The guard responsible for protecting Fu Anwen and his mother knelt before the king at the edge of the training ground. In the half hour since she'd arrived, she hadn't moved, nor had the king spoken a word.

  Heavy rain was pouring down onto the training ground's dirt surface. Strangely, no rain was falling in the corner where the guard was kneeling.

  Thoom!

  The king's foot smmed down, sending out a spray of mud and water. Most of the sptter flew in the direction of the guard, who by this time had been covered in a thick yer of mud.

  The king continued his training for another few minutes, occasionally sending out more spshes of mud that always seemed to unerringly find their way onto the increasingly muddy guard.

  "Anwen failed to awaken his spirit root," the king finally spoke.

  "Yes, your majesty."

  Thoom!

  Another spray of mud went flying toward the guard.

  "I'm sending Qing'er and our son back to her ancestral vilge soon," the king continued. "You'll be going along as their personal guard."

  The guard was so shocked at hearing the news that her jaw dropped open, which unfortunately allowed a lightning-fast stomp from the king to send a mouthful of mud spshing inside.

  After a few hacking coughs, the guard regained her voice and excitedly shouted, "I'll be sure to take excellent care of Fu Qingyu, your majesty!"

  The king gnced over and squinted his eyes at her before returning to his martial arts training with renewed vigor. Even more mud than earlier began flying directly toward the kneeling guard.

  Fu Jianlong continued training for another hour before he finally gave the guard permission to leave, after which she happily shook off a mountain of mud, then ran out to take a bath and tell Fu Qingyu the news.

  The king kept staring in the direction the guard had gone for a while before sighing and muttering, "Consider that your final punishment for getting what I can never have."

  After shaking his head at his own pettiness, the king called out, "That's enough rain, Uncle."

  As if a switch had been flipped, the rain suddenly stopped falling.

  The king, whose training had already sted longer than he'd pnned, headed off to take a bath and pay a visit to his royal harem.