Chapter 87: My Son Has the Bearing of an Emperor, Part 13

At this moment, Lord Xu thought of making a move with the one called Cui, yet for a time he had no idea where to begin.

For now, all he knew was that Cui, like Pei Shaoping, loved money.

But Lord Xu truly had little wealth to his name, and feared he could not satisfy Cui.

Send a beauty?

That would likely not do. Cui had never shown much interest in feminine charms; he cared only for money.

In that, he was far too much like Pei Shaoping. The two of them had lately been all but inseparable, as though they had already drawn together as one faction.

For a moment, Lord Xu even felt a certain loathing stir within him. Fine men, not loving beauty but only that copper-scented wealth—vulgar, truly vulgar beyond endurance!

“There are many sisters in the household. Father may as well select promising men from the army and marry them off to my sisters. As for your daughter, one must not break one’s word, especially with such great changes looming. Therefore, I intend to honor my betrothal to Young Master Wen of the Wen family.”

“No. That Wen boy cannot even afford books for his studies; he still has to come to me to borrow money.

“Besides, all he seems to think about is scholarship. I suspect he still hopes your father will recommend him for office so he can enter the court.

“A good-for-nothing like that, how could he be worth your lowering yourself to marry him?”

Lord Xu had begun to react to the word good-for-nothing with a certain reflexive irritation.

No help for it. Cui cursed his brother-in-law with that word all day long, and Lord Xu had come to feel that whenever it was spoken, it was aimed like a private insult at some decadent young wastrel surnamed Qin.

“Mother, the future is impossible to predict. Besides, in times like these, whoever your daughter marries may well be dragged down afterward. But Young Master Wen—

“He is a man of no standing, with nothing to his name. If your daughter is willing to marry him, he will surely feel grateful and treat me with the utmost sincerity.

“As for money, when your daughter marries, Mother surely will not fail to prepare a dowry for me. If I have a dowry, what matter is it whether he is rich or poor?

“If I may say so, though my younger brother is growing older by the day, if Father were to recommend him for office now, it would only harm him.

“After all, His Majesty... in any case, Father might as well give the opening in hand to Young Master Wen. In that way, the Xu family would have bestowed a great kindness upon him, and your daughter would become a daughter-in-law of the Wen family...”

Madam Xu suddenly interrupted Xu Yinglan: “Lan’er, it seems you are absolutely convinced that that Wen boy is destined for great things, and will surely make something of himself.”

Xu Yinglan: ...

Well, of course she was convinced. The man had already become the supreme ruler of all under heaven.

But she could not reveal that she was a reincarnator. After a moment’s thought, Xu Yinglan bit her lip.

“To tell the truth, some days ago I dreamed of a phoenix descending from the heavens and entering my body. After I awoke from that dream, I found that I seemed able to sense the aura of the true Son of Heaven.”

Old Xu’s eyes widened. “You mean...”

“That’s right.”

Lord Xu felt as though he had won the grand prize. He rose again and resumed pacing back and forth, unable to sit still.

Madam Xu, though half-believing and half-doubting, wondered whether her daughter had not been seduced by the Wen boy’s looks into becoming desperate enough to fabricate lies just to marry beneath herself. Still, she raised no objection.

In the end, Lord Xu made the decision: the marriage would proceed.

Xu Yinglan warned him not to become overly enthusiastic, and to leave everything to her.

Madam Xu, meanwhile, prepared her daughter’s dowry while quietly observing whether her daughter was truly chosen by fate, or merely making up nonsense for the sake of marrying her beloved.

Old Xu was marrying off his daughter, and the prospective son-in-law had a bright future ahead of him. Delighted, he was flushed with pleasure—and then he was scolded soundly by the emperor.

The emperor had only recently lost a son, and though he was not particularly grief-stricken over the boy’s death, was this not a bit too much?

Old Xu got an earful and was left in low spirits. On the way back, he happened to run into Qin Ye.

He suddenly thought it over: although his own family could not attach themselves to Cui, it was no bad thing to cultivate good relations with him.

So Lord Xu warmly invited Qin Ye back to his home. Even Dahei was given a seat of its own, with a feast laid out for it to choose from at will.

Though Dahei hardly dared be picky at all—usually it would eat whatever was put before it without complaint.

Qin Ye was quite satisfied with Dahei’s performance and gave it a look of approval.

Then he and Lord Xu talked of this and that, and in the end they agreed that Qin Ye would certainly attend the day Lord Xu married off his daughter. After that, the Xu household servants, already half-drunk, saw him home.

When the Xu family later threw a grand banquet to marry off their daughter, Qin Ye arrived on time, leading Dahei.

After her rebirth, Xu Yinglan had decided to change her former disdainful attitude toward Wen Baiyu and not push the marriage onto her half-sister.

Once she made that decision, Wen Baiyu actually had no choice at all. He could only accept.

After all, he was penniless. Whether before Xu Yinglan’s rebirth or after it, he had to rely on the Xu family if he wanted any chance of rising in the world.

This notion that a wife must be someone he truly loved was empty talk, unless he had a choice to begin with.

Although Xu Yinglan had indeed been difficult, willful, and troublesome in the early days, after her rebirth she changed at once.

