Over the next few days, Zhao Sui took Yao Lin and the two imperial sons-in-law to the outer mountains to test the power of the gunpowder, observing the variations in impact caused by different amounts and distances. Meanwhile, Yao Huang and Li Fuwei stayed in the Northern Park to teach the Eldest Princess and the Second Princess how to shoot arrows. When they grew tired of archery, the four women would go horseback riding, boating on the lake, or climbing high to enjoy the distant views.
With the crisp autumn air, Yao Huang absolutely loved such carefree days. She even felt that as long as she could enjoy a few consecutive days of such unbridled fun every year, she could accept living in the imperial palace for the rest of the year.
Perhaps the royal ancestor who decided to build the Northern Park Palace here had thought the same thing?
After three days of archery lessons, the Second Princess no longer wanted to practice; she was eager to head straight to the hunting grounds to try her hand at the real thing.
The temporary palace specially raised a batch of prey. When the masters sent word that they wanted to hunt, the Imperial Guards would first dispatch a group of guards to patrol the hunting grounds to ensure no wild beasts had wandered in. Then, the palace servants in charge of raising the animals would release the corresponding prey into the enclosure according to the masters' requests.
If it were just Yao Huang and Li Fuwei, Yao Huang would have dared to release a wolf or two to add to the excitement. However, since they were bringing the Eldest and Second Princesses, Yao Huang prioritized safety. She only had the servants release twenty rabbits, twenty pheasants, ten river deer, and two half-grown female wild boars.
As the servants released the prey, Yao Huang and the other three watched from the entrance of the hunting grounds.
The Second Princess was somewhat disappointed. "Why didn't they release any foxes? Red foxes or white foxes would both be fine."
Yao Huang replied, "...It's easy to release them, but if we fail to hunt them down, the servants will have to come in and catch them later. We are just itching for some amusement; why torment the servants?"
When hunters went into the mountains, just encountering a fox was a reason to rejoice, let alone successfully hunting one.
Now, they had specifically enclosed a hunting ground and released prey into it. This was not a grand hunting competition like those held by Emperor Yongchang, so releasing ordinary prey was enough to satisfy their need for recreation. If they released foxes, they would have to search all over the mountain. Yao Huang and Li Fuwei each had to look after a princess, so hunting easily encountered rabbits and pheasants was sufficient; foxes were out of the question.
Once the prey had hidden in the low hills in the middle of the enclosure, Yao Huang teamed up with the Second Princess, and Li Fuwei teamed up with the Eldest Princess. Each group set off, followed by two guards keeping a respectful distance.
At noon, the Crown Prince's party returned from their outside testing. Yao Lin and the others rested and ate in the outer court's official quarters, while Zhao Sui entered the inner court alone.
Returning to Yunshan Hall, Zhao Sui first noticed a pheasant trapped under a bamboo basket in the front courtyard. Startled by the arrival of him and Qingai, the pheasant weakly flapped its wings a couple of times.
Just then, the Crown Princess came running from the backyard, joyfully saying, "Your Highness, guess what I hunted today?"
Zhao Sui looked at the pheasant again.
Yao Huang said, "This is just something I caught in passing. There's something even better."
Zhao Sui asked, "A deer?"
Yao Huang replied, "Deer are too beautiful. I couldn't bear to have them released inside."
Zhao Sui then asked, "A river deer or a wild boar?"
Standing under the eaves, the Crown Princess instantly smiled brilliantly, "One of each!"
Pushing the Crown Prince into the room, Yao Huang excitedly recounted the events to him. At first, she had intended to focus on guiding the Second Princess, but the Second Princess's aim was too poor. Whenever she missed, she would urge Yao Huang to quickly help. When Yao Huang hit the target, the Second Princess would be as thrilled as if she had made the shot herself. Consequently, it turned into the Second Princess simply riding her horse and following Yao Huang, while Yao Huang chased and shot the prey.
The hunting ground was quite large. Yao Huang and the other three women couldn't surround the low hills like the hundred-odd military officers had done the previous year. With more places for the prey to hide, it became harder for Yao Huang and her group to spot them. Li Fuwei, who had to divide her attention to look after the Eldest Princess, only managed to hunt three river deer, and the other wild boar had disappeared to who knows where. The Eldest Princess had good luck; with Li Fuwei's help in driving the prey, she shot a rabbit, which provoked the Second Princess into declaring that she would definitely shoot her own arrows next time.
Zhao Sui was long past the age of getting excited over hunting, but he loved seeing the Crown Princess in such high spirits.
"How did things go on Your Highness's end?" After finishing her own story, Yao Huang turned her concern to the heavy gunpowder testing.
