Chapter 440: Affection Outside the Door, Indifference Within

“Tell him to get lost.”

Count Zheng said the words lightly, as though this were his own home, as though the woman sitting on his lap truly belonged to him.

Only three words.

Yet the moment they left his mouth, Zhao Cheng felt his ears buzzing, while the Princess’s breathing suddenly quickened.

Count Zheng was not deliberately trying to act domineering. It was simply the kind of genuine ease that came when matters had already reached this point.

Under ordinary circumstances, if you were sitting there with another man’s fiancée in your arms and the rightful fiancé suddenly showed up at the door, even the boldest adulterer would probably panic.

Count Zheng did not.

Because he knew panic was useless.

Another man might only be beaten half to death.

He, on the other hand, would absolutely die in an extremely miserable fashion.

The thing had already happened. He had already come inside.

So next he would simply deal with whatever came next.

Zhao Cheng immediately went out of the sleeping hall, treading carefully as he prepared to stop Qu Peiluo.

Inside the chamber, the Princess raised her head and turned slightly, looking at the Yan man currently holding her.

Unexpectedly, she did not feel disgusted.

She did not scream.

Did not berate him.

But the look in her eyes was not infatuation either.

It was appraisal.

Since ancient times, marriage had produced no shortage of tales about love enduring until seas dried and stones crumbled, about swearing never to part even if mountains lost their peaks and Heaven merged with Earth, about Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai becoming butterflies and flying together.

One moving story after another.

Legends people yearned for.

But the stories people remembered were precisely the things that rarely happened in reality.

If they were common occurrences in ordinary life, who would need stories about them?

And who would have nothing better to do than read them?

Romance existed.

But for most people, once marriage was truly being discussed, both sides still had to sit down and judge one another.

Look at family background.

Calculate the bride-price.

Compare dowries.

The more people loved wrapping something in hazy, dreamlike colors, the more often it was because they wanted to conceal its true nature.

Marriage.

Choosing a spouse.

Most of the time it was a transaction.

At least that was how Xiong Liqing saw it.

Originally, she had never thought this way, because the person she had always loved was her own elder brother.

Even after that brother decided to marry her into the Qu Clan, though sorrow greater than a dead heart had nearly swallowed her whole, she still had not considered any other road.

Because there had been no second road.

Count Zheng’s appearance had given her one.

Only with comparison could one truly see which choice was superior and which inferior.

The Qu Clan was one of Great Chu’s ancient great aristocratic houses.

More precisely, before the Qu ancestors ever followed the Marquis of Chu in opening new territory, they had already been nobles during the Great Xia era.

But ancient inheritance also meant ancient rules.

Heavy ritual.

Rigid bearing.

From the people in the household down to every blade of grass and every tree, the entire family seemed to exude a faint smell of mold.

Besides, Xiong Liqing herself had been born into the Great Chu imperial clan.

She did not place much weight on family pedigree.

She already had more than enough of it.

Then there was Zheng Fan.

It was said that in his early years, he had opened a tavern in Beifeng Commandery and could only barely be considered from a comfortably-off household.

Yet over these past years, he had campaigned north and south, accumulated dazzling military achievements, received a Chief Commander’s seal, and been enfeoffed as a Count.

Family background?

He probably truly had none.

His ancestors had likely been commoners so low they did not even qualify as a poor gentry household.

Was that a flaw?

Actually perhaps not.

Because in Xiong Liqing’s eyes, precisely because Zheng Fan lacked illustrious ancestry, he had even greater need for a “principal wife” of exalted birth to raise the standing of his household.

From then onward, his descendants could inherit a noble title in Yan while also publicly claiming descent from the Marquis of Chu—that was, possessing Fire Phoenix blood.

It was no different from how, in recent years, as the imperial line of Jin weakened, wealthy magnates everywhere had developed a fondness for marrying women surnamed Yu.

It raised the threshold of their own households.

That was how transactions worked.

You did not merely judge whether something was good or bad.

You judged whether it matched your own needs.

That was family background.

Marriage, however, also involved the person.

And the person could be judged in three parts.

Character.

Appearance.

Ability.

First, character.

The Princess had once seen Qu Peiluo through a gauze curtain and had heard many people speak of him.

One could say he carried the standard elegance of a great Chu aristocrat.

Every movement had the flavor of Chu refinement.

Even in armor, it was difficult to hide his handsome beauty.

