Coming out of the Dali Temple’s cold prison, just as he stepped outside, Xie Jingchen saw a palace servant from Weiyang Palace waiting by the wall.
As soon as he saw him, he immediately walked forward, gracefully performed a salute, then handed over the note in his hand, somewhat stammering as he relayed the words Ying Xu had instructed him to say to Xie Jingchen.
When the stumbling words ended, Xie Jingchen nodded, only saying one sentence, “Understood,” and then let the palace servant—who lifted his eyes to look at him cautiously after every sentence, afraid that what he relayed from Ying Xu might displease him—withdraw.
After the palace servant from Ying Xu’s side left, Xie Jingchen took a few steps forward and lifted a subordinate who had been squatting lazily on the ground teasing a stray cat that came from who-knows-where.
He directly handed over what he had just learned to him, saying, “You go run an errand for me.”
Caught off guard by an unheard-of name slapped onto his face, Pei Xingzhou—who not long ago had just finished “exorcising evil” in the palace—could not help but look blank, reflexively asking, “What is this?”
Xie Jingchen said, “Ying Zhao is here. You go bring him back.”
The news that Ying Zhao’s whereabouts were unknown was naturally something Pei Xingzhou had also heard. After all, this matter truly was not small.
But… the problem with this matter lay in—
He looked somewhat strange and asked Xie Jingchen, “How did you find out Young General Ying’s whereabouts?”
Although according to official rank, Ying Zhao was now already a Great General of Great Qi, for people of their generation, they were still more accustomed to addressing him this way.
Immediately after, he heard an answer that was clearly unreasonable everywhere, yet when spoken by Xie Jingchen, sounded completely normal:
“A Xu told me.”
Then Pei Xingzhou twitched the corner of his mouth, but still suppressed his complaints, and following the problem in this sentence, asked further, “Where did the young miss get the information?”
Hearing this, Xie Jingchen glanced at him sideways, his tone somewhat disdainful, “A Xu naturally has her reasons. You just do as told.”
“……”
Endure it. Endure it.
Pei Xingzhou warned himself in his heart that the idiot in front of him was his superior and could not be beaten.
Of course, the biggest problem here was that he couldn’t beat him. No matter what, Xie Jingchen was properly trained in the military, had gone to the battlefield multiple times, and had truly earned military merit. Otherwise, based on years of friendship, he would have long since laid hands on this unlucky love-brain.
After mentally preparing himself, Pei Xingzhou let out a long breath, then asked again, “Where is this tribe?” If he was to go find someone, he had to at least be given a direction.
Just as the sentence finished, he saw Xie Jingchen reply without hesitation, “Don’t know.”
Immediately followed by another sentence: “You go send people to find out for yourself.”
If not for hearing this tribe’s name from Ying Xu, Xie Jingchen would not have known that there even existed such a Java tribe.
“……” Pei Xingzhou was choked speechless by him. Then he seemed to think of something and suddenly asked, “Xie Liu is dead?”
Hearing this, Xie Jingchen nodded slightly.
Seeing him nod, confirming the emperor’s death, and knowing that future trouble was eliminated, Pei Xingzhou immediately felt at ease. And right at this moment, he then heard Xie Jingchen say another sentence, “You should set off as early as possible.”
Hearing his superior’s “driving him away” words, Pei Xingzhou could not help but say, “Boss, you’re in such a hurry to drive me away—at least let me stay in Jinling City and watch your enthronement ceremony, right?”
Although rationally he knew that Xie Jingchen entrusting him with bringing Ying Zhao back was a sign of trust, right now they had just returned from Mobei to Jinling, and after returning he had been busy nonstop—at least give people some buffer time, right?
Upon hearing this, Xie Jingchen was stunned.
Enthronement.
…Becoming emperor.
Actually, after seeing Ying Xu, he had completely forgotten that there was such a thing.
—What he sought in his heart was nothing more than Ying Xu’s safety.
Seeing Xie Jingchen’s expression, Pei Xingzhou’s heart immediately went “thump.”
He hesitated for a moment, then cautiously asked, “You wouldn’t be…” forgetting about this matter, would you?
But the last few words could not be spoken no matter what. Or rather, he did not want to say them. Because before asking, he already had an answer in his heart.
Although he did not finish, Xie Jingchen understood his meaning. So under his somewhat shocked gaze, Xie Jingchen nodded.