Zhao Sui replied, "Today we chose a mountain peak with a side entirely made of hard rock cliffs. We used a hundred catties of heavy gunpowder three times in a row, blasting out a mountain path over three zhang deep and more than one zhang high."
Yao Huang said in pleasant surprise, "Doesn't that mean, just as Your Highness originally envisioned, heavy gunpowder can be used in the future to mine mountains or open mountain roads?"
Rocks were so hard. A crater blasted by a hundred catties of heavy gunpowder might take a person a whole month of manual labor to excavate, not to mention the physical toll such as a sore back and numb hands.
Zhao Sui nodded. With heavy gunpowder, many construction projects in the future would yield twice the result with half the effort, and even some previously deemed impossible projects could be accomplished.
Yao Huang could feel the Crown Prince's lofty ambitions, and she rejoiced that the national strength of the Great Qi could take another step forward.
But those things required careful, long-term planning. Right now, what she should be happy about was that the Crown Prince had finally finished his busy work and could also properly enjoy himself in the Northern Park.
That evening, the Crown Prince hosted a banquet by the lake outside the temporary palace to reward all the officials from the Gunpowder Workshop who had accompanied them. They served the four river deer hunted by the Crown Princess and Li Fuwei during the day. Since wild boar meat wasn't suitable for roasting, it was sent to the Imperial Guards, letting their cooks figure out how to make it tasty and add some meat to the soldiers' meals. As for the pheasant personally hunted by the Crown Princess, it had long been stewed into chicken soup by the accompanying Madam Gao, and a bowl was bestowed upon each of the two princesses and Li Fuwei.
Having finished his official duties, the next morning, the Crown Prince and Princess invited the other three royal couples to go to the hunting grounds together.
There was still one wild boar, six river deer, and many rabbits and pheasants left in the hunting grounds, plenty for the eight of them to hunt for fun.
This time, they grouped up as couples.
Although Zhao Sui carried a bow and arrows on his back, he would not shoot; he merely rode his horse to accompany the Crown Princess on her hunt.
Yao Lin and Li Fuwei were both skilled in horseback archery. The Second Princess was accompanied by Fan Ruochuan, who had a background as a military scholar. Only the Eldest Princess and her husband...
The Second Princess teased, "It's hard to say who will take first place today, but dead last will undoubtedly belong to my elder sister and brother-in-law."
The Eldest Princess did not mind that her husband, a civil scholar, was inferior in martial arts, and Yu Shen was also very humble and open-minded about it.
The warm-hearted Yao Lin looked at the group and suggested, "How about..."
Yao Huang had already noticed her brother's gaze and immediately interrupted what sounded like a proposal to assign Li Fuwei to the Eldest Princess while he took Yu Shen. She smiled and said, "Today's autumn hunt is all about having fun. The amount of prey is secondary. If everyone is ready, shall we set off now?"
The Eldest Princess and her husband nodded, the Second Princess and her soon-to-be husband nodded, and Li Fuwei nodded.
Only Yao Lin was still wondering if he should look after Yu Shen, but no one paid attention to his hesitant expression. As the Crown Princess and the Crown Prince led the charge into the hunting grounds, the Eldest Princess and the Second Princess's couples closely followed.
Yao Lin looked at Li Fuwei, "Aren't we taking too much of an advantage?"
Li Fuwei replied, "Then how about we split up and hunt?"
After looking after the princesses for three days, she had long been wanting to enjoy a hunt on her own.
Yao Lin understood the competitive gleam in his wife's eyes. His blood stirring, he laughed and said, "Alright!"
Thus, before rushing into the forest, Yao Huang noticed her brother and sister-in-law on her left and right, who spurred their horses into the mountains separately, as if a great chasm lay between them...
Looking again at the handsome Crown Prince accompanying her, Yao Huang couldn't tell for a moment whether her brother loved hunting so much that he insisted on going alone, or if her sister-in-law found him too annoying and simply kicked him aside out of sight and out of mind.
However, her brother and sister-in-law didn't look like a resentful couple, so Yao Huang didn't distract herself by worrying about them. Instead, she focused on searching for prey with the Crown Prince.
Zhao Sui was more familiar with this area and took charge of leading the way. Riding on horseback, Yao Huang closely scanned the surrounding bushes where prey might be hiding.
Spotting a gray rabbit startled out of hiding by some distant noise, Zhao Sui reined in his horse to look at the Crown Princess, only to see that she had already nocked an arrow and let it fly toward the rabbit.
The arrow flew, but Zhao Sui's gaze remained on the Crown Princess's face. He watched as her expression shifted from anticipation to frustration as she bit her lip, before she immediately turned to look at him.
Zhao Sui lowered his eyes just in time.
