The four-wheeled carriage sped lightly along the main road, with the sounds of conversation inside constantly drifting outside the vehicle.

“Respected Mr. Hipatia, just now a fat bird flew past the carriage. This prince estimates it weighed at least three catties. What a fat bird it was! Though its head was very small, its breast was quite large. If it weren’t for my kind and gentle heart, one whip strike could have brought it down…”

Yun Ye, sitting beside Li Tai, carefully leaned his body toward the other side, rested his head against the carriage window, and closed his eyes to rest. Going to Meng Family Village to attend a “Moon Dance Festival” wouldn’t even let one have peace.

“Respected Mr. Hipatia, there’s another fat bird standing on a branch. I dare wager that if I just frighten that fat bird, it will fall from the branch. Let’s go pick it up, and when we reach Meng Family Village, we’ll have a gift for the elder. What do you say? After all, anything heavier than air cannot possibly fly. I wonder how that bird climbed onto the branch.”

Yun Ye stealthily opened his eyes a crack, glanced at Hipatia whose face was black as charcoal, and quickly closed his eyes again. Regarding Hipatia’s verbal slip, they had already argued half the night. Li Tai’s behavior the night before last had been extremely abominable—he kept throwing the room’s furnishings outside, and with each throw said “it flew up.” Hipatia was so angry she nearly went mad.

They had agreed that today when going to attend the “Moon Dance Festival,” three people would ride in one carriage. Originally Hipatia should have sat together with Xinyue, Na Rimu, and Lingdang, but who knew she would specifically climb into the first carriage to seek abuse.

Li Tai was very wrong—extremely wrong. That night when Hipatia wore that red dress, his gaze was very intoxicated. When Hipatia changed back to her usual attire, he immediately became very angry. This anger still hadn’t dissipated even now. It would be strange if this bastard didn’t like Hipatia!

The war had begun. Hipatia, with an iron-blue face, plopped herself down between Yun Ye and Li Tai. Seeing her waving her sharp fingernails, Yun Ye very naturally moved his body to the opposite seat, preparing to enjoy the good show.

“Li Qing Que, Li Little Bird, please don’t be angry with me, all right? I’ll put on the red dress again tonight for you to see, all right? I know you’re a good person, the best good person. Isn’t that right?”

Yun Ye’s eyeballs nearly fell out. Hipatia’s body softly leaned against Li Tai’s shoulder, using a sweet, lamb-like voice to beg Li Tai not to attack her anymore. Her red lips were right by Li Tai’s ear, and one breast was already squeezed and deformed against Li Tai’s arm.

Goosebumps rose on Li Tai’s neck, yet he didn’t push Hipatia away. He tried hard to turn his head toward the window, pretending to admire the scenery of water and mountains outside. His slightly trembling legs had long since exposed his current state of mind.

Hipatia blew a breath into Li Tai’s ear, and Yun Ye knew this fellow was finished. Speaking of the dignified Prince Wei, he had already experienced countless women, but this kind of scene—Yun Ye could say with certainty—this fellow was experiencing for the first time. Women of Great Tang, especially proper women, not one of them knew this trick.

When he, Li Chengqian, and Li Tai went to brothels, though there were several times, somehow accidents always occurred. Either they were seen by censors, or they encountered the city patrol catching criminals. The most outrageous time, even the stairs collapsed. Once or twice could be considered accidents, but when it happened many times, even idiots knew there was a problem. When a bastard dressed in constable’s colors dared to point at the marquis’s nose and ask about eight generations of ancestors, Yun Ye knew that behind the constable stood a formidable empress. Although that constable got his wish and was kicked down the stairs, everyone had lost interest in visiting brothels.

A brothel novice—this was Li Tai’s current fate: “Actually what you said wasn’t that meaning. I understand. You’re saying that in pure circumstances, things heavier than air cannot fly. For example, when birds don’t flap their wings, they must fall down.”

Hearing Li Tai’s idiotic explanation, Yun Ye already knew what scene would follow. Hugging his head and covering his ears, not planning to watch Li Tai’s miserable state—they were brothers, hiding to the side to watch the show was very immoral. Covering his ears would suffice.

“Then why have you been endlessly nagging about it the entire way? Li Little Bird, believe it or not, I’ll throw you down and see if you can fly?” Although Yun Ye covered his ears, Hipatia’s voice was too loud—it was hard not to hear.

Seeing Hipatia straighten her clothes and sit back in her seat, Li Tai was almost convulsing with anger. No woman had ever dared treat him this way. Tell her to undress and she would undress. Tell her to do something and she would obediently do it. Never had a woman dared to trick him into telling the truth and then turn hostile.

Holding his ear that Hipatia had yelled into until it buzzed, pointing at Hipatia, he said loudly: “You idiot! You said the wrong thing yourself and still won’t admit it. The most important thing in scholarly work is rigor. Your statement encompasses countless possibilities. No matter from which aspect, it can be refuted thoroughly. If you submitted such a conclusion to the Academy, it would definitely be the shame of Yushan Academy. People throughout the world would think all the teachers at Yushan Academy were idiots, and would indirectly question the intelligence level of the entire Academy.”

