Futile Devices Scans

In the silent, deserted library pavilion, the fresh, herbaceous scent of gentian drifted through the air, pushing aside the old smells of paper, ink dust, and aged wood, wrapping itself tightly around the person he loved.

Yu Gong Zhao Ye’s eyes were covered, leaving only the lower half of his pale, narrow face exposed. He looked unusually gentle, even faintly easy to bully. The corners of his lips curved ever so slightly, relaxed and completely lacking their usual sharpness, enough to stir reckless thoughts in others—so much so that it felt like kissing him once probably wouldn’t get you beaten to death.

The bold and audacious flirt lost his mind and leaned in.

Yet Yu Gong Zhao Ye seemed to have eyes on the back of his head. He precisely lifted a hand and pinched Wei Fu’s lips shut, squashing them into a flat little duck beak, then sneered coldly, “Additional charges.”

The flirt: “Mmfmfm!”

“I’ll count to three. We let go together.” The hateful curve at Yu Gong Zhao Ye’s lips became even more obvious. “Three, two, one.”

The instant they released each other at the same time, Wei Fu moved with lightning speed and swiftly kissed the fingertips Yu Gong Zhao Ye had yet to withdraw.

Yu Gong Zhao Ye: “……”

“Your Highness is so young and handsome. Traveling abroad like this, how could I not worry?” Wei Fu wrapped his other arm around Yu Gong Zhao Ye’s waist and turned him around. Prepared to get beaten for it, he resolutely declared, “Fine, if you won’t give me a title, then at least leave me a mark. That way, when you think of me in a foreign land, you’ll still have something for comfort. As for me, sleeping alone every night, weeping beneath the moon, I can only cling to these memories to keep warm…”

The more he spoke, the more tragically heartbroken he sounded. For a fleeting moment, Yu Gong Zhao Ye felt as though he had been conscripted to build the Great Wall and would probably never return home in this lifetime, while Wei Fu looked like the sort who would collapse the wall crying the moment he laid the final brick.

Ever since the previous night, when Wei Fu had forcibly shortened the distance between them until only a thin, mutually understood window paper remained, Yu Gong Zhao Ye had blocked and stalled with all his might to keep certain words from being spoken aloud. They had not seen each other for an entire day and night since then.

Yet now, suddenly meeting again here, Yu Gong Zhao Ye had not even had time to feel awkward before falling into profound self-doubt—

Had he really managed to stop him from saying it that night?

It felt as though he had lost part of his memory. Why was Wei Fu acting so brazenly, as if he had already succeeded?

“What exactly are you worried about?”

Yu Gong Zhao Ye reached out irritably and rubbed at Wei Fu’s cheek twice. Under Wei Fu’s puzzled and aggrieved gaze, he said calmly, “My hand got covered in dust.”

Wei Fu froze for a second, then burst into laughter. Deliberately tilting the other side of his face toward him, he asked, “One slap and one sweet date—what about this side?”

“Get lost.” Yu Gong Zhao Ye felt deeply that Wei Fu had become extraordinarily cunning after growing up, nowhere near as lovable as he had been as a child. “Who slapped you?”

Wei Fu was not annoyed in the slightest by the rejection. Sweet delight shimmered in the corners of his smiling eyes, as though simply looking at Yu Gong Zhao Ye already made him immensely happy. His gaze was so soft and warm that it almost made people involuntarily reflect on whether they had been too harsh toward him. “What brought Your Highness to the East Pavilion?”

The second half of the sentence was written clearly in the high arch of his brows—

“Did you come looking for me?”

Yu Gong Zhao Ye answered honestly and sincerely, “Young Master Wei, when someone comes to the library pavilion, besides reading books, what else could they possibly be here for?”

Wei Fu silently mouthed the words “secret affair.” Yu Gong Zhao Ye pretended he was about to smear dust all over his face, and Wei Fu laughed softly, hugging him as he whispered intimately, “Fine then. I came to see Your Highness.”

“The court pays you a salary, and this is how you repay the court.” Yu Gong Zhao Ye poked him lightly, putting on a stern front as he warned, “One of these days I’m going to lodge a complaint about you to your emperor.”

As for exactly what “this” referred to, although Prince Yu Gong possessed the Longsha people’s broad tolerance toward novel—even outrageous and bizarre—things, he still cared about his dignity. He neither spelled it out nor bothered to seriously struggle with Wei Fu’s clingy antics.

It was like a scholar threatening an overly bold fox spirit by saying, “I’m telling your sworn elder brother.” The fox spirit was not truly afraid, but feared the scholar might get angry and walk away, so he immediately put on an understanding and gentle demeanor. “What is Your Highness searching for? Perhaps I can help advise you.”

What is there to advise about reading a map? It’s not as if I can’t read.

Yet when the words reached his lips, for some reason they twisted into: “Find somewhere more spacious. It’s dusty here. You’ll choke if you’re not careful.”

The two moved to a long table beneath the window and spread open two map scrolls. One depicted the entirety of Dongyu, the other the whole of Yan Yuan. Neither was especially detailed, only briefly marking major mountains, rivers, and cities.

After all, no nation would easily allow detailed maps of its territory to flow abroad, and Yan Yuan’s vigilance against Longsha was especially strict. The map before them had been obtained more than a decade ago, back when relations between the two countries had not yet grown so hostile.

