Chapter 90: The Small Matter of My Father Actually Being a Hidden Big Shot

After the unification of the realm, Qin Ye had also fulfilled the wish of the body he had inherited. Qin Teng and Qin Man’s attitude toward him, at the very least on the surface, was passable.

Perhaps because he had been obedient and dutiful, a plain and honest man through and through, and because Madam Qin Liu had died of illness. Once the one who had borne the greatest share of hatred was gone, it seemed that the two children’s resentment toward the former self had faded considerably.

Though in Qin Ye’s eyes, the former self was by no means innocent.

Qin Teng unified the world, founded the nation, and ascended the throne as emperor, while Qin Ye, after death, was posthumously honored as emperor.

The posthumous title, compared with the one given to Madam Cui, felt rather perfunctory, as if someone had casually picked a favorable character and attached it to him.

Unlike Madam Cui, whose title was piled high with every beautiful phrase imaginable, praise taken to the utmost.

Qin Ye had spent his whole life as a loafer, digging deeply into the pleasures of food, drink, and amusement in ancient times, and in his later years he even led the dissolute sons of the founding meritorious officials under Qin Teng around by the nose.

He urged them to think farther ahead, not to confine themselves to the patch of land beneath their feet, but to spend their money and sail out to sea.

Voyages brought to this land the rare goods of other continents, enriching its resources.

They also broadened the horizons of the people of this great land.

Most importantly, the parents of these meritorious families’ sons could not manage them in the slightest, because their fathers had followed the founding emperor in campaigns across the land, and their mothers were inclined to indulge them.

After all, the circle of officials who had won Qin Teng his victory was rarely from old aristocratic houses; they were all common men from the fields.

Qin Ye, an old hand at being a wastrel and a master at rearing troublesome youngsters, personally took them about in pursuit of food, drink, and merriment. Since he was Qin Teng’s father, no one dared say a word against it.

Not only did they not dare object, but on the contrary, they all wished Qin Ye would take their own children out to play.

After all, Qin Ye was the father of the lord whom the head of their household served with absolute loyalty.

When Qin Ye returned to the system space, he greeted Little Three warmly. After all, the last world had been nothing more to him than a holiday spent feasting and enjoying himself.

What did that mean?

Little Three must still love him.

It had to be because in the world before last, when it discovered the blood of his koi fish and thought he must have been deeply heartbroken, it specially chose a world of rest and leisure for him.

Three, he would never lock it in the little dark room on a whim again. Truly, he swore it.

Little Three: ...

Little Three was utterly numb. Who cared whether he was in a good mood or not? And don’t think it didn’t know how many good things he had extorted by using the dead koi fish as leverage!

If it had been that koi fish, it would have died with its eyes wide open.

Qin Ye toyed with the system and discovered that a function for viewing later developments had been added.

Or perhaps it had not been added at all; perhaps it had always existed, and Qin Ye had simply never noticed.

He opened it and glanced at it, just in time to see his own remains being given a grand burial, and himself being posthumously crowned emperor.

That scene flashed by quickly, followed by the male and female leads.

Xu Yinglan wore a look of resentment and often argued with Wen Baiyu.

Wen Baiyu had originally intended to seek refuge with Qin Teng, but she stopped him. Though Wen Baiyu did not understand her meaning, he still obeyed Xu Yinglan’s words.

But later Xu Yinglan seemed to have gone mad, cursing Wen Baiyu as useless one moment and, without reason, suspecting him the next of having an affair with her half-sister.

One had to know that by then her half-sister was already married, living in harmony with her husband and enjoying a fairly decent life.

Xu Yinglan, as her elder sister, had brought endless gossip and slander down on her. Fortunately, the man she married was reasonable and ignored those rumors.

Instead, he took her away to throw in his lot with Qin Teng, who at the time had a reputation so divided that opinions of him were split clean in two, far from their original home, and that spared them the trouble.

Wen Baiyu therefore quarreled with Xu Yinglan, which only made Xu Yinglan more convinced that he still had lingering feelings for her half-sister.

Xu Yinglan’s instability and nervousness stemmed from her belief that, after being reborn once, she could replace her half-sister and become the glorious mother of the nation, ruling with supreme radiance.

Who could have imagined that after rebirth, the course of events would suddenly be hacked apart by some unseen force, and everything would be completely different from what she had experienced?

Wen Baiyu did not rebel, did not become one of the kings vying for dominion over the realm, and did not gain the allegiance of the Qin brothers.

Nor did he become the final victor.

Just as he had first appeared, he was gentle in temperament, courteous to others, and very good to her.

Even though she had treated him as she once did, he held not the slightest grudge.

But none of that was ever what she wanted.

Madam Xu was also somewhat disappointed. After fleeing alongside the Emperor of Great Shun, once the Emperor of Great Shun was gone, Madam Xu had no intention of continuing as this dull and flavorless official. She resigned and left with her family.

Only then did she discover that her son-in-law was not, as her daughter had insisted, possessed of some so-called true dragon aura.

After her disappointment, Madam Xu soon accepted reality.

At least the Xu family were all still alive and not scattered.

The only vexing matter was that her son had developed admiration for the famed young general of the realm. After hearing that the man had risen in revolt, he secretly hid it from the family and set off alone to join his idol.

