Once Zhao Chen had come down from the dais, no few watchful eyes naturally fell on him.
The guard Panther-Girl was already standing at Zhao Chen's side without a sound; though the people who came here were in the main all of unquestionable standing,
and all had been scanned for dangerous weapons before entering, to make sure of safety,
as one of the Emperor's Guard, Panther-Girl kept to her duty as always.
Zhao Chen first walked past the booths of the inner circle one by one.
In the main he chatted a few words at each and moved on to the next.
As for what to say, Lilith gave him some pointers and suggestions in the earpiece.
That left Zhao Chen's talks with them in the main without trouble; and besides, Zhao Chen already knew most of the people in this core area.
At this point, before Zhao Chen had even reached the next booth,
a figure shot out.
"Can I leave early and take delivery of my ship now?" Xue Xiaoxiao looked at Zhao Chen, unable to wait.
Even her breathing sounded somewhat heavier,
as though she could hardly wait to lead her bride into the bridal chamber.
Looking at the eager eyes Xue Xiaoxiao turned on him,
Zhao Chen reckoned that if he said the one word "agreed,"
the lass would be gone from here at tremendous speed, flying into the arms of her new love.
"It won't hurt to wait a little. Stay here and behave yourself. We'll talk once the banquet is over. Besides, you're the supreme commander of the Owl Dragon Empire's Fourth Legion Fleet Group now; a great many people are watching you," Zhao Chen said.
Xue Xiaoxiao pouted and went back to her seat with a touch of grievance, then raised her head and looked at that interstellar battleship outside the dome,
like some hopeless admirer gazing infatuated at her goddess,
swallowing every now and then.
"Grandson-in-law!"
At this point a booming voice suddenly rang out.
Then a large hand clapped straight down on Zhao Chen's shoulder.
Grandson-in-law?
Zhao Chen looked in surprise at Old Master Chu Changhe beside him, his face all smiles.
"Old Master Chu… what's this?"
"What's this 'Old Master'? Call me Grandpa." Old Master Chu Changhe patted Zhao Chen's shoulder.
For a moment Zhao Chen did not know what to say.
At this point Chu Xuan came running over in a hurry,
her face red, as though it might drip blood.
"Grandpa, what are you doing here?" Chu Xuan tugged at Old Master Chu Changhe's arm, trying to pull him away.
But Old Master Chu Changhe was a soldier by origin, and very steady on his feet.
However hard Chu Xuan pulled, Old Master Chu Changhe did not budge an inch.
"What am I doing here? Aren't I bringing up the old betrothal with your fiancé? He can hardly go back on his word, can he? It's not like the old days now, and people are open-minded, but we of the old Chu family are still very traditional. The good name of our family's girls still matters a great deal!" There was a meaning behind Old Master Chu Changhe's words,
and he looked at Zhao Chen, all smiles.
"Your Majesty, don't listen to my grandfather. He's drunk right now. He's throwing a drunken fit here." Chu Xuan, red in the face, looked at Zhao Chen; were her grandfather not still here,
she truly wished she could find a crack in the floor and crawl into it this moment.
She could never show her face again.
By now Zhao Chen too understood what Old Master Chu Changhe was hinting at.
It was from back when his own Owl Dragon Fleet had just risen, and had leaned on the Chu family's backing for a while.
At the time, to make Zhao Chen's standing secure, he had been given the standing of the Chu family's future grandson-in-law, and Chu Xuan's fiancé.
Only as time went on, almost no one had brought it up any more,
and Zhao Chen had gradually forgotten it.
He had never thought Old Master Chu Changhe would raise it at a time like this.
"Old Master, I know about this matter. But now… you know how things stand with me. I've not only a wife, I've children too. To have Chu Xuan marry me now, wouldn't that be doing her wrong?" Zhao Chen looked at Old Master Chu Changhe, talking on and on, and said helplessly.
Old Master Chu Changhe patted Zhao Chen's shoulder and said, "I know all about your affairs. In the old days I'd never have let my granddaughter marry you. But you're different now. You're the Emperor of the Owl Dragon Empire, a powerful man; having a few women about you is the most natural thing in the world. The more so since yours is a monarchy. Hereafter the Owl Dragon Empire's royal house will bear the name Zhao. For the Owl Dragon royal house to branch and flourish in future, this sort of thing is naturally quite all right. Look at those kings and emperors: never mind a few, no few have had dozens. There are even some with a hundred and more. But you, lad, had better know where to stop. A dozen or more won't do! Or my granddaughter loses out. Seven days in a week, and she can't get so much as one of them; how would that do?"
