Two simple words, yet they expressed Ying Zheng’s attitude more directly than anything else — he did not even want to give a reason for why he refused.
If the person present at this moment had been Lü Buwei, the alarm bells in his heart would already have begun ringing, and he would have known that in the future the matter of “marriage and taking concubines” should no longer be mentioned.
But unfortunately, the person with Ying Zheng now was Zhao Ji. Since Ying Zheng ascended the throne as King of Qin, she had always been obeyed by her son, and everyone in the palace also regarded her as supreme. These past few years of living in comfort and privilege had long since stripped her of the observational ability she once had when she had to lower herself.
So even though she was rejected so mercilessly by Ying Zheng, Zhao Ji still did not realize the danger of the situation, and instead truly understood it according to its literal meaning. Thus, she immediately followed up with another sentence, “Does Zheng’er not like women of Chu? Then women of Qi? Women of Wei?”
One only heard the extremely beautiful woman say, “As long as it is not a woman of Zhao, the princesses of the royal clans and noble daughters of all states under heaven — no matter whom Zheng’er wants to marry, I will certainly manage this matter well.”
Although Zhao Ji was born in Zhao State and was truly a Zhao person, because back then Lü Buwei ran away with Ying Yiren, she and the child she gave birth to were left behind in Zhao State. Because of the Battle of Changping and General Bai Qi of Wu’an burying alive four hundred thousand Zhao soldiers, they were targeted by the people of Zhao, suffered bullying, and lived with great hardship, and thus she hated Zhao State deeply.
Therefore, no matter what, she absolutely could not accept having a daughter-in-law from Zhao State — not even as a concubine!
Seeing that Ying Zheng did not speak, Zhao Ji then said again, “Zheng’er, royal marriages are originally for politics. If you do not like the queen you marry, later when you meet someone you like, there are so many ranks in the harem — there will always be enough positions to confer, right? Don’t you think so?”
After speaking, Zhao Ji could not help but feel that today’s remarks of hers were extremely insightful. She could not help but feel somewhat self-satisfied, suddenly feeling that she was not inferior even compared to Lü Buwei.
Then the next moment, the slight pride that had just surfaced in her heart was knocked back by her son.
In the youth’s warm brown eyes, the coldness grew even stronger, yet his face showed no emotion. Ying Zheng picked up a piece of sweet cake and, as if casually asking, said, “Mother’s view like this was taught by Zhongfu, wasn’t it?”
Ying Zheng’s calm words indeed did not arouse Zhao Ji’s suspicion, and following her son’s question, she spoke with a somewhat unhappy expression, “Could it be that I cannot have insight of my own?”
This one sentence, although it did not directly answer the question, had already explained the truth of the matter.
Afterward, Ying Zheng said again, “As Mother says, marriages between two states are to seek mutual amity, and behind this amity, the most fundamental purpose consists of only two words: benefit.”
“The world is bustling, people come and go for profit. If there is profit to be gained, other states will naturally draw close to Qin. There is no need to promise them the position of Qin’s queen. And when there is no profit to be gained, if other states want to go to war with Qin, could it be that they would refrain because of this?”
In this age of great contention, there are fundamentally no two states that can maintain everlasting amity — it is only because there is profit to be gained that they do not tear off each other’s masks.
If one truly wants to make peace with all the states under heaven, there is only one point — to grow strong! To swallow up the world!
Turn every inch of land of the states under heaven into Qin State’s land. At that time, there will no longer be any feudal state that comes to attack Qin or wage war against Qin.
Originally, Ying Zheng had not planned to say these things to Zhao Ji, but since matters had already reached this point today, and seeing Zhao Ji’s appearance, it was clear that she had her heart somewhat set on wanting him to marry a woman of another state’s royal clan or nobility. She was, after all, his mother, and he could not treat her in the same manner as external officials — mothers under heaven worrying about their sons’ marriages, no matter who they are, one cannot find fault with that.
So he could only spend a few extra words to cut off Zhao Ji from again sending people to inquire into the situations of royal and noble women of marriageable age from various states, similar in age to him.
However, it was one thing for Zhao Ji to urge him to marry, but…
Thinking of the sentence he had just asked Zhao Ji, the youth’s eyes were filled with a pitch-dark, bottomless darkness.
Lü Buwei, his Great Qin’s Marquis Wenxin, his thoughts… were indeed somewhat… too great.
Liyang.
On this day, the Divine Maiden’s Residence was again unusually lively, because today happened to be exactly the “half month later, send someone to find me” that Li Xi had once told Cheng Jiao.
Early in the morning, Cheng Jiao charged over to Li Xi’s Divine Maiden’s Residence with his people, full of momentum, looking as if he wanted to disturb someone’s sweet dreams.
But this thought of the young lord was destined to fall through. As a martial practitioner, Li Xi woke up much earlier every day than Cheng Jiao imagined.
When Cheng Jiao led his people to rush to the entrance of Li Xi’s courtyard, at that time she was practicing with swords, spears, and staves, doing her daily morning training. Upon first glance at Cheng Jiao, one could tell the child had come to pick a fight. The pretty young girl in short, rough clothes immediately revealed a gentle and pleasant smile that was completely incompatible with the vigorous outfit on her body. Then, maintaining this gentleness, she fiercely thrust the long spear in her hand into the ground, instantly burying half of it underground, while smiling and asking, “May I ask what business the young lord has in coming so early to look for Li Xi?”
In an instant, Cheng Jiao once again recalled the fear of being dominated by her when they first met at the royal palace.
But even so, as the saying goes, lose the person but not the formation. So after a brief moment of trembling, Cheng Jiao quickly returned to his usual domineering manner of “my brother and heaven are number one, I am number two,” raised his head, and said loudly with righteous indignation, “You were the one who told me to come find you today. You did not say in advance that I could not come at this hour!”
