Rebirth: The flatterer prince I raised couldn't be so clingy

Behind him, Yang He ordered the guards to disperse with a sullen face, leaving only chaos and oppressive silence in the courtyard.

Wu Fang limped after Gu Qingzhi, muttering non-stop, "...If you ask me, we should quit while we're ahead. This wound on your back is no joke. The blood has seeped through your coat. We should hurry back and get it treated."

Gu Qingzhi seemed not to hear.

She swept the courtyard with sharp eyes, and quickly reviewed the trajectory of the flying knife in her mind: the angle, the force, the sound of breaking through the air, and finally stopped under the dense locust tree in the corner of the west wall.

She turned and walked straight there.

"Eh? The door is over there!"

"Brother Gu, even if you need to go to the bathroom, you can't do it here..."

Wu Fang limped along with great difficulty, and when he looked up, he saw Gu Qingzhi inexplicably hiding in the bushes. He tried to understand for a long time and came to this conclusion.

But before he could finish his words, Gu Qingzhi emerged from the bushes again, holding a throwing knife in her hand and examining it carefully.

Wu Fang took a closer look and frowned, "Why is this thing so weird?"

Gu Qingzhi also found it strange. The flying knife in her hand was shaped like a crescent moon. The whole knife was cast in one piece, but the tail end was not an ordinary handle, but an unusual shape, like the teeth of some kind of key.

The tail of this flying knife is obviously heavier than ordinary ones, making it look top-heavy and a little unbalanced. It should be easy to deviate from the intended direction when thrown, but that person actually found such a tricky angle.

Thinking of this, Gu Qingzhi placed the tip of the knife in front of her eyes, squinted her eyes and looked towards the place where the knife had just flown from. She saw a young man sitting under the shade of a tree not far away, busy with something.

Gu Qingzhi put away the flying knife and strode over.

Wu Fang looked in this direction and felt that something was wrong.

"You've already scolded me, and you've done what Aunt Liu told you to do. What else are you dissatisfied with? Can we go, ancestor? Who do you want to hit this time?"

Although he was complaining in his heart, he had no choice but to use his injured leg to catch up again.

A thin figure in a guard's uniform had his back to them, tinkering with something on the stone table, oblivious to the noise behind him.

Wu Fang also saw it, and muttered with his hands in his pockets: "...Are you going to pick on a little brat?"

Gu Qingzhi stood in front of the stone table.

The boy looked to be about fifteen or sixteen years old, not tall, with a delicate baby face, which seemed out of place with the pitch-black guard uniform he was wearing.

She looked up at the sign hanging next to the open door behind him. It read "Preparation Warehouse" and below it was the name of the person in charge - Mu Ying.

There were a lot of miscellaneous items piled in the room, except for a tidy bed, as if he lived there. It seemed that this person was Mu Ying, who was in charge of backup work in the Guards' Court.

Looking at the young man again, the two were standing in front of him, but he still didn't notice anything. He was concentrating on fiddling with the building blocks in his hands with an extremely focused expression, as if trying to put them together perfectly.

Her eyes fell on the straw paper scattered on the ground, which was covered with precise mechanism drawings. As her eyes swept over, two familiar words suddenly caught her eye in the corner of an unfinished crossbow design.

Orchid Boat.

It’s her “Lan Zhou”.

It was the same "Lan Zhou" that she had carved on her knife.

Gu Qingzhi's heart trembled. She raised her eyes suddenly and looked at the person in front of her carefully again, confirming that this face had never appeared in her memory, not in the previous life, and not in this life.

Who is he?

At this moment, Mu Ying seemed to finally feel that the light was blocked. He raised his head slightly and saw two tall figures appearing silently in front of him. He was so scared that his hands trembled and the parts fell onto the stone table with a "clang".

Gu Qingzhi spread out her hands, revealing the strange flying knife: "This, is it yours?"

The young man was stunned. He looked at her, then at the flying knife. After a long while, he nodded slowly, his voice as thin as a mosquito: "...Yeah."

"Hey! You kid!" Wu Fang couldn't help but interrupt, "Do you know that this thing almost pierced someone? Look at my brother Gu's back!"

Mu Ying just glanced at Wu Fang quickly, then his eyes returned to Gu Qingzhi.

There was no fear on his face. Instead, he quietly defended himself, "It was...he who wanted to challenge the entire Guards Academy. I was just...taking this opportunity to test out a new weapon."

