While the other two options were okay, [Haste] was the best skill for puppets in Adventure Incarnate since it was cast on both the puppet and player, allowing them to use their skills faster. GodIAm, who I now knew was my father, made three puppet player characters, giving them each skill to test them against each other, and logged the damage they hit over time. [Haste] turned out to be the most valuable skill.
[Regen] was pretty useless, we all agreed on that. The common sense in the game was that killing mobs before they damaged you was vastly more useful than regenerating the damage they dealt.
As for [Fire Rain], there were better area-of-effect skills my puppet could learn later.
Decision made, I leaned back into my husband, feeling the slow rise and fall of his breathing against my back. The steady rhythm of the oars and the salt-laced breeze smoothed away the last of my mental stress.
We reached the main island in good time. I put a pair of cute sandals on, and this time, I didn’t get my feet wet because Prince Baiyu flew me to the beach. The other clan members did the same for the others, except for Fengying, who was carried by her husband. I knew Deming was a cultivator, of course, but seeing him rise from the sand, robes snapping in the wind as he carried Fengying through the air, made my mouth fall open in surprise.
“He’s reached a new minor cultivation realm,” Prince Baiyu whispered to me when he saw my reaction. “It’s a good thing, too, since your crops’ qi have been increasing.”
“Oh my.”
The islanders on the beach welcomed us with flower garlands and kisses, men, women, and children alike, before taking us to the elders’ meeting house, which turned out to be a different place from the one I had seen before. This one was much more grand. It was built on a slightly raised platform and looked like a massive, upside-down canoe with a thatched roof. There were no walls, only thick wooden posts that held the roof up.
I’d met them before, so I knew the drill. I let my husband, who had been trained in diplomacy since childhood, take the lead. The greetings exchanged between my prince and the ladies were flowery and fulsome.
The elders were all dressed in flowing dresses with long, full sleeves and skirts in cheerful tropical colors like green and red or orange and yellow. Though they were called “elders,” most of them were middle-aged, with only a sprinkling of women who had wrinkles on their faces.
The maids handed over the gifts we had prepared for the elders, silk-lined, intricately carved wooden boxes of our bestselling [Ageless Beauty Essence] potions, which they gracefully accepted. They thanked us for the gifts and invited us to join the feast.
After our little talk with the elders, I went to the open space behind the building where the islanders were preparing the food. Deming and his assistants had already butchered and dressed the pigs, chickens, and cattle before we gave them to them, and now they were getting ready to cook them in three large pits.
The Peach Blossom Isle was rich in fish, seafood, native vegetables, and, of course, peaches. They were quite short of meat, which was why we gave them the animals for cooking.
I sat down on a stool and drank peach juice with three ladies-in-waiting whom I had met the first time I visited. The island people had some sort of taboo about giving their names to outsiders, so I only knew them by their nicknames, Dawn, Day, and the one who had guided us here, Dusk.
Lari, Kharli, and Mo went off with the teenagers to swim and picnic on the beach, as did most of the other staff, except for Deming and his assistants, who had joined the people cooking the food for the feast.
Prince Baiyu went off to help. The pits were already dug, and some people were piling river rocks over wooden logs, but to cook the food underground with hot rocks, they needed lots of different leaves and the trunk of the banana plant. My husband went off to cut down some plants with the men while I rested and had a nice little chat with the ladies who regaled me with raucous tales of their love lives and gossip about various interesting romances.
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Even though I didn’t know the people involved, I still found it fascinating. It seemed even in the Peach Blossom Isle, which was said to be a paradise, there were still a lot of controversial romances.
“Everyone is talking about the farmer, Little Kai is the subject of a fierce rivalry between two sisters,” said Dawn.
“Pearl wants him because he’s wealthy, but her sister, Coral, is wooing his mother instead by giving her the finest woven mats and cloth,” said Dusk.
“People are betting that the sister who wins the mother's approval will win the man, even if Pearl is the prettier one,” said Day.
