The next day, Ren Xiyang woke up early once again. After waiting until the patrolling guard turned away, he went out through the window.
Ren Xiyang simply ran around the estate, visiting the farms. It was reassuring to know that things were growing free from the taint of the zombie virus.
He was still sore from the exercise yesterday, though.
He walked back to the manor at a sedate pace. He quietly waited for the guard to face the opposite direction and walk a distance before flying back into his rooms.
He only wiped himself off, rather than wasting water on a bath. He straightened his hair again, tying most of it up. Then, he sat down at his desk. Piles of papers with all his notes awaited him.
The lighting in his suite was entirely provided by magical lights which produced a softened version of light that was the same colour as sunlight. He wanted to study how the magical lights worked…but he had already spent the entirety of yesterday on farming and magic-spell-learning.
His primary objective wasn’t ‘to farm’. It was to prevent the future zombie plague-curse from occurring.
If the disease was inevitable or had an unknown origin, then he would need to consider preventative and preparatory measures, such as setting up hospitals and quarantine facilities and communicating germ theory and the necessity of hand-washing.
But the novel laid out the origin of the plague-curse: it was developed in a magical laboratory in the neighbouring kingdom, with the research starting in three years.
Ren Xiyang had many options, some of which involved murder and some of which didn’t.
Murder was definitely the easiest. All it required was Ren Xiyang flying over there, finding the targets, and then killing.
Unfortunately, the problem with assassinating the key people involved was that others could simply step in to take their place, with the murders giving them another reason to continue their research.
He could try and entice some of the magical researchers over to his fief instead. He could fund his own magical research conference, invite those magical researchers, and impart guidelines for ethical research.
He could go to war with the other kingdom, or he could improve diplomatic and trade relationships.
Every option had costs, consequences, uncertainties, risks and trade-offs.
Ren Xiyang grimaced. At the end of the day, it was all politics, annoyingly. If only there was someone who could deal with the politics for him.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
Rian felt a tickle in his nose. He rubbed it casually as he read on the trade and diplomatic relations between his kingdom, Sedaveria, and the Angio Kingdom.
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Rian considered and discarded many options to deal with Angio.
War wasn’t worth it for Sedaveria. Angio wasn’t stronger than them, but they weren’t weak either. Instead of his people dying from the plague-curse, they would be dying on the battlefield instead. The cost to the Imperial coffers would be immense and it would be very difficult for him to convince his Imperial Father to go to war.
After deliberation, Rian felt that the best way to prevent the plague-curse development from beginning was to tie some national interests together. The first step was to have important Angio citizens frequently visiting and staying in Sedaveria and to establish some mutually beneficial trading. As a secondary measure, he wanted to secretly monitor Angio’s healer-researchers.
Everything had a layer of difficulty for Rian: he needed to nudge his Imperial Father to implement all this without his father knowing his true purpose. He might be a prince, and he might be reborn, but he was still constrained in this twelve-year-old body.
Rian raised his head, gazing without focusing on his surroundings. He wondered what Ayden Rosewood planned to do next.
Ren Xiyang was planning to have breakfast next. After the servants knocked, Ren Xiyang went to open the door to let them in.
“Young Master Rosewood, breakfast—” Kel’s eyes widened in shock.
The distinctive red hair was gone! In its place was straight black hair, with part of it tied up. Ayden Rosewood really had used the hair-colour changing charms?!
Ren Xiyang stepped to the side, allowing Kel in.
Kel recovered from her shock. “Young Master Rosewood, was the hair-colour charm suitable?” she asked hesitantly as she placed the tray of breakfast down on the desk.
Ren Xiyang gave the smallest smile, which made him look as young as he should be. “Yes, thank you.”
Kel smiled brightly. “I’m glad you liked it, Young Master Rosewood. For breakfast, the cooks have prepared assorted fruit, small butter pastries, almonds, and a glass of milk.”
After bowing, she left the room and closed the door.