"What were the test results?"

Gu Qingzhi bent down and looked at the crossbow carefully, her tone calm, as if she was discussing today's weather.

Even Wu Fang was choked by this question, with an expression that said, "Are you confused because of excessive blood loss?"

Mu Ying seemed to have been hit in the vitals. His eyes lit up slightly, then quickly dimmed. "There's still a problem with the counterweight. It's off by half an inch. Otherwise... I should have been able to hit you."

Gu Qingzhi nodded slightly, not surprised at all: "Can you show it to me?"

The young man immediately squatted down, his fingers nimble and almost showing off his skills as he quickly picked up the scattered parts in the mess. With a few "clicks", a crossbow with an exquisite structure and peculiar shape was formed and handed to Gu Qingzhi.

Gu Qingzhi took the crossbow, stroked the cold mechanism with his fingertips, found the groove that fit with the tail of the flying knife, and with a light twist, embedded the knife in it.

Wu Fang was dazzled and muttered, "Hey, there's something here...Brother Gu, how do you know how to use this thing?"

"The same principle applies to most hidden weapons."

She answered casually and aimed her crossbow at a tree as thick as a bowl not far away.

There were a few very slight metal biting sounds coming from inside the crossbow, and the flying knife was retracted into the crossbow little by little with the sound of "clicking", accumulating full force.

“Swoosh—bang!”

A flash of silver light passed by, and the tree trunk was instantly pierced. The flying knife still had the remaining force and was deeply nailed into the brick wall behind it, and the tail of the knife was still trembling.

Mu Ying's eyes suddenly widened. He looked at the transparent hole in the tree, then at Gu Qingzhi. His lips trembled, and he couldn't utter a complete sentence for a moment: "You...you...how did you do it? Why can't I...can't I?"

"The crossbow is light in front and heavy in the back. The instantaneous recoil will cause it to deviate from its trajectory. If you have enough force, you can stop the trajectory. That strike you just made could have killed me."

Gu Qingzhi handed the crossbow back to him, her eyes fixed on his thin arms. "This isn't the weapon's fault, it's your fault. Without enough strength, you'll never be able to truly control it."

As if he had already thought of this problem, Mu Ying looked down at himself, as if all his strength had been drained away in an instant, and the fingers gripping the crossbow turned white.

His head dropped, his shoulders slumping.

"...So, the data is correct. It's really my fault." His voice trembled. "Commander Yang and the others were right... I have no talent for martial arts. Even the things I made..."

Wu Fang couldn't stand the gloomy atmosphere. Looking at the guard's uniform that didn't suit his temperament, he couldn't help but interrupt: "By the way, are you really a guard? Which family sent you? Look at your skinny arms and legs. What do they think?"

Mu Ying lowered his head even more, his voice muffled: "I... I used to work in the aristocratic family workshop. My parents were both old servants in the mansion. There was a man with the same name as me in the guards' courtyard, but he didn't want to come, so... he pushed me out to replace him..."

"Ah? Is this all right?" Wu Fang was stunned. He wanted to ask more, but was stopped by Gu Qingzhi's eyes.

This child is also honest. He comes when others push him out.

Realizing he had said the wrong thing, Wu Fang quickly tried to make amends: "Uh... oh well... there's no need to be so depressed, right? You weren't originally a guard, so it's normal that you're not good at this."

Mu Ying lowered his head even lower.

"I just... I just want to be closer to him, even if I can only see him from afar..."

He muttered something under his breath, suddenly grabbed the sketch of "Lan Zhou" on the table, looked solemnly at the two small words in the corner, and used his knuckles to almost crumple the paper, his voice choked with sobs.

"Maybe these... are really not suitable for me..." He said as he was about to tear up the picture.

A hand held him down first.

"What if," Gu Qingzhi raised her eyes and said with great conviction, "I have a way to prove that you are suitable?"

Mu Ying's tearing motion suddenly stopped. He looked up in shock, his red eyes filled with confusion: "...What?"

Gu Qingzhi gently pulled out the sketch he was holding tightly, carefully smoothed out the wrinkled corners, then turned the drawing towards him and gently tapped the word "Lan Zhou".

The dark pupils were calm and powerful, falling into the boy's confused eyes.

"I mean, prove to Lan Zhou that you can do it."