Volume One: The Youngest of the Three Hundred, Chapter Eighty-Seven: As Desired

Chen Chang'an was speechless. In the heart of the capital, beneath the Son of Heaven’s own feet, theft had actually been committed so brazenly. Was there any law left in this world? Any justice at all?

“Even my things dare be touched by you bastards... I...” Chen Chang'an tried his best to say something fierce, but in the end nothing truly threatening came out.

With no other choice, he asked everyone nearby, even Liu Zhuan, who was in charge of recording star points beneath the tent. Yet not the slightest clue was found. By all ordinary reasoning, outsiders could not enter the Black-Robed Guard compound, so the thief had to be one of their own. But how had he done it without a sound or trace? Could it have been Song Jiu? That fellow certainly bore him a grudge.

Still, the hidden name talisman given by Hua Mulan was still in place, which meant the other side had plainly come for the sword alone. An orc? No... it was said there were prohibitions in Chang'an City, and foreign races could not enter.

“What a pain. This is giving me two heads’ worth of trouble. Fine, forget it for now. I’d better go settle the issue of the two deputy commanders both wanting to claim me—no, both wanting to have me under them.”

With that thought, Chen Chang'an turned back the way he had come.

Cao Wu and Cheng Mulong called out in unison from far away, “Where’s the sword?”

Chen Chang'an let his mouth droop and said gloomily, “Lost it.”

“Oh, so it was lost after all!”

“I see, lost, right?”

Their voices were bright with delight.

Chen Chang'an blinked in confusion. “What are you laughing at?”

With a thunderous crash, two surging waves of internal force answered him, fierce enough to smash through all obstacles in their path. From start to finish, neither of them had cared much about the sword he spoke of. They had only treated it as a brief interruption.

Since the interruption had failed to materialize, they might as well keep fighting.

Chen Chang'an was exhausted. All this daily sparring and internal killing would make outsiders think he was some kind of conniving little flirt, all right? So he hurriedly raised his hands to stop them.

“Two commanders, would you hear me out for a moment?”

Cao Wu and Cheng Mulong both turned to look at him, though the power in their hands remained fully gathered, each wary of a surprise attack from the other.

That tiny detail only made Chen Chang'an more determined to end this once and for all.

He straightened his back and drew a coin from his robes, then flicked it onto his index finger. It spun with a faint hum before he said, “How about this: I’ll toss it three times. If heads appears more often, I’ll go under Commander Cao. If tails appears more often, I’ll go under Commander Cheng. How does that sound?”

“Deal!”

Cheng Mulong agreed at once, thinking to himself, This falls perfectly within the controllable range of my Wish-Fulfillment art. Ha ha ha!

Cao Wu saw the smug look on his face and immediately knew he was up to no good, but just as she was about to object, she caught Chen Chang'an winking at her. What did that mean? Was he on my side? Did he have a plan?

“All right... fine!” she finally agreed, somewhat reluctantly.

So Chen Chang'an flicked the coin with two fingers. It traced a graceful arc through the air and landed with a clink.

Heads.

Cao Wu chuckled. “Ha!”

Cheng Mulong, who had clearly used his origin art without a trace of emotion to control the situation, merely raised an eyebrow.

Chen Chang'an kept an expression of absolute fairness, as though he favored no one. He picked up the coin and tossed it again.

Tails.

Cheng Mulong burst out laughing. “Ha ha ha!”

The corner of Cao Wu’s mouth twitched. “...”

Chen Chang'an remained perfectly calm. He picked up the coin and flipped it a third time. It rang as it hit the ground, spun a few times, and came to rest on heads.

Cheng Mulong nearly exploded on the spot. “This... this is impossible! I clearly...”

Cao Wu lifted her chin proudly. “Well? A bet is a bet. Chen Chang'an will be joining my command. There are so many newcomers in the training ground over there. If you refuse to honor your word, it’ll ruin your reputation if it gets out.”

“I...”

“This... impossible. Absolutely impossible!”

Cheng Mulong’s confident expression shattered to pieces. Just as Cao Wu had said, many newcomers were practicing nearby in the training ground. He had no face to deny it. Furious, he snorted, “Fine... fine!”

He tossed down the words and swept off in a huff.

Cao Wu gave a satisfied nod. After instructing Cai'er to handle a few matters, she turned back to Chen Chang'an with the avid curiosity of a gossip-lover. “Hey, tell me. How did you tamper with Cheng Mulong’s origin art?”

“What... what do you mean?” Chen Chang'an did not even understand the punctuation.

Cao Wu explained, “Cheng Mulong’s fifth origin art, Wish-Fulfillment, can, in a certain sense, make a coin land however he wants with a one-hundred-percent success rate. And yet he only succeeded once just now, while the other two tosses still favored me.”

Damn. The fifth origin art, Wish-Fulfillment? That sounded incredibly impressive. Chen Chang'an hadn’t even known it existed.

In truth, every result had been produced by the secret art he used to reverse fate and draw spirit, and the reason he had let the second toss come up tails was simply to avoid being too obvious and raising suspicion, or worse, creating an imbalance in Cheng Mulong’s mind.

He had never imagined that Wish-Fulfillment was involved too.

It seemed Hua Jie’s thousand-year secret art was truly overbearing. Even Cheng Mulong, a seventh-rank life-and-death realm expert, had no choice but to swallow the loss. Of course, if they were to clash head-on, Chen Chang'an knew very well there was no comparison.

It should have been his reversing art that was immune to Wish-Fulfillment, one-sidedly.

Watching Cheng Mulong’s departing back, Chen Chang'an felt an inexplicable sting in his heart and silently apologized. Commander Cheng, I really used this method because I did not want to see the two of you fight over me.