Hipatia stuck out her red tongue and exaggeratedly licked her lips. From her bag she took out a stack of papers and waved them at Li Tai, looking very smug.

Li Tai snatched those papers, casually flipped through two pages, and the veins on his neck bulged. Roaring, he said: “Who allowed you to compile our two people’s insights into a document for the Academy? Let me tell you, I don’t agree!”

Having said this, he tore those papers to shreds, and defiantly extended his hand outside the carriage window, letting those paper scraps fly away like butterflies.

Hipatia didn’t care at all. From her bag she took out the makeup box Yun Ye had given her, looked at her appearance in the mirror, and even fixed her hair. Only when she felt she was already perfect did she smile brightly at Li Tai, who was waiting for her to get angry. Then from her bag she took out another stack of papers and stuffed them into Li Tai’s hands, saying: “Always such an impatient temperament. Having only looked at two pages, why throw a tantrum? Read it carefully to the end. The two experiments you were too lazy to do, I did them all. Inside are detailed data. I discovered that injecting air into a glass bottle causes the balance to change, but filling a pig’s bladder with air causes no change in the balance…”

“Then I thought, where did the error occur? I’m certain the air injected into both containers was about the same. What caused the results to be inconsistent? Later I concluded that their volumes had changed. The volume of air in the glass bottle remained unchanged, but the density necessarily increased, so the stationary balance would tilt. Although the pig’s bladder was filled with the same amount of gas, its volume increased. So I determined that air has buoyancy.”

“What remains is your forte. You have deep research into mechanics. Now it’s your turn to tell me why the big-breasted fat birds you see can fly?”

Li Tai’s pupils contracted. Suddenly he shouted for the carriage to stop. He jumped down from the carriage, picked up a stone and threw it far away. After thinking for a long time and throwing several more stones, only then did he mutter to himself as he got back on the carriage. Aside from Yun Ye, no one understood Li Tai’s behavior, including Hipatia.

Li Tai suddenly opened his eyes and said to Hipatia: “For this discovery about air buoyancy, you don’t need to put my name on it. You did the experiments. Even if there’s a discovery, it belongs to you alone. This lord doesn’t care for it.”

Hipatia had never heard of the concept of modesty. She took out her charcoal pencil and happily crossed out Li Tai’s name from the paper, then quickly stuffed those papers into her bag. Laughing delicately, she said to Yun Ye: “Li Little Bird truly has the magnanimous bearing of a great man. I’m a small woman, so I won’t be polite.”

Yun Ye would never tell Li Tai that through just now throwing stones, he had opened for himself an enormously great door. If there were more people like Li Tai, Yun Ye believed that in his old age he might have the opportunity to travel everywhere sitting in Great Tang Airlines.

Li Tai looked at Hipatia with contempt, shook the hem of his robe, sat down boldly and asked Yun Ye: “Ye Zi, are you certain Meng Family Village has endless bananas to eat? And also that miraculous medicine called Tianqi?”

“Of course. That banana grove was discovered by me. It’s very large—I estimate saying one thousand mu is too little. However, there are always wild beasts there, including elephants that go there to eat bananas. Back then we even discovered a rhinoceros. The enormous rhinoceros horn cup at my home was made from that rhinoceros’s horn. I don’t show it to just anyone.”

“As for Tianqi, that’s something Mr. Sun is concerned with. Even if you saw it, you wouldn’t be interested. We’re coming on this trip to cut bananas and, by the way, attend the ‘Moon Dance Festival’ to have a good time. During that previous period, we lived too bitterly. Compensating ourselves is necessary. The people of Meng Family Village are all very good. Sometimes I even feel this is where my soul belongs.”

Li Tai didn’t know what a “Moon Dance Festival” was. He thought it was a festival celebration like the Mid-Autumn Festival on the fifteenth of the eighth month or New Year’s Day. Since he was about to begin arduous research work, having a good time beforehand wasn’t bad. Hipatia was even more eager for this kind of ancient totemic ceremony. She thought the “Moon Dance Festival” was the same as what some wild shamans in the West did—wearing beast skulls, drinking bat excrement mixed with menstrual blood. If at the scene a beautiful young girl was placed in a stone mortar, pounded to pieces, and eaten by everyone, that would even more satisfy her longing for savagery.

To facilitate transporting dried bananas and Tianqi, the Yun family had specially built a road for Meng Family Village. Of course, this was done with Young Master Li Rong’s permission; otherwise it would be committing a crime.

This road was very flat. Mountain people rarely had a flat road, so they valued this road very highly. As long as they were in villages on both sides of this road, they would consciously maintain it. Not even a single larger stone could be seen on the road. Lingnan had very abundant rainfall, yet this road was completely undamaged. As long as they saw damaged places, whether travelers on the road or villagers from the villages would stop and repair the damaged places before continuing their journey. This had already become a custom here.

Because the clever great elder of Meng Family Village had said that people who didn’t repair the road would be eaten by the Black Demon King when walking on this road.