The afternoon sunlight slanted through the lattice windows of the grand reception hall, casting long, sharp shadows across the polished jade floor.
Wen Yu sat upright at the head of the low rosewood table, his hands resting gracefully over his knees. His deep plum silk robes were immaculate, his hair pinned back with a simple silver hairpin, and his expression was the absolute picture of docile, trembling obedience. On the outside, he looked like a deer caught in a forest fire.
Inside his head, however, a multi-lane highway of pure, unadulterated profanity was currently burning down to the asphalt.
[Three vicious, Botox-free aristocratic harpies invading my living room on a Saturday afternoon,]
Wen Yu screamed internally, his eyes flickering toward the three women seated across from him. [Marquise Hanyang looks like she swallowed a lemon and hasn’t smiled since the previous dynasty! Lady Wu is sitting there with her fan up like she’s hiding a weapon, and Duchess Feng is practically radiating passive-aggressive toxicity! I survived final-exam week on four hours of sleep and instant coffee; three snobby noblewomen with too much time on their hands cannot break me!]
"My, my," Marquise Hanyang purred, breaking the heavy silence with a laugh that sounded like dry leaves scraping across pavement. She lifted her porcelain teacup, peered down into it with visible distaste, and set it back down with a sharp clink. "The estate has certainly... changed its standards since General Xie took command. One can almost smell the lingering scent of the scullery floor clinging to the upholstery, don’t you agree, Lady Wu?"
Lady Wu covered her mouth with an embroidered silk fan, her eyes crinkling with false sympathy. "Oh, you must forgive our dear Marquise, Consort Wen. She is only speaking out of motherly concern for our illustrious Supreme General. After all, a man who has spent his entire life defending the borders deserves a spouse who knows which fork to use at a state banquet, rather than someone who spent his youth scrubbing kitchen tiles."
Duchess Feng leaned forward, her sharp gaze sweeping over Wen Yu from head to toe. "Tell me, child—is it true that you used to sweep the southern wing’s corridors? How fascinating. I suppose palace intrigue must feel quite similar to mopping stone floors, only with slightly more blood."
The three matrons exchanged razor-sharp smiles, fully expecting the trembling omega to burst into tears, drop a teacup, or cower behind his sleeves.
Wen Yu blinked slowly, letting his lower lip quiver just enough to sell the performance. He lowered his gaze, pitching his voice into a soft, breathless, and thoroughly terrified register. "You honor this humble one with your profound concern, Marquise, Duchess, and Lady Wu," he whispered, clasped hands trembling in his lap. "My background is indeed... humble. I spent my days sweeping floors and listening to the wind howling through the courtyard. I never imagined in my wildest dreams that someone of my low breeding would ever sit in a room with ladies of such monumental... historical presence."
[Translation: You three fossilized relics belong in a museum, and your collective wrinkles could map out the entire silk road, but go off about my mopping skills!] Wen Yu added fiercely in his own mind, maintaining a sickeningly sweet, innocent smile.
Marquise Hanyang’s eye twitched. She had expected weeping, begging, or desperate fawning—not a cheerful, direct reminder that she was old enough to be Wen Yu’s great-grandmother.
"Ahem," Marquise Hanyang recovered quickly, her voice sharpening like a blade. "Humility is a virtue, Consort Wen, but competence is required to survive in the capital. Since you are now legally bound to the most powerful military household in the empire, we thought it only fitting to give you a small lesson in proper court etiquette. Let us start with the tea ceremony. Pour for us."
With a flick of her wrist, Marquise Hanyang intentionally shoved her empty porcelain cup a full foot away from her, right to the edge of the low table, tilted at a dangerous angle where any normal person would spill boiling water all over the silk runner.
Lady Wu smirked behind her fan, while Duchess Feng leaned back, crossing her arms with an air of absolute superiority. They were testing his coordination, waiting for him to make a clumsy mess so they could write a formal joint memorial to the Ministry of Rites declaring him unfit for high society.
Wen Yu’s internal sigh could have powered a small wind turbine.
[Oh, wow. The classic ’spill the tea and humiliate the peasant’ trick. Groundbreaking!] he thought, forcing his hands to shiver. [Did you brainstorm that in your retirement home, or did you steal it from a fifth-rate webnovel villain?]
"I... I am so clumsy, esteemed ladies," Wen Yu murmured, his voice cracking with fragile distress. "Please forgive me if my hands fail me."
