"Huh? Are we going to split up now?" Jojo hesitated for a moment, flipping himself out of the barrel as he spoke.

"Of course, didn't you say we still have to find the Prime Minister Lord?" Aya nodded.

"But I have no idea where Grandpa Wu is..." Jojo touched the ends of his hair, tracing circles on the ground with the tip of his left foot, feeling a bit embarrassed.

"Wait a minute, aren't you a noble? Your old man is a minister of foreign affairs, and you still don't know the Imperial Palace well?"

"My old man is a high-ranking official, not me! Besides, except for recent palace celebrations and events, my father usually doesn't bring me in. And even if it's my father, he's just an official, and there are many places in the palace he can't go. The Imperial City is quite vast."

Jojo stomped his foot, unable to help but retort.

"...Fine, then what do you plan to do? If I don't know, you definitely won't know either," Aya spread her hands, hoping you could help me find the way.

"Well, Aya, you can accompany me to find Grandpa Wu first. Once we find him, Grandpa Wu will surely allow you to meet Lord Xingjian more formally."

Jojo chuckled and clasped his hands together in a pleading gesture towards Aya, realizing that this was the Imperial Palace, not to mention the hidden masters within, even the mighty officers in the Forbidden Army were numerous. Jojo knew his own abilities and understood that he needed Aya's help to navigate through it.

"No, since you've decided to meet, why not just ask a servant or someone for directions?"

"No, no, this trip was a last-minute decision, I didn't bring any proof of identity with me. If we encounter the Imperial City Guards, we'll definitely be taken down. That would cause a big commotion, and my punishment won't be as simple as copying books like when father punishes me... breaking the Imperial City laws openly is no joke."

"But even so, if he sees the two of us barging in, wouldn't he get mad and chop me first..."

Aya pursed her lips, realizing that it was one thing to be powerful under normal circumstances, but sneaking into the city now required utmost caution, especially when trying to meet the current ruler of the palace. Accidentally dying would leave them with no one to appeal to.

"Don't worry, Grandpa dotes on me, he won't. If we meet privately, at most he will scold me. And I'll plead with him on your behalf!"

Jojo patted his chest confidently, then covered the barrel and pushed Aya towards the exit of the cellar. "Let's go, let's go."

"Have you already taken it for granted that he'll chop me in a fit of anger? Talking about asking for mercy after 'and' makes me anxious! Well, let's just go with it for now..." Aya muttered, feeling like she might have walked into a trap.

The wine cellar was quite large, with two floors, and the two of them wandered through the shelves for a while before finding the stairs leading up. Following the stairs up, they arrived at a courtyard larger than the one where the carriage was parked in Jojo's mansion.

Behind them was a building similar to a storage warehouse they had just left, with crimson walls, flying eaves, delicate wooden carvings on doors and windows, and splendid decorations that had some similarities but more differences compared to Western nobility.

The sky had yet to fully dawn, seeming to be just before dawn, but the palace servants were already bustling about.

"What's our next move?"

"Um...I vaguely remember this place. Once we leave the gate, we should be able to reach the Imperial Palace's kitchen soon. From there, it's easy to get to several palaces, the Temple of Heaven, and the priestess tower..."

Jojo searched his memory and said softly, "Hey, hold on."

Suddenly, Aya's voice sounded behind him and a hand was placed directly on Jojo's shoulder, sounding somewhat unfriendly, "I say, could it be that the Witch Tower where Hoshimi is located?"

Aya pointed with a black face to the black high tower that peeked out behind two palaces in the distance. While the imperial city mostly contained grand palace structures and some pavilions and towers in gardens, unlike the Western habit of building castle towers, most buildings were not too tall. In contrast, the height of that black high tower seemed to be dozens of meters, and its color and style stood out from the entire imperial city, making it particularly conspicuous.

In a country like Seichu that valued etiquette, building a higher structure than all the palaces in the imperial palace itself was a bit out of the ordinary. Thinking a bit, it seemed that besides the Witch Tower, there was no other possibility, right?

"Haha, Aya, what are you talking about... I don't understand at all..."

"That one, is· the· Witch· Tower· right? " Aya approached Jojo and repeated it word by word.

"Yes, I'm sorry, my mistake." Jojo admitted his mistake straightforwardly.

"Good, as long as you know you're wrong, I'll take my leave." Aya bowed slightly and decided to walk away.

"Hey, wait, wait, Aya, you promised me!"

"Hehe! You said you knew you were wrong, right? So, it's normal for me not to care!" Displeased, Aya clicked his tongue and dragged Jojo, who was holding onto his sleeves, step by step forward.