Fortunately, the result was not bad. That boy truly made a name for himself and became a general in his own right, so proud of himself it was almost unbearable.

The only one who never quite let it go was Xu Yinglan.

Fortunately, Wen Baiyu remembered the Xu family’s kindness toward him and had always been quite tolerant of her.

After seeing the later developments, Qin Ye propped his chin in one hand and idly played with a jade-green bracelet in his fingers, waiting for the client’s evaluation of him.

The client: ...

Though reluctant, the golden special effect, as if someone had pressed a knife to its throat and forced it to comply, slowly squeezed out its response in the end.

Qin Ye was very satisfied and said, “All right, let’s begin the mission for the next world.”

Little Three, hearing this, quickly whisked him away.

Ah, a miserable system life indeed. Why was it that on its very first binding, it had to meet such a great Buddha of an owner?

Other systems held their hosts firmly in hand, making them go east while the hosts never dared to head west. Why was it that it alone had to be so humble?

Wuwuwu...

This time, before Qin Ye even opened his eyes, he first felt a sharp pang in his chest.

“I just like Yuan Yuan. I’m going to be with her forever. You can forget about stopping me, forget about breaking up my happy match!”

“Yuan Yuan is your sister!”

“We have no blood relation. Why can’t we be together? I don’t care. I’m going to be with her.”

“You wretched creature, wretched creature!”

In his ears came the quarrel between an elderly woman’s sorrowful cries and a young man’s clear, resonant voice.

Everyone was arguing with great fervor, so no one noticed Qin Ye’s heart seized by pain.

The former self had probably suffered sudden cardiac arrest and died on the spot. When he left, it must have been in the most unpeaceful state imaginable.

Qin Ye first released his soul, allowing the crystallized memories of the body’s former owner to enter his sea of consciousness.

The former self was now nearly fifty years old, with one son and one daughter under his roof. He had treated the two children fairly enough, giving no preference to sons over daughters or daughters over sons.

He had been born into humble circumstances, while his wife came from a well-off family in the city.

Back then, in the eyes of most people, he had been a man who married upward, and they all thought he had latched onto a better family and simply wanted to take advantage of his wife’s side.

Fortunately, this did not affect the relationship between the two, because the former self had no unreasonable parents and no gaggle of sisters selling blood to support him as the only boy.

His family ties were fairly simple, and his parents were quite reasonable, so the couple lived in deep affection.

Their eldest son, Qin Yan Cheng, inherited all their finest qualities and had been lovely and delicate since childhood.

Given the outstanding performance of their firstborn, and with their finances much more comfortable and the former self’s prospects bright, they had another child, a daughter named Qin Yuan Yuan.

Then, just as their eldest son was about to graduate from university and their youngest daughter was due to take the college entrance examination in June, a famous local tycoon, Tan Jian, came to their door with his wife.

Only then did the former self learn that his daughter had in fact been accidentally switched at birth with the daughter of the Tan family by a nurse.

Now that the Tan family had discovered the truth, they naturally wanted to bring their own flesh and blood home.

And the fake daughter who had taken the place of the Tan family’s young lady and enjoyed eighteen years of luxury would naturally have to be sent back by the Tans.

The former self had already found it hard to accept that the daughter he had raised for eighteen years was actually someone else’s child, switched at birth.

His good eldest son was even more absurd. Upon learning that his sister was not his biological sibling, he immediately declared that he liked his sister and wanted to be with her.

Tan Jian was a well-known tycoon in the city, while the former self was only a mid-level manager at a small company. Compared with ordinary people, his income was fairly decent, but against the Tan family, it was nothing at all.

The resentment in the Tans’ words toward the daughter who had usurped their place was plain to the former self.

On one side, he could not bear to part with the daughter he had raised for eighteen years; on the other, he felt heartache for his biological daughter.

Because in the attitude of the Tan couple, he could not detect the slightest affection for his daughter.

At that moment, his eldest son, who had rushed home with the unshakable air of a hopeless romantic, forcefully declared that he wanted to be with his sister. The former self suffered a heart attack and collapsed to the ground, and once he fell, he never got back up.

But before he completely left this world, through his wife’s exhausted, collapsing sobs, he still learned what happened afterward.

After he fell, unable to rise, he was immediately sent to the hospital by his wife and children.

Qin Yuan Yuan did not come back to visit him. She had already been taken away by the Tan family, and even though the college entrance examination was near, the Tans still used their connections to send her to an elite academy rather than leaving her at her former school.

They probably looked down on the school Qin Yuan Yuan had been attending by a full million degrees.

After that, the two sides lost contact, but the Tan family’s daughter was never sent back.

Had Qin Yan Cheng not been making such a fuss, saying he liked Qin Yuan Yuan and wanted to be with Qin Yuan Yuan?

The boy was not really that depraved; there were so many people in the world, and yet he had developed feelings for his own younger sister of all people.

Even though the two had no blood relation in truth, they had grown up living as real siblings, and to dare say he liked Qin Yuan Yuan was, in the former self’s eyes, the act of a perverted, vile scoundrel.

In truth, when Qin Yan Cheng said those things, he simply did not want to lose his sister.

He never imagined it would anger his old father so much that he collapsed to the ground.

Surrounded by remorse, Qin Yan Cheng wanted Qin Yuan Yuan to come back and visit their father, but he could not even get near Qin Yuan Yuan.