Li Jiyan vomited a few times, but nothing came out. This only angered Yu Ziyu, who crushed the stale steamed bun in her hand and pressed it onto Li Jiyan’s head.
”I kindly offered you food, and this is how you treat me? You really are a country bumpkin from beyond the Great Wall, utterly ignorant of manners!”
The cool, damp spring breeze mingled with the sour, pungent smell of stale steamed buns, making Li Jiyan feel dizzy and lightheaded. Although he was a military general who had been stationed in the border regions for many years, he was always particular about cleanliness and would make sure to tidy himself up whenever possible.
”Why are you always like this?” Li Jiyan stood up straight and brushed the sour-smelling crumbs off his face.
”What kind?”
Yu Ziyu was furious that this brute was staring at her so directly. She was destined to become a cultivator, and she had even opened her Yin-Yang eyes; she was destined to become an immortal. How dare this peasant question her like that? He truly didn’t know his place.
”You made me wash my hair with tea a few days ago, and you’re doing it again today. Why is that?” Li Jiyan’s cold gaze was fixed on her fair face.
Yu Ziyu was stunned and didn’t know how to respond, so she said, “I have my reasons for doing things. How dare you laugh at my abilities? Are you jealous of my talent for cultivation and want to harm me?”
She drew her longsword again and placed it against Li Jiyan’s shoulder. “It’s your good fortune that I took a liking to you and was willing to marry you. I considered you my husband, yet you question me like this, you shameless man!”
Li Jiyan pursed his thin lips, raised his hand, and pinched the tip of the sword between two fingers. He was a martial artist and a veteran of many battles; with a flick of his finger, he easily deflected Yu Ziyu’s longsword.
”Do you even know how to use a sword?” he asked.
Yu Ziyu blushed. She knew her own limitations; she only had a superficial understanding of swords and staffs. However, she disdained to learn them. She wanted to cultivate immortality, not compete with others. Why would she bother learning the skills of ordinary people?
She sheathed her sword and said defiantly, “My skills are in subduing demons and cultivating immortality, not in wielding weapons. Fine, I won’t bother with you.”
After saying that, she prepared to leave.
Li Jiyan strode forward, then walked backward in front of her, a bright smile on his face. He snapped his fingers in front of her and said, “Yu Ziyu, there are no ghosts or monsters in this world, nor is it possible to cultivate immortality.”
”You know nothing!” Yu Ziyu despised this bastard and didn’t want him to be her husband anymore.
It seems I need to find a new man as soon as possible; the art of the bedroom is also part of spiritual cultivation.
She had already studied it carefully, according to the Taoist classic “Huang Ting Jing”: “The inner is the mind. The scenery is the image. The external image refers to the image of the sun, moon, stars, clouds and rosy clouds; the internal image refers to the image of the flesh, bones, and internal organs.”
Yu Ziyu believes that the essence of cultivating Taoism and immortality should be divided into inner vision and outer vision.
Considering her own situation, her external vision is her Yin-Yang eyes. Now that she has opened her Yin-Yang eyes, her external vision has improved considerably.
What remains is the interior.
The inner refers to the heart, and the inner imagery encompasses the flesh, bones, and internal organs. It emphasizes treating the body as a jade furnace and the heart as a golden cauldron. To cultivate inner vision, one should follow the principles of yin-yang balance.
This is also why Yu Ziyu is so eager to find a suitable man to share a room with.
Everything else is insignificant; only cultivating immortality is paramount. No one can stop her from cultivating immortality. Since Li Jiyan is so unattractive to her, she might as well abandon him.
With that thought in mind, Yu Ziyu hurriedly descended the mountain.
Li Jiyan followed behind her and quickly caught up: “Yu Ziyu, when did you start acting crazy? When I came to the capital three years ago and met you, you were a pretty normal girl.”
”I’m not crazy, you wouldn’t understand.” Yu Ziyu didn’t turn her head and strode forward.
