Li Xi was not the shy type. Whatever she thought of, she asked directly. She looked at Ying Zheng and said, “Is it because of the Empress Dowager?”
Hearing her say this, the youth in black robes turned his head away, withdrawing the gaze of his phoenix-shaped eyes, and instead stared straight ahead.
He did not speak, but all the signs already showed that Li Xi’s guess was correct.
But thinking about it, this was only natural. In Ying Zheng’s youth, the person who could have such a great influence on him, aside from Zhao Ji, the mother who had depended on him since childhood, there was no second person to consider.
Aside from Zhao Ji, no one else had any possibility of shaking his heart.
And when, in the future, he would be completely hurt through by Zhao Ji, when his mother would choose her lover and the illegitimate children she had borne with her lover instead of him, and even fantasize about deposing him and instead establishing those two who, to the Qin royal family, were completely and utterly “bastards” as the new king—only at that time would he truly begin to become heartless and desireless, no longer caring about anyone, with only his great cause of unifying the world in his eyes and heart, becoming the eternal emperor of the ages.
But to go through all of this, how sad must he have been?
Li Xi gently lowered her eyelids. Thinking of the “future” she knew, a few strands of heartache could not help but rise in her heart.
Then, by her ear, she suddenly heard that familiar clear and cold voice, “She is the mother of the King of Qin, but she is not my mother, not my mother.”
“A Zheng…” She turned her head, looked at Ying Zheng, and softly called his name, yet did not know what to say.
Scold her? She actually wanted to, but Zhao Ji was, after all, his mother. She should not, and could not, speak ill of Zhao Ji in front of Ying Zheng. What would that become?
But words of comfort seemed far too pale and powerless. When a person is at an emotional low point, many comforts you think are comforts are actually just sprinkling another handful of salt onto someone’s wound, instead causing them to be hurt even more deeply.
But perhaps things in this world are always like this: the more easily something is obtained, the less willing one is to cherish and protect it. Zhao Ji had obtained Ying Zheng’s kindness too easily. Whatever she wanted, whether proper or improper, as long as she opened her mouth, even absurd things like granting Lao Ai a fiefdom as a eunuch and bestowing upon him a marquis title, Ying Zheng had agreed to them all.
But ever since Ying Zheng ascended the throne, Zhao Ji had, for decades without change, been living off the emotional capital of the hard days she had shared with Ying Zheng in Zhao, extracting everything she wanted from him, and no longer giving him any genuine feelings in return.
Thinking of this, Li Xi could not help but softly murmur, “If I could obtain A Zheng’s true heart, I would be willing to pay any price…”
To her, that was the most precious thing in the world.
“What did you say?” Ying Zheng turned his gaze, his phoenix eyes staring straight at her.
Li Xi gently shook her head, smiled faintly at him, and said, “Nothing, nothing important.”
She thought to herself, luckily Ying Zheng did not hear what she said, otherwise this would have directly fast-forwarded to a large-scale social death scene.
Only…
Those beautiful peach blossom eyes could not help but steal a sideways glance at the handsome youth beside her, as if trying to observe something from his expression.
…Did he really not hear that sentence at all?
Li Xi actually could not be certain about this, but whether he heard it or not, since Ying Zheng had already acted as if he had not heard it, she could only press it down in her heart. Otherwise, could she confront Ying Zheng and ask him whether he had heard words that were practically a confession to him?
Although she did not think the vague feelings she harbored, which even she herself could not clearly explain or define, were something shameful or disgraceful, thinking again about the ghost-like expression her own older brother always wore whenever she mentioned Ying Zheng, Li Xi felt that… for the sake of her brother not getting high blood pressure at a young age, she should restrain herself a little.
At the very least, there had to be a step-by-step process, lest her brother suddenly get heart disease and clutch his chest and faint from fright.
Thinking this in her heart, feeling that she was quite clever, Li Xi gave herself a V sign in her mind.
Then Li Xi thought for a moment, looked at Ying Zheng beside her, and felt that she perhaps still wanted to do something, so she could not help but say to him, “A Zheng, let me tell you a story.”
“Hm?” The youth with phoenix eyes slightly turned his gaze, and in his eyes reflected the girl’s beautiful profile.
Li Xi gently lowered her eyelids, her crow-feather-dense eyelashes casting a small fan-shaped shadow at the corners of her eyes, and she softly began:
“Once, there was a lucky, yet at the same time very unlucky little girl. She was born into a harmonious family with a small population, with parents who loved her. But good times did not last long. At the age when she began to study, she was tested and found to have extremely powerful talent. Everyone said she was a genius rarely seen in hundreds of years, and that ordinary family therefore became no longer ordinary. And this, precisely, was the beginning of the little girl’s nightmare.”
