The Silly Alchemist

“Really? Watch your words. If someone else heard you, you’d be in big trouble,” someone scoffed.

“Huh?”

The loud arrogant man was confused and stared at the person before responding.

“Are you questioning my power?! Do you know who I am?! I’m…” proceeding to mention his status. To the general public, he sounded like a powerful individual. However...

“Your status doesn’t matter unless you’re an aristocrat from one of the three big kingdoms or extremely important. If you’re none of these, I suggest you shut up and enjoy the competition. Don’t go around spewing such nonsense!” the other person sneered.

“Who’s this guy threatening the girls?” the man couldn’t help but be curious at this point. After all, the people talked about this guy as if he could do whatever he wanted here.

“The thirteenth prince of the Ye Family, that’s who!” he replied. A simple self-explanatory reply.

“...”

The loud man had never heard of the Ye Family and this thirteenth prince that they mentioned. But still, the fact that the Ye Family could silence him for eternity whenever they wanted to surely meant that they were someone of higher authority, right?

The whole situation was odd to this man. The others had spoken of this Ye Family’s thirteenth prince rather fondly despite the fact that he had threatened to harm the girls participating in the competition. Shouldn’t they be angered by this?

Logically, people should despise Ye Lang for saying such a thing, causing such a mess in the community. However, this wasn’t the case. Instead, everyone had treated it as a prank and all agreed that Ye Lang shouldn’t be blamed at all.

Many adored Ye Lang for he had helped many as a result of his constant squandering.

Plus, his clueless personality made him seem more approachable and grounded compared to the typical arrogant aristocrats.

His idiocy was a blessing in disguise, as most of the commoners had taken a liking towards him. That made Ye Lang much more popular than the other aristocrat children.

It was a rare sight to behold for a well-known prodigal like Ye Lang.

Over recent years, people progressively forgot about Ye Lang, as he had maintained a low profile. Despite that, however, any occasional appearance of him would remind the citizens of their fondness for him. That feeling was easy to forget as there was only as much as a sliver left.

The conflicting part of it, however, was how impactful that fleeting fondness was. It truly was something that you’d hold on for the rest of your life!

Just like every other regular competition, The Most Talented Girl in the Royal Institute of Education had a preliminary round. One who wished to join the competition had to adhere to the expected criteria. It definitely wasn’t something anyone could participate in. In the case of Zhen Xiaoyoan, she’d get disqualified immediately during the preliminaries!

Today marked the beginning of the most entertaining competition in the kingdom. Only ten participants would make it to the final round. The competition could go on for days as the participants had much to show.

This year, the preliminaries went on for three days. Everyone enjoyed the many talented performances, cheering on for their favourites to win. Everyone was excited; on their toes in anticipation of who would proceed to the finals.

Participants who were disqualified were still loved and supported by the audience. After all, they had performed to their utmost capabilities and potential!

Surprisingly, the list of finalists wasn’t the most anticipated event for the audience. Instead, they wanted to know whether Ye Lang and Zhen Xiaoyan would show up.

Could it be? This was all a deliberate prank by Ye Lang to stir up everyone’s emotions? Or could it be that Zhen Xiaoyan was simply a lost cause?

Nope, that wasn't true at all!

At the very last moment, to everyone’s disappointment, someone else appeared on stage. Everyone’s attention was immediately brought back on stage.

She was drop-dead gorgeous. Her face was dusted in light breathable makeup, aura as elegant as a swan. Her charisma shone whilst standing amidst the other talented and beautiful aristocrat ladies. She was charming! The ethereal girl came running from the outside of the venue and screamed with her light voice.

“Wait! I’m...Zhen Xiaoyan…” panted the girl.

Zhen Xiaoyan?! The 200kg fat girl, Zhen Xiaoyan?!

“How is this possible?! That can’t be her!”

“There’s no way that could be her. This must be a fraud!”

“That’s very low of Ye Lang to find a substitute. Does he really believe that he could fool us like that?”

…

This caused an uproar among the crowd. Everyone was yelling, protesting of such behaviour.

As soon as the girl got on stage, everyone understood that they were just overreacting.

“Who said I was Zhen Xiaoyan?! I’m just here to pass a message! How are we even the same person, I’m way prettier!” whined the girl, offended.

“Oh, it was a misunderstanding. See, there’s no way Zhen Xiaoyan had the potential to be this beautiful. That’d be black magic!” The audience agreed with her.

“Who’s the message meant for?” pried the competition host curiously. 

“I’m here to pass a message on behalf of the thirteenth prince. He wishes to inform you that he and Zhen Xiaoyan shall appear in the final round and miss the preliminary round. He would also like to remind the panel to add Zhen Xiaoyan’s name to the finalist list,” announced the girl calmly.

“That’s… not possible. That would be going against the rules of this competition…” the host and the judging panel disagreed to such a request but they were afraid of offending the Ye Family, masking their replies.

“He knew you’d say something like that. The thirteenth prince also added on that you could leave your finalist list on as usual and simply add Zhen Xiaoyan onto the list as an additional contestant. If not, he’d physically remove one of your finalists to allow Zhen Xiaoyan into the finals.”

This was a threat! An outright threat!

The audience had lots to say about it. Some yelled in protest to Ye Lang’s outrageous requests while the majority of the others had thought to simply accept his request as it was not worth the risk to receive the full wrath of the Ye Family.

It wasn’t too big of a deal if there were eleven finalists instead of the initial ten. The most important factor in accepting their request was that they had to believe that Zhen Xiaoyan had nothing against these girls.

After some discussions among the panel, they decided to allow Zhen Xiaoyan to join the finalists without needing to go through the preliminaries.

This was something new. Nothing of this sort had occurred in the entire history of this competition. Not that no one had thought of doing so, it was just that no one had such power to do such a thing. And if they did, they wouldn’t commit such a lowly act!