Four Dragon Island
Volume Thirteen
The Dragon Starves

Summary by Amparo Bertram




Fei feels a wall growing between the Howaluu and White Dragon, particularly since Max revels in showing off how happy he is with his new wife. (Said wife, Shueran, still innocently believes that spending a night with her husband means all the hide-and-seek she wants.) Max receives an official request to be the guardian of Qianglong while their ruler is "ill," but before the status becomes official he must obtain the agreement of the other two Dragons. He sets off to Zhulong to get the Red Dragon's approval.

The man who helped teach Fei martial arts and gave him his dragon tattoo comes to stay with him and his adopted father. Fei tells him about Lingchuan and that he intends to pay a visit to the head of the Shulingfan lumber merchant family to inform her of the death. When he does, she insists that Lingchuan couldn't possibly have been his mother because she worked at the Red Dragon's estate since the time she was ten and the servant women weren't allowed to have children. He's told that Lingchuan whispered "Yuiran" right before she left to search for him, but he can't recall why that sounds familiar.

The Red Dragon's identity is a secret to everyone except those who are part of her estate, and even the White Dragon can only speak to representatives. His father's legal wife came from Zhulong, and as a bastard son he is looked upon unfavorably by the Red Dragon. She can't refuse his request outright, so instead she makes a bet: if he can identify the true Red Dragon out of the hundreds of women at the estate, as his father once did, she will agree to his guardianship of Qianglong.

The Red Dragon throws a party one night every month for which her women are allowed to kidnap any men in the city they like and do with them as they please. Fei is captured for the event and forced to fight for the "prize" of sleeping with the Red Dragon herself. (The Red Dragon has no husband; the fathers of her children are selected in this fashion.) Knowing that Fei intends to lose, Max joins the tournament and challenges him, resulting in a draw. Max then identifies the Red Dragon, who had been posing as a eunuch servant.

As the Red Dragon prepares to give the unwilling Fei his "prize," with Max watching, she reveals that she is the niece of the previous Red Dragon. She inherited the title at three years of age when her aunt married the Great Dragon. Fei is devastated to hear that the childhood nickname of the Great Dragon's widow was "Yuiran," the same as the magnolia blossom he received from her as Max's "bride." The Red Dragon is called away before she can continue to bestow the prize, but when Max tries to pick up where she left off, Fei threatens to kill himself if Max touches him.

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