[Alternate t.i.tle: Xirong Onslaught

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The broken-neck Emperor was resting within the palace, precious herbs constantly flowing in and used with wild abandon as if they weren't worth anything at all. Were one to look at him now, they would hazard a guess that he wouldn't be waking up again.

The Crown Prince is somewhat depressed upon seeing his father's miserable appearance. The t.i.tle of Emperor is clearly almost his own, but as of right now, he's currently still bearing the one of ‘country regent' and hasn't yet been genuinely granted the former.

He was the Emperor's eldest legitimate son and appeared to be unceasingly marvelous, but in reality, this was an exhausting undertaking. Xiao Yi had been a heavily suspicious and narrow-minded person. A son being excessively outstanding would make him worry about his motives and that he was conspiring to kill him. However, if his son was excessively disappointing, then he would think that he was like an embroidered pillow and a waste of a person, and should go back to his mother's womb to be remade.

It may seem way too harsh and cold-hearted, but the Prince inwardly, and honestly, breathed a sigh of relief. As the eldest son, he has many younger siblings, and his father is right in the prime of his life. If this hadn't happened, he likely would have gone on to produce a whole litter, and after that, the Prince would possibly have to squander an extreme amount of effort for his crown. It's true irony,that his blood father peris.h.i.+ng would be beneficial to him.

The Emperor being a.s.sa.s.sinated with his life currently hanging by a thread is a very serious subject for the citizenry. The Imperial Court was temporarily stabilized, but the nation's commoners weren't so settled. It was at this time that the matter between the Emperor, Mu Qian, and You Jinru was leaked out due to someone's carelessness, and could not be suppressed. The more people pa.s.sed it along, the more unreasonable it got, until everyone was in a panic. Who could've known that His Majesty had broken up a pair of lovers? Alluding to the words of a book that was secretly being pa.s.sed around, it presumably wouldn't be too long before there would be vivid reenactments of the tale beneath pa.s.senger bridges telling of a such-and-such Emperor's affairs.

For the Crown Prince, matters both big and small in the palace hung over his head like plumes of smoke. The Emperor was still reclining comfortably in the palace and hanging onto his life by the doctors' work. However, if he knew what sort of talk about himself was currently going around, his only regret would likely be that he didn't drop dead immediately.

As for others, life goes on as it did before. Rong Jiahui didn't know how many days or nights she spent trying to fawn on and swear to the Heavens and make pledges to her papa, all for him to just look unhappy. Forgiveness? That's impossible, as far as Rong Chen is concerned, but he can temporarily skip over this. No need to bring it up in the future.

His daughter had run off with her boyfriend such a long time ago, and no one would be able to say what had happened between them and what hadn't. He just thinks that he'd have all the fortune in the world if she wasn't pregnant out of wedlock. As parents, they had ultimately decided to relent on the subject of these two's marriage, so as to avoid complications from a long-term delay. It was originally them who spurned Zhongli Luo, but what if that resulted in him being unwilling when the time came? What would their old daughter do in that case? Will she have to be a secondary wife [1], then?

After sitting silently in the study and giving careful thought about this, Rong Chen snuck out to find Zhongli Luo.

What ended up happening was that, as soon as he went in, he was unfortunately just in time to witness his daughter, alone, on a swing in the courtyard.

Rong Jiahui noticed him coming and quickly jumped down from the swing with pleasant surprise. “Dad! Why are you here?”

He hadn't expected that his fool daughter would be here. He smiled awkwardly. “I came to see this Zhongli cad. We have something to discuss, so you can go back before that.”

Jiahui might normally be easy to deceive, but this time, she can keenly sniff out that something's a bit wrong here.

“Dad, are you keeping something from me?” she asks.

Rong Chen chokes, giving her a look. “If I'm keeping something from you then it'll be kept, and I told you to go back so you'll go! Don't talk so much!”

Jiahui jumped with fright, feeling a bit aggrieved. He was being so vicious to her! Even so, upon taking note that her vicious papa seeming to be a bit at his wit's end, she could only purse her lips and nod. “Okay.”

She left with a bitter face.

Not long after, Zhongli Luo came out after changing her clothes. However, she discovered that Jiahui, who had been waiting for her in yard, was nowhere to be seen.

In her place… was Marquis Zhenguo, Rong Chen.

She quickly bowed to him. “Marquis.”

Were this the past, Rong Chen might have been willing to deflect and help her up. As it is now, he merely gives her an indifferent glance. “Enough with this sham. If you truly had any respect for my heart, you wouldn't abduct my daughter and bring her with you to that d.a.m.ned place! Do you really believe that because you're used to me being friendly, I wouldn't come and kill you?”

Zhongli Luo didn't dare lift herself up, head hanging as she also didn't dare to respond directly. Yet, from the bottom of her heart, she didn't agree at all with the label of ‘friendly' that came out of his mouth.

He evidently hadn't lectured her enough, as he prattled on. “General Zhongli, is there anything you wouldn't dare to do? Jiahui had just turned of marriageable age when you took her away, which you shouldn't have done since you're not married! She's usually so obedient and sensible, so it must have been some pretty words you told her that swindled her into running off to such a desolate wasteland!”

Her head is hanging lower and lower. Not a word of what he was saying was right, but she didn't allow herself to say half a sentence of reb.u.t.tal. All she did was quietly listen, waiting for him to talk his fill, and then they can discuss the rest.

She finally knows where Jiahui's flaw of talking on and on about nothing comes from. The skill of the one before her is clearly on a whole new level.

An unknown amount of words later, Rong Chen finally stopped being a chatterbox. He took a cup of tea a chamberlain had brought over, and after a small sip, he sighed. “I'll allow your marriage.”

“Really?”

Two voices said that, one from inside the courtyard and one from out.