She ditched Li Jiyan and returned to the Yu family mansion. Her parents and eldest sister were waiting for her, and her good-for-nothing second brother, Yu Yuanchu, had also returned.
As soon as the second brother saw Yu Ziyu, he grinned and said in a carefree manner, “Oh, third sister, you went to catch monsters again? What did you catch this time? Show it to your second brother.”
Yu Ziyu glared at him, ignored him, and turned to her mother, Yu Ningying, saying, “Mother, I don’t want to marry Li Jiyan anymore. I want to find someone more suitable.”
”Didn’t you take him for a walk? Did he upset you?”
Yu Ziyu felt a surge of anger when she recalled Li Jiyan bending over and vomiting earlier. She muttered, “He won’t eat the food I bring him.”
”What did you give him?” asked the eldest sister, Yu Qingdai.
”Steamed bun.”
Yu Ziyu stopped chatting with her family and ran back into the house. Among a pile of Taoist classics, she accurately found the “Huangting Neijing Yujing” and began to read it page by page.
outside the house.
Yu Ningying sighed repeatedly and said to her husband Zhao Tianjun, “Why don’t we find another imperial physician to take a look at Ziyu? This can’t go on like this.”
“What’s the use of finding a royal physician if she doesn’t take the medicine? Making her take medicine is like taking her life.” In recent years, Zhao Tianjun has been searching for doctors and medicines everywhere for his daughter’s hysteria, and he has become so anxious that his hair has turned white.
Yu Yuanchu said nonchalantly, “You all keep saying that the Third Sister has gone mad, but I don’t think so. She’s just obsessed with cultivating immortality. What kind of hysteria is that? Besides, what if she really has the ability to see ghosts and can see things that we can’t?”
”There are no demons in this world! They’re all just charlatans playing tricks. Are you going to follow their nonsense too?” Zhao Tianjun shouted sternly.
”Fine, fine, I won’t say anything more. I finally get to come home, and you all just don’t like me!” Yu Yuanchu opened his folding fan, whistling as he went back to his room.
Yu Qingdai gently patted her mother’s back: “Mother, can the marriage between Ziyu and General Li still go through?”
”Let’s wait and see. It would be great if it could work out. The emperor is neglecting state affairs these days, and various forces are colluding with each other. Our family has been out of favor in recent years. If we could form a marriage alliance with Grand Commandant Li’s family, that would be the best thing ever.”
*
Li Jiyan returned to the general’s mansion, and the gatekeeper whispered, “General, the master has arrived.”
”Hmm.” Li Jiyan entered the room with a cold expression and went straight into the study.
Li Fanglian sat upright behind the desk, carefully examining the documents on it. Li Jiyan entered the room, bowed, and greeted him in a low voice: “Father.”
Li Fanglian did not reply. The room was so quiet you could hear a pin drop.
After a long while, Li Fanglian finally spoke: “I heard that you went to the Yu family to propose marriage this morning?”
”Yes, Father.”
”Why didn’t you inform me?” Li Fanglian walked out from behind the desk and stood in front of Li Jiyan.
Li Jiyan kept his head down and eyes lowered: “Father, you said that your son and Yu Ziyu are a match made in heaven, a perfect pair. Since that’s the case, this marriage is a joyous occasion, so what’s wrong with me proposing?”
Li Fanglian chuckled: “Red Phoenix and Heavenly Joy, you peasant, you actually know this idiom.”
He pointed at Li Jiyan and reminded him again: “Son, I told you long ago, it’s better to be a centurion than a scholar. Don’t blame me for not letting you study and learn to read; I’m doing this for your own good. If you want to achieve great things in the future, just be obedient. I won’t harm you.”
”Yes, Father.”
After pondering for a moment, Li Fanglian asked again, “Do you really like Yu Ziyu? Why are you so fond of her? Tell your father.”
“My son is ignorant and doesn’t know how to explain it. He just saw her, thought she was beautiful, and wanted to marry her.” Li Jiyan’s answer was always simple. He was illiterate, had never been to school, and didn’t have much critical thinking ability.