And then she hurried down to the kitchens to update everyone!
While the servants at the Rosewood summer manor were trying to puzzle out their new master, the news of the Rosewood murders and the rumours about ‘Ayden Rosewood’ was the talk at the breakfast table of aristocrats across the kingdom.
How scary that the Rosewood family was assassinated like this! Being a noble wasn’t entirely safe, but no one expected something like this could happen in this day and age.
And who was Ayden Rosewood? Who was the mother of this bastard child? Or, was he not a Rosewood at all, and was merely a scammer? Was this child related to the murderers? Wasn’t his appearance too convenient? Who were the adults behind Ayden Rosewood’s sudden emergence into the limelight?
These rumours were prominent on the minds of the Rosewood managers at the main house in the Capital.
Senior Manager Gregory received Ayden Rosewood’s letter first. He read it, scowled, and then showed it to the other managers.
The managers of the Rosewood estate all had family links to noble houses, albeit from the lowest ranks. They didn’t think that this unknown ‘Ayden Rosewood’ should inherit, let alone order them to pay ‘entitlements’ to the commoner servants. Even if the estate paid ‘entitlements’, who was to say Ayden Rosewood didn’t plan to take that money from the commoner families’ hands afterwards?
In short, Ayden Rosewood’s actions were suspicious, and so after convening, they decided to notify the Investigators at the Capital and submitted the suspicious letter for analysis.
The Capital Investigators then sent the letter to the Investigators on the case at the Rosewood summer manor.
And those Investigators in turn gave a copy to Prince Rian Azure.
It was now evening. Rian had heard from his Royal Guards that they had heard from the Rosewood servants that Ayden Rosewood had dyed his hair black.
Rian also had a copy of Ayden Rosewood’s letter to the Rosewood managers.
Count Aegean was in Rian’s room. He read the letter after Rian finished. He handed the letter back with a snort.
“Who was Ayden Rosewood’s tutor? No respectable noble family has such a policy. Why would anyone pay dead servants who can’t work for six whole months?” Count Aegean shook his head. “Unless Ayden Rosewood has necromancy ties and can animate the dead servants for six months. And you said he dyed his hair black? The late Earl Rosewood would be very unhappy, assuming that Ayden is truly his son.” He stopped and then looked at Prince Rian. “I hope you don’t take that as a prompt to dye your own hair, Prince Rian.”
“I’ll keep that in mind to surprise you,” Rian said with a smile.
Personally, he wasn’t sceptical of Ayden Rosewood in the same way.
He didn’t think Ayden Rosewood was entirely lying. After Ayden Rosewood spoke to him about farming, he had grasped a part of his character. Taking that the Rosewood estate’s money all for himself didn’t seem in character, not when he was very willing to go and farm himself.
“If Ayden Rosewood inherits the estate, he might truly enact this new policy,” Rian said. “In that case, there will be repercussions for the rest of us. What if the servants decide they would rather quit and work for new Earl Ayden Rosewood instead?”
Count Aegean frowned. “The investigation is not over yet, and Ayden Rosewood’s lineage has not even been determined.”
“Then isn’t it about time it’s tested? Everyone is curious, after all.”
Count Aegean pursed his lips.
“I will tell my Imperial Mother later,” Rian decided.
“Don’t dwell too long on it,” Count Aegean said in a warning tone. “Let’s continue your study of the Angio Kingdom.”
“Angio has some delicacies that we don’t have. Do you think Imperial Mother would like to have some of those served at one of the upcoming social functions? We can have some Angio nobility and their chefs visit. Of course, we’ll also have delicacies from the Aegean fief,” Rian added.
Count Aegean had a hint of approval on his face. “It’s good that Your Highness is finally taking an interest in the social functions. For you, more than any other, these social events are where you will form the networks to serve you into the future…”
Rian put on an attentive listening expression. In comparison to nudging his Imperial Father, planting seeds of ideas in Count Aegean was easy.