Both Rong Chen and Zhongli Luo turned to look. They saw that Jiahui hadn't actually left, her head poking through a crack in the door revealing that she had been eavesdropping.

She had originally been falling asleep due to her papa's big load of gibberish, but that sentence startled her awake like a thunderclap.

“Dad, you're not allowed to go back on that! It has to be written down, in black and white!”

She started to leave to go find a brush and paper.

“Jiahui!” Rong Chen called out with great disappointment in her. “What sort of young woman acts like you in this day and age? I came here to consult about the wedding date. As I see it, the twenty-fifth of the next month is a lucky ecliptic day. There's still time to prepare for it if we start now.”

Such an exact date has Jiahui feeling a bit bashful. “It's the third of this month today. The twenty-fifth of next month? So soon?”

Rong Chen glared at her. “Do you not want it to be soon? Are you not wanting to get married, you shameless girl?”

Shameless? How could a father talk to his daughter like that in this day and age? The embarra.s.sed and annoyed Jiahui was forced to retract her head back behind the door.

Zhongli Luo was happy at first, but after thinking it over, she had to speak up with an awkward tone. “Marquis, I'm… afraid we can't?”

“What?” The father-daughter pair said in unison.

Not waiting for Jiahui to say something, Rong Chen took a huge step forward and nabbed Zhongli Luo by the collar. “What are you saying, Zhongli Luo? I just knew… I just knew you weren't good news! You actually dare to play with my daughter's heart just to abandon her in the end? You'd best think that over carefully before saying it once through to me again, else I'll kill you right now!”

The collar-s.n.a.t.c.hed Zhongli Luo looked into Rong Chen's bloodshot eyes. “Marquis,” she started weakly, “when the Emperor was a.s.sa.s.sinated so many days before, the Crown Prince said that that was a deed of rescue and I should be rewarded for it. I was thinking of Jiahui, so I declined, and only sought a favor from him to have you relent.”

Rong Chen's hand loosened at that. “Then… was the favor you asked for to call it off?”

He could see that wasn't it, otherwise an imperial order would have been transmitted by now.

Zhongli Luo shook her head despondently. “The Crown Prince said… that once the Emperor awakens, he will personally ask him to grant it for me.”

Rong Chen holds his forehead. They have to wait for the broke-neck Emperor to wake up? Is that even possible? That's what the Crown Prince has said, but… do they really need to wait for so long? It's time to stop being optimistic as far as the Emperor's status is concerned. What'll be done if he never dies? And if he does die, what'll be done when the country has to mourn for three years? There's no good solution to this.

“Luo'er, uh…” Rong Chen faintly sighs. “Don't casually ask for favors in the future. These words don't leave this house, but there aren't many monarchs that are reasonable…”

She nods, having already personally suffered through that lesson.

After they exchanged a few more words, Rong Chen left with a cloud of worries in his head. Ah, how can anything good come of this, is all he can think about.

As her papa pa.s.sed her at the door, Jiahui barely managed to eke out a smile for him. Then she once again went inside, saw Zhongli Luo, and sighed.

She ineffably thought once more of her last life. In that, this person had lived to twenty-seven and walked the path of a loner all that time. Is it possible that she isn't able to escape that fate in this life, either? That's just too tragic.

This time, Zhongli Luo and and the large group she came with stayed in the capital for a bit too long, and the amount of people left behind in the Northwest wasn't sufficient enough. It would have been fine in the past, but now, the Xirong clearly know that the land is in great turmoil and that it would be a good time to do a large-scale raid on the South. They banded together and fought all along the way, with those in the Northwest finding it somewhat hard to push them back.

Zhongli Luo was greatly startled upon hearing this news and didn't dare delay, quickly taking the soldiers to hurry back and provide a.s.sistance.

While the faraway officers in the Northwest are valiantly killing the enemy as always, in the capital, Emperor Xiao Yi with his broken neck has been in a coma for three months now. The Imperial Court all felt that they had done their due diligence to him and there was no need to wait for him any longer, so they changed their tune and pleaded for the Crown Prince to be coronated, crying that the nation could not go one day without a ruler. After the Prince's repeated refusals didn't bear fruit, and under the circ.u.mstances of unending external and internal conflict, he hurriedly ascended the throne and became Emperor. As for Xiao Yi, he was honored as a Retired Emperor, and continued to receive life-supporting treatment at the hospital.

A t.i.tanic event like a new Emperor coming into power was actually not regarded as a big deal by the commonfolk at current. The ferocity of the Xirong is something the older generation is very clear about, and upon hearing about how they were on the brink of infiltrating them, the citizenry was up in a panic, everyone feeling themselves to be in danger. This is also true for Jiahui, and she knew at the time that there must not be a sliver of mistake made in this time of great peril. She put aside her own tendencies to be headstrong and trouble-making and didn't continue to recklessly follow Zhongli Luo around. Today is different from the past, after all; Zhongli Luo isn't merely defending the Northwest, only occasionally beating back the Xirong when they decide to cause trouble. As of right now, the place she had been staying at and strolling around before has already been overcome. Were she to follow her into the battlefield, she would only be a burden that drags Zhongli Luo down.

Respected people are to be self-aware, and as of recent, Jiahui has clearly started to become so.

The author says: I hung up two (word unknown, 預收坑) for fans to take a look at. I'm tentatively looking at the mood on Brother 912's birthday to start on them. They're currently in the works of being drafted, though progress is slow.

The translator says: One of the few times I'm completely stumped on a translation… and it's an author note… If you know what the h.e.l.l a “pre-received hole(?)” means, let me know.

[1] This could have multiple meanings; either marrying a widower, thus literally being a second wife, or being a concubine. Both Chinese and English sources are unclear as to an exact term.