“After becoming a genius in the eyes of the world, the little girl received the best education and quickly displayed her talent, shining brightly, growing ever more dazzling, seeming as if everything was developing in a good direction. But before long, after some time, the little girl discovered that her loving parents had changed, gradually becoming unfamiliar. From initially using her genius status to seek profit, to eventually selling the little girl to powerful and wealthy people, whether it was her father or her mother, they were unwilling to want the little girl anymore. Because they had another new daughter—obedient, not so dazzling, not highlighting their own dimness.”
Li Xi spoke in an utterly calm voice, as if she were fully telling someone else’s story, not her own painful past.
Her experiences were, in some aspects, somewhat similar to Ying Zheng’s. Both had been betrayed by the closest relatives they once had. When making their choices, the other party would rather choose a useless child who knew nothing than want the more outstanding them. That was why, when she read history books, she empathized with the eternal emperor of ten thousand years separated from her by thousands of years, and sincerely felt heartache for him.
Because they were the same.
Noticing the meaning within Li Xi’s words, Ying Zheng suddenly gave a light laugh and asked, “Is this the strange encounter the Divine Maiden experienced during her time with Guiguzi?”
Li Xi smiled and answered in affirmation, then added, “Actually, I cannot quite distinguish whether it was Zhuang Zhou dreaming of a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming of Zhuang Zhou. But the only thing I can feel to be real is that those things truly appeared in my memory, genuine and true.”
Before awakening in a single moment this year, she had always been a muddled, foolish person, naive like a child—this was something that could be easily investigated without even needing deep inquiry. But precisely because of this, it could better explain the mysterious aspects about her.
—If she truly did not have a unique opportunity, how could she have suddenly awakened? How could she have known those matters of destiny?
Today’s matter, she could be considered as using her own experience of being abandoned to comfort Ying Zheng, while also once again laying out her identity on the surface.
After all, the present had truly long since walked out of that shadow. Moreover, now she had a brother who genuinely loved her.
Then Li Xi swept away the gloom in her heart, looked at Ying Zheng, whose mood seemed to have slightly improved, and as if suddenly thinking of something, reached out and grabbed the hand beneath the wide sleeve of the youth, saying, “Come with me.”
As she spoke, she was about to lead Ying Zheng back, heading toward her home. Then, under the youth’s slightly puzzled gaze, Li Xi blinked at him and said, “I’m giving A Zheng a gift.”
In no time, Li Xi and Ying Zheng both returned to the entrance of the Li residence.
After arriving home, Ying Zheng could clearly feel that the girl’s pace beside him had obviously slowed a little, and that she had deliberately lightened her footsteps. Watching Li Xi stand there, moving slowly and quietly as she opened the door, the youth in black robes could not help being momentarily speechless, and could not resist complaining, “Why do you return home like a thief?”
Hearing this, Li Xi immediately widened her beautiful peach blossom eyes, as if she did not understand how he could ask such a question.
Then the pretty girl opened her beautiful eyes wide, and in order not to disturb those in the house, deliberately lowered her voice and said, “Isn’t it because men and women should not touch each other? Going out at night with a man as a young girl—if my brother were to find out, he would go crazy.”
As she spoke, she also glanced toward the inside of the house. Then she looked back at Ying Zheng and muttered, “Actually, going out with a man isn’t a big deal. If I explained it, my brother would be able to understand. But the key point is that this is going out with you. If my brother found out, he would definitely start overthinking again…”
Ying Zheng: “…?”
Listening to the girl’s soft muttering beside him, the youth in black robes could not help but glance sideways.
These words… Why did they sound so inexplicably strange to him?
In Li Si’s eyes, what kind of lecherous and muddle-headed image was he?
Seeing Li Xi’s reaction, the youth in black robes silently put a mark against his own chancellor in his heart, waiting to settle accounts later.
If Li Si were to know that, because of this kind of thing, he had inexplicably been blacklisted over his head, the young man would probably cry on the spot, because—
—What he feared about Li Xi being alone with Ying Zheng was not that His Majesty would do something to his sister. What he truly feared was that his sister, who had somehow fallen deeply in love with His Majesty and also had extremely high combat power, would force herself on His Majesty!
Putting aside the matter of Li Si being innocently shot while not even present, at this moment Li Xi had already walked to the table, picked up the paperweight and took out the sheets of paper beneath it, handing them to Ying Zheng. The youth in black robes casually accepted them, looked at the smooth, delicate, pure white things in his hands, like the first snow of winter, and asked, “What is this?”
Li Xi curved her brows and eyes and replied, “A good thing that will let A Zheng not have to always carry around bamboo slips.”
Then Li Xi roughly explained to Ying Zheng the definition and concept of “paper.” After hearing it, Ying Zheng’s first reaction was, “Can this be mass-produced?”
