The Silly Alchemist

“Lanyu, you’re lying. You like roses. You like them so much you once forced me to buy them for you,” the thirteenth prince exposed his sister shamelessly. 

Oh dear, they all knew the truth now. Lanyu loved roses, especially blue ones. Maybe it was her name that the colour blue had a special place in her heart.  

[Note: Lan(蓝)= blue, Yu(雨)=rain] 

“Stop talking, you lil’ shit. I’m trying to reject someone here,” scolded Lanyu, as she hit Ye Lang. The boy stood there with his roses, awkward and depressed. 

“Just reject him straight then! There’s no need to lie,” the thirteenth prince clutched his head. 

“You don’t understand. They won’t stop gifting me flowers even after I’ve rejected them countless times. I’m way too charismatic it seems. It would be totally different if it were you, no one would even bat an eye for you,” Lanyu grabbed Ye Lang’s arm, running as fast as possible to lose her crowd of suitors.   

It had become an everyday routine for her, and it had evidently burdened both the thirteenth prince and Tigress. The thirteenth prince had also inherited the problems with the guys because Lanyu was so adamant on walking him to school and home every single day.  

“That’s not right, I’m plenty attractive. I’ve got quite a few suitors,” said the thirteenth prince. 

“Really? Who’s the lucky girl? She must have such exquisite taste to see potential in a dummy like you,” asked Lanyu curiously, she wanted to know who his suitor was. 

She wasn’t trying to embarrass her brother, she was just curious. As his sister, she was always around him, therefore, she knew what Ye Lang was truly capable of and wanted to know if someone else had shared the same acknowledgement. 

“Not only girls but also men,” boasted the thirteenth prince. He was rather proud of himself, surely his sister had underestimated him.  

“Wait, what? Men? Yuck, paedophiles. I’m going to kill them. Ye Lang, tell me honestly, who are these men? I’m going to turn them into ice,” raged Lanyu. It was obvious she had taken this wrong way. 

“Miss Lanyu, wait. I think you should listen on before you jump to conclusions,” reminded Tigress. The reality was very different from what Lanyu thought but Tigress didn’t attempt to explain because Lanyu disliked other people retelling her brother’s experiences. 

“?” Lanyu was confused. After a moment or two, she understood what Tigress was trying to say. Ye Lang did tend to express things incorrectly. 

“Brother, tell me. What did they do?” asked Lanyu. 

“They did it the same way as yours, sister. With items in their hand and always screaming for me to stop running away,” replied the thirteenth prince promptly. Ye Lanyu’s expression hardened. 

Wasn’t this still the same as what she had thought about a moment ago? Yikes. 

“Master, what were they yelling about and what were they holding whenever they come after you?” prompted Tigress.

“They were holding benches and stools. They always yell ‘Ye Lang, you asshole! You better stay still, I’m going to kill you today!’ or something along that line.” 

“...”

Ah, so that was it. Ye Lanyu had finally understood. They weren’t suitors but angry people. She was also rather aware of the reasons behind it. 

Ye Lang often fiddled around with alchemy items. Some of the potions or magical accessories in his possession were risky and potentially dangerous, mostly due to the fact that they were semi-finished products. Semi-finished products were definitely not the safest. 

Despite knowing the risks, the thirteenth prince often brought them to school to show it to his peers. It scared the hell out of them every single time, so their anger was understandable.

The thirteenth prince was always experimenting with alchemy. For some inexplicable reason, he was always filled with odd ideas, and he often messed up ordinary alchemy formulas by adding in other elements. 

Usually, these added elements would intensify its effects, but it had also added in another feature. The experimental items were dangerous. 

Not only did he experimented on alchemy formulas, but he had also messed with alchemy formations. The runes he had used for it were so different that no one could understand a single thing. 

His peers only knew one thing about Ye Lang --his items were bad news and he was dangerous! 

Sometimes, the damage done was minor, sometimes it was rather severe. Tigress would quickly pull him away and leave the scene whenever that happened. 

She had never once helped to retrieve the item causing the problem as her master already had way too many similar ones. She was trying to prevent incidents like this from happening too frequently. 

Accidents like these were caused by the thirteenth prince’s carelessness, which had indirectly involved his classmates and people around him. Other than that, he had often misplaced the dangerous items and when someone else picked it up by mistake, they were landed in trouble. Ye Lang always escaped unscathed as Tigress was always there to protect him. 

Many were displeased at the fact that he was the troublemaker but he was always unharmed while the others were. It was common knowledge that alchemy students were extremely prone to making errors, everyone in the academy was pretty understanding in that sense. 

It was the fact that he could always get away with incidents like this that they were positively jealous of his luck. They despised him. 

Gradually, the thirteenth prince had become the class and even the academy’s enemy. His schoolmates weren’t able to beat him up as they were no match for Tigress. She never left the thirteenth’s prince side so after a while they had no choice but to give up on revenge. 

“Alright, I’m headed to class now. Try to not cause any trouble today, okay? See you at lunch!”  said Lanyu. Though she knew that Ye Lang wouldn’t listen to her, she had made sure to play her part as an elder sister and to remind Tigress to keep a close eye on him.

Ye Lanyu was a student of the magic academy while Ye Lang studied at the alchemy academy. Their classrooms were far apart from one other, separated by a few blocks of school buildings and fields. If the thirteenth prince was enrolled in the academy of martial arts instead, the two siblings would’ve been much closer to one another.  

The thirteenth prince was already dangerous enough, imagine the entire student body of the alchemy academy combined! The academy houses many hazardous items, therefore it was quarantined and built along the borders of the school compound. 

Due to that, the academy’s security and defence system was the strongest out of all academies. It stood proudly isolated from the others with obvious barriers around like the man-made river and tall fences. 

The academy’s isolation and inaccessibility were to the benefit of the thirteenth prince. Some of the angry people who wanted to beat him up couldn’t reach him and had to give up their hopes and dreams (of beating him up). 

Students who chose to enrol in alchemy were usually less competitive. However, one still cannot escape an emotion like jealousy, even if students there were more rational and calm. They practised good separation between academics and personal affairs, and they rarely looked into the latter. 

Fortunately, the thirteenth prince had shown good progress in his academics so far, though in the eyes of outsiders, he might seem weak compared to the abundant geniuses in his academy. 

His alchemy skills were still lacking and required lots of improvement, hence he had not attracted any form of attention.