The Legendary Female Strategist

Chapter 26 - Planning for Destruction

The night slowly crawled by as morning arrived. But still, Feng Yao didn't move. From behind the curtain of hair covering her face, her soft muttering spread into the darkness.

"Seven hours, fifty-nine minutes, fifty-seven seconds. Seven hours, fifty-nine minutes, fifty-eight seconds. Seven hours, fifty-nine minutes, fifty-nine seconds--"

She abruptly stopped before her lips slowly turned upwards into a grin. "Eight hours. Time to begin." Immediately, she went into action.

Twisting the foot on her good leg, she began working at loosening the ropes around her ankles. But no matter what she tried, the rope wouldn't become looser.

Feng Yao let out a breath of impatience. It seemed that Long Yi was pretty confident that she wouldn't be able to get out of these ropes.

She switched tactics and started to move her right arm instead. Using the back of her knuckles plus her fingers, she slowly started to peel away the wood that she was tied to.

It was a slow process that made her fingers start to bleed, but eventually she managed to strip off a few pieces of wood. That was all she needed.

Twisting her right arm, she wiggled the ropes towards the end of the wood until it slipped off the wood. Quickly now that her one arm was free, she untied the rope holding onto her other hand.

With both arms free from restraint, Feng Yao immediately bent down and started working at the rope around her legs. But the sudden movement caused her to wince as she remembered about the open wound on her left leg.

She glanced down at it and saw that it was still bleeding, although it wasn't as bad as before. The skin around it had been torn badly and would likely take a lot longer than usual to heal. She could thank Long Yi for that since he was the one who decided to put barbs on her arrow and then rip the entire thing out.

Did she mention that she was feeling a tiny bit resentful?

As fast as she could, she ripped off her sleeve and began to tightly wind the cloth around the wound to stop the bleeding. Feng Yao grit her teeth as she ignored the pain. The quicker she got out of this prison, the quicker she could continue her plan.

Her fingers were swift and nimble as if she'd done this type of bandaging many times before. Before long, a simple and neat knot was tied around her thigh.

Examining her handiwork, Feng Yao gave a small nod to herself before bending down and resuming taking apart the rope knotted around her ankles. Suddenly, with one final tug, the rope came apart and Feng Yao tumbled forward from the sudden loss of support.

"Ouch!"

Another shot of pain rushed up her leg as she was forced to twist her body in order to not fall flat on her face. Using the wall as a support, she made her unsteady legs stand back up after having been numb for a few hours. Feng Yao made sure not to put much pressure on her left leg. If she worked it too hard, her wound would get even worse and have the risk of creating a blood trail.

Now that I'm free, how shall I get out from this dungeon? I need to get to his imperial study before he notices that I'm gone.

Feng Yao had known early on that the Emperor would leave no way for her to escape the Wei country. Her guess had been right about him personally following her while she tried to leave.

Even if she had somehow miraculously stepped foot outside of the borders, there would have been no way to hide from the other countries now that Long Yi announced her identity to the world.

There was only one way to permanently escape Long Yi's grasp while also getting rid of the attention from the other countries:

Concubine Zhao needed to marry Long Yi as the legendary strategist.