"Grandpa, stop it!" Chu Xuan at this moment felt truly as though she had been set on a stove, and did not dare look His Majesty in the eye at all.
She would rather fight the endless Pitch-Black Legion fleets to the last drop of blood than stay here one minute or second longer.
Zhao Chen saw Old Master Chu Changhe's view of the matter.
He truly had no excuse left.
And at this point, Lilith's voice did not even sound in his earpiece.
Likely the lass was enjoying the show.
Happily, brilliant 'fireworks' out among the stars were bathing those warships, and the magnificent sight drew everyone's attention.
Those 'fireworks' were of a special material, and harmless.
Like raindrops, they fell around those newly commissioned warships.
It was the ancient 'water salute.'
It was commonly used at very important moments.
Watching this ancient ceremony, Old Master Chu Changhe remembered how the T4 Boreas-class Heavy Interstellar Battleship, whose development the Chu family had once led, had likewise, after its 'water salute,'
stepped formally into everyone's view,
and become the most glorious warship of the Starlight Empire of the time.
But by now the T4 Boreas-class Heavy Interstellar Battleship had long since sunk into the long river of history.
Almost no one still remembered these warships that had once shone for a time.
What everyone talked of, and what everyone looked at, was in the main all Owl Dragon-line warships.
Old Master Chu Changhe sighed at heart a moment and drew his gaze back.
Just as he was about to talk over Chu Xuan's marriage with Zhao Chen again, he found the lad had run off who knew where.
"This fellow's slipped away from me again!" Old Master Chu Changhe said, somewhat displeased.
"Grandpa, if you ever do this again, I'll never see you again!" Chu Xuan was so angry she stamped her feet, mortified past bearing.
Had the officers under Chu Xuan seen Marshal Chu Xuan like this, they would likely all have been astonished:
that woman marshal, so dashing on the battlefield, now as bashful as a little girl.
"It's all for your own good. How can you be so thoughtless?" Old Master Chu Changhe looked at his granddaughter in this state. "If I were you, I'd get on the bus now and buy the ticket after; cook the raw rice into a meal. Make it so the fellow can't shake you off. And if he still won't own to it, then once the child's born we'll have the tears, the tantrums and the threats of hanging… Hey, why are you leaving?"
Chu Xuan ran off with her hands over her ears.
This place truly was not to be borne one minute or second longer.
On the other side,
because of this interlude with Old Master Chu Changhe, Zhao Chen had quickly finished his meetings and talks with the other guests and hidden himself in a small private room.
Only then could he breathe easy.
In the private room
Charlotte and Lilith, and the two little ones, were all waiting.
"Why didn't you say anything just now either?" Zhao Chen glared crossly at Lilith, who was holding back her laughter.
Lilith laughed lightly. "That's our Majesty's peach blossom, his romance; it's not for me to say anything about it."
"What do you mean, peach blossom? That was all something done because there was no other way at the time," Zhao Chen explained.
Charlotte, beside them, playing with the two children, looked at Zhao Chen and said, "When the Owl Dragon Fleet had just been founded and was just rising, if the Chu family hadn't come forward, and with that standing of Chu Xuan's in place, we could never have come this far so smoothly. Whether or not it was an expedient at the time, little sister Chu Xuan really was protecting you with her own good name. And little sister Chu Xuan's feelings for you: you can't not know them."
Zhao Chen was at a loss for words.
Chu Xuan's feelings for him, Zhao Chen naturally knew.
Perhaps from the moment, long ago, when she had leaped onto his starship at the Northstar Starship Military Academy,
a bond had formed between him and her that could not be cut.
Only, because of Charlotte and Lilith, Zhao Chen and Chu Xuan had kept things as they were from then on.
Still, where ability was concerned, Zhao Chen had not passed Chu Xuan over for it.
On the contrary, he had given Chu Xuan heavy charges, and she had now become marshal of the Owl Dragon Empire's Fourth[1] Legion Fleet Group.