As they spent time together, Wen Baiyu felt that her earlier arrogance had perhaps been perfectly natural. If the positions were reversed, with him standing in Xu Yinglan’s place, he would certainly not accept the existence of a ruined family’s penniless fiancé.

In short, the marriage could be called a success.

After attending someone else’s wedding, Qin Ye’s own turn came at once.

Qin Teng sent word that his marriage to the beloved daughter of the regional governor Li was drawing near, and asked Cui to spare some time to come over—and, oh yes, to bring Qin Ye along.

Qin: ...

So his father was only an afterthought.

It hardly mattered. He might as well treat it as a holiday. The cub could manage on his own; with or without him, it made no difference.

Having comforted himself, Qin Ye briskly climbed into the carriage with Dahei in his arms.

The Cui clan had already arrived long before. It was plain enough that, in the minds of Qin Teng and Qin Man, father and mother were not even remotely comparable in importance.

Mother was the moon in the heavens, lighting the traveler’s road ahead.

Father was a stinkbug in a gutter; merely having him around felt like bad luck.

Qin Ye realized that someone was watching him, intentionally or otherwise. Qin Teng was worried that Qin Ye might go into one of his fits and ruin the perfect wedding with his bride, so he had people keep a covert eye on him.

Qin Ye felt his heart about to break. Did he really seem even more unhinged than that Great Shun emperor?

Cui: ...

Not impossible. After all, he felt that Qin Ye was the one person who truly shared a wavelength with the Great Shun emperor. The two of them were practically in sync by divine intervention.

And once Cui had realized this, whenever any problem arose, he would first come discuss it with Qin Ye and ask what Qin Ye would do if it were himself. Qin Ye would give an answer, Cui would follow it, and it would usually satisfy the emperor perfectly.

Why did the emperor trust Cui so deeply?

Because the emperor felt that under heaven, Cui was probably the man who understood him best.

So much so that even when the emperor’s paranoia as a sovereign flared and he kept testing Cui, this Great Shun ruler—so deranged in the eyes of the court—would even hesitate, thinking that if the tests exposed some flaw in Cui and made him displeasing, would he truly have to kill him?

After all, Cui truly was the person who understood him best in all the world, better than his own parents, his wife of the same hair and pillow, even better than his own children.

He was practically another version of himself.

The world did not understand him, hated him, blamed him, even called him a fool of an emperor. Only Cui truly understood him, truly grasped his lofty ambitions, and truly knew him.

At times Cui even felt that the way the Great Shun emperor looked at him was so sticky it made him deeply uncomfortable all over.

If the Great Shun emperor had not had a clean past in matters of the southern passion, Cui would long ago have found a way to incur his displeasure and had himself transferred out of the capital.

It was one thing to remain at the emperor’s side for the sake of his nephew’s foundation and ambitions, to steady the emperor and prevent suspicion and dislike from arising.

It was quite another thing to sacrifice himself in the process.

And since Qin Ye was so very much like this Great Shun emperor who loved to go mad, and since Qin Teng was a reincarnator who had personally lived through his own father’s absurd behavior,

it was understandable that Qin Ye would be treated with caution and secretly watched.

Li Bing’s daughter was not the quiet, demure type, but a heroic and spirited female general.

It was plain to see that Qin Teng adored his wife. One look at his smile, bright and gaudy as a cheap firework, made that obvious enough.

When the young couple served tea to their elders, Qin Teng wore an affectionate, adoring smile before the Cui side of the family. But when he turned to Qin Ye, the groom withdrew the smile entirely and became expressionless.

Only after his bright-eyed, gentle-faced bride secretly pinched him did he force out a fake smile.

Qin Ye: ...

After Qin Teng’s wedding ended, Cui was soon urged by the emperor to return to the capital, with Qin Ye accompanying him.

By then, the land was overrun with roaming bandits. Even near the capital itself, a band of them had appeared.

Yet no one dared speak the truth to the Great Shun emperor.

The Great Shun emperor never took refugees seriously. They were nothing but a rabble of mud-smeared peasants; once the regular Great Shun army was sent out, they would all die.

So such trivial matters need not be brought up and spoil his mood.

Besides, if you cannot even handle a little thing like that, what use are you as an official? Go home and till the fields.

Those who dared speak were dismissed or thrown into prison. The rest either protected themselves by keeping silent, like Lord Xu, or else took a detached, unconcerned attitude.

For example, those three—or rather, now four, with Cui added.

Cui could not be bothered to mention it, and besides, it was pointless. In any case, he told the emperor that his nephew, though only in his teens, could march out and cut down every last bandit.

The emperor believed him, granting Qin Teng and Qin Man the title of young generals and assigning each several thousand troops to pursue and suppress the bandits.

In name, each commanded only several thousand men; in reality, no one kept close count, and the troops under Qin Teng kept swelling like an ever-growing snowball.

He led the charge at the front, while all logistics were handed over to Qin Man.

For Qin Teng, as long as his logistics were in his younger brother Qin Man’s hands, he could unleash his ideas and tactics to his heart’s content without worrying about supplies.

Because Little Man would never let him down.

And indeed, that was how it was.

Even in their previous life, from their separation into independent command to the years when they bowed under the ruler of that time and were hemmed in by countless restrictions, with innumerable people secretly filing reports against them behind their backs—

it was simply because the two were too outstanding. The authority of their lord could not press them down, so everyone feared them and worried that they might betray their master.