Taeya (3)
“Master… I wanted to visit but I didn’t expect the sudden change in political conditions at Soaring Sky… And it was that eighth princess, the princess you once wronged. I can’t imagine how cruel she must be to murder her own father. Thank goodness she didn’t do anything to you or I would never live….
“I heard you and your family escaped and built Ye City…
“You know, I could’ve given you all a place to stay if you had nowhere to go… I’ll always be there for you…
“Once this war is over, I will visit immediately.”
The little tiger girl spaced out once again, muttering in circles in her heart. She was waiting for the day she could meet her master once again. ‘She’ was Tigress.
She regretted not being present during such a critical moment. If anything had happened to Ye Lang then, even she didn’t know how she would react.
“Miss, miss…” The people around her noticed, gently bringing her back to reality. They were used to this.
“Ah, what?” asked Tigress.
“What should we do now?” asked the people around her.
Tigress was calm. “Don’t worry, tell me everything in detail. Let me look at the plans again.”
“It’s like this, as what we planned, we…” They explained battle conditions to her in detail, drawing everything out on the sand table.
“Hmm, this feels familiar…” Tigress felt like she had seen this before but thought it was impossible after giving it some thought.
There was no time for that though. Tigress ignored her feeling to focus on the immediate task ahead- planning their next move.
Where did Tigress learn how to do this? Well, Ye Lang once spent some time learning about military strategies and the use of ancient war techniques and showed them to her on a sand table.
Occasionally, for fun, he would let Tigress play the opposing armies. Tigress would always lose though because Ye Lang’s strategies were too unpredictable. However, from this, Tigress’ strategic skills skyrocketed.
However, she never told anyone about this. No one initially expected her to have such a skill.
This war was the first time she used her skills in war planning and her martial arts skills. They were supposed to be outnumbered and at a disadvantage but when she showed up, she forced the scales back to a balance.
If it wasn’t for Ye Lang, her army would’ve had the upper hand at this point, likely winning the war soon.
However, if Ye Lang was helping the other side, would they beat Tigress then? We can’t tell for sure because other than mapping out strategies, Tigress led the armies herself. She could annihilate crowds just with her Yang Family Spear Techniques. Her presence greatly increased her army’s morale too.
A few days later, Athena and the rest of the leaders were once again gathered around the sand table. They were stuck once again, their opponents had forced the battle back into a stalemate.
Although many of Athena’s plans had been successful, the overall conditions did not change. She could not stop them from changing. However, it was already impressive of her to be able to hold the fort for such a long time.
With Tigress utilising military strategies that had never been seen in their history, even a battle-hardened general would be defeated.
If there were other generals watching how the battle unfolded, they would probably break out in cold sweat because both sides were equally cunning.
That was true. Athena wasn’t weak, her opponent was just too powerful. Or more accurately, weird. Her opponent wasn’t using a battle style from this universe.
“How is their general? Are they consulting Tianhu or something? That’s not right, Senior Tianhu would never interfere, this isn’t him…” muttered Athena, brows furrowed. Senior Tianhu was a famed wise man among the fox tribes.
A few people at the table were already showing signs of giving up. They were exhausted by the stalemate. Not Athena though. This was one of her strengths too: her willpower.
“We still have hope. Where’s Taeya?” Athena’s key to success was also the fact that she would never let jealousy cloud her judgements. When necessary, she would consult people better than her.
“Taeya? She’s bright but not as good as you. Calling her in would not help much,” said Thomas. They were all very familiar with each other’s skill levels after working together for a long time.
“I’m not looking for Taeya, I need the Master with her…” her tone was weird when she said the word ‘master’.
Ye Lang was getting increasingly popular these few days, almost everyone knew him now. One was because of his weird position at the tribe, second was that he went on frequent shopping sprees and spent gold coins wherever he went.
And due to his spending behaviours, plus Taeya calling him master as Tigress, almost the entire tribe also called him master. It wasn’t a greeting out of respect or disrespect, it was just a name.
Ye Lang was now ‘master’ for no reason. Which was odd, since ‘master’ was a greeting for someone of higher position.
“Taeya, sir, Athena invites you to the conference hall.”
At this moment, both of them were eating at a shaokao barbeque stall. Ye Lang was holding a few sticks of mutton while Taeya was having grilled fish. Both were enjoying themselves very much.
After a few days with him, Taeya was growing to like Ye Lang – the platonic kind, of course. She became more comfortable around him, unlike the stiffness she had on the first day.
“Oh, alright. We’re coming…” replied Taeya, still biting off some fish as she dragged Ye Lang to the conference room.
“Master, we’ve got to go…”
“Wait, I haven’t paid…” shouted Ye Lang.
“Sir, you don’t have to! It’s on the house this time, you’ve paid a lot the last few times…” replied the stall owner. The money Ye Lang had paid him was enough to buy over the entire stall, these few sticks of meat were nothing!
“No way, how can I eat and not pay? I can’t not pay you just because I paid last time…” said Ye Lang solemnly as he took out a gold coin.
