hands again."

Zhou Shudan raised his head to look at Xie Feng, then lowered his head to look at the slightly warm stone slab in his hand.

"We do not know what the future fate of this stone slab will be, but We know that today's grace cannot be so easily scattered, nor can we allow future emperors to forget how they sat upon this chair."

He shoved the stone slab into his hand.

"When the child named Emperor Zhou Weixi ascends the throne, We will have our descendants hand it over to him."

Xie Feng stood up and patted the dust off his knees.

Tu Ziguan and Lu Mingyuan had already packed up, and the three of them bade farewell to Zhou Shudan by the shore of Black Water Lake.

Zhou Shudan stood among the nine giant boulders, his bright yellow dragon robe fluttering slightly in the lake breeze.

He did not say goodbye, but merely cupped his hands and said, "Pass on Our regards to the child named Emperor Zhou Weixi."

Xie Feng nodded, spreading the five fingers of his right hand. Silvery-white threads of magic surged from his fingertips, tearing open an azure mirror surface in the air.

The King in Yellow stood upon the eaves of the pavilion, his tattered robe sleeves gently sweeping through the air.

This time, the edges of the Spacetime Gate were extremely stable without any deviation.

That bright yellow ray of light fell silently from His fingertips onto the mirror surface of the Spacetime Gate, and the azure slowly precipitated into an extremely faint and transparent silvery-white.

Yog-Sothoth's Gate Guide leaped gently in Xie Feng's right eye socket, as if greeting this Lord of the Deep Space Starry Sea.

Xie Feng stepped across into the Spacetime Gate, with Tu Ziguan and Lu Mingyuan following closely behind.

The deck of the flying boat solidified once again beneath their feet.

Xie Feng opened his eyes and found himself standing by the side of the flying boat's railing, in the exact same spot where he had been thrown away before being hurled by the Spacetime Gate.

Outside the porthole was that familiar desert at the edge of Yongzhou, and the flying boat's levitating wooden hull was humming slowly and steadily.

The Third Princess stood before him, her dark black martial attire still stained with dust picked up during the teleportation deviation, with Zhou Jinglan and Xu Liujing standing behind her.

Her mouth was open, clearly having been speaking to the others on the deck just a moment ago, only to be interrupted by the three people suddenly appearing out of thin air.

"You—" The Third Princess's gaze swept from Xie Feng's face to Tu Ziguan's face, then from Tu Ziguan to Lu Mingyuan, and finally landed back on Xie Feng. "Where did you go just now? The three of you suddenly vanished for a whole night! This Princess sent Imperial Guards to search every corner within dozens of li, but we couldn't even find a shadow of a person."

The flow of time wasn't even the same? Only a single night had passed?

That bastard Lu Mingyuan lied again; sooner or later, I'll beat all the goods out of his mouth.

Xie Feng struck the cold crystal blind staff against the deck and tilted his head to glance at Tu Ziguan.

Tu Ziguan was currently slipping the jade thumb ring rewarded by Zhou Shudan onto his thumb. Sensing Xie Feng's gaze, he shrugged:

"Don't look at me, you tell it. My ears haven't fully recovered yet."

Lu Mingyuan had already sat down cross-legged by the ship's railing, fishing out that bronze communicator from his bundle to start recording something, showing completely no intention of helping to explain.

"Fine."

Xie Feng turned around to face the Third Princess and Zhou Jinglan:

"We were thrown by the Spacetime Gate to the border of Yongzhou several hundred years ago. We stayed there for a few days, and by the way helped The Tenth Emperor, Zhou Shudan, quell a palace rebellion. The Taixuan Sect joined forces with a dozen Sects in Yuzhou to besiege the imperial city, and Zhou Shudan only had a few hundred Imperial Guards and a few old retainers in his hands. Later, I invited their family's The King in Yellow down, and that bunch of Cultivators are probably still lying flat on the square of the Hall of Supreme Harmony."

The Third Princess's brows slowly furrowed, Zhou Jinglan's folding fan froze mid-air, and the Seal carving knife in Xu Liujing's hand dropped straight onto the deck.

"Can you repeat what you just said in the language of Jiuzhou? Do you dare guarantee it will be exactly the same?"

Third Princess Zhou Tanghua revealed the same look one would give to a lunatic, identical to that of the Taixuan Sect master.

