Chapter 485: Chapter 468: The Fat Princess
A young lady was holding up the hem of her voluminous skirt with one hand, and stretching the other hand out in front to stop the carriage, with burrs clinging to her skirt, indicating she must have just dashed out from the roadside.
Her slightly disheveled black shoulder-length curly hair frad her fair complexion, and her dress was styled like informal courtwear, suggesting she might be a young noblewoman.
Upon seeing Mu Ying erge from the carriage, Princess Shirley gave her a curtsy and said with a hint of embarrassnt, “I’m terribly sorry, my na is Shirley. I fled to the forest to evade my stepmother’s poison, but I have run out of the snacks I brought with and am terribly hungry, so I took the liberty of stopping your carriage to ask for sothing to eat.”
“Shirley? The princess from the Rose Kingdom?” Mu Ying inquired.
Although she had been traveling in Sunset Forest lately, she had actually reached the forest area close to Trebia, the capital of the Rose Kingdom.
Mu Ying had also encountered a village or two with few inhabitants in the forest and had learned about the kingdom, which led her to decide to head straight for the capital.
All because of this princess nad Shirley, Hearing her na made her realize that Trebia was where the last fragnt was located.
She hadn’t expected to et the protagonist of the story before even leaving the forest. Perhaps it was because she had been wandering in the forest for too long, but Shirley didn’t possess the beauty described in the fairy tales. Indeed, her skin was fair, but to call her the most beautiful woman in the world would be an overstatent.
Perhaps she could simply be considered a pretty girl, with her skin fair and delicate. She also seed a bit chubby.
“Yes,” Shirley had intentionally revealed her identity. When her birth mother was still alive, even before the birth of her stepmother’s child, she had always been cherished by her father, and her grand birthday parties had made her famous throughout the kingdom.
This reputation also aided her in securing so help. Alone in the forest, she couldn’t survive, and needed to seek assistance from others.
The girl who appeared to be a noble in front of her indeed knew who she was.
Seeing an opportunity, Mu Ying certainly wasn’t going to reject it. It was the perfect ti to find out how far the story had progressed. “I am a traveler who loves hearing stories. Why don’t you tell about what has happened to you? In return, I will provide you with so sweets and fruits.”
Shirley had anticipated that she might ask for money, or kindly offer direct help, or even take her in, but she didn’t expect to be asked to tell a story. Nevertheless, she was more than willing to reveal the wicked intentions of her stepmother, not wanting to hide them at all.
So she agreed without hesitation.
Mu Ying didn’t invite her onto the carriage but pulled the carriage over to the side of the road. She then lifted two large picnic baskets from inside, with a picnic blanket tucked under her arm.
After laying the blanket on the grass next to them, she placed the picnic baskets on top and invited Princess Shirley to sit. “You can eat your fill first, then tell your story. Anything left over, you may take with you if you choose.”
Mu Ying was quite considerate, as the picnic baskets contained bread, pastries, roast at, fruits, and a water bag.
When Shirley saw such a lavish spread, barely different from what she ate in the royal palace, she licked her sowhat cracked lips, restrained her eagerness to feast, and after taking two sips of water from the water bag and eating a beautifully made small pastry, she began her tale.
The beginning of the story was almost the sa as what Mu Ying knew, but the details that followed were sowhat different.
Shirley was nad so because her skin was as white as snow when she was born.
She had been greatly loved by the king and queen since she was a child.
But the good tis did not last; when she was six years old, the Queen fell ill and died.
A year later, the King took a new Queen; after a year of marriage, she gave birth to a little prince.
Although the stepmother did not trouble or abuse Shirley, under her influence, the King’s attention to Shirley gradually diminished, and his paternal love was completely transferred to the little prince.
Half a year ago, the stepmother suddenly beca very concerned with Shirley’s diet and even personally made her favorite desserts; at the ti, Shirley thought nothing of it and happily ate them.
But the erstwhile svelte Shirley suddenly started gaining weight—within a week, she bloated to almost two hundred kilograms and beca extrely ugly.
Believing she might be ill, the King summoned a physician, who found her to be very healthy, suggesting only that she needed to regulate her diet; the King, thus enraged, ordered her to diet.
But in reality, she had always had the constitution that prevented her from gaining weight no matter how much she ate.
She despised her sudden obese and pig-like appearance, so she sneaked off to consult the treasured golden mirror her birth mother had brought when she married her father.
The golden mirror knew all things and occasionally emitted prophesies; it once successfully led the Kingdom to a Gold Mine.
The mirror inford her that her stepmother, jealous of her increasingly beautiful appearance, had poisoned her to make her gain weight rapidly—the poison was in the desserts her stepmother had made by hand.
After a month, the drug’s effects would begin to fade, and she would return to her svelte self in as soon as a week. However, three days later, as the effects started to diminish, her stepmother would poison her again.
Three days later, the Queen indeed brought more desserts, just like last ti, and made by hand as before.
Shirley found an excuse to say she would eat them later, stalling for ti, and then secretly disposed of the desserts.
The next day, the excess flesh on her stomach had indeed diminished a bit. She used clothes to fill out her figure, temporarily fooling the Queen, but she knew she couldn’t keep up the deception for long.
Her father had beco entirely focused on the little prince and had lost the patience he once had for her in her childhood. Shirley felt that if she continued to stay in the Royal Palace, she would inevitably be killed by her stepmother sooner or later.
After all, her only loving birth mother was dead, and her father no longer cared for her; therefore, she decided to leave the palace, which had long ceased to be her ho.
She secretly found an opportunity to ask a Hunter who was delivering ga to the palace to take her out, and she ran into the forest. She aid to cross the Sunset Forest and seek help from her birth mother’s family on the other side in the Green Wall Kingdom, content with just a place of refuge.
Then, because she underestimated the journey and brought too little food, she didn’t get far before running out completely.
“Thank you, with this food you’ve given , I’m sure I can cross the Sunset Forest! Then I will be free!” Shirley said before starting to eat elegantly yet quickly.
Mu Ying didn’t know quite what to say.
Perhaps the Human Kingdom didn’t have maps as comprehensive and detailed as the witches’—having traveled for almost half a month in the Magic Carriage, Mu Ying doubted that Shirley, on foot, could quickly make her way out; those two baskets of food seed plentiful, but most of it wouldn’t keep, lasting at most a couple of days.
Normally, Mu Ying would have reminded her of that, but obviously, the story had just begun not long ago, and her purpose was to know the full story, to gather fragnts, not to do good deeds.
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