"Your trust in Chu Xuan and the training you've given her all this time: can you say there's nothing personal in it? You believe you can't take her into your heart, so you think to make it up to her this way? But for some people, that kind of making-up is not at all the same thing as what she wants," Charlotte said quietly.
"This… does this sound like something you'd say?" Zhao Chen looked at this great white cat in some surprise.
These were not words at all like the great white cat to say.
"Perhaps it's because my standing is different now." Charlotte looked at the two children, then at Zhao Chen, and said, "Because I'm Supreme Marshal, I have far more time and chance to be with Chu Xuan now than you do. I watch her fill every moment with busy work so she has no time to spare. I know she's using it as a way to run away. She's not like us. Lilith and I are both of long-lived interstellar races; we can both live several hundred years, and if technology advances, over five hundred years is no problem. But Chu Xuan? Even with technology to lengthen life, a human can live at most three hundred years; anyone still alive after that isn't truly human any more. Chu Xuan has followed you for nearly seven years now. How many sevens of young, lovely years does a human girl have?"
Charlotte looked at Zhao Chen with pity in her eyes.
Zhao Chen said hesitantly, "But… but I already have the two of you!"
Lilith said beside them at this point, "There's one thing, in truth, where I agree with Old Master Chu. You're the Emperor of the Owl Dragon Empire now. You are the foundation of the Imperial royal house. And right now the root of this royal house is far too shallow! Count them: how many royals are there now? You're one; your elder sister and younger sister are one. Charlotte and I are one. Add the two children, still very young. Whose royal house has only these few people? That's why, when you went missing before, the Empire had wave after wave of trouble: the root is too shallow. With only Charlotte and me, however we try, the two of us can't branch the Empire out and make it flourish."
"Little Hu and Baier are enough for me," Charlotte declared outright at this moment.
She did not want any more children.
For she still meant to pursue her own ideal, which was naturally to gallop over the battlefields with the army.
She already had two children; with more, Charlotte truly would not know how to manage.
"And I can't have too many either. This one birth has already held up a lot of things. And if there are only three children, the root of the royal house is too thin. So we really don't mind little sister Chu Xuan being there," Lilith said calmly.
Zhao Chen looked at Lilith in astonishment, and then at Charlotte beside her, whose face was calm.
For the moment Zhao Chen could not take in the two women's words.
"I need to calm down. I need to think it over properly by myself." As he spoke, Zhao Chen picked up his daughter Zhao Baier.
"Little Baier, Daddy's baby. Daddy kiss." Zhao Chen held Zhao Baier, who smelled sweetly of milk, and kissed her little cheek.
Charlotte and Lilith said nothing more either.
For in this kind of thing, Zhao Chen had to persuade himself.
At least the two of them had made their position known now; what came next rested wholly with Zhao Chen.
In the next few days,
though the banquet lasted only a day, everyone was seldom gathered together, so naturally they discussed some affairs, and where it went well, even began some partnerships.
And Zhao Chen did not go straight back to the Imperial Military Industry Research Academy either.
He only gave guidance remotely now and then and checked on the progress of the work.
In this time Zhao Chen kept Charlotte and the two children company properly, and Lilith, in the days of her confinement.
That too was why Zhao Chen had been willing to put down his work for a while and attend this banquet.
For Lilith's due date was in these few days.
At the least, not having been at Charlotte's side when she gave birth made Zhao Chen feel very guilty.
Now Lilith was giving birth.
Zhao Chen was naturally not going to let such a thing happen again, and so these few days he stayed dutifully at the two women's side.
And, under Zhao Chen's supervision, Lilith had only one hour a day in which she could hear her subordinates' reports on work,
and that only at intervals of several hours.
If ever she worked a little too long, Zhao Chen would press Lilith back down on the bed.
As for the work, either it was given to the secretarial department, or where the secretarial department truly could not handle it, Zhao Chen did it himself.
Only what even he could not handle would be put to Lilith.
Lilith watched Zhao Chen running back and forth, more anxious than she was herself.
A happy smile appeared at the corners of her mouth.
Suddenly, a sharp pain in her belly.
"Ah……"
Charlotte, who had been through it, called at once, "She's giving birth!"