Li Xi smiled and gave him the exact answer he wanted to hear: “Yes.”
Li Xi continued, “The paper A Zheng is holding now is made from tender bamboo. But besides bamboo, things like tree bark, rags, hemp rope, and even the cotton I previously gave to A Zheng can all be used to make paper.”
After all, what papermaking fundamentally requires is plants that can be beaten into fibers.
Then Li Xi said again, “I’m also planning to sell paper to the other six states, to subsidize household expenses.”
Hearing this, Ying Zheng slanted his gaze and fell upon the girl in front of him. Under Ying Zheng’s sideways glance, Yu Xi spoke in a small, righteous voice, “Who told our family to be poor!”
But even at this moment, she still remembered not to alarm her brother who was still at home.
And in her heart, she could not help but feel fortunate that her brother was just a frail scholar with no strength to bind a chicken and had not trained in martial arts, so he was not sensitive to these things. Otherwise, if it had been herself, if Li Si and someone had made such noises at home, she would definitely have discovered it long ago.
Seeing Li Xi in such a miserly little appearance, Ying Zheng said, with two parts faint indulgent helplessness in his tone, “Tomorrow I’ll have someone send you two boxes of jewelry. Embarrassing.”
As soon as she heard this, Li Xi immediately revealed a brilliant smile and said in a tone of thanking the boss, “Thank you, Your Majesty. Your Majesty is so good!”
Looking at Li Xi’s face full of a professional fake smile, the youth in black robes helplessly shook his head, but there was indulgence in his eyes.
“Speaking of which,” Li Xi suddenly raised her hand and patted her forehead, and asked Ying Zheng, “What day is my brother leaving for Zhao?”
Ying Zheng replied, “The day after tomorrow.”
Hearing this, Li Xi slowly nodded and said thoughtfully, “Then I’ll also go back to Liyang the day after tomorrow.”
Hearing Li Xi say this, the youth in black robes’ eyes shifted, and he said with a half-smile, “So unwilling to stay in Xianyang?”
“How could that be?” Li Xi immediately retorted, then muttered, “Isn’t it because once my brother leaves, you’ll be busy, and there’ll be no one here to keep me company? I might as well go back to Liyang to work.”
Hearing her words with an explanatory tone, Ying Zheng slightly curved his lips, and reminded her as if thinking of something, “If you go back to Liyang, remember to take Cheng Jiao along.”
Hearing Ying Zheng say this, Li Xi tilted her head, played with the stone he had previously used as a paperweight in her hand, and said, “How could I possibly handle Prince Cheng Jiao? His temper, I really dare not compliment.”
As soon as this sentence fell, she saw Ying Zheng turn his gaze and quietly stare at her, his look seeming to say that he was not unaware of how she bullied Cheng Jiao.
“All right.” Under the focused gaze of those deep phoenix eyes, Li Xi quickly surrendered and said, “Don’t worry, I will definitely remember to pack up Prince Cheng Jiao and take him away.”
Listening to Li Xi talk about Cheng Jiao as if he were cargo to be transported, Ying Zheng only shook his head. Then he raised his eyes and glanced at the sky, felt that it truly was late enough, and that he should almost return to the palace, and thus directly bid farewell to Li Xi.
At the end, the youth in black robes raised the stack of spotless white paper in his hand and said, “This will count as my interest.”
Since the boss had earlier generously said he would send her two boxes of jewelry, Li Xi naturally would not dismantle Ying Zheng’s platform at this moment, but instead revealed a sweet beckoning-cat smile, indicating that she was also very willing to continue doing this kind of business with the boss next time.
Then, after selling some cuteness, she seemed to suddenly think of something and asked Ying Zheng, “A Zheng, do you need me to walk you back?”
Ying Zheng: “……”
He did not answer Li Xi’s question, but under the gaze of those phoenix eyes that were already faintly capable of killing, Li Xi very cleverly understood Ying Zheng’s meaning. Then she heard him say, “I have shadow guards accompanying me,” and once again tilted her head and revealed a cute beckoning-cat smile, trying to muddle through with cuteness.
Ying Zheng did not pay her any more attention, but turned around and left, intending to return to the palace.
“Oh, right, A Zheng.” Just after Ying Zheng had walked out of the Li residence courtyard, Li Xi seemed to think of something again, stood up from the stool, chased after him, and called out to the youth in black robes ahead.
Ying Zheng turned his head and looked at Li Xi who had suddenly chased out, seeming somewhat puzzled.
Li Xi walked a few steps forward, closing the distance between them, and then said, “I just suddenly thought of something about the Empress Dowager, but I don’t know if you would want to hear it.”