Then he honestly said, “This matters… I’ll wait and ask A Xu.”
This one sentence nearly made Pei Xingzhou unable to breathe.
Pinching his own pulse to keep himself from fainting, he lowered his voice and asked, “Don’t tell me, if the young miss doesn’t let you be emperor, you really won’t be?”
Naturally, Pei Xingzhou knew that Xie Jingchen’s feelings for Ying Xu ran deep.
Back then, he had also abandoned a throne that he could definitely obtain if he fought for it, just to go into exile in the desolate northwest for Ying Xu.
During the four years in the northwest, he never harbored rebellious intentions.
But now, the throne was right before his eyes—something he could reach out and take. It had already come to this point. Why would he let go of that position?
Looking at him desperately restraining his emotions so he wouldn’t rush forward and strangle him, Xie Jingchen merely glanced at him calmly and asked back in an extremely natural, matter-of-course tone, “If A Xu doesn’t let me be emperor, then why should I be?”
Everything he did was only to hope that Ying Xu could be happy.
If his actions were what Ying Xu disliked and went against her wishes, then what meaning would there be in doing such things?
Pei Xingzhou clutched his chest and asked, unable to bear looking straight at him, “Do you know what you look like right now?”
As soon as the sentence fell, he didn’t wait for Xie Jingchen’s reply and answered himself, “Just like those noble young ladies in street storybooks who see a poor scholar as the male lead and then give up everything and disregard everything.”
That was the throne right in front of him! Already in his hands, only half a step away—just take two steps forward and it would belong to him!
Hearing this strange and indescribable comparison, Xie Jingchen immediately scolded, “Don’t talk nonsense!”
Hearing this, Pei Xingzhou had just thought maybe his unlucky boss still had some hope, when he immediately heard Xie Jingchen add, “I am the one who is the poor scholar with nothing.”
Being favored by Ying Xu, who was a noble young lady, was his blessing.
Between him and Ying Xu, one was dust on the ground, the other was lofty clouds in the sky.
So even if she did not look upon him favorably, that was entirely reasonable.
“……”
Very good. Xie Jingchen was still the same love-brained person he was familiar with. At this point, he was completely beyond saving.
Then Xie Jingchen lowered his eyelids, not knowing what he was thinking of, and softly said, “Actually, I just…”
“I’m afraid A Xu will be bullied.”
Even now that he had returned, the events of the previous life were still vivid before his eyes.
Every time he dreamed in the middle of the night, sometimes he would dream of that cold world without Ying Xu. No longer was there that girl with beautiful phoenix eyes making requests and ordering him around. Cold and empty, lonely and solitary, as if between heaven and earth, only he remained.
“No—” Hearing him say this, Pei Xingzhou finally couldn’t take it anymore and interrupted, “With her personality, who could bully her?”
Thinking of the day they returned and entered the palace, Ying Xu’s aura was still just as flamboyant and proud as before she left Jinling, looking as though she had suffered no grievances and never compromised, Pei Xingzhou couldn’t help thinking that Miss Ying would be the one bullying others—how could she be bullied?
But regarding how deep Xie Jingchen’s filter for Ying Xu was, he was also one of the few people who had experienced it most over the years. Seeing his boss’s expression now, as if recalling something, Pei Xingzhou did not want to say more. After all, no matter what he said, it would not move him.
Everyone who followed Xie Jingchen knew that as long as it involved Ying Xu, no one should attempt to persuade Xie Jingchen—it was useless.
So even though he had countless things he wanted to say about the throne, he suppressed them all.
Rather than waste words, it was better to obey and work, at least that way he wouldn’t be angered to death by the fact that his boss was an incurable love-brain.
Thinking this, Pei Xingzhou directly waved his hand and said, “I’m going! I’ll go investigate that tribe you mentioned!”
As for whether Ying Xu’s influence on Xie Jingchen was so great that the people under him had never thought of asking Ying Xu to help persuade him—actually, someone had thought of this, and someone had indeed done it in the past.
And the result was that when the person went to find Ying Xu, they were directly beaten into a pig’s head by this most noble young lady in Jinling City, because he was nagging and polluting the young miss’s ears. And afterward, when Xie Jingchen found out that this person had gone to interfere with Ying Xu, he showed no mercy and used thunderous methods to make him disappear from Jinling City.