He is usually quiet, not because he is naturally dull, but because he is afraid that if he talks too much, he will expose the fact that he is illiterate.
”That’s fine then. I’ll go talk to Minister Zhao another day and finalize the marriage.” He waved his hand. “Alright, you can go now.”
”Yes, Father.”
Li Jiyan returned to his room and sat there all afternoon. Only when it was dark did he tiptoe out from under his bed and retrieve a copy of the Three Character Classic. Li Fanglian was very strict with him, especially regarding reading and writing, and he spared him the trouble of studying.
When they were in the border region, he was never given the opportunity to come into contact with books.
It was only in the last few days, after he returned to the capital, that Li Fanglian, busy with social engagements, loosened his guard on him, giving him the opportunity to secretly hide a copy of the “Three Character Classic” for children to learn to read.
He flipped through the Three Character Classic over and over again, his head throbbing with increasing dullness. He recognized fewer than twenty characters in the book. He wondered if Li Fanglian had given him some kind of drug that had made him so mentally impaired.
After looking at it for a while, he saw the character “子” (zi), one of the few characters he recognized, and his thoughts gradually drifted away.
Could the “子” in Yu Ziyu’s name be this one? He began to wonder how to write the three characters of “Yu Ziyu.” She was so beautiful; her name must be beautiful too.
He wanted to have a long chat with Yu Ziyu. Yu Ziyu was mentally ill, and even if he was uneducated, Yu Ziyu shouldn’t be able to tell. He didn’t need to feel so inferior.
Li Jiyan recalled the first time he met her three years ago, when she was holding a rabbit lantern and laughing and talking with her older sister Yu Qingdai on the street.
When he returned home at night, he would be consumed by thoughts of Yu Ziyu, and whenever he had a spare moment, he would frantically ponder those trivial matters between men and women. He wanted to kiss Yu Ziyu, to hug Yu Ziyu, and to be her husband.
In his madness, he commissioned an artist to paint her portrait, and in the dead of night, he hungrily devoured the portrait.
Yu Ziyu was still hesitating, unsure whether to find a new man or settle for Li Jiyan. The next day, she shouldered her long sword and scimitar, preparing to head up the mountain to hunt demons.
She ran into Granny Sun in the side courtyard and suddenly remembered the “husband-taming techniques” that Granny Sun had mentioned a few days ago.
Thinking to herself, since Li Jiyan’s personality is so unsatisfactory, but he has an excellent appearance, broad shoulders, a narrow waist, and a towering, imposing figure, if he can be tamed, it might be acceptable.
”Granny Sun, come here!” Yu Ziyu called out.
Granny Sun was sweeping fallen leaves. She put down her broom and came over, saying, “Third Miss, what is it?”
”Granny, I overheard you chatting with Granny Tao and the others before, and it seemed like you were talking about some kind of husband-taming technique. What exactly is this husband-taming technique?”
Granny Sun covered her face and laughed: “Oh my, my third young lady has grown up and has learned to ask such mundane questions. What’s going on? Is the marriage between the third young lady and General Li about to be finalized?”
”Don’t worry about me, I’m very busy. Just tell me first, what is the art of controlling one’s husband?”
Granny Sun smiled kindly: “This varies from person to person. It’s a wife’s way of controlling her husband, restraining him, disciplining him, and making him listen to her. That’s what it means.”
”So how exactly should we discipline them?” Yu Ziyu pressed for details.
”I can’t really explain it, but it’s basically about establishing three principles for a husband: the principles of sex, mind, and body, so that he listens to you, and that’s all.”
Yu Ziyu was confused, but after thinking about it for a while, she said, “The principles of sexuality, mind, and body… I understand! Thank you, Granny. I’ll study them carefully when I get back!”
”You really… understand?” Granny Sun sighed.
Yu Ziyu had already run far away: “How could I not understand something when I’m so smart! I can even figure out those obscure cultivation techniques, so how could a mere technique for controlling a husband be difficult for me?”