While we were laughing our heads off, a few elders approached me with their handsomest sons, grandsons, or nephews to propose marriage or at least a courtship.
“No. Thank you, but no. I’m in a monogamous marriage with my prince,” I said to all of them.
They went away disappointed, but Dusk confided that they didn’t really expect me to say yes.
“They would be delighted if you did, but they’re just showing you honor,” Dusk explained. “We wouldn’t want you to feel neglected, after all.”
“And also some elders are using this opportunity to show off their descendants,” said Dawn. Her smile showed off the cute dimples on her cheeks and pearly white teeth.
While we were talking, the cooking was progressing nicely. The wood had been set on fire, and the ladies told me it wouldn’t take that long for the fire to turn the stones white-hot since they were using specially treated wood that burned hotter than normal. Prince Baiyu returned with a group of men from the jungle, bearing a large number of banana trunks and leaves.
I watched in fascination as the cooks removed the burned wood and coals from the pit, leaving only the hot rocks behind. I ventured closer to see, and I could feel the heat from the stones on my face.
They then added shredded banana stem fibers to the rocks, which hissed and steamed.
“It will add moisture to the heat,” explained Dusk.
The food, mostly meat wrapped in banana leaves and herbs, was then put on top of the banana fibers, along with some tubers and onions. A few hot rocks were placed over the meat, and then the whole thing was covered in layers of banana leaves, sweet seagrass, palm leaves, and flowers native to the island that were called “chili flower” because they gave the food a nice zing. Then the leaf-covered mound was covered with soil to keep the moisture in.
Since the meat would need six hours to cook, fresh fish and vegetables were grilled for us to eat while we waited for the feast. The noonday sun was hot, so we retired to a beach hut for better shade. Prince Baiyu joined us for the midday meal, and the ladies teased him unmercifully about all the marriage proposals I got.
After lunch, the ladies brought us to a guest house, a small but very neat and tidy house made of bamboo with a thatched roof. They advised us to rest during the hottest part of the day and said that they would return at sunset to bring us to the feasting area.
The only piece of furniture was a small, low table. The wooden floor was covered in woven mats, and a few pillows and thin blankets were neatly folded in one corner.
“How many proposed to you?” he asked.
Giggling, I patted the space on the mat beside me. “Let’s relax.”
“How many?”
“I lost count after the first six.”
He shook his head in mock dismay. “This is what happens when you marry an unbelievably beautiful woman.”
I sat up and pulled him down beside me. “Let’s cuddle.”
“I’d love to.”
***
By the time Dusk came to fetch us at sunset, we had already refreshed ourselves in an outdoor tent shower I got from the Cash Shop and changed into more festive and lightweight sapphire blue and silver robes. I was expecting her to take us to the feast, but she said the elders were looking for us again. When I arrived at the meeting place, I saw that Lari, Kharli, and Mo were already there, seated on the right side of the elders.
Prince Baiyu and I had done the traditional greetings earlier in the day, so this time, they got straight to the point.
“These washed up on the beach. They’re for you, from the great turtle.” The chief elder nodded to a lady in waiting who placed an ornate silver box in front of me. It was around ten inches in height and twelve inches square. The chief then unrolled a scroll and read the message written on it out loud. “Divinity will once again descend upon this land. Archelon greets the mother of the dragon and offers this gift.”
I was speechless.
Archelon knew about my dragon child?!
Seeing that I was frozen in shock, the elder smiled and said to my husband, “Go on, open it.”
He opened it, but the box was empty. Nonetheless, he thanked them profusely while I just stood there in stunned silence.
Wait, so Archelon knew that A, my child, was a dragon, and B, he was a god? How? Was there some sort of deity grapevine? How many others knew?
I snapped out of my reverie when my apprentices approached to examine the box.
“Teacher, this seems useful? But how do we activate it?” asked Kharli.
“Let me try.” Mo knelt and opened and closed the lid, but nothing happened.
“Blessed by Archelon?” asked Lari. “Should we get a turtle and put it inside?”
“Wait, let me try,” I said.
*****
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