Both maps contained only a few rough strokes depicting the border lake, simplistic to the point of resembling a child’s doodles. Yu Gong Zhao Ye aligned the two maps together along the border and studied them with a frown for a moment. “This place…”

Wei Fu: “What about it?”

“It looks familiar.” Yu Gong Zhao Ye circled the area with his fingertip and tapped the lake’s center. “I feel like I’ve seen it somewhere before… Tch, I can’t remember.”

Wei Fu lowered his gaze to the yellowed paper. The winding lines imprinted themselves into his mind, transforming into countless swiftly flipping pages and documents. Closing his eyes in thought for a moment, he said softly, “The map Xie You Lan brought out that day wasn’t the same as these two. It was also somewhat different from the maps I saw in the Imperial Archives. Your Highness, help me find some paper and brushes.”

Xie You Lan’s map had likely been specially commissioned. The Dongyu section had been drawn in exquisite detail, yet Wei Fu had only glanced at it a few times. Could he really have memorized the whole thing already?

Although Yu Gong Zhao Ye often felt Wei Fu was overly childish and lively, he had never once doubted his real abilities. He immediately pulled out xuan paper and writing brushes from a nearby bookshelf, then went downstairs for water and personally ground half an inkstone of ink for him.

Wei Fu dipped a fine brush into the ink. He had long since drafted everything in his mind while waiting. Without the slightest hesitation, he began drawing, smoothly sketching the rough outlines of lakes, mountains, and borders, carefully marking nearby cities and their positions. His movements were so practiced that it looked as though he had grown up there himself, as though a ready-made landscape already existed inside his chest and all he needed to do was trace it onto paper.

Yet Wei Fu had never once been there. Had Xie You Lan not mentioned it, he probably would never have paid that place any attention in his life. To reproduce by hand a place he had never seen, solely from glimpsing a few maps, sounded more absurd than bragging about flying to the heavens.

Because mapmaking was nothing like ordinary drawing. It required adherence to the Six Principles of Cartography, ensuring accurate proportions, directional alignment, distances, elevations, and more. A tiny mistake on paper could translate into hundreds of li in reality—placing mountains into rivers. Simply getting the rough outline and cardinal directions correct was nowhere near sufficient.

Wei Fu finished in one smooth breath. Lifting the paper and giving it a light shake, the first thing he said was, “This can’t be used as an official map. It’s only a compiled reference map pieced together from several maps I’ve seen before. Your Highness can take it merely as reference.”

Yu Gong Zhao Ye accepted it and studied it carefully. The Dongyu section matched Xie You Lan’s map fairly closely from what he could remember, while the Yan Yuan section likely came from old maps stored in Xiling’s Imperial Archives, with Wei Fu filling in the blank areas near the border.

Just from having “seen” those maps years ago, he could redraw them from memory. Setting aside questions of precision, that memory alone was terrifyingly rare in the world. If word of this spread, not only Yan Yuan’s emperor but emperors everywhere would wake in the middle of the night calculating how far their assassins had already traveled.

Yu Gong Zhao Ye glanced at him. “Photographic memory?”

“A trivial trick.” Wei Fu replied modestly, “Not as difficult as drawing talismans.”

Yu Gong Zhao Ye: “?”

“You…” He chose his words with extreme caution. “Besides me… have you ever done something like this in front of anyone else?”

Wei Fu played dumb. “What sort of thing? Secret affairs? Of course there’s only you, Your Highness. How could you doubt the sincerity of my feelings?”

Yu Gong Zhao Ye: “……”

“Talk seriously.” He reprimanded softly, somewhat awkwardly. “Stop changing the subject.”

“There’s only you.”

Wei Fu still smiled openly at him as he repeated himself in a gentle voice, “I’ve already handed over my sincerity, Your Highness. Now it’s your turn to decide—will you let me go again in this lifetime?”

Clearly, it was Wei Fu whose weakness had fallen into Yu Gong Zhao Ye’s hands, his life and freedom resting on another’s whim. Yet somehow he carried himself with the force of someone threatening and coercing instead, to the point Yu Gong Zhao Ye almost felt cornered and could no longer tell who the real bully was.

“What’s all this talk about quilts and pillows? Who’s stopping you from leaving?” Yu Gong Zhao Ye said irritably. “If you’re sleepy, go back and sleep.”

Wei Fu secretly delighted in how adorable he found him. This peerless, unstoppable blade would pretend to be obtuse whenever he heard something he did not want to respond to, just like a little animal playing dead when confronted by a natural enemy.

But outwardly, he revealed obvious disappointment. The corners of his eyes, lips, and invisible tail all drooped as he unwillingly muttered, “Oh.”

Yu Gong Zhao Ye truly could not understand what he had to be disappointed about. Baffled, he asked, “What exactly were you expecting?”

“Your Highness is always saying you’ll throw me into prison.” Wei Fu lowered his voice shyly and whispered beside him, “I thought you might lock me up personally and keep watch over me yourself, never leaving my side, and all that…”

Yu Gong Zhao Ye dared not listen any further, fearing he might truly kill Xie You Lan tomorrow. Remaining composed, he backed away three quick steps and shoved open the window. “If there’s nothing else, I’ll be leaving now. Farewell.”

Wei Fu: “Your Highness, that’s jumping out a window.”

Yu Gong Zhao Ye calmly replied, “No need to see me out.”

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