Zhang Lie continued questioning the ninth prince. "Why did you seem so upset on your way back here? Isn't it a good thing that you're establishing a relationship with the crown prince?"
"Master, you know what happened in court?"
Zhang Lie rolled his eyes. "I was right in the palace—what do you think?"
In his mind, the ninth prince praised his master for being so skilled at stealth that he could eavesdrop on the court's affairs without being caught.
He took a deep breath and replied, "I wanted to take down the Wang clan or to damage my third brother's standing somehow, but in the end, I was unable to accomplish anything. I saw Wang Jian try to kill me with my own eyes, and I even possessed the murder weapon—but even with all that evidence, the Wang clan slipped away scot-free. Doesn't that make me rather useless, Master?"
The ninth prince's intention was to remind the entire capital that he, the ninth prince, existed. He wanted all those who thought him useless or irrelevant to fix their eyes upon him, to see what he could accomplish.
Even the guard captain of the capital had ignored his presence and tried to detain his master in front of him; this was a memory the ninth prince could never forget.
And yet, despite all the evidence he possessed, he had managed to achieve nothing. He was still that useless prince of the past.
"Hahaha!" Zhang Lie suddenly began to laugh, so much that he was almost curling up into a ball.
The ninth prince frowned. His face turned dark. "Master, I know I'm useless, but there's surely no need to make fun of me so."
Zhang Lie continued laughing. "Do you know why I'm laughing at you?"
"At my uselessness?"
Zhang Lie shook his head. "At your naivete."
The ninth prince was rather confused, so Zhang Lie elaborated, "How long has the third prince been in power? And how about the Wang clan? Do you think that one blade alone would be enough to topple these major powers of the capital?"
The third prince had been in power for five or six decades, whereas the Wang clan had been established centuries ago in this world.
"You, a child in your first decade—do you really think you can upend those powers whenever you want?
That blade might mean a lot to you, but it's nothing more than a toothpick to these major powers. Even the crown prince might not be able to suppress the Wang clan without sufficient preparation in his own right."
The ninth prince lowered his head. "As expected, I'm useless."
"Your uselessness is as much an advantage as it is a disadvantage."
The ninth prince raised his head sharply. "How can that be? How can my ineptitude—"
"It's precisely because you're useless that the others will underestimate you, to give you opportunities where none might have existed before. How did you manage to end up with the Wang bladewielder's blade, for example?"
"Because you were strong, Master!"
"That's part of it, sure, but the more important reason is that the Wang clan underestimated you. They believed that the Wang bladewielder would certainly be enough to get rid of you, but you managed to subvert those expectations."
The ninth prince nodded hesitantly.
"From this perspective, then, do you really think you're still the useless ninth prince of before?"
The ninth prince, deep in thought, sat in silent contemplation. Zhang Lie didn't disturb him; he quietly had a cup of tea. By the time he finished, the ninth prince's eyes were aglow once more. "I might still be my useless self, but I have you, Master!"
"You do have me," Zhang Lie affirmed.
"My presence elevates you from an individual to a force to be reckoned with, one with an unknown level of strength, whom the other princes all know very little about. But there's something else, too."
The ninth prince tilted his head. "What?"
"You're not useless—the assassin's blade was crucial, critical evidence. The king of the realm simply wanted to leave the Wang clan alive for now."
The ninth prince sighed. "I should have taken that into account. In hindsight, it does make sense what my father would have done."
"It's precisely for this reason that even the crown prince might not have been able to take down the third prince and the Wang clan, but the crown prince would have been able to leverage that blade far more effectively than you."
The ninth prince stared thoughtfully at his tea. "I understand, Master. You think I should have handed this blade to the first prince."
"Very good."
The ninth prince smiled weakly. "If only I had thought about that point before the court session today."
"Actually, the best outcome would have been to hand the sword to the third prince, not the crown prince."
The ninth prince frowned as he tried to unravel Zhang Lie's thoughts. "In hindsight, yes. However, at the time, neither of us knew that the mastermind was actually the fifth prince."
If he had handed the sword to the third prince, the third prince would have understood that the Wang clan was betraying him. That would have frayed the trust between the Wang clan and the third prince, and the ninth prince would receive the third prince's gratitude.
"It seems as though you have much to learn," Zhang Lie surmised.
"I understand, Master!"
"That said, your choice wasn't particularly bad, either. Your most important task now is to establish a relationship with the crown prince. The other princes are all attacking the crown prince. He doesn't need an ally; he needs a spy. You're the prince who can best play that role, because ?the other princes are all on poor terms with him. He can't refuse your help—he needs you too."
"In that case, Master, what do you intend to do during the upcoming hunt?"
"Tell me more about the hunt—I don't know anything of it."
The ninth prince blinked in surprise. "Here I thought you knew everything!"
"There's much that I'm unaware of regarding yoru customs and culture."
The ninth prince began his explanation.
Every year, the king of the realm and his favored princes would participate in a hunt. Those who obtained the highest-quality prey would obtain an impressive assortment of rewards, and it would be an excellent opportunity for the princes to display their strengths in front of the king.
The prey of these hunts were superior-grade lifeforms. contemporary romance
The king of the realm was able to make use of his authority to temporarily help the lifeforms within the hunting grounds grow rapidly, so that they could easily ascend to mutated- and superior-grade.
These mutated-grade lifeforms would become the bottom of the food chain; peak-grade lifeforms stood at the top.
"Some of the hunting grounds even have legendary fifth-level beasts."
Fifth-level beasts—in Zhang Lie's terms, those were disaster-grade lifeforms! Zhang Lie was excited, but understandably wary. They were extremely rare even in the third and higher realms, or someone would have shared their existence well before Zhang Lie did.
Furthermore, the disaster-grade lifeforms of the third realm and up were far stronger than in the second realm. Even Zhang Lie, strong as he was now, couldn't take such lifeforms lightly. If they really existed, however, Zhang Lie didn't mind obtaining a few disaster gene fragments ahead of plan...
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