Watching his expression, He Fei couldn’t help laughing. “So cute. No wonder General Gu likes you.”
Was that a compliment?
Geng Nuo acutely sensed that he was being mocked, and the teeth he was baring were instantly pulled back in.
“Hey, don’t stop. Just like that is great.”
Geng Nuo bit down on the chopsticks for a while longer until drool was practically about to leak out. Removing the chopsticks, he spat twice, growing increasingly indignant. He looked at He Fei, blinking his eyes with a look of innocent pity.
“How about I practice by myself? No matter what, I’m the one who got complained about and punished; how can I drag you down and waste a whole day of your scheduled day off?”
“Besides, with you watching here, I… I feel too embarrassed.”
How could He Fei fail to see what he was scheming? He shoved the chopsticks right back into Geng Nuo’s mouth. Geng Nuo bit down on them looking utterly pitiful, resembling a dejected little puppy.
“I’m nothing like you, I wouldn’t dare bang my fists on Boss Pi’s desk. I still need to make my living under his thumb.” Not buying that routine at all, He Fei dragged Geng Nuo over to a mirror and made him practice facing his reflection.
“Then…” Geng Nuo rolled his eyes, trying to bring up something else, but He Fei didn’t give him a single opening to chatter, grabbing his head and twisting it toward the mirror.
“Cut the nonsense and hurry up and smile!”
“…”
In the mirror, Geng Nuo had the chopsticks wedged between his teeth, the outer corners of his eyes drooping nearly to the corners of his mouth as he forced out two stiff dimples.
The Pesman Imperial Palace.
Mu Er had originally intended to chat in depth with General Gu in the Hall of State Affairs, but by the time they got there, they had already talked through most of the matters on the way.
“You’re saying that while Shark Club’s espionage plot hasn’t been definitively proven, an accidental investigation uncovered that they’ve been trafficking hidden mistresses and boys to the nobles, and these people practically vanish without a trace once they enter the nobles’ inner estates?” Mu Er was deeply shocked. “Meaning these people might also be involved in human trafficking?”
“Precisely.”
“And Lord Wright’s figure is mixed up in this as well? Then you’ve truly eliminated a massive malignant tumor.” Mu Er’s expression turned solemn. “Yet what role could he have played?”
Gu Chengyan replied, “We can always find someone to go down and ask him.”
Seeing his detached, none-of-my-business attitude, Mu Er started getting irritated. “It’s easy for you to stand there and talk when you aren’t the one feeling the pinch. Let’s step back and think: aren’t there plenty of other ways we could have sanctioned that tumor?”
“At the very least, we could have swept for landmines before swallowing up his assets.” Mu Er spat with disdain. “That old Wright, he sticks his nose into every single filthy thing going.”
“Come now, Your Majesty, let’s not rake up old grievances when your mouth is already greasy from eating your fill.” Gu Chengyan’s mocking tone made it sound as though he were reasoning with someone. “You agreed to let me do this in the first place.”
Mu Er raged, “I agreed? What did I agree to?”
Gu Chengyan amicably helped him jog his memory:
“I asked for your permission to handle Lord Wright without holding back.”
“And you said:”
“As you wish.”
Mu Er grew even angrier. “I originally assumed your so-called not holding back just meant arresting Lord Wright, slapping an ironclad charge on him to legally take him down, and then radically shuffling and swallowing his assets.”
“I even coordinated with the Upper House to fast-track a green light for you all the way. Fine, you didn’t use it, I’ll let that pass. I figured the least you’d do is execute him in private…” Mu Er heavily emphasized the word private, sounding through and through like he was grinding his teeth. “Who would have thought! You actually went straight to Welcome Avenue, the Imperial Star’s busiest avenue, and chopped his head off right in front of all those people? You really… you really…”
Actually, what he really wanted to say was that using his private funds to grease the wheels of the Upper House wasn’t cheap, but saying that out loud made him look too petty for an Emperor.
Yet the money had been given, the job hadn’t been done as expected, and he couldn’t get that damn money back either!
Accumulating private funds hadn’t been easy for Mu Er; how could his heart not ache?
“Stop faking it, Your Majesty,” Gu Chengyan mercilessly punctured his act. “Your money pouch has grown millions of times fatter with private funds lately, stop crying over a few loose coins.”
Mu Er’s heart ached. “You’re a single bachelor who doesn’t need to make money to support a wife, what do you know?!”
The late Marquess Wright held a grip on numerous vital technological lifelines, and the weight of the Ampere Corporation had made His Majesty Mu Er drool with covetous desire for ages. After Lord Wright met his end, he had swiftly had people carve up and divide the Ampere Corporation among themselves.
