Chapter 148: Peacocking for the Prince’s Precious Progeny
Animal courtship rituals.
From the smallest insect to the largest whales, the pursuit and wooing of a mate is ingrained into the blood of every single animal. However, the method they go about to finding a mate can range greatly from species to species.
Some make unusual structures or nests, some perform elaborate dances and songs, others duke it out to determine who tops and some don’t even do anything other than make themselves look pretty.
Regardless of the method though, most animals only have one or two rituals to perform in order to attract a mate , or at least produce some form of interest…unless they’re human, at which point it’s all of the above and then some.
Then again, not all humans adhere to the same mating ritual standards…
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[Maestro, why are you crimping on my style?,] Hurricroak complained in a mock hurt tone.
‘Pardon? {Punish me}’
[Animal prints and purple is my thing! Why do you plagiarize me so?,] she cried in an overdramatic tone.
Hurricroak’s complaint wasn’t exactly off, in that Zhen Liu was currently wearing a purple suit done in Roaring Tide style, with golden tiger stripes printing. It looked nice, but the collar was a tad tight.
‘Don’t blame, blame my mother and aunties. They’re the ones who wanted us to dress up. It’s “proper etiquette”{to swallow}, they said. Honestly wasn’t expecting legit royalty this time around.’
[Boo~.]
Immediately after Daria had informed her son about the Patriarch’s decision to limit everyone’s movement to the city for the next week or so, she proceeded to hand him a new set of fine clothing, go to one of the clan’s owned restaurants and gave him a brief explaination about who they were with meeting exactly…a straight up prince and one of his many children.
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Much like how his own father, Zhen Yan, wandered a bit and ended up making friends with weirdly prospective people, Zhen Hou had a similar experience, but went a bit farther then anticipated due to unforeseen circumstances. Zhen Liu’s generation were’t completely clear on the details, but the story went that Zhen Hou had found a Golden Moon Grizzly Bear and had attempted to wrestle and tame it. Instead, his ass got dragged for about a week out of the frontier region, out of the Iron Heart Kingdom and straight into another kingdom known as the Bronze Bell Kingdom.
The Bronze Bell Kingdom was a traditional monarchy with all the…bells and whistles, that come with such a governmental style: king, queen, various knights and ladies ,concubines and royal children vying for the throne, the usual.
It was in this setting that Zhen Hou had ended up running into the Third Prince of the Bronze Bell Kingdom, Carlos Ecaredies.
Well…less run into, and more like slam into him on the aforementioned bear…and then knocking himself and the prince straight into the entrance of a wandering ruin shaped like a tree.
The two of them then, in the words of Zhen Hou and Zhen Liu’s mother, “developed a relationship that was deeper than a normal friendship, and transcended the petty matters of the material world.”
The exact nature of this relationship is up to debate.{THEY WERE FUCKING, THEY WERE DEFINITELY FUCKING.}
Regardless of past dalliances though, Zhen Hou and Carlos ended up falling out of touch with one another due to humanity’s oldest enemies: time and distance.
The fact that they reunited all these years later, long after they had both established families with marrying age children, could best be described as either destiny or a weird twist of fate.
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‘Huh…can’t tell if I find this place pretty or gaudy{like a brothel}…’
[It…looks…nice…]
[Too much gold, not enough jade.]
It took Zhen Liu about fifteen minutes of straight walking, but he eventually arrived to one of the finest restaurants in Stone Claw, which happened to be owned and operated by the Zhen Clan, the Golden Pearl Garden.
When the Zhen Clan first arrived to Stone Claw all those decades ago, there wasn’t exactly much in terms of fine cuisine in the area.
It made sense for the most part, frontier areas you’re valuing survival over taste, so any eateries in the area went for “filling” and “long lasting”, with the only seasoning being salt.
Over time however, and basically having access to a ton of ingredients in the form of butchered aether beasts , the Zhen Clan managed to establish restaurants in Stone Claw City that introduced the flavors of Roaring Tide to the people. They even managed to set up a few experimental “Stampeding Tide” restaurants, that combined the flavor profiles of both continents.
However, the most established of their restaurants was none other than the Golden Pearl Garden, a massive banquet restaurant designed to accommodate hundreds of people in general, as well as five stately private rooms for large groups.
Granted, Zhen Liu never really thought much about this place. Being a despondent sad sack has a tendency to kill one’s desire to go to fancy restaurants, even if one’s family owns it.
He gazed briefly at the dozen or so people eating at the restaurant currently, the smell of spices and oil filling the air, before taking the stairs to go to the second floor where the private rooms were.
‘Alright,{nice and tight}, the other cousins should be here-‘.
“Hey! You’re just in time Zhen Liu!”
“Hmm? Oh hey Zhen Hai. Nice suit.”
“Thanks! You too.”
[With animal prints…man, everybody be stealing my style, and they haven’t even met me.]
Evidently, Zhen Liu wasn’t the only one given a new set of dress clothes. Standing before him was his six other cousins of the same generation, all in new dress clothes, that for some reason were the six other colors of the rainbow, and had different animals embroidered on it.
Zhen Hai was wearing a red suit with a wolf imprint, while Zhen Yue was wearing an orange dress with a bear-like design on it.
‘Alright, so we’ve been given clothes based on the birth order of our respective fathers and what animal they specialize in like a video game motif. So, if Zhen Xing is the one wearing a blue suit with the rose designs, then that would make the guys wearing the yellow peacock suit, the green boar suit and the indigo viper suit, Zhen Guo, Zhen Tai and Zhen Feng respectively…damn we just straight up peacocking huh?,’ Zhen Liu mused.
A couple feet away from the group of youngsters, Zhen Liu could see his grandfather talking with the first, second and third uncles and aunts in a hushed tone. If he had to guess, it involved engagement prospects or something of that nature.
“So…any idea when the guests of honor are gonna-”
*WHAM!*
The building was shocked silent as everyone turned their heads towards the door to see who or what was able to cause such a ruckus.
“Well that answers that.”