Ying Zheng’s answer was very straightforward, only two crisp words, “Say it.”
“Um…” Ying Zheng being so decisive, Li Xi instead began to hesitate, preemptively laying down some padding for what she was about to say, “I’ll say this in advance: what I’m about to say, you might really not want to hear, and after I say it, you’re not allowed to get angry.”
Ying Zheng looked at her and asked in return, “When have I ever been angry at you?”
Li Xi said again, “And you’re not allowed to scold me, and absolutely not allowed to hit me!”
Ying Zheng was speechless and raised a soul-searching question, “In the Divine Maiden’s heart, what kind of person am I, exactly?”
Then, as if thinking of something unpleasant, his teeth faintly ground together, and his tone carried two parts inexplicable gloom, “Besides, didn’t the Divine Maiden say that I can’t beat you?”
“Then I’m saying it, okay? I’m really saying it.” Li Xi emphasized and repeated it twice. Then, under the gaze of those long, narrow phoenix eyes, she slowly spoke her thoughts, “Well, in my opinion, you should directly pick a few young, handsome male favorites and send them to the Empress Dowager. Anyway, Your Majesty’s harem is empty, with no one in it, and those unoccupied palaces still need workers to clean them, so you might as well make use of the little value they have.”
What Li Xi was thinking was to send Zhao Ji a few young and considerate little lovers, letting those pretty male favorites coax her into happiness, so that later, when that idiot Lao Ai came out, he would not be able to charm Zhao Ji so completely that she lost all sense of right and wrong.
According to the historical trajectory, Lao Ai was smuggled into the palace for Zhao Ji, but now Lü Buwei had been dismissed several years earlier, so she could not say for sure when that idiot would appear.
Only guessing that Ying Zheng’s bad mood was related to Zhao Ji, but not yet connecting it to the fact that at this time Lao Ai had already appeared, Li Xi thought this in her heart.
Li Xi could feel that as soon as her words fell, Ying Zheng’s gaze became somewhat subtle, but since the words had already been spoken, there was no reason not to finish them.
So, under the strange gaze of the young king, Li Xi continued and finished her advice about sending male favorites to his own mother, an idea that sounded rotten just hearing it. She coughed lightly and deliberately changed her form of address, speaking seriously, “Your Majesty, speaking reasonably, at the Empress Dowager’s current age, to remain widowed like this until old age is really… quite difficult. Moreover, among noblewomen throughout the realm who keep male favorites, when counted, there are not few.”
If one were to count, Qin even had a particularly famous and particularly typical example—Empress Dowager Xuan—who kept them too.
After all, the Warring States period was not an era of foot-binding, where all women were required to be chastity arches incarnate.
In this era, women who had been married and bore children were actually more popular and had a better market in marriage, because surviving childbirth meant good physical health and the ability to continue the family line.
So the later certain dynasties were simply absurd. She cursed certain later periods where women’s chastity was valued above everything in her heart, then continued.
“Moreover, finding a few agreeable male favorites for the Empress Dowager, diverting her attention, perhaps in other aspects it would…”
Li Xi did not finish this sentence, but at this point, Ying Zheng already understood what she was about to say next.
Before he personally took control of the government, those who handled state affairs were Lü Buwei and Zhao Ji. If some male favorites were found to divert her attention, she would no longer think about seizing power that should belong to Ying Zheng.
Zhao Ji herself was not a particularly intelligent person, and was limited by her background and horizons. In matters of state and governance, she was unlike the Qin Empress Dowagers who had once held great power—such as Empress Dowager Xuan of King Zhaoxiang or Empress Dowager Huayang of King Zhuangxiang.
Furthermore, if a few pretty, considerate male favorites were sent to Zhao Ji and made her happy, Zhao Ji’s mood would improve, and from another angle, this could also be considered fulfilling Ying Zheng’s filial duty as a son.
It was just that this matter… sounded really quite immoral.
But since things had already been said this far, she did not mind adding the final sentence, so Li Xi directly smashed the pot and went all in, saying, “Of course, the most important point in this matter is that the male favorites sent to the Empress Dowager must definitely be given a bowl of sterilizing medicine by a physician, to prevent human lives from being created. If that happened, it might not look very good.”
One must fully absorb the lesson taught by that idiot Lao Ai.
She thought this in her heart.
And as Li Xi’s impassioned “speech” finished in a stream of words, during which Ying Zheng had been made to fall into silence, the youth in black robes lifted his eyelids and asked, “Finished?”
Hearing this, Li Xi nodded solemnly.
Seeing the girl nod, Ying Zheng looked at Li Xi, who had explained this matter so thoroughly, and then suddenly asked her a question, “If the Divine Maiden’s future husband were to die, would you also prepare to act as you just told me?”