Chu people were unlike Qian people.

Qian admired the modest gentleman, cultivated and scholarly.

Chu admired romance, freedom, and graceful bearing amid mountains, rivers, and streams.

As for Zheng Fan that lecher!

That bastard!

That demon!

That black-hearted, dog-hearted son of a bitch!

Those were the Princess’s impressions after the few days she had spent with Count Zheng after being captured.

On the first day, he had Siniang slap her.

On the second day, he directly brought up what she had done in the corner the night before...

And now, the moment he saw her again, he had pulled her into his arms, and his hands refused to behave.

Yet despite all the cursing the Princess did not feel particularly disgusted.

At the end of the day, bad men often appealed to women.

More importantly, whether intentionally, unintentionally, or merely to relieve his own tension, Count Zheng had already taken quite a few liberties and delivered quite a few slaps.

Without realizing it, he had forced the Princess to “invest” quite a lot into this ridiculous relationship.

Compared with Qu Peiluo, whom she had never even properly met face-to-face, Count Zheng had already unlocked far too many forbidden stages ahead of schedule.

Once you had invested you naturally became reluctant to let go.

Then there was appearance.

The Princess felt Zheng Fan was not ugly.

One could even say he looked fairly good.

But compared with Qu Peiluo, purely in terms of face and skin, he fell far behind.

Qu Peiluo could be placed anywhere and still count as a genuine handsome man.

Yet from another angle, the hard lines of Zheng Fan’s face, the killing aura that leaked through his movements without warning, even the depth in his eyes that could make a person shudder when he was joking all of that was something Qu Peiluo did not possess.

A woman was like a flower, glorious when in bloom.

A man was like wine—the longer it aged, the richer its fragrance.

No matter how beautiful a face was, stare at it long enough and one eventually became tired.

The latter kind only grew more intoxicating the longer one tasted it.

Yes.

In the eyes of this Great Chu princess, her official fiancé, Qu Peiluo, had already been categorized as the sort of man who entertained others with his looks.

This was not because the Princess possessed some warped aesthetic.

Nor was it because Zheng Fan carried some mysterious remnant from another world.

In truth, when Count Zheng had first awakened inside that tavern room in Tiger Head City, he had radiated the thick aura of an ordinary shut-in loser inherited from his previous life.

He had simply seen too many great scenes since then.

Too much blood and slaughter.

People matured beneath that kind of grinding.

They were tempered.

Many times, Zheng Fan himself did not realize that in quite a few places, he had gradually begun to carry Tian Wujing’s shadow.

When people spoke of the Marquis of Jingnan, they discussed his military command.

His personal martial strength.

The monstrous crime of exterminating his own clan.

Who would bother discussing whether Tian Wujing himself was handsome?

Put another way when “good-looking” still had to be listed as one of a man’s major virtues, just how useless did that man have to be?

Then came the third factor.

Ability.

There was hardly any need to discuss it.

Even Xiong Liqing, a Princess of Chu, felt that forcibly placing Qu Peiluo beside Count Zheng in a comparison of ability was already unfair to Count Zheng.

Busybody commentators had once ranked the Four Rising Generals of the age.

The young barbarian prince.

Zhong Tianlang of Qian.

Nian Yao of Chu.

And finally—

Count Pingye of Yan.

But if one searched one’s conscience, the so-called achievements of the other three were mostly internal.

Their accomplishments against foreign enemies were limited.

Zhong Tianlang had launched several proactive attacks against Yan and gained some results, but that was also because Yan currently had no intention of launching a massive southern invasion of Qian.

Count Pingye, on the other hand, had earned his merits almost entirely in foreign campaigns—and repeatedly in wars on the scale of destroying states.

As for Qu Peiluo, the people of Chu loved saying that he possessed something of his father’s style.

When a man genuinely lacked any achievements worth boasting about people could only say he resembled his father.

And beyond that his father, Qu Tiannan, Pillar of State of Great Chu, along with the Qu Clan’s most elite forty thousand Azure Luan soldiers had died because of Zheng Fan.

Chu people often blamed Qu Tiannan’s death on the Marquis of Jingnan.

But nobody could deny that beneath Yupan City, the order to massacre the surrendered troops had been issued by Count Pingye.

As for literary accomplishment, the Princess knew Zheng Fan had written a military treatise.

Even her elder brother had specifically sought it out and read it.

