The Golden Throne

Liu Feng went back to the tree trunk, and saw that Amelia was slowly falling in a daze. She was tilted to the bark, and was leaning onto it. Moment by moment, she started falling asleep, and she finally fell onto the tree branch flat. She was about to fall down, but Liu Feng quickly caught her. Heaving a breath of relief, he thought to himself,

"Well, it has been exhausting, and no one got a good rest. She isn't nearly as strong as you Liu Feng. You need to cut her some slack. Let her have at least this much sleep. She could use all of it. She is after all, your love interest." , and just sat there, waiting for her to wake up.

After a few hours, Amelia woke up, and her balance started shifting. Liu Feng quickly saved her by holding her waist, and they got exceedingly close. Liu Feng, who was half a head taller than Amelia at this point, had his mouth at her nose, and it was quite a compromising position to be caught in. Liu Feng could feel Amelia breathing quickly down his chest. She looked at him blushing, and her face was as red as a tomato. Seeing her helpless eyes, Liu Feng could not resist, and he just swooped in for a quick peck. Amelia was startled. She pushed him away as a reflex, but in doing so, lost her balance. Liu Feng quickly held her hand and pulled her up. He got her back up and said, "It's time to move."

He quickly turned away; both of their faces were red, red as tomatoes.

"You pervert. You bully. You are always looking for times to take advantage of me.", Amelia wanted to say, but not a word came out of her. She just followed Liu Feng. Quickly though, their quick romantic moment had fleeted away, because the situation that they were in was quite the serious one. They were in the middle of a very foreign place, and they did not have any one else with them to help them in the time of need. Both of them were prince and princess respectively, so this was their first time(in this life) that they were this helpless.

"Quick now. I don't want to meet any monster here yet. It is best to conserve my energy. Maybe if I was the only person here, I would be very confident in my ability to protect myself. But now, I have you to take care of. In fact, I can't even trust your ability to hide, because these monsters have an excellent sense of smell, and will be able to find you in no time at all.", Liu Feng sighed.

"Okay! I get it. I am weak, and I am pulling you down. You have clearly said that before. You don't need to remind that to me again and again. You are rubbing it in my eyes.", Amelia said rolling her eyes. When someone takes such digs so many times, you are bound to get very, very irritated. 

They went back to the monster gathering that they were at a few hours ago. It seemed like a massacre, as all they could see was blood. Liu Feng hypothesized that at least a quarter of the students died here. But, not a single body could be seen. Not even bits and pieces. Either the monsters had eaten everything to the last bone, or that the teachers had gotten their remains out in the nick of time. For some reason, Liu Feng just felt that the former was more likely to be true.

"It looks like we did a very good thing separating from the main crowd. I want to check something, but I am not so sure. What do you think we should do now, Amelia?", Liu Feng asked his companion.

"You actually want to ask me? I don't know. You do whatever you want to do.", she said. She had relied on Liu Feng's words so far to stay alive, and it was clearly working out for her. Why would she change that at all?

Liu Feng wanted to go back immediately, and it was the more logical thing to do as well. But his intuition told him not to.

"We have to get to higher ground. I have to do something, but we will be defenseless at that point, so it is better if we are on higher ground. Let us climb that bigger tree. I want you to be ready to attack a monster that could come at us at any moment while I will be closing my eyes.", Liu Feng told her.

"Alright, fine. Just trust me already. I already literally put my life in your hands.", Amelia said.

He and Amelia climbed yet another tree, and Liu Feng told her, "I am literally putting my life in your hands."

He sat down with his legs crossed and started using Mana perception. Although it was dangerous at this time, he had no other option, and he did not want to take any risks, considering that he had a dependent. This was no longer a normal mana perception either. He had spread the mana that he had far too thin to far too much space. Normally, the mana perception could work in maybe fifty meters. But now, Liu Feng was looking at distances more over a kilometer away by concentrating all of his mana over a particular distance than a circular region. However, it was not easy, as sweat was dripping from his eye brow. Liu Feng was barely doing it at all.

The vision that he saw was clear. He saw that a few powerful monsters were chasing after the teachers, and students were nowhere in sight. For a brief moment, the leader of the pack that was chasing after the teachers stopped for a moment and looked at Liu Feng's direction. But, then it changed its focus back onto its prey. Liu Feng sighed in relief. Liu Feng knew that they had to take another route. He thought about it, and decided to go the roundabout way, and he decided that they had to cross the gathering to the other side of the forest.

"Where are we going to go now? This is a place where the teachers did not want us to go.", Amelia warned Liu Feng. She wanted to remind him that the teachers were more experienced because they had done this far more times than he did.

"The forest is like a circle. Let's go to the edge of this place, then slowly scale the edge to go back to the academy. I just feel like the route that we used earlier was compromised, and there are more dangers there.", Liu Feng wanted to justify himself. But, there was another problem. He wanted to grow quickly, and to do that, he needed a few months on his own. He wanted to get 'lost' in the magical forest in the middle of the expedition, but he never expected that there would a problem actually happening so soon.

"Fine, whatever. I am trusting you, but if this doesn't end well, it is on you.", Amelia snapped back.

They went the other route, crossing the huge divide that caused the whole trip to go down the trip, and got to a clear stream. This time, Liu Feng sensed that there were no monsters at all in the stream. He was suspicious, but figured that they were in a strong beast's territory. It was a dangerous path that they were treading, but it was necessary. Liu Feng would rather face one strong monster over a hundred monsters roughly a little less than Liu Feng in power. At the end, a thousand ants could kill a wolf. They went ahead and drank water. Liu Feng said, "I will take a bath in this place, after a while, you can too. We smell really bad, and I think that this is also attracting the beasts."

Amelia nodded and said, "If I catch you peeking, I will kill you."

Liu Feng started imagining it, and his nose started bleeding. "Whatever. I'll go in now."

And he took out his shirt.

"Wait for me to leave.", she said blushing, but she saw Liu Feng's rock hard abs, and was captivated. 

"I am waiting, you said you'd leave?", Liu Feng reminded her, snapping her out of a daze.

She shook back to reality, and she went to a tree back there. Liu Feng quickly completed bathing, and dressed up. Then, he went back to the tree, and Amelia started bathing.

They quickly finished up, and were about to leave, when Liu Feng froze. He stopped Amelia dead in her tracks, and said, "Get ready to run. As fast as you can. Something dangerous is coming."

"Something dangerous indeed.", A voice came out from nowhere. 

Liu Feng looked up instinctively, and saw a huge figure blocking the sun. It's shadow cast on them, and even the shadow radiated heat.

"A phoenix.", Liu Feng realized.

"Yes. I didn't think that a human would recognize me."