Card Apprentice Daily Log

Chapter 2744: Glorious Homecoming

Date: Unspecified

Time: Unspecified

Location: Zhongguo (China), Liaodong Province, Shuntian Prefecture, Shenyang City

”Your Highness Reven, please return to your body. We’re about to reach the Shenyang City gate,” Martha said softly, keeping her voice low as she guided the donkey cart by its reins.

Dust drifted around the wooden wheels as the cart rolled forward in an uneven rhythm. It was nothing like the ornate chariot she had prepared, with polished lacquered panels, gold fittings, and eight purebred horses trained for imperial display.

The princesses had refused it. They had chosen this instead. A battered donkey cart creaking along the trade road like common merchants entering the city for the first time. No banners. No guards in gleaming armor. No ceremonial escort to announce their arrival.

Reven’s floating head drifted beside the cart, her expression thoughtful as she watched the walls of Shenyang rise on the horizon. Coryn, in their merged body, sat cross legged inside, chin resting on her palm as if this were a leisurely outing rather than a political entrance into foreign territory. They couldn’t get enough of the outdoors. They could spend days like this.

”We blend better this way,” Coryn said casually, brushing dust from the plain robe they had chosen to wear.

Martha tightened her grip on the reins, remarking, ”Your Highness, look at them. Their dark slanted eyes, black hair, yellow-toned skin, their small build. Now look at us. Even their men are shorter than us. How do we actually blend in?”

The massive gates of Shenyang drew closer, banners snapping above the battlements. Reven sighed and drifted lower. ”Fine.”

The floating head dissolved into motes of light and flowed back into their fused body inside the cart. Their aura settled. Their presence compressed cleanly into a single figure.

Martha exhaled. Whatever waited beyond those gates, she preferred it begin with only one visible princess.

Since leaving the palace, the princesses had become almost unbearable in their enthusiasm.

Everything delighted them. A roadside vendor shaping sugar into flowers became a master of living art. A child chasing a chicken through the market was a symbol of unrestrained freedom. Even the uneven rhythm of wagon wheels on cobblestone earned praise as music made by ordinary lives.

They treated cracked walls as history, stray dogs as philosophers, and street noise as a festival staged for their amusement. Martha endured it in silence.

At first, she believed the novelty would fade. She expected the dust, the smell of livestock, the crowded inns, and the blunt speech of commoners to wear down their fascination. It did not.

If anything, their amazement grew stronger and more deliberate. They praised coarse bread as though it were royal cuisine. They thanked stable boys with sincere reverence. They watched artisans work with wide, almost worshipful eyes.

What irritated Martha most was their cheerfulness. They were not mocking them. They were truly enthralled by it, greeting everything with the same bright intensity.

Martha understood the reason for it.

The princesses had spent their entire lives within palace walls, glimpsing the world only through narrow windows, filtered reports, and polished pages in bound books. Markets had been illustrations. Festivals had been secondhand descriptions. Poverty and laughter had both been academic concepts rather than lived experiences.

Now that they were beyond the gates, everything struck them as revelation.

She told herself she could endure it. She owed them her life and more than that. They had healed and lied for her when they had every reason to leave her broken. Whatever irritation she felt was small in comparison.

Yet the constant amazement tested her patience.

Their cheerfulness was relentless. Their curiosity without restraint. They found wonder in mud, poetry in smoke, and purpose in strangers who would never know their names. It was exhausting to march beside two former royals who treated cracked brickwork as though it were sacred scripture.

Martha sighed quietly and adjusted the reins of the donkey cart. She understood them. That did not make them any less unbearable.

They had been on this journey for nearly four weeks and had barely arrived in time for the Zhong Guo royal family’s trial, the very ceremony the princess had insisted on attending.

’Attending.’ Martha resisted the urge to scoff at the word even in her own mind. There was no invitation awaiting them, no envoy dispatched ahead, no formal acknowledgment of their presence. The royal trial was a sacred imperial rite, reserved for heirs and chosen scions of noble houses with royal blood in their veins. It reaffirmed legitimacy, hierarchy, and divine favor.

And the princess wanted to ”join.” Martha knew better. What the princess truly intended was intrusion. Not as a reckless act of sabotage, but as a calculated challenge. To step into another empire’s ceremony, compete under its laws, and walk away with its most treasured heirloom—the last and most significant symbol of their mother, Dragon Dicing Saber.

It was not theft in the conventional sense. It was worse. If successful, it would humiliate the imperial court on its own stage. If unsuccessful, it would provoke diplomatic consequences that could engulf their kingdom. King James and the Princesses were strong but the Empire had too many resources and manpower at disposal.

Martha tightened her grip on the reins and studied the distant city walls rising ahead. The banners already fluttered in celebration of the coming trial, oblivious to the storm approaching beneath the guise of a dusty traveler’s cart.

She owed the princess her life. But loyalty did not make the plan any less insane. They saved her life and now it belongs to them. She was prepared to die for them.

A long line of carts, wagons, and travelers stretched toward the city gates, all waiting to pass through the walls. Martha guided their donkey cart into the queue, but their appearance quickly drew the guards’ attention.

She did not panic. They had faced this kind of scrutiny ever since entering the Zhongguo Empire. By now, they were accustomed to it.