Stand Out Among the Bootlickers
Ling Yanxing’s mouth twitched. “With medical skills like that, perhaps this prince should proclaim your talent to the whole world.”
Shen Muyu bowed his head modestly and waved a hand. “Oh, it’s nothing, it’s nothing.”
He really did have the nerve to take the credit.
Prince Jing’s impression of the young master had gained one more facet: shameless.
Ling Yanxing gave a low, meaningful chuckle, glanced at Shen Muyu, then strode away.
“Hey?”
They’d been talking just fine. Why was he leaving?
Shen Muyu hurried after him, lifting his robe, but two men in the uniforms of guards from Prince Jing’s front gate appeared from nowhere and seized him by the arms.
Confused, Shen Muyu flailed in place, like a fish pinned to a chopping board, helplessly watching the tall, slender man in a purple python robe.
The guards at Prince Jing’s residence were big and burly. Shen Muyu could barely touch the ground with his toes. To ease the ache in his arms, he secretly stretched out his toes and tried to grip the soles of his shoes.
Ling Yanxing seemed to notice the little movement. His gaze fell on the young man’s cloud-patterned boots, decorated with pearls and jewels.
“Where are you going?” Shen Muyu lived up to his name. When he couldn’t break free, he gave up struggling, but kept his eyes fixed on Prince Jing, afraid he’d get away.
The boy’s voice still had a youthful softness to it. When he spoke quietly, it came out gentle and sweet, the last syllable rising slowly as if he were pouting.
Ling Yanxing’s expression remained cool and unreadable. He lifted his chin with haughty grace, and the guards holding Shen Muyu cruelly turned around and dragged him away.
Only when he was being taken from his “target” did Shen Muyu start to panic. He kicked his legs, but how could a pampered boy possibly match guards hardened by the army? He twisted around in disbelief to look for Prince Jing and stretched out a hand in a dramatic plea. “Your Highness! How can you pull up your pants and then refuse to take responsibility?”
They’d been getting along so well in the garden just a moment ago.
Well, all right, he’d been the only one openly making advances…
But still, Prince Jing hadn’t rejected him, had he? He’d even traded a few barbs with him. Though they’d drifted from the close friendship Shen Muyu had planned for, becoming frenemies wouldn’t be so bad.
The guard holding Shen Muyu gave a sudden twitch.
The prince had taken off his pants?
Was that something a guard was supposed to hear?
Ling Yanxing’s brow twitched. His cool, ascetic face darkened considerably. He’d learned one more thing about the child spoiled by the Director of the Secretariat: he was melodramatic and shameless.
Ling Yanxing’s presence turned icy. His dark eyes seemed capable of swallowing a person whole, and he gave a string of cold laughs. “I could just as easily put down my bowl and curse my mother.”
The guard could tell that their prince was angry. He quickened his pace and dragged the ignorant young master away.
After asking the servants at the Shen residence, the guards learned that the young master was still under house arrest and had sneaked out on his own. They asked where the ancestral hall was, bundled Shen Muyu up, and tossed him inside.
Shen Muyu lay there peacefully. This was nothing new.
He rolled over once before getting up and brushing the dust off himself.
The white snake slithered down from his body, its tail tip poking at the sore spot on its neck where Prince Jing had squeezed it. Still shaken, and with a hint of disbelief, it asked, “Host, don’t tell me this is your way of making friends quickly: telling the Prince Regent cheesy pickup lines?”
Whenever it remembered Shen Muyu bluntly telling Prince Jing that he was his whole world, or that anywhere was on the way as long as he was there, its scales bristled.
It really shouldn’t have expected anything from an innocent but stupid college student who only knew how to sing “Makka Pakka” in the dorm and act out “Today I’m getting married!”
First, a third-year student sent a junior to a vocational college with a score of 227. Now second-year Shen Muyu was getting the Shen family sent to the execution ground with cheesy pickup lines.
His host must have transmigrated to speed up the execution of the entire household, since his father wasn’t getting them there fast enough.
Shen Muyu said, “That’s right.”
It was simple and quick, and it got across exactly what he wanted: to make up, and to be friends, and friends only.
Bai Tu reared up. “Cheesy pickup lines! Forget that he might be so grossed out he punches you. Aren’t you afraid he’ll think you like him?”
If their brotherly friendship turned into a love story, this political intrigue novel would suddenly become niche boys’ love fiction.
Shen Muyu made a thoughtful sound. “But men and men aren’t a thing in this era. Nobody thought the original owner was into men when he chased that male courtesan. Old Man Shen is only so sensitive about it because some old guy nearly molested him when he was studying. Back in my dorm, we’d jerk each other off and call each other ‘husband,’ hug all day and say ‘I love you,’ but every last one of them was straight as a ruler.”
A lot of people in this era didn’t even know men could be together. The idea simply didn’t occur to them. A close male friendship could even mean more than a wife. Unless Prince Jing had been born gay, it would be very hard to turn him gay later.
In the original novel, after Prince Jing became emperor, he had countless consorts. At his most outrageous, he spent a night with ten women. There was no doubt he was straight as a ruler.
Shen Muyu didn’t think anything was going to change that.
It was like the guys in his dorm, calling each other “big brother” with great affection, then getting girlfriends faster than anyone.
“At most, Prince Jing will think I’m a suck-up, a little flatterer who’s completely devoted to kissing up to him.”
The white snake fell silent.
No wonder it was just a system. The human mind was impossible to understand.
“Besides…” Shen Muyu sighed toward the heavens, then straightened his face and held up five fingers. “Xiaobai, we’ve been turned away five times! Five whole times! He’s harder to see than a pop star. If I don’t deliberately get his attention, how am I supposed to stand out from all the other flatterers?”
The white snake: “…?” That actually made a little sense.