At the same time, Zheng Fan’s casual literary talent was absurd.

Whenever he let a few lines slip, they became exquisite poetry.

Yet he himself seemed unwilling to write.

As though he found the entire thing uninteresting.

Qu Peiluo, by contrast, loved sending her pieces of Chu-style verse he had composed.

The comparison was humiliating.

After weighing one thing after another, even the Princess of Great Chu herself found the result strange.

Except for the divide between their states the man currently holding her had completely surpassed her official future husband.

And as for the divide between states—

Xiong Liqing felt she no longer needed to care.

She had once loved her elder brother.

And now, that elder brother represented Great Chu.

If he could cast her away without hesitation as a bargaining chip for the court and use her to form a marriage alliance with the Qu Clan then she, Xiong Liqing, could also behave selfishly and choose the husband she believed best.

The state.

Great Chu.

All those grand, abstract things she did not want to care.

She was only a woman.

A woman who already carried hatred inside her heart.

And somewhere in the unseen, a kind of intuition kept reminding her that if she let the man before her slip away, she would one day regret it.

Perhaps that was a woman’s sixth sense.

Count Zheng reached out and lightly tapped the tip of the Princess’s nose.

“Why do I feel like I’m a slab of pork on a butcher’s chopping block, and you’ve been standing here picking through the fatty and lean pieces?”

A smile appeared at the corner of Xiong Liqing’s lips.

“Have I?”

“Yes. The way you’re looking at me is exactly like someone picking fat from lean.”

At that moment, Qu Peiluo’s voice drifted in from outside the sleeping hall.

He was chanting a new piece of verse.

Completely unaware that his fiancée was currently sitting on another man’s lap.

And that the man was also the enemy responsible for his father’s death.

Truthfully, some wicked ideas did appear inside Zheng Fan’s mind.

For example, he could hold the Princess in his arms on this side of the sleeping hall door and have her chat with Qu Peiluo through it.

As someone who had drawn horror comics in his previous life, Zheng Fan understood better than most what it meant for humanity to become twisted and morality to collapse.

But Count Zheng ultimately did not do it.

The reason was simple.

He was scared.

Back when the Princess had been inside the Fan Residence, he held the knife and she was the fish.

He could torment her however he wanted and treat her like some little maid.

But now, Count Zheng genuinely did not dare play with fire.

This level of physical contact was still manageable.

He could control the temperature.

But if he truly made her feel he was trampling her dignity and defiling her person, did he really think she would not turn against him in the next instant?

He was under someone else’s roof.

Better to keep a low profile.

Zheng Fan could not hear every exact word Qu Peiluo was chanting.

The man was using refined Chu speech—the equivalent of each state’s “standard language.”

But Zheng Fan understood the general meaning.

The poem praised the snowy winter landscape and compared the Princess to pure white snow that intoxicated him and filled him with yearning.

Zheng Fan lowered his head and looked at the woman in his arms.

“You like this sort of thing?”

Xiong Liqing blinked.

“His writing is not as good as yours, but he wrote it with sincerity. Yours are always tossed out carelessly.”

“Which do you prefer?”

“The better-written one.”

“Good girl.”

Count Zheng was very satisfied with that answer.

“Are you frightened right now?” Xiong Liqing asked.

“Terrified.”

“You’re terrified to death, yet you still dared sneak in here to see me?”

*I fucking came here by accident!*

*I never planned to come at all!*

Zheng Fan sighed.

Then said:

“It was worth it.”

Of course.

The deed was already done.

He was already here.

He had already held the girl.

If he still started agonizing over why he had come in the first place, would that not mean a donkey had kicked him in the head?

“Do you believe that if I shout right now, people will immediately rush inside and kill you?”

“I do.”

“Boring.”

“You wanted me to say I didn’t believe you, so you could keep arguing with me?”

“I simply feel that... we have not reached that point.

“I never even imagined you would suddenly appear inside this imperial villa.”

They had only spent a few days together.

Nothing beyond the boundaries of ordinary intimacy had actually happened.

How could genuine feelings form so quickly?

Xiong Liqing was not stupid.

She was not the sort of woman who would be overwhelmed by one sudden blast of masculine presence and immediately lose all sense.

“I was worried about you, so I came to look.

“To look at my... prey.”

“I don’t like that word.”

“I do.”

Zheng Fan smiled.

