Underneath A Thousand Skies ✔️

65 Foster Son, Don't Be So Crazy (2)

When Song Jia next opened her eyes, what greeted her was a domed ceiling full of peeling paint.

She blinked. Supporting her aching forehead with her hand, she looked around the dilapidated bedchamber that she found herself in.

"Ah." She pursed her lips. "What a ghastly sight."

Everything was full of dust. Sunlight streamed through broken stained-glass windows, showing the smashed pieces of ceramic tiles that littered the ground below her bed. There were vines that sprouted here and there along the cracks on the walls, showing how abandoned this place had become.

Song Jia gently wiggled her toes and fingers. Alright, it seemed that this body was still in perfect working condition. She swung her legs to the side and slowly climbed out of the ornately-carved wooden bed.

She was wearing an ancient palace gown, making it difficult for her to move around. Song Jia tore away the bottom half of her dress along with the densely gathered sleeve flounces, leaving a trail of fabric on her wake. There were rats that scurried away at the sound of her footsteps, but Song Jia ignored them. She was more focused on the old dresser mirror not far away.

After brushing away the numerous cobwebs, Song Jia studied her reflection.

Pale golden hair that almost seemed to shimmer as it cascaded over her shoulders, and eyes that were the vivid blue of a clear, summer sky.

Her fingertips touched the surface of the mirror.

"Jin Jia," she said out loud.

'Jin', which meant gold, and 'Jia', which meant beauty [1]. The forgotten princess that had slept for a hundred years, locked inside a castle that was hidden deep inside a forest.

The sleeping beauty.

Song Jia abruptly sat on the footstool behind her, creating thick plumes of dust in the air. She put her head in her hands, sighing at how bad her luck was.

"A fairytale-like world. Nova, you bastard."

She had only known that this world held traces of magic, as the people here were descendants of supernatural beings that had long since gone extinct. Her mission was to raise a child that would become the right-hand man of an evil queen in the future. Because of her orders, he had pushed this world into the edge of destruction, killing millions of people without blinking. Song Jia was supposed to stop this from happening by turning that 'bad' child into a 'good' child.

[You're hopeless in matters of love, so I won't be giving you missions that involve adult male and female relationships. This time, you will only be raising a child and teaching him on how to be good. That should be easy enough for you, 886.]

Her boss had told her this, right before he closed the soul transfer pod and sent her on her merry way.

If Song Jia had known beforehand that she would be transmigrating into a world that followed the plot of a fairytale, she would have definitely retorted, "Easy?! You're easy. Your whole family is easy!"

Of course, it was too late for regrets now. She had already occupied the body of Princess Jin Jia, which meant that the only thing she could do now was to find the child before the future evil queen and raise him properly.

Song Jia pulled out her anti-gravity boots from her storage space and put them on. Princess Jin Jia had been sleeping for a century, so the memories inside her mind were of no use to her. She needed to do a complete reconnaissance of this world first.

Song Jia went out of the dilapidated palace and easily found her way to the nearest village. After perching on the roof of a busy inn for almost an hour, Song Jia finally had some idea about her situation.

This world was set up like a medieval kingdom, which followed the social hierarchy of the Middle Ages. There were nobles and peasants, knights and clergy. However, instead of a king, it was a queen who ruled over the common people.

Simply put, this world had a matriarchal society, where women held more advantages than men. In fact, females could even keep several male concubines in addition to their official husband.

As Song Jia listened to the conversations of the people inside the inn, she realized with a bit of surprise that the original host of the body that she was borrowing, Princess Jin Jia, originally didn't have anything to do with this kingdom. It was because this kingdom already had a princess.

Her Highness, Crown Princess Bai Xue [2], the heir to the throne.

At this point in time, both the future evil queen and her right-hand man were still growing children. As for Princess Bai Xue, the vengeful reincarnator who was going to become an evil queen in the future, Song Jia didn't place any importance on her. That was still far off in the future, and besides, as long as she prevented that child from becoming bad, Bai Xue would merely become a paper tiger.

A dragon without its legs is merely a worm. Once it no longer had the ability to walk and fly, it would only be able to crawl on the ground.*

Song Jia picked a certain windowsill on the inn and jumped down, swiping the cloak of a weary traveler that had gone out to eat. He placed it on a chair beside the window, which made it easy for Song Jia to snatch. By chance, she also saw a map on the bedside table.

Song Jia's lips curved.

"Lucky~"

Taking the two items with her, Song Jia used her anti-gravity boots to quickly leave the village. She had learned from her eavesdropping earlier that the annual slave auction was going to be held in two days.

At that slave auction, Princess Bai Xue was going to pick her personal body guard. As slaves had death contracts, they were the most ideal meat shields. Song Jia knew that the princess would shock everybody by picking a small child who looked both sickly and weak, with a burn scar on the left side of his face.

[1] The name Jia (嘉) means beautiful/beauty in Chinese.

[2] 'Bai' means white, and 'Xue' means snow. With China's format of last name + first name, if Bai Xue was rearranged according to Western format, her name would then become Snow White.

*edited. Thanks for all the readers that pointed it out!

A/N: I will only be loosely following the traditional fairytale. As for the magic, there will be close to none (actually there will be none at all, except for a few traits that the characters had inherited from their ancestors).