It lashed its tail anxiously, but still felt something wasn’t quite right.
But it was a system fresh off the assembly line, one that couldn’t even get assigned a mission. All it could do was take on a mimic form and keep its host company. No matter how hard it thought, it couldn’t figure out what was bothering it.
“But going straight for it the first time you meet, isn’t that a bit too forward?” The white snake raised its round head, more or less conceding that its host’s harebrained plan might work.
Shen Muyu said, “That’s exactly the point. I guarantee he’s thinking about me right now.”
In the carriage, Prince Jing suddenly sneezed.
The man leaned against the cushions and rubbed his forehead, pressing his fingers to his temple, which had been throbbing all day. The innocent, slightly foolish boy appeared in his mind. His long fingers resting on his knee tapped twice.
When Ling Yanxing returned to Prince Jing’s residence, he paused at the gate for a few moments and instructed the steward, “If that young man from the Shen family comes again, don’t stop him.”
The steward was surprised, but his expression didn’t change. “Yes, Your Highness.”
* * *
“You unfilial brat! You truly are an unfilial brat!”
As soon as Shen Yangyu woke up, he started cursing. He kept at it until the sun had set.
Madam Shen had never seen her husband so furious. Worried, she said, “Muyu explained everything to me. My lord, could you have misunderstood? Muyu doesn’t like men.”
Shen Yangyu’s face contorted. “Doesn’t like men? That might fool a sheltered woman like you! He said Prince Jing was his whole world. He was practically about to grab the prince’s hand and kiss it. So now you and I are outsiders, are we, madam?”
Hearing that, Madam Shen lowered her gentle eyes.
Shen Yangyu thought back to Prince Jing storming off with a dark expression and couldn’t help feeling afraid. He roared, “That little bastard even keeps a snake in the residence! He let it attack Prince Jing! Madam, this time we have to be firm. If we aren’t, that brat will get the whole Shen family killed sooner or later!”
Today he dared to ambush Prince Jing. Tomorrow, he might dare to seize the throne.
Madam Shen’s mouth fell open in shock. Cold sweat broke out, and her eyes reddened. She leaned sorrowfully against her husband’s shoulder. “My lord, Muyu used to be so well-behaved. How did he become like this?”
“Madam, we really have spoiled him too much.” Shen Yangyu sighed. “There’s no teaching him. We might as well hurry up and have another child.”
He gave her wrist an insinuating squeeze. Madam Shen immediately pushed the old reprobate away and snapped, “If you want another child, have one yourself!”
Shen Yangyu had no answer.
He couldn’t do that, either.
Without Madam Shen pleading on his behalf, Shen Muyu was truly placed under house arrest this time. The ancestral hall door was locked from the outside, with two servants posted to guard it.
Shen Yangyu ordered that if Shen Muyu didn’t sincerely repent and hand over the snake to be executed on the spot, he would be kept locked inside for the rest of his life.
Shen Muyu stared in disbelief. “Xiaobai, did you hear that? Is this really my father?”
Bai Tu said, “System scan confirms Shen Yangyu is Shen Muyu’s biological father. Otherwise, we could explain it to Old Man Shen…”
The white snake stopped itself. Last time its host tried to explain, Old Man Shen had misunderstood and thought he wanted to sleep with a man. This really wasn’t easy to explain.
If Shen Muyu told him he wasn’t from this world, and that in a year Old Man Shen and the emperor would join forces to assassinate Prince Jing, only for the plot to be exposed and the Shen family framed for treason and executed in its entirety, Old Man Shen would only think Shen Muyu had gone mad.
Shen Muyu fumed. “I’m running away from home!”
Bai Tu asked, “But can you earn money?”
The air went out of Shen Muyu’s bravado with a little pop. He forced a smile and pressed his lips together. “Maybe I’ll run away next time.”
A man had to know when to bend and when to stand tall. He could no longer take off Kong Yiji’s long gown.
Not becoming a beggar was his one firm boundary. He couldn’t bring shame on the Shen family!
A second-year student at a proper university begging for a living? What kind of thing was that?
The setting sun filtered through the lattice window, scattering neat squares of light across the carpet. A rosy glow suffused the ancestral hall.
Shen Muyu sat cross-legged on a cushion, deep in thought. His shadow stretched long, while his thick, long lashes cast featherlike shadows across his handsome, jade-bright face. His full pink lips were pressed together slightly.
The white snake coiled up lazily, its round head nodding sleepily. Just as it was about to tilt its head and fall asleep, the boy slapped it awake.
“I’ve got it!”
“Ow! That hurt!”
“Xiaobai, Xiaobai, I’ve got a brilliant plan!” Shen Muyu excitedly grabbed the snake around the neck and shook it. His flushed face glowed with a faint pink, like a ripe, juicy peach just peeled.
Bai Tu regarded him skeptically. “What plan?”
Shen Muyu said proudly, “A hunger strike.”
Old Man Shen only had one precious son. Shen Muyu refused to believe a father wouldn’t worry. Even if his father didn’t care, his mother certainly would.
Madam Shen had played no small part in making the original owner the capital’s top dandy.
Bai Tu said, “…That’s so you.”
From sneaking over to stake out Prince Jing’s residence to staging a hunger strike, its host really had no ambition at all.
Shen Muyu happily made up his mind. Every day, he sent the meals brought to him back untouched. He survived only on the eggs the white snake secretly brought him in the dead of night, squeezing through walls and cracks.
Sure enough, before two days had passed, Madam Shen came, full of worry.
The lock, in place for three whole days, clicked open from outside. Shen Muyu gave Bai Tu a smug look that said, “See? I told you,” then hurriedly hid the eggs and the white snake. He reached out dramatically, looking weak.
“Mother, your son has been unfilial. I’m afraid I must go on ahead… Cough, cough, cough…”