Then continued:

“To tell you the truth, I don’t feel much for you.”

“Do you think saying that to me right now is appropriate?”

Especially while your hand was still squeezing her.

“We’re both adults. We can speak openly.

“I genuinely don’t feel anything special for you.

“But neither do you disgust me.

“You’re intelligent.

“I think if you remained beside me, I wouldn’t find you irritating.

“If, on the day of the wedding, you decide to leave with me, then I will owe you a favor.

“And unless you deliberately seek death yourself, I’ll make sure your future life retains the greatest dignity I can give you.

“That is all I can promise.

“Anything else would just be flowers falling from the sky.

“You wouldn’t believe it.

“And I can’t be bothered boasting.”

Outside, Qu Peiluo finally finished his recitation and took his leave.

He believed the Princess had surely been standing behind the sleeping hall door listening to the entire poem.

He was also quite pleased with his own performance today.

So when he walked back there was a smile on his face.

Eunuch Zhao released a long breath.

His instinct was to return to the sleeping hall.

But after hesitating he remained where he was.

He desperately wanted to ask who that man truly was.

Yet he did not dare.

Winter wind blew through his robes.

His crotch felt icy.

The sensation was truly miserable.

But Zhao Cheng did not dare enter the sleeping hall and ruin the atmosphere between the two people inside.

Nor did he dare simply leave.

He had to stand watch!

What sins.

What damned sins.

He did not know whether those laments in his heart were directed at his own current predicament or at the performance of the Qu Clan’s legitimate eldest son who had just left.

He himself had cut away that part of his body.

He could no longer be called a man.

But compared with the man who had just stood in the inner courtyard, separated from his fiancée by one sleeping hall door, chanting poetry with his heart full of feeling—

Eunuch Zhao felt he would rather not be a man at all.

He turned.

Looked toward the sleeping hall doors.

And suddenly thought of something.

Something he had not had the mental space to consider before, first because of his own panic and then because he had been busy carefully pretending in front of Qu Peiluo.

That question was the man had appeared in Xiayong City.

And now he had appeared here too.

Then this wedding could it truly continue?

If it did continue and the Princess eventually married into the Qu Clan would he, Zhao Cheng, have to keep standing guard like this in the future?

Keep living in terror?

And if the wedding could not continue...

Eunuch Zhao’s legs suddenly trembled in fear.

Then where the hell would *he* go?

For a moment—

Eunuch Zhao’s breathing quickened.

He licked his lips.

...

“What about Feng Siniang?”

“My relationship with her is different.

“She is willing to die for me.

“Are you?”

Because if I died, she might very well drop dead too.

The Princess fell silent.

“Or perhaps the two of you can compete.”

The Princess became even quieter.

Because they were both women, she understood the difference in their levels all the more clearly.

That woman was nearly capable of everything.

The Princess knew she could not compare.

“My...

“My future child.

“Would he be the legitimate son?”

Child?

Who said I was having a child with you?

I haven’t even finished unlocking Siniang’s dungeon yet!

It was all Little Tian Tian’s fault for displaying such remarkable talent.

That had made Siniang decide that if the two of them raised their strength another large step before having children, then their child might inherit an even better constitution.

The result was that Count Zheng could use almost every other position he wanted but if he wanted a child, forget it for now.

Still, Zheng Fan hesitated.

Sometimes a kind lie was necessary.

All for the sake of living.

The girl was already talking about children.

No matter how emotionally tone-deaf you were, you could not crush her directly at this moment.

If you crushed her too thoroughly you might truly die here.

Besides, his earlier “heartless” and “cold” words had served two purposes.

First, to sound genuine.

Second, to prepare the ground for what came next.

He had not come all this way just to put on a cold face and act cool.

His life was precious!

“Yes.

“A legitimate son.”

Count Zheng gave a firm answer.

“He would inherit your title, correct?”

Hearing that Zheng Fan laughed softly.

“What are you laughing at?”

Zheng Fan lowered his head.

He brought his lips close to the Princess’s ear.

First he breathed a little warm air.

The Princess immediately shrank.

“It tickles...”

But what Zheng Fan whispered next made this Princess of Great Chu instantly forget that sensation.

Even the divide between their states—something she believed she no longer cared about, but could never truly ignore completely—blurred in that instant.

Count Zheng whispered:

“What is a noble title worth?

“A throne— want one?”

————

[End of Chapter 440]