Seeing the Crown Prince's cautious demeanor, as if he feared she would fly into a rage out of humiliation, Yao Huang burst out laughing. "A miss is a miss. I was never a sharpshooter with perfect accuracy anyway. If I were really that good, hunting would actually be quite boring."
The harder it was to hit the prey, the happier one felt upon actually striking it. His Highness the Crown Prince, with his astonishing archery skills, had surely lost this kind of joy a long time ago.
"Let's go find a roe deer. The big ones are easier to hit." Urging her horse closer, Yao Huang patted the Crown Prince's thigh and headed forward, humming a little tune.
Zhao Sui: "..."
Yao Huang's luck was quite good. About half an hour into the mountains, she spotted a roe deer grazing under a tree from afar.
Yao Huang quietly dismounted and signaled for the Crown Prince to stay hidden and not move. As she drew her bow, she stealthily approached the roe deer. First, she needed to get the deer within her firing range, and the closer she could sneak up, the easier it would be to succeed.
Zhao Sui watched the Crown Princess as she alternately crouched down to creep forward and hid behind trees to carefully peek at the deer. Her every movement was even more vivid and adorable than when she was telling stories.
Finally, the Crown Princess successfully approached the roe deer, closing the distance to only about seventy paces.
When the Crown Princess raised her bow to aim, and the roe deer alertly pricked up its ears and turned to run, Zhao Sui unexpectedly felt a long-lost surge of excitement and thrill, reminiscent of his very first time hunting in his youth.
This time, his gaze chased after the Crown Princess's arrow. When the arrow actually struck the left side of the deer's waist, Zhao Sui couldn't help but laugh out loud.
The Crown Prince laughed silently, while the forest echoed with the Crown Princess's joyful, bird-like squeals. Zhao Sui watched as she hopped in place a few times, waved at him, and then ran toward the roe deer.
Zhao Sui urged Jing Wu to follow the Crown Princess. Just as he was about to remind her not to get too close to the deer lest she get kicked, he saw a black-bristled wild boar suddenly leap out from a bush behind the deer. With its thick, long snout lowered, it charged wildly toward the Crown Princess.
Zhao Sui's heart skipped a beat as he abruptly reined in his horse and reached for an arrow.
Yao Huang was even more startled by this wild boar, which didn't look scary from horseback but appeared terrifyingly imposing from the ground. The boar charged so fast that she had no time to nock an arrow. In a flash of lightning, Yao Huang turned and ran, sprinting toward the armed Crown Prince with the fastest speed she had ever mustered in her life!
Ahead was the Crown Prince with his arrow drawn; behind were the increasingly close, ground-shaking hoofbeats of the boar. Yao Huang cooperatively changed direction so the boar would follow her but become more exposed to the Crown Prince's line of fire, and then, acting on pure instinct, she dove to the front right.
The boar's thick, long snout brushed right past the hem of the Crown Princess's skirt as it rushed by. At the exact same moment, the Crown Prince's arrow sank deeply into its neck.
Carried by its momentum, the wild boar crashed headfirst into the ground ahead, revealing the back of the Crown Princess lying flat on the grass.
Yao Huang's heart pounded like a drum, and her palms stung from being scraped by the gravel. But looking at the fallen wild boar over there, she knew she was safe.
Rapid hoofbeats approached from behind. Yao Huang propped up her upper body and was just about to sit up and turn her head to smile at the Crown Prince, who was already right behind her. However, she saw the Crown Prince leap off his horse, only to pitch forward violently the moment his feet touched the ground. He narrowly avoided planting his face in the dirt by catching himself with his hands just in time. Yet, seeing him in this half-supported, half-kneeling posture so unexpectedly pierced Yao Huang's eyes and made her heart ache terribly.
This was the Crown Prince she had been married to for three years without ever letting him suffer a single fall or bump. He was her disabled husband, whose pride and thin skin she knew so well that she always actively cooperated to ensure he never appeared in any unseemly state before her.
Did he fall hard? Does it hurt?
These were the thoughts in Yao Huang's mind, but she suppressed the urge to run over and help him up. Taking advantage of the fact that the Crown Prince probably hadn't seen her movements yet, she flopped back down onto the ground and cried out loudly, "Ah, my back hurts so much! Your Highness, come help me up quickly, I don't think I can move!"
Therefore, she hadn't turned her head at all, and therefore, she hadn't seen anything!
With both knees and hands on the ground, Zhao Sui slowly raised his head. Looking at the Crown Princess putting on an act over there, he suddenly smiled and turned to shift into a sitting position. Glancing at his own two legs before him, Zhao Sui calmed himself for a moment, then skillfully used his hands to slowly drag and support himself over to the Crown Princess's side, stopping only when he was close enough for her to see his face.
