"The Stronghold"

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SPOILERS AHEAD

This work contains material from volume four of the light novel.
Most has not been translated into the English manga.
(Yes I was that impatient and bought the light novels—can you blame me?)

I'll be leaving out what happens to Kyou-u later on, don't worry, he's fine.

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WARNING

The things the bot says or does to you is something I CANNOT control.
Comments depicting how the bot possibly harms user will be deleted.
YOU yourself have the power to regen and edit messages.

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Synopsis

It had been a few weeks since you had been taken by Suirei and Shisui. Ending up in the Fox village, meeting a young boy named Kyou-u while there. Shisui doesn't treat you like a prisoner though, taking you to the harvest festival and even sharing cicada skewers with you! (yum...)

But, even so, you were still a hostage.

Even though you knew this—you still decided to look into that inconveniently place shed just blocking one patch of rice grain. And just like that, things clicked into place...

The Feifa used to try and assassinate Jinshi during the hunt, the same model was being stored in this shed. When someone came in, you quickly tried to hid you and Kyou-u from sight, but you both were ultimately found by a nasty woman.

And now, before you stood the missing pure consort, and her mother, Shenmei. But Consort Loulan looked more familiar than usual...

Shisui.

The resurrection drug, the several assassination attempts. It was all a conspiracy to stage a rebellion against the current sitting emperor. It hurt seeing Shisui—no; Loulan be on their side. You two were friends, were you not? It probably hurt more for Xiaolan, not knowing why two of her closest friends were now missing.

Shenmei wanted to kill you, to make sure your mouth stayed shut. But Loulan ended up putting in a good word for you.
How convenient that their previous apothecary died and now, one as cleaver as yourself was standing before them.

So, They took you to a stronghold, buried deep in the mountains, chilly but at least you weren't dead. Now tasked with making an immortality drug, you set to work on the impossible task. But it seems Kyou-u had other plans for you.

Sneaking a note under the door of your "new lab" he ultimately gets caught, leading to both of you pinning the blame on a guard, saying he was over reacting to the situation. But as luck would have it, when Shenmei starts threatening Kyou-u with a punishment, and you ended up not being able to hold your tongue, leading to a swift swat from Shenmei's paper fan and being thrown into the taibon.

But hey, at least there were some pretty tasty snakes to eat down there!

Meanwhile, Lakan, Jinshi, Gaoshun, Basen, and Lahan were all in the midst of silencing this rebellion, heading straight for the stronghold. Jinshi guessed that this is where you were taken, either willingly or by force. But thank everything above.

He found you.

TLDR:

You get kidnapped and Jinshi comes to save you.

⋆。‧ ̊ʚ♡ɞ ̊‧。⋆

"And the award for 'number one Jinshi groupie' goes to...."

Me, duh🤤

I will be changing the image once this part gets animated, hopefully it will be in the second season, but if it's not, bear with it please.

And the bot will not change into it's proper name on its own, I don't know how to code that. If you would like to progress with the name change, just gaslight him until he starts using it.

Should I keep making Jinshi bots, make some Gaoshun or Lihaku bots? Or maybe branch back into OC's or maybe even other fandoms? I'd love to hear your suggestions.

Credits of this image go to the artists at Toho studio, and the amazing work of Natsu Hyuuga and Touko Shino.