"Hold on." Zhou Jinglan closed his folding fan and took a step forward. "What did you just say? The Tenth Late Emperor? It is our Zhou family's Tenth Late Emperor, Zhou Shudan. The three of you disappeared inside the Spacetime Gate for merely a single night, yet you arrived hundreds of years ago, helped the Late Emperor quell a rebellion, and even alarmed The King in Yellow."

"Right." Tu Ziguan finally secured the jade thumb ring, raising his left hand to shake it in the sunlight. "Bestowed by your ancestor, made of jade, not a PVC pipe."

Xie Feng added without turning his head, "Besides, Zhou Jinglan wouldn't understand what a PVC pipe is."

Zhou Jinglan quite cooperatively shook his folding fan twice: "No need to understand, but it doesn't sound like anything good."

The Third Princess ignored their banter and pulled the topic back on track: "Tell it from the beginning. What on earth did you guys experience over there?"

Xie Feng scratched his head, indicating that what he said was the truth.

With no other choice, he could only lean against the ship's railing and recount from the beginning.

From being thrown by the Spacetime Gate to Fengle City, from Chen Xiaohe being forced into a ghost marriage to him and Tu Ziguan breaking into the Zhao family residence and slapping the corpse-transformed Zhao Yuankui flying with a single palm, from the collusion of the Chisha Sect and the Taixuan Sect in forcing a palace coup to hundreds of Cultivators besieging the three of them in the square, from his magic power being exhausted, stuffing the stone slab into his abdominal cavity and using Cthugha's flames to dry Cthulhu's damp aura, to when Aldebaran was at the exact center of the zenith, using ten Byakhee to forcefully meet the conditions to invite down the Clone of The King in Yellow.

"Wait." Zhou Jinglan raised a hand to interrupt him, pushing his own jaw back into place. "You invited a Clone of The King in Yellow down? Above the Hall of Supreme Harmony?? And let hundreds of rebellious Cultivators see it???"

"It wasn't a Clone; The King in Yellow came over in person."

Xie Feng corrected him.

The Third Princess fell silent for a moment, asking him if he had truly seen The Tenth Emperor in person.

Xie Feng said yes, just like her imperial father, he was also a Mortal.

She lowered her head and smiled slightly, then raised her head, the expression on her face returning to her usual composure.

"This Princess once flipped through the diary of daily activities of The Tenth Late Emperor. There was a passage stating that he once dreamed of an otherworldly person in a black robe. There were only a few brief sentences in the diary, and This Princess always thought it was a legend fabricated by later generations. Now you're telling This Princess that otherworldly person in a black robe was actually you?!"

She murmured to herself.

"Wait, that black robe was actually given by me??y"

Zhou Jinglan reopened his folding fan, paced half a circle on the deck, and suddenly stopped. "Young Master Xie, this humble one has another matter that remains unclear. You just said you called the Late Emperor 'Old Zhou'."

"He didn't object."

Xie Feng kept a straight face.

The Third Princess gave a light cough and turned her face away.

Xu Liujing finally picked up the Seal carving knife from the deck, his facial expression still blank, but he had already given up on questioning any details. He had fought side by side with Xie Feng during the Shituolin Swamp incident in the imperial city and knew deeply that the strange things happening to this person were endless to pursue.

Furthermore, for such imperial matters, it was fine to listen with one's ears, but there was no brain capacity to hold it.

Zhou Jinglan closed his folding fan and put it back at his waist, turning towards the cabin direction. "Since the three of you have returned from the Late Emperor's place, the luck of this expedition shouldn't be too bad. The levitating wooden hull has been replaced, and we can set off at any time."

The Third Princess nodded, turned around and walked towards the upper level of the flying boat. After a few steps, she stopped and turned her head to look at Xie Feng.

"Xie Feng, what did the Late Emperor leave to say to my Imperial Father?"

Xie Feng leaned against the ship's railing and thought about it. He turned Zhou Shudan's words "Pass on Our regards to the child named Emperor Zhou Weixi" over in his mind, and relayed it to her in a different phrasing.

"He hopes that every generation of emperors will remember that the dragon chair is not about power, but duty."

Tu Ziguan gave Xie Feng a thumbs up.

"What emotional intelligence."