He leaned forward gracefully, pouring the steaming, fragrant green tea with absolute, robotic precision. The water hit the center of Marquise Hanyang’s cup with a smooth, silent stream, not a single droplet splashing onto the table, let alone onto the silk runner. He filled it to precisely three-quarters full—the exact traditional standard for high-ranking imperial banquets, a rule so ancient and obscure that most modern nobility forgot it entirely.
He slid the cup back across the wood with a soft, flawless glide, offering a wide, guileless smile. "Please, Marquise. Do enjoy the tea. It is imported straight from the northern mountain slopes—though I suppose someone accustomed to the finest imperial tribute might find its provincial notes... lacking, just like my breeding."
Marquise Hanyang stared at the perfectly filled cup, her fingers freezing over the handle as her face flushed a mottled shade of pale pink.
The tea was poured with a precision that even the palace tea-masters would envy, and the subtle jab at her age and entitlement hung in the air like a foul odor she couldn’t wash off.
"You... your hand steadying technique is surprisingly adequate for a servant," Marquise Hanyang managed to choke out, her voice tight with suppressed fury.
"You are too kind, Marquise," Wen Yu replied, dropping his gaze demurely while doing a little celebratory dance in his head.
[Take that, you aristocratic gargoyle! Try finding a flaw in a three-quarters pour when your own posture looks like a bent paperclip!]
Duchess Feng cleared her throat sharply, stepping in to salvage the ambush. "Adequate, perhaps, but pouring tea is merely the baseline of a consort’s duties. What of intellectual standing, child? Can a former scullery servant even read the classic poetry texts required for the seasonal imperial banquets, or will you sit beside our general like a mute decoration?"
Lady Wu chimed in smoothly, her eyes gleaming with malice. "Indeed. The spring poetry symposium hosted by the Imperial Consort is only three weeks away. Naturally, the Supreme General’s spouse is expected to compose an original verse celebrating the dynasty’s military might. Have you ever even held an ink-brush for anything other than writing grocery tallies, Consort Wen?"
The three matrons leaned in, their expressions locking onto him like predators closing in on a wounded deer. They had him cornered. Even noble heirs trained by scholars for years struggled with the archaic, flowery metaphors required for imperial poetry compositions; a kitchen servant would inevitably humiliate himself into total silence.
[Poetry composition?] Wen Yu thought, his internal eyes rolling so hard they nearly detached. [I spent four years in university writing academic papers, translating texts, and reading thousands of Chapters of complex historical webnovels! I can quote classical Tang dynasty couplets in my sleep, and I know three different rhyming schemes that will make your collective wigs fall off!]
Wen Yu let his shoulders slump further, his lower lip trembling as he lowered his head in a display of pathetic, defeated submission. "You... you are entirely right, Duchess Feng," he whispered, his voice cracking with manufactured despair. "I am illiterate when it comes to such lofty verse. When I held an ink-brush before, it was only to count bags of grain and record laundry loads. I could never hope to match the intellectual brilliance of the capital’s noble ladies. I shall simply beg the General to excuse me from the symposium on grounds of utter ignorance."
Marquise Hanyang smiled a triumphant, venomous smile, leaning back against her cushions. "At least you have the self-awareness to recognize your own limitations, Consort Wen. It saves everyone a great deal of embarrassment."
[Oh, you sweet summer child!] Wen Yu chanted happily inside his mind, staring down at his teacup with a mask of pure, trembling sorrow while plotting absolute psychological devastation for the upcoming symposium. [You just walked right into my trap! I am going to write a poem so hauntingly beautiful and politically subversive that the Emperor himself will give me a medal, while you sit there choking on your own dried-up dignity!]
Before the matrons could press their advantage further, the heavy double doors of the reception hall swung open with a slow, deliberate creak.
A heavy, suffocating wave of cold mountain pine swept through the room, instantly dropping the temperature by ten degrees. Every single head snapped toward the entrance.
Xie Yan stood framed in the doorway, his dark battle robes dark as midnight, his expression carved from solid glacier ice. His dark eyes swept over the three high-society matrons with a look so lethal that Marquise Hanyang physically recoiled in her seat.
"It seems," the general’s deep, bone-chilling voice echoed through the hall, "my estate’s hospitality is being tested quite thoroughly this afternoon."