Chapter 199
Chapter 199: Mate and Cub Are So Fragile. I Don’t Even Have the Right to Die with Them
Zhong Li He couldn’t understand. “What? This fire is huge. You can’t step back a little? You have to stand this close? Aren’t you burning?”
Even if Jiang Tea Tea was treasure, she’d jumped into the flames without a single cry for help. She was probably fine. Why was Chong Ming torturing himself?
Chong Ming stared at the fire without blinking. “I’m not moving. If she calls me, I need to know immediately.”
“If you’re afraid of heat or losing feathers, stand farther away,” he added coldly. “Don’t worry about me.”
Zhong Li He kept countering the flames and pushed again, suspicion sharpening. “Tell me the truth. Is Jiang Tea Tea a phoenix clan female huang bird?”
“No.”
“No?” Zhong Li He snapped. “Then how can she gather flame orb? A flame orb this big is hard even for me. She can gather it and stay inside it burning—and you tell me she’s not phoenix clan? How am I supposed to believe that?”
His mind raced, trying to remember if the phoenix clan had ever lost an egg, or a bird.
Chong Ming’s gaze shifted slowly from the fire pit to Zhong Li He. His voice turned cold and forceful. “Believe it or not, she’s not your phoenix clan female huang bird. She is my person.”
Zhong Li He nearly choked. If not for their friendship, he’d let Chong Ming roast himself.
Behind them, Kong Que couldn’t watch anymore. He pulled a flame-shield plate from his storage button and set it in front of them.
The transparent shield didn’t block their view. It only dulled the brutal waves of heat.
Chong Ming slammed a palm into it and shattered it.
Zhong Li He jerked, enraged. “Chong—”
Kong Que clamped a hand over his mouth and dragged him back before he could finish the shout.
Zhong Li He struggled and made muffled sounds as Kong Que pulled him away. He couldn’t keep countering flames for Chong Ming either.
At the crater’s edge, red fire licked Chong Ming like a venomous snake.
He stood there as if nothing was happening. Even his golden hair whipped in the heat.
Zhong Li He shook Kong Que off. “What are you doing? Why are you dragging me?”
Kong Que looked at him, expression tight. Zhong Li He was only steady when dealing with national affairs or standing on a battlefield. In front of Chong Ming, he always lost his balance.
“Talk,” Zhong Li He warned. “If you don’t, I’m going over—”
Kong Que grabbed his arm again. “Chief Executive, have you still not noticed how Commander-in-Chief Chong Ming treats Miss Jiang Tea Tea?”
Zhong Li He frowned. “What are you saying?”
Kong Que’s voice lowered. “Maybe, to Commander-in-Chief Chong Ming, Miss Jiang Tea Tea’s status is more than just a 3S-grade mutant plant-type healer.”
Zhong Li He’s eyes widened, as if lightning had struck him. “You mean… Jiang Tea Tea is Chong Ming’s kept lover?”
Kong Que pinched the bridge of his nose and covered his eyes. He couldn’t even look at him.
A kept lover?
How had Chong Ming not punched him into the dirt?
Zhong Li He yanked Kong Que’s hand down. “Then what? If not a kept lover—his nephew’s mate?”
Kong Que drew a slow, dark breath. “Why can’t it be his own mate?”
Zhong Li He rejected it instantly. “Impossible. His mate has cubs. From the medical report he showed me last time, it’s been seven and a half months.”
“A female carrying dragon eggs—in beast form it might not show, but in human form, seven and a half months means the belly can’t be as flat as Jiang Tea Tea’s. And she definitely couldn’t fight like that.”
“Don’t correct me,” he added stubbornly. “Don’t deny me. I don’t like pork, but I’ve seen pigs run. Dragon eggs and phoenix eggs in a belly aren’t that different.”
Kong Que said nothing. For once, silence was mercy.
“Zhong Li He.”
Chong Ming’s voice cut through the heat.
“Come look.”
Zhong Li He stopped mid-argument and rushed back. “What?”
Chong Ming pointed at the pit. “Look. Did the fire change color?”
Zhong Li He stared.
His pupils tightened. He rubbed his eyes.
It wasn’t a hallucination.
The red flames had shifted—green threaded through them, spreading fast.
“It changed,” Zhong Li He said, tension creeping into his voice. “It turned green. How could it turn green? It shouldn’t.”
But around Jiang Tea Tea, everything that shouldn’t happen kept happening anyway.
Green replaced red.
The color deepened until the fire became harder to see through, not easier.
Chong Ming watched the flames, voice low and steady. “I remember your phoenix clan has a legend. Long ago, your ancestor—a high-level female huang bird—lived to five hundred. When she was kindling fire, a spark landed on her, and the fire burned on her body.”
“The fire grew and lit the phoenix trees on Wu Tong Mountain. The flames burned around her for twenty-one days, from red to green, from green to—”
Zhong Li He cut in, heart pounding. “Wait. How do you know our legend so well?”
Chong Ming turned his head slowly. His golden eyes locked onto Zhong Li He, sharp and urgent. “I want to know: now that it’s turned from red to green, will it turn from green to blue, then white, and finally black?”
Zhong Li He met his stare and felt a chill crawl up his spine.
Chong Ming’s gaze was too sharp, too cold, too aggressive—and beneath it, fear and worry twisted together.
Chong Ming never looked afraid. Not even when millions of insect clan invaders flooded a battlefield.
If he looked afraid now…
Zhong Li He answered seriously, “I can’t give you a direct answer.”
“If Jiang Tea Tea has phoenix clan blood, then yes. According to the legend, it goes red to green, green to blue, blue to white, and finally black.”
“But you say she isn’t phoenix clan. Then phoenix fire burning on her at all is already rare and unprecedented. There’s no example to follow. I can’t imagine what she’ll become inside that fire.”
“Ancient records say Wu Tong Mountain burned with her. Her screams echoed across the mountain for eighty-one days before they finally stopped.”
“In the end, all the phoenix trees on Wu Tong Mountain turned to ash. Our senior ancestor became a phoenix egg in that ash.”
“After she became an egg, after three years of artificial incubation, she returned as a phoenix female with no memory—just a clueless hatchling.”
“All her old memories became ash. She had to learn everything again, live through the path all over again.”
In the pit, green flames multiplied until there was no red left at all.
The green glow was hotter than the red. It pressed down harder. The light spread wider, too.
Even the crater containing the flame orb kept expanding and collapsing under the burn.
Chong Ming couldn’t stand where he’d been anymore. He retreated step by step. If Zhong Li He hadn’t countered with fire to shield him, his golden hair would’ve caught.
Zhong Li He watched him go silent, staring at the roaring green flame orb. “Chong Ming,” he demanded, “what are you thinking?”
Chong Ming’s clenched fist loosened, then tightened again. After a long time, he let out a bitter, almost broken smile.
“I’m thinking… if I were an ordinary beastfolk, and my mate and cub suffered harm in that flame orb, I could follow them. I could die with them.”
“But I’m not ordinary.” His voice turned quiet, edged with something sharp. “I’m the Commander-in-Chief of Zhen Lin Empire. A prince.”
“The Imperial Crown Prince is only eighteen. He can’t hold up an empire. He can’t intimidate all the armies. He can’t make the citizens submit.”
“If my mate and cub are lost, I don’t even have the right to follow them into death. The empire and its people are responsibilities I can’t throw away!”