After all, I did promise Sister Wu first. But rest assured, no matter whose command I’m under, I, Chen Chang'an, will still be one of the Black-Robed Guard, and I guarantee I’ll come whenever I’m called.

An apology alone did not seem enough. Fine, he would treat him to a meal another day.

“Hey, I’m talking to you!” Cao Wu waved at the dazed man.

“Oh! Oh! Oh!” Chen Chang'an jolted back to his senses. “That... because this coin was the Five-Element Coin gifted by Lord Li, maybe it can block certain origin arts. I didn’t even know Wish-Fulfillment existed. In the end, I just got lucky!”

He threw the blame onto Li Shu.

“All right.” Cao Wu chose to believe him. She could not help feeling relieved that Wish-Fulfillment had failed to produce a concrete effect, or else Chen Chang'an might truly have slipped through her fingers.

“Ah!” At that moment, a certain son-in-law surnamed Chen suddenly slapped his thigh.

Cao Wu stared. “What’s wrong?”

Chen Chang'an said excitedly, “Wish-Fulfillment! It’s Wish-Fulfillment! I’ll have to properly beg Commander Cheng for a fortune someday, maybe get a few strokes of peach-blossom luck out of it!”

“Uh...”

Cao Wu looked at him as though he were some country bumpkin who had never seen the world. She explained, “Wish-Fulfillment is indeed powerful, but it’s still bound by rules. It only works on things that are relatively possible. It has to make sense. The cause and process must already exist objectively. It can’t be used however one pleases.”

“To give a simple example, in a fight, it can’t directly make an enemy die, but with its blessing it can guarantee that the attack you launch will land.”

“Got it. So that’s how it is!”

Chen Chang'an nodded in deep understanding.

In other words, for Wish-Fulfillment to take effect, there had to be a node in which a desired outcome could plausibly emerge. It also had to concern something relatively probable, and the relationship and logic involved could not be too complicated.

Otherwise, why would Cheng Mulong have agreed to coin tosses at all? He could have simply invoked a thought: Chen Chang'an is mine, Cao Wu should die.

Or even more ruthlessly, he could have quietly killed Bai Wan and become the emperor of Da Min himself, founding the Min dynasty as its first ancestor...

Meanwhile, after leaving the empty ground where the coin toss had taken place, Cheng Mulong walked away with a dark and tense expression, deeply displeased. He had clearly used Wish-Fulfillment throughout the whole process, so why had it succeeded only on the second toss?

“Could it be that my realm has recently slipped, making the effect unstable?”

He began to doubt himself and wanted to test it. Not far away, he saw one of the Black-Robed Guard members practicing swordplay and muttered under his breath, “Swinging that fast... it’s not impossible to stab your own toes.”

The words had barely left his mouth when that Black-Robed Guard member let out a scream and collapsed, clutching his foot, his body trembling slightly.

“Hmm. So it works? Let’s try again.”

His gaze then fell upon the long pole on the balcony of the women’s residential building, strung with drying clothes. “Hanging so many at once? Of course it’ll snap.”

Crack.

The effect returned immediately. A crisp wooden snap rang out, and in an instant the air filled with a storm of women’s garments falling like meteors: skirts, inner robes, short jackets, belly wraps, underpants...

Cheng Mulong: “...”

From the building, female members shrieked, “Ah!”

By evening, as the sun sank in the west, Song Jiu finished the tasks assigned for the day and completed the bookkeeping and assessment. He then left Black-Robed Alley and headed out, preparing to return to the inn where he was temporarily staying.

Along the way, when he passed a street corner, he overheard a man selling oil cakes speaking animatedly. “Do you know? There’s a new recruit in the Black-Robed Guard named Song Jiu. He made a bet with Chen Chang'an that if he lost, he’d kneel and apologize, but in the end he refused to admit defeat.”

The man selling dates beside him replied, “Of course I know. The whole street’s talking about it.”

“...”

“...”

An old man smoking a dry pipe joined the conversation. “Yes, yes... Song Jiu is the kind of man who doesn’t keep his promises. He’s not fit to enter the Black-Robed Guard at all.”

Song Jiu, who happened to be passing by, instantly flushed red with anger and grabbed the old man by the collar. “Who said that?”

The old man trembled. “I-it was Old Lady Wang, the melon seller, who told me. I...”

So frightened he nearly collapsed, Old Lady Wang sat down hard and smashed several green-and-red watermelons. “It was Ma Laosi, the one selling roasted meat, who said it!”

Ma Laosi’s heart skipped a beat. “It was Zhang Eryan, the one selling mutton offal, who said it.”

Zhang Eryan caught sight of Song Jiu for only a moment before burying his head between his legs in terror. “I-it was someone from your Black-Robed Guard who just passed by here... he gave me silver and told me to say it!”

“Chen Chang'an!”

Song Jiu’s furious roar echoed through the street.

No wonder that surnamed Chen had seemed so calm when he refused to apologize. So this was the trap he had laid.

At the same time, in front of the Su family manor in Yong'an Ward, Chen Chang'an dragged back his exhausted body after a whole day of running about to complete his tasks and accumulate star points. Just as he was about to push the door open, the two wooden panels swung outward from inside.

It was his second sister-in-law, Su Wanqing.

Before he could even greet her, Su Wanqing spotted him and rushed over as though she had seen her own father, clutching his arms. “Oh, thank heavens, you’re finally back! Hurry, hurry, Big Brother is looking for you!”

“Uh...”

Chen Chang'an immediately knitted his brows into two tight twists. What did his useless brother-in-law, Su Dingfeng, want with him? Sparring in shameless tricks?