This whole affair had been executed using Gu Chengyan’s hands, though neither of them had stepped forward publicly.
Yet with Lord Wright dying at Gu Chengyan’s hands, everyone knew Gu Chengyan’s influence was behind it.
As for whether the Emperor’s hand was in it…
You had to hand it to him: when it came to acting, His Majesty Mu Er was truly second to none. Although the two of them had once been thick as thieves when fighting the nobility together, nowadays, with General Gu’s sphere of influence growing steadily stronger, the Emperor had no choice but to divert a share of his attention to guard against him.
This time, with Gu Chengyan publicly executing Lord Wright on the street, nobles came to drop eye-drops and poison Mu Er’s ear every few days, today he dared execute a Marquess, tomorrow there was no telling if he’d dare make a move against His Majesty.
Mu Er had predictably flown into a thunderous rage.
To outsiders, General Gu’s recent days looked thoroughly wretched.
His duties were suspended, though in reality, it was paid leave.
His army was recalled, just in time to be arranged for tactical drills on planets near the military zones.
He was even on the verge of being stripped of his General rank.
Anyone looking at it now would assume the Emperor and the General had broken ties completely.
Therefore, regarding the Ampere Corporation, it superficially appeared to be nothing more than a pack of hyenas swarming in to devour an elephant, yet Gu Chengyan, squeezed in the middle of them, hadn’t managed to carve off much meat either.
At the very least, those nobles’ egos had smoothed out quite a bit.
Had it not been for this commotion outside, Pix and the people behind him would never have dared to abet Gu Chengyan into betraying the Emperor.
Things were getting more and more interesting.
Mu Er sighed. “Alright, to tell you the truth, killing Lord Wright, while crude and brutal, genuinely solved a massive headache for me. Those nobles don’t dare make any rash moves with your military authority backing things up.”
“As for whether we’ll startle the snake in the grass, I figure the snake’s already startled by now anyway, or they wouldn’t be dangling olive branches at you. Keep sparring with them; I’m going to look into Lord Wright’s inner quarters. That’s been leaking and left unchecked this whole time, and I have a feeling this guy…”
Gu Chengyan turned his head slightly. “What did you say?”
Lifting his head, His Majesty Mu Er finally noticed they had reached the vicinity of the Hall of State Affairs, where the roaring sound of construction outside had entirely drowned out his voice.
A robotic arm over six meters high was tearing up the paved stone road in a horrifying manner, making a deafening clack-clack sound that caused even those standing by the roadside to clearly feel the vibrations.
Hearing this din made Gu Chengyan even less inclined to visit the Hall of State Affairs, so he fished up an excuse to take his leave.
“So what on earth is the palace renovating?” Before leaving, Gu Chengyan couldn’t help asking.
“Nothing much.” His Majesty Mu Er’s expression grew somewhat unnatural. “I just had them dig up all the turf and soil around the palace’s Hall of State Affairs, restore it to how it was, and then dig it up again…”
“…” Sounds like looking for trouble for no reason.
“What is the point of you doing this?”
“During a routine inspection a while back, the palace shielding system was hit by a hacker attack. Although repairs are complete, Luoluo still isn’t quite reassured.” His Majesty Mu Er shifted his expression, blending pride with confidence, and topping it off with a solid eighty percent of sheer bluff. “And my choice of this method is precisely to ensure that all conversations within the Hall of State Affairs take place under absolute physical security.”
Gu Chengyan looked at the massive robotic arms raised high outside and the catastrophic ground, mentally translating Mu Er’s repairs are complete as utter bullshit.
“Are you saying our current technology has been beaten to a pulp, to the point where our security measures have to rely on physical defenses?”
“Enough, General Gu, stop looking at me with that the Pesman Empire is finished look.”
His Majesty Mu Er offered a sheepish defense, “The satellite monitoring system that’s been maintained for three hundred years was destroyed by some unknown, mysterious force, and we’re forced to spend a fortune rebuilding the Galactic Guard framework. That bunch of damn good-for-nothings still haven’t figured out the root cause, and today’s preliminary investigation report actually claims presumed to be stray space debris. Whose space debris causes such a massive chain reaction?!”
Gu Chengyan keenly extracted the core point. “So because of rebuilding the galactic satellite monitoring system, your national treasury has no budget for renovating the palace this year, is that it?”
His Majesty Mu Er: “…”
Damn it, you guessed it right.
Though this was only on the surface, after all, the Emperor swallowing up the Wright family’s assets couldn’t be leaked to those nobles just yet.
“Don’t the nobles and parliamentary ministers question how such a meaningless expense isn’t an extravagant waste?”