—Truly telling everyone that Ying Xu’s matters were not something they could interfere with.
That was his reverse scale. Touch it… and die.
Recalling the past events of Jinling, Pei Xingzhou sighed repeatedly in his heart, hoping only that Ying Xu would “show mercy” and not tell Xie Jingchen that she didn’t want him to be emperor. Otherwise, this whole ordeal would truly be in vain—drawing water with a bamboo basket and coming up empty, while also making wedding clothes for someone else.
Why doesn’t Ying Xu like Xie Jingchen? If only she could look favorably upon this love-brain, how great would that be…
“Wait!”
Just as Pei Xingzhou was praying in his heart for Ying Xu to like Xie Jingchen, suddenly his unlucky superior’s voice came from behind, as if he had something new to tell him.
And just as he turned back, the next moment Pei Xingzhou was pulled aside by his superior, who asked him solemnly, “Do you have any medicine that can beautify and care for men’s skin? I want to make myself look better.”
“…?”
Pei Xingzhou slowly typed a question mark in his mind.
Then he stared at Xie Jingchen’s jade-like, handsome face for a long while and finally confirmed one thing, saying, “Are you sick—?”
Xie Jingchen was already good-looking, handsome and elegant, with sword-like brows and starry eyes, a face very popular with girls. He didn’t like tying his hair, always wearing a high ponytail full of youthful sharpness. When he was in the northwest, whenever he went out, girls often secretly threw flowers at him.
As for in Jinling City? He mostly stayed by Ying Xu’s side, and with such a great beauty present, no one had the courage.
Moreover, if Xie Jingchen didn’t have a good foundation and wasn’t handsome, in the very beginning he wouldn’t have been picked by Ying Xu as her follower—Xie Jingchen came from the Cold Palace, and this was not a secret in Jinling City. When Ying Xu picked him up back then, his condition was worse than that of the palace eunuchs, from which one could imagine how high his looks must have been.
Ying Xu absolutely rejected ugly people by her side. If not for exceptional looks, Xie Jingchen could not have been her longest-serving follower.
So for such a high-appearance-value handsome guy to say in front of him that he wasn’t good-looking and to ask for medicine to make himself better-looking, Pei Xingzhou felt he truly couldn’t suppress his urge to hit someone.
After all, he was truly being shown off too.
But still, the biggest problem remained—he couldn’t beat Xie Jingchen.
And calming down a bit, if he thought about it, the reason Xie Jingchen could say such a thing wasn’t hard to guess. There was no need to think of a second person besides Ying Xu.
Only Ying Xu’s words could stir waves in his heart and draw his attention.
Even back when the late emperor was alive, Xie Jingchen had always been arrogant and looked down on everyone—this wasn’t something that started yesterday.
So after rolling his eyes repeatedly in his heart and strongly despising his boss’s love-brain tendencies, Pei Xingzhou still resigned himself to giving his boss a prescription that met his request.
Naturally, the prescription indeed had beautifying and skin-nourishing effects, but it was mostly used on women. Whether it would work on men was questionable—after all, before this there had never been a strange case like Xie Jingchen.
After giving him this basically female-use prescription, perhaps out of guilt, Pei Xingzhou added another sentence: “If you find it doesn’t work well, why not learn from those scholars who are full of benevolence and morality and powder their faces?”
With his face, if it were made even whiter, he would truly become a genuine, literal “pretty boy.”
Actually, when Pei Xingzhou said this, he had a bit of mischievous intent. But what he didn’t expect was that after his words fell, Xie Jingchen actually seriously thought about it.
It made Pei Xingzhou mutter in his heart even more, sighing that love truly harms people—fortunately, he was a single dog and spared from all these troubles.
But speaking of this, he truly had a great curiosity in his heart, and that was—
Suddenly thinking of something, he couldn’t help but gossip and ask, “By the way, I had always been thinking about one thing—Xie Liu was already doomed to die. Young misses her… why,” he paused, then said the last few words, “divorced her husband?”
Previously, when he heard from his boss that Ying Xu was going to divorce the emperor, he almost spat out his tea.
Divorcing one’s husband was not unheard of in Great Qi’s history—during successive emperors’ reigns, it happened occasionally—but what was rare was that the husband was divorced… was the emperor.
But thinking again about who did this, it somehow felt reasonable… or rather, no, it didn’t!