"Um...I'm cute, so please forgive me? No, I'm cute, so give me money?" Jojo tilted his head and said softly.

... Indeed, a woman who boldly accepted the punishment of copying books and then slipped out without a care, was just good at admitting mistakes but not changing her ways.

Aya was a bit helpless with Jojo's persistence. Even with strangers, let alone those with some acquaintance, he really fell for this trick. The reason he couldn't see this before was probably because all the people he had met before were like Tiran Mimi, not many would pull on his sleeve and act coquettishly...

Anyway, the tower was right there, so he could go there anytime, right?

So, Aya reluctantly agreed.

...

From dawn to morning, as the sky grew brighter, Lijing also became lively again. The metropolis with a population of over a million maintained its prosperity every day.

"It truly is the capital, looks even more bustling than Tianan, huh."

Tiran, standing under an archway, shook the bamboo stick in his hand and took the last piece of fruit into his mouth. As the core city of East Land, there were all kinds of delicious and fun things to be found, like this fruit that looked like an apple but was sweet and juicy with a hint of sourness, tasting like canned yellow peaches, making it irresistible.

This was just the normal stuff; there were also some weird things, and quite a few of them.

Uh... It seemed that he saw talking cabbage and red fish balls at the market before, which was a bit strange, to be honest.

Thinking back to the bizarre food vendors carrying straw targets with bamboo sticks inserted in them, shouting "big sister" and "boss" non-stop, the princess felt a bit creepy. It was fine with one or two, but when the straw target was filled with them, it was simply mental pollution.

—Oh, that's right, despite only a day passing since driving away the beasts, Tiran had already arrived in Lijing City.

As for how he got here...

"Silver War Maiden, what are you doing?"

A cold voice sounded behind them, revealing the sharpness that even a plain-clothed swordsman like the Princess of the Western Empire Chu couldn't conceal. She briskly approached Tiran.

"Just wandering around casually, getting to know the city a bit." Tiran casually remarked, "But what about you, you dragged me all the way back in such a hurry, and just disappeared for so long a moment ago?"

They didn't arrive in Luojing by conventional means. The distance from the northwest border to Luojing was thousands of miles. Even if Tiran could fly, with the speed of the ice crystal wings, she couldn't reach Luojing in a day. Furthermore, they hadn't spent just a day traveling. Just an hour ago, they were making final preparations at Yanmen Pass before their journey.

But just as Tiran and Mimi were boarding the carriage, Zhilan rushed in saying that Xiang Ling wanted to see her. And after meeting Xiang Ling, a talisman was attached to Tiran, and when she came to her senses, she was already standing on the increasingly bustling street.

"A thousand-mile pursuit, a talisman for single long-distance movement, I don't have many of them, to prevent the time difference between when you and my two royal brothers grab me for coming back in a hurry, we had to come back first."

"No, sis, you could have informed me in advance. If I didn’t have the magic tool for long-distance communication with Mimi and the others, I would have gone crazy from suddenly disappearing. It wasn't until half an hour ago when Xiang Ling had some business to attend to and asked her to wait nearby that Tiran suddenly remembered Mimi and the others were still at Yanmen Pass. When she took out the crystal for long-distance communication, it was filled with voice messages from Mimi."

"I've contacted the people I placed in Luojing," Xiang Ling looked at the bamboo token in Tiran's hand with a hint of resignation, "Silver War Maiden, now is not the time for leisurely walks—hm?"

Before she could finish her sentence, Tiran had already stuffed the second string of fruits she had prepared into Xiang Ling's mouth.

"Okay, okay, I forgive you for leaving me here. As an exchange, don't mind these trivial matters. These are delicious fruits from the tropical south, even a noble imperial princess like you who usually resides in the northwest must rarely have the chance to taste them, right?"

Tiran handed the bamboo token to Xiang Ling and winked.

With a small piece of fruit in her mouth, Xiang Ling subconsciously swallowed it. Hmm, the taste was indeed good. Xiang Ling's eyes flickered for a moment, but she didn't dwell on this trivial issue further.

"Anyway, we need to find someone first. The people I stationed in Luojing are all arranged by him. Only through him can we get the dispatching authority and understand the recent detailed information in Luojing."

"Oh, that's really good."

Indeed, someone like Xiang Ling wouldn't enter the fray unprepared. Otherwise, relying on just themselves to vie for the throne was not very realistic. No matter how strong a Holy Rank immortal was, seizing power and ruling wasn't just about strength; otherwise, all the royal nobles should have been unparalleled experts. But speaking of finding someone...

Tiran suddenly remembered someone that Xiao Mo had mentioned just before they set off for East Land.