Count Aegean: Don’t dye your hair too!
Rian: I wasn’t planning to, but maybe I will now.
Count Aegean: ….
Thank you for the update ❤️💯
Thank you for reading!
تيx ❤️❤️❤️❤️
🤗🤗🤗🤗
Thanks for the update. Lol ayden is undoubtedly gonna make part of his land into a resort of some sort and have novel specialty products on his farms
Thank you for reading! We’ll see hahahah
Looks like Rian has the politics sorted.
😏😏😏😏 I’m glad the transition to Rian was obvious 🤭
and another thing is, uhh.. why is one country able to create a biological weapon, while another’s nobles has servants manually removing bathwater bc there’s no plumbing.. tho it is called a plague-curse so maybe it’s magical, and if it does have to do with magic how did they make sure the researchers didnt get the plague, how did they transport it, how come they didnt protect the peasants if they were able to protect the researchers? shouldnt they know how? even if they didnt take precautionary measures, once they realized it affected their citizens why couldnt they stop the spread? were they lacking the resources to do so? if so why did they do something so risky????
idk jus my thoughts. also im sorry for the horrendous grammar… it isnt my strong point…………
Since there has been disease (bacteria, viruses, etc) people have been able to use “bioweapons”. Just send one or more diseased persons or infected items to the target population. (Ex. In colonial days, settlers in America gave the Native Americans blankets with the smallpox virus. )
I imagine an easy bioweapon in this setting would be to take airborne virus and apply wind magic to allow it to diffuse further or fire magic to keep it alive at optimal temperatures.
?maybe i miss the plumbing
and yh ik abt sending infected pple, it’s jus i got the vibe they developed it themselves.
never considrered using wind and fire magic to spread it, seems cool to consider all the possibilities w/ magic in this novel.
Thanks for your analysis 🥰
Now, plumbing was definitely mentioned as existing in the Rosewood summer manor, but simply no hot water.
As for your other concerns…we’ll see if I can answer them in-story in the later future 😆
thank you for writing such an immersive novel 💕
yh i seemed to miss the plumbing.
thank you for considering my comments ^^
🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗 Thank you for reading~!
Thanks for the chapter! Wait, wasn’t the secret communication room only accessible to members of the Rosewood family? So, wouldn’t that prove he’s a Rosewood?
The secret room can only be found/entered by a Rosewood and the Duke’s special communication crystal requires the Duke or Ayden. But I think that crystal might be in the secret room so… the investigators don’t know about it.
The Investigators know that the crystal exists–since Ren Xiyang contacted them via it. However, again, other people may not realise that there are anti-Rosewood spells on it, and that could be tampered with (Ayden Rosewood is apparently a super strong mage!), so these things can’t be used as ‘proof’ that Ayden Rosewood is a Rosewood.
Thank you for reading! The secret room is still a secret, and even if it wasn’t a secret, the others wouldn’t know that only Rosewoods can enter it, because it’s not obvious!
Rebellious rian 😂
Ren Xiyang is so good at showing the way to rebellion haha
thanks for the chapter <3
Thank you for reading! 🤗
Thank you for the chapter!! <3
Thank you for reading! 🤗🤗
I love how Ayden is casually proving he was not raised as nobility. So, when his pedigree comes back, there will be no question he is a bastard. Best thing is that when asked who his mother is, he can say he doesn’t know or give his real mother’s name from the first world. Won’t matter.
Ren Xiyang doesn’t care LOL. He has had enough of higher-ups being stuck up and all that from the zombie apocalypse, really has no intention to join such an uncool group 😂😂😂😂
Hahahaha! Thanks for the update! Enjoying the comments too! 🤣
Thank you 🤗🤗🤗
Necromancy!? Sit you’re saying some heavy accusations!
It’s getting so good! Thank you!!
🤗🤗🤗🤗 Thank you for reading!
Count Aegean would become his scapegoat in his early stage.. how convenient
Count Aegean is going to suffer u_u