No matter how he thought about it, Pei Xingzhou still felt this matter was strange. And then he heard an even stranger answer from his boss—
Hearing this question, Xie Jingchen looked at him somewhat strangely, as if despising him for being so stupid as to not understand even this, and answered back in a very ordinary tone, “Otherwise, do you want people to criticize A Xu for bringing death to her husband?”
At the same time, in Weiyang Palace, the system was also curiously asking Ying Xu this question.
Hearing this stupid question, Ying Xu—who was not asleep on the bed—immediately got angry at the system’s lack of understanding and replied fiercely, “Otherwise, do you want people to scold me for bringing death to my husband?!”
“And you still brag about being some artificial intelligence—I think you’re an idiot instead! Stupid! From now on, without my Ying Xu, you’re not allowed to speak casually.”
System: QAQ
After scolding the system, Ying Xu completely lost any intention to sleep. She rose from the bed and summoned palace servants to help her wash and groom.
Sitting in front of the dressing mirror, Ying Xu seemed to think of something and asked the maid combing her hair, “Have there been any special days recently?”
Hearing this, the little palace maid respectfully replied, “Apart from the New Year, there are no special days ahead, but today happens to be the Qiqiao Festival.”
Hearing this answer, Ying Xu slightly furrowed her brows, seeming dissatisfied.
The Qiqiao Festival was originally the summer Qixi, but since a certain emperor of Great Qi, because that emperor wanted to commemorate the love between himself and his empress, from that emperor onward, Qiqiao was no longer associated with Qixi, but was instead fixed as the winter day when that emperor and empress first met.
However, although that emperor and empress’s love story was later widely passed down and praised by the world, with people admiring the emperor’s deep affection, Ying Xu did not like this story. The reason was simple—
—Looking through the history of Great Qi, there was not a single emperor who guarded only one empress for his entire life.
If you’re flirtatious and unfaithful, then just be flirtatious and unfaithful—why insist on clinging to the word “deep affection”? Men truly are pretentious.
Then she thought about it, as if weighing something, and afterward told the maid to give her a relatively simple hairstyle, letting her smooth long hair fall straight down, and told the attendants preparing her clothing to bring a casual outfit.
After finishing her grooming, under the trembling gazes of the palace servants, Ying Xu’s clear voice slowly said, “You go bring Xie Jingchen here.”
This made the palace servants cry inwardly. They feared that the Mobei King—who had slaughtered countless people and beheaded many young palace servants in the past two days—coming to Weiyang Palace might conveniently clear out all the “survivors” of their hall, but they dared not disobey Ying Xu.
Ahead lay unknown terror, and before them… if Ying Xu were displeased, they likewise would not escape disaster.
So a group of people exchanged glances, pushing the responsibility onto each other about who should invite this friend. In the end, everyone’s eyes focused on the palace servant who had previously delivered Ying Xu’s message to Xie Jingchen, causing her to simply close her eyes and pretend to know nothing.
—What a joke? Appearing repeatedly before that King of Hell in such a short time—if the Mobei King remembered that Weiyang Palace had such a person and mistakenly thought she was a trusted senior maid of the empress, then if anything happened in the future, wouldn’t she be the first unlucky one questioned?
Besides, delivering something and calling someone over—how could these two tasks be compared?
The palace maid who had previously delivered the note firmly decided never to appear before Xie Jingchen again. The others had no choice, and since Ying Xu’s order could not be delayed, they could only pick another unlucky person.
In the end, the unlucky one who lost the push-pull went to find Xie Jingchen with a heroic mindset, continuously rehearsing in her mind how to phrase things to eliminate that “come when called” feeling, to avoid being accidentally injured.
But after seeing Xie Jingchen, the palace servant realized she had overthrown it.
She didn’t need to think of any extra wording—she only needed to state the fact that Ying Xu was looking for him, and he completely stopped paying attention to her as the messenger.
Inside Weiyang Palace.
Xie Jingchen hurried in, striding quickly to Ying Xu, who was seated at the table waiting for him. His eyes were bright, his tone mixed with anticipation: “A Xu was looking for me?”
“Xie Jingchen, you’re so slow.” Seeing the familiar dog-like gaze, Ying Xu first complained somewhat dissatisfied.
Then she stood up and directly walked forward, giving him an order without giving him any chance to refuse: “Today is the Qiqiao Festival. You accompany me out to stroll.”