Chapter 262: Absolutely Regret

　　Chu Liuyue looked over.

　　A young man stood there with a pale face, and the fire within the cauldron before him was completely extinguished, leaving behind black ash only.

　　The previous sound came from there—it turned out that he failed in producing his pill.

　　Looking at his clothes, he was from Tai Yan Academy.

　　At the side, the judge reminded him, “You still have one last chance.”

　　The young man then recovered his senses and mechanically nodded his head. He hurriedly cleaned the cauldron, picked up the second set of ingredients, and tried for the second time.

　　But perhaps the first failure had made him nervous, which caused his hand that was holding the herbs to tremble.

　　The judges secretly shook their heads.

　　The crowd watching the scene also sighed, but they had seen such situations many times.

　　The competition was already very intense. The first pill production failure was an even larger impact.

　　Many students—who weren’t mentally strong enough—would quickly lose confidence after the first failure, causing them to fail for the second time as well.

　　As expected, the young man was dazed, and he put in the herbs in the wrong order after a short while. When he realized it, he started to extract the herbs carelessly.

　　This movement caused him to lose control of the fire in the cauldron, and it was extinguished once again.

　　The set of herbs—which had yet to finish being extracted—was wasted just like that.

　　The judges looked like they expected it, and they shook their heads.

　　“Number 37 is eliminated!”

　　When the young man heard this, his entire body trembled. He looked very defeated as he weakly walked off the arena.

　　“He’s the first person to be eliminated from this year’s heavenly doctor competition, right?”

　　“I didn’t expect for his second attempt to be worse than the first! At least he had extracted all the ingredients previously; there was only a problem during the merging of the ingredients.”

　　“Perhaps he’s too nervous… Even I’m very nervous just by watching them, let alone the competitors.”

　　“I think he’s not talented enough! Look at Situ Xingchen. She has always been calm since the start of the competition. Even though this is her first time participating in the Qing Jiao Competition, her extraction methods are much smoother than the rest!”

　　“She’s Country Xing Luo’s most beloved eldest princess after all. She truly lives up to her name…”

　　…

　　Situ Xingchen was bent on taking first place this time, so she chose the most difficult formula from the start without hesitation.

　　This resulted in her having many more herbs beside her.

　　When the other people—who chose the ‘intermediate’ and ‘beginner’ formulas—had already started to merge the ingredients, she was still calmly handling her herbs.

　　Gradually, more people were eliminated.

　　When Situ Xingchen heard those sounds, she was not affected at all. She would sometimes look up, but she would only glance at the progress of the people who had chosen the ‘advanced’ formula as well.

　　She did not even care about the others.

　　…

　　As time gradually ticked past, more and more people were eliminated. Only half of them were left by noon.

　　Chu Liuyue had always been waiting for that person to appear, but the other party no longer acted after that first glance.

　　Chu Liuyue felt regret in her heart, but she did not give up as she waited alertly. Since the other party came here, he definitely has tricks up his sleeves. There are many people at the Qing Jiao Competition’s venue, so it isn’t easy for him to do anything here. Perhaps after the competition…

　　….

　　Emperor Jiawen looked at the competition arena, smiled, and said, “Situ Xingchen is indeed outstanding. When I saw her a few years ago, she was still a small girl. Now, she’s matured beautifully.”

　　She excelled both in terms of appearance and talent.

　　The Empress looked at Emperor Jiawen and felt that he really liked Situ Xingchen. She then smiled and supported him. “You’re right, Your Majesty. A girl like Situ Xingchen is really a rare find. I heard that she isn’t engaged yet, right?”

　　Emperor Jiawen laughed out loud. “That’s right! Her father really dotes on her, and he can’t bear to marry her off. He keeps saying that he wants her to stay by his side for a few more years, but…”

　　But when both of them were communicating through mail, Situ Xingchen’s father—Country Xing Luo’s Emperor Jing Kang, Situ You—had once mentioned a marriage alliance.

　　The target of this marriage alliance was the Crown Prince, Rong Jin!

　　Not many people knew about this, and it seemed like Situ You had casually mentioned this. But as the Emperor, his words were rules, so how could he possibly joke about this?

　　Emperor Jiawen knew very clearly that Situ You was testing his attitude. He was naturally very satisfied with Situ Xingchen, but he did not know why Situ You would suggest this.

　　In Country Xing Luo, Situ Xingchen could also pick a husband that she was satisfied with. Why would they want to form a marriage alliance? And they even chose Rong Jin?

　　The Empress naturally did not know what Emperor Jiawen was thinking. When His Majesty casually mentioned it to her before, she did not take it to heart.

　　But after thinking about it, she felt that Situ Xingchen was a very good choice! She was better than Chu Liuyue at least.

　　As long as His Majesty granted them the marriage, Rong Jin could not reject it—especially when the other party was Country Xing Luo’s eldest princess!

　　She jokingly said, “I wonder who will be so blessed to marry this eldest princess.”

　　Emperor Jiawen was in deep thought.

　　Rong Jin secretly knitted his brows. Actually, he was interested when he heard the news from his mother previously. But that was before he angered his father.

　　During this period of time, he had encountered consecutive setbacks. He felt like he had lost all hope. However, it seemed like his father did not completely reject the idea.

　　But… he had already decided that Chu Liuyue would be his Crown Princess! If it were the previous him, he would be elated to have a marriage alliance with Situ Xingchen.

　　Who wouldn’t want to marry such a perfect Crown Princess? However, his heart was filled with Chu Liuyue now, and he did not want to change to someone else.

　　He coughed and pretended to speak to Rong Qi casually, who was beside him. “I heard Chu Liuyue took first place for two competitions?”

　　Rong Qi was stunned. Didn’t Big Brother always hate Chu Liuyue? Why did he suddenly bring her up now?

　　His brain turned, and he suddenly remembered that there were rumors about how the Crown Prince had changed his attitude toward Chu Liuyue. Rong Jin had even invited her in public. However, he was rejected by Chu Liuyue.

　　According to my understanding of Rong Jin, he shouldn’t want to have anything to do with Chu Liuyue… Rong Qi nodded. “I think so. I didn’t come the past few days, so I’m not too sure about what happened. But… Brother, why did you suddenly talk about her? I thought you…”

　　Rong Jin smiled. “She sort of saved me previously, and I haven’t had the chance to thank her yet.”

　　Rong Qi felt very strange and thought that Rong Jin’s expression was weird when he talked about Chu Liuyue.

　　When Emperor Jiawen heard this, he turned around to look at Rong Jin. Rong Jin is actually speaking for Chu Liuyue? It seems like the things that happened during this period has indeed made him change.

　　“Liuyue is indeed very good.”

　　Rong Jin nodded and bitterly laughed. “You’re right, Father. I was dumb before, and I missed her. Now, I…”