“Oh!” His Majesty Mu Er waved it off nonchalantly. “If anyone asks, I’ll just say the Empress demanded it. The Empress has been spoiled rotten by me; what’s wrong with a little extravagant waste? It’s not like it’s coming out of their family coffers.”
Gu Chengyan: “…” No wonder the Empress finds you annoying.
“Is there really any need to renovate?”
“General Gu, you don’t understand. If you had a wife who fussed over every tiny detail for you, you’d realize you simply can’t bear to turn down his care.” His Majesty Mu Er sighed with world-weary sentiment. “If the Empress hadn’t kept pestering me and acting spoiled, saying he’d worry himself sick and couldn’t even eat his favorite sugar-filled glutinous rice cakes if we didn’t secure the palace’s defensive secrecy… Look, if I didn’t take some kind of measure, he’d probably go on a hunger strike and threaten suicide.”
Gu Chengyan wore a look of utter apathy.
Oblivious to how utterly shameless he sounded, Mu Er shook his head and sighed heavily, “I pamper him far too much; look what kind of monster I’ve turned him into! I hear that in ancient times, the imperial family had a rule called the inner court shall not meddle in politics, where the Emperor’s lover didn’t need to constantly show their face in public, but only needed to stay in the inner court waiting to make babies with their husband.”
His tone was brimming with yearning. “If you ask me, these little Omegas ought to just stay honestly at home, sparing them from going out every day and meeting all sorts of riffraff.”
Nodding in deep agreement, Gu Chengyan brought up his terminal and tapped away furiously on the screen.
His Majesty Mu Er grew vigilant. “What are you doing?”
Without pausing his movements, Gu Chengyan hit send, lifted his eyelids to glance at him, and with magnanimous mercy, hit play. His Majesty Mu Er’s voice, virtually lacking any distortion, blared straight out of the terminal: “I pamper him far too much…”
Mu Er panicked instantly. “You… you’re just trying to watch the world burn!” He lunged forward in a frantic scramble to snatch the terminal out of Gu Chengyan’s hands. “Why do you have Xiluo’s contact info?!”
Gu Chengyan took a massive step back, holding the terminal high above his head, and stated without a shred of politeness: “Too late. It’s already been sent to Her Majesty the Empress.”
He displayed the terminal screen to His Majesty Mu Er, right beneath the sent audio file sat a glaring Read.
His Majesty Mu Er’s face turned as dark as charcoal. “Why did he read your message in seconds? The message I sent him three days ago still says unread!”
“Who knows.” Gu Chengyan spread his hands. “Maybe your wife doesn’t love you. He even beat you out the door this morning.”
“You don’t even have a wife, what do you know?!” Mu Er roared in exasperation.
When the two of them interacted in private, the monarch-subject distinction often blurred. At times, Gu Chengyan’s imposing aura was even stronger. When dealing with this young Emperor, Gu Chengyan kept most of his formalities strictly superficial, yet Mu Er didn’t mind.
After all, those nobles didn’t show him much respect either; by comparison, Gu Chengyan shared a life-or-death bond with him. He had handed military power over to this brutal monarch born of the underground black market, and in return, the rebellions across major star systems over the years had been pacified, with every sign of impending upheaval firmly suppressed.
Even if, to outsiders, General Gu’s influence was on the verge of eclipsing imperial authority.
So what if it did? He didn’t even have a wife.
Alphas always found bizarre places to derive a sense of superiority from.
Mu Er began to resort to sarcasm. “General Gu, I know you’re jealous of me. I sincerely advise you, if you keep acting so unapproachable and treating Omegas like they’re floods or wild beasts, you’re bound to die alone.”
“Though it’s quite rare that you’ve actually accepted a Beta this time, I hope he becomes your downfall.” Mu Er gloated, “Of course, this isn’t a blessing; from the bottom of my heart, I still hope you fail. That way, when we’re old, Xiluo and I can bring a whole houseful of children and grandchildren to show off our presence right in front of you.”
“Is that so? I recall someone mentioning cheating just now, so I suppose the Pesman Palace will be welcoming a newcomer before long. By then, that houseful of children and grandchildren might not belong to you and Xiluo after all.”
“You…”
Mu Er ground his back teeth, letting out a creaking, grating sound, and glared viciously at Gu Chengyan. “Just you be smug, General Gu. Watch out you don’t capsize in a gutter!”
“A gutter?” Gu Chengyan curved his lips in disdain. “You mean that Beta?”
“Right! That Beta!” Mu Er cursed him viciously. “You’re definitely going to fall hard in his hands.”