Hearing him say this, Li Xi lazily responded perfunctorily, “Alright then.”
Then she said again, “But the young lord came too early. I have not yet eaten breakfast, so I am afraid the young lord will have to wait.”
Cheng Jiao said, “It’s fine. This young lord has also not eaten yet. I will reluctantly eat a little here with you.”
Hearing this, Li Xi could not help but look at him with the gaze of someone caring for a little fool, and in her heart she only felt that this matter… had too many槽 points to even begin speaking. But she indeed did not mind sparing this child a mouthful of food.
After eating a rather ordinary, not particularly special breakfast of stomach-nourishing millet porridge paired with pickled vegetables, Li Xi had someone fetch a knife, preparing to go out together with young Cheng Jiao. Turning her eyes, she saw him looking at her with a face full of vigilance, and could not help but say irritably, stabbing fiercely at the child’s weak little heart, “Does the young lord think that if I wanted to do something to you, I would need to specially have someone fetch a knife?”
“…” Recalling the feat of Li Xi breaking a stone railing with her bare hands when they first met, Cheng Jiao could not help but be left speechless by her words.
But as the saying goes, even if one is not justified, one’s spirit must still be strong. This point was something the young lord had always grasped firmly, and he raised his voice and said, “Then why did you have the servants fetch a knife!”
Li Xi merely glanced at him faintly and said calmly, “You will know shortly.”
Li Xi had been very busy recently and did not want to waste more time. Upon arriving at Cheng Jiao’s grassland, she immediately held her small knife and directly headed purposefully toward the pig pen where a group of pigs were kept.
Although Cheng Jiao felt somewhat puzzled, seeing Li Xi’s momentum as if she were unstoppable, he still hurriedly followed behind her out of curiosity.
Then, watching Li Xi’s actions, the young lord’s worldview suddenly shattered into piece after piece of fragmented shards.
There was no other reason. It was entirely because after Li Xi entered the activity area of the group of male pigs, she quickly and deftly grabbed the pig closest to her, immediately knocked it down, flipped it over, made the pig assume a supine position with all four legs facing upward, and then, her gaze locking onto a certain spot, she found the position, raised her hand, and brought the knife down.
With two whooshing sounds, the pig’s two testicles fell in response, dropping to the ground.
After completing all this, Li Xi flipped the pig back upright again. Then she went to find the next target.
And seeing all this, everyone around was completely dumbfounded, especially Cheng Jiao, who was so shocked by Li Xi’s move that he was dumbfounded among the dumbfounded.
Amid the dazed stupor of the group, Li Xi finished castrating all the male pigs in this specially set-up pig pen, and at the end asked the servants here, “Did you understand?”
Upon hearing this, the several male servants who were questioned immediately nodded nonstop, afraid that if they said they did not understand even a little, the Divine Maiden who had just dealt with all the male pigs would drag one of them into a new round of demonstration.
Seeing the few people’s legs already somewhat weak and trembling nonstop, Li Xi could not help but feel a bit helpless, and said to them, “Don’t be afraid. Castrating pigs is to allow you to raise them better. In the future, these pigs’ temperaments will become much better, and at the same time, after castration their weight will also increase rapidly.”
So it’s fine, don’t be afraid of me for no reason. I don’t castrate people. ←_←
Then Li Xi’s gaze turned toward Cheng Jiao, who was standing there dumbly. She walked over, with a face full of kind smiles, and said, “This is the method I previously told the young lord about to solve the rank smell of pork. Is the young lord satisfied?”
“…Satisfied.” What he had just seen was too mentally devastating for any male creature, so even someone as proud as Cheng Jiao had to give in at this moment before Li Xi.
…His lifelong psychological shadow was born just like that.
In the blink of an eye, several days passed again. Over the past two days, the brick kiln had truly fired red bricks that could be used in construction, and it was currently undergoing kiln expansion in order to seek mass production.
After all, previously they had only been conducting experimental plots. For safety reasons in case an explosion accidentally occurred, the area was naturally relatively small, and now that it had turned out successful in the blink of an eye, expansion was naturally a matter of course and entirely justified.
At the same time, the fertilizer group also had some developments. The fertilizer that had been produced earliest had already finished fermenting, so the players fenced off a few small plots of land and planted some plants with relatively short growth cycles, conducting tests of the effects. Generally speaking, to summarize, the progress was gratifying.
And aside from the players’ side making significant progress, Li Xi’s side had not fallen behind either. Ever since she had suddenly remembered, based on the geography knowledge she had learned, that Qin State seemed to indeed possess gold mines, she had been carrying out the “drawing maps by hand” skill that most people who study geography have to match, attempting to match the resource distribution she had once seen —
Originally, she had wanted to have the system directly search the resource maps on the player world’s internet. After all, it could even flood major forum software, so presumably it could also find such a small matter.
However, the answer she received was that the reason the little useless system could make such big moves in the player world was entirely because those were “game promotions.” In short, it meant that it could not do the task Li Xi assigned this time, so Li Xi could only pick up her former skills again.
And after spending some time working hard, comparing the map she had learned with the current world’s Qin State map, Li Xi finally obtained a roughly accurate coordinate range and prepared to find time later to go and explore it.
Putting away the silk cloth on which she had written the latitude and longitude and estimated coordinates, Li Xi raised her eyes to look at the system screen floating in midair, then looked at the bright midday sunlight outside the door, raised her hand, and lightly tapped on it.
Speaking of it, today indeed was a special day,
— “Great Qin” second testing phase begins, the fourth day of the second batch of players flooding in.