Chapter 63
Now was not the time to care about these messy things. Li Yu quickly straightened out his crooked thoughts and focused on the next step of the Revitalization Main Plot.
Next Step: Stick to Tyrant Like Glue.
Hint: None.
Just as Li Yu was about to stop playing tricks and focus on solving the Main Plot, he saw the new mission refresh and was speechless.
System, come out! I promise I won’t kill you!
Li Yu could fool the System into drinking wine, but how could he fool the System into sticking to Tyrant Like Glue? The two of them hadn’t even started dating!
Besides, the Main Plot should be divided into several steps. If they stuck to Tyrant Like Glue, what would he do in the future?
Li Yu’s eyes twitched violently. He felt that this development was not a good sign. This “sticking Tyrant Like Glue”… he should wait.
Li Yu hurriedly exited the Main Plot as if his tail was on fire.
When he was in the System, his fish body would temporarily lose consciousness. When Li Yu came back to his senses, he saw a magnified handsome face.
King Jing, who said he had something urgent to attend to, had come back. He was holding a jade box and was about to feed the fish.
Li Yu was speechless.
He didn’t feel it when they squeezed into the carriage and kissed each other, but when he suddenly saw the person he liked, the fish was a little shy!
When he was shy, his brain and fins crashed together, and his fish body sank with a whoosh.
King Jing quickly reached out to catch the fish.
Li Yu stared at him blankly, her heart was like the spring water being blown by the wind, rippling with waves of joy. No wonder he used to find this person pleasing to the eye. It turned out that he liked him too!
… This feeling was love.
Li Yu suddenly jumped up as if he was startled. He swam around randomly and then went into the artificial cave, only showing the tip of his tail. This speed was faster than when he escaped in anger.
Fortunately, the fish was covered with scales. Otherwise, it might have been obvious that the fish was completely red.
The fish was hiding in the fake mountain cave again. King Jing was a little worried. He was afraid that the fish was stuck again or that it was throwing a tantrum with him again.
He tried to fiddle with the fish tail. The fish tail trembled violently and retracted completely.
King Jing: “…”
The rule that King Jing had figured out over the past few days was that the fish had to be coaxed slowly and could not be rushed.
Recalling the kiss in the carriage, King Jing chuckled.
Although Xiaoyu did not manage to finish his sentence in the end, King Jing was in a good mood.
Li Yu hid in the cave and eavesdropped on the movements outside from time to time. He also continued to think about his own plans. Before he realized this feeling, he might have been conflicted and wavering. But once he realized that every young man who had just awakened to love was a brave warrior. No matter how many difficulties and obstacles there were in the future, they were nothing to him at this moment.
The moment he realized that he liked her, he realized how deep this love was. Just the daily reunions and seeing this person again made him feel overjoyed.
He liked her so much that he wanted to fall in love with her. Even if this path wasn’t easy, if he didn’t give it a try, how could he talk about the future?
However, a fish was not enough to fall in love. He could only be human for two hours a day. He probably wouldn’t even be shy enough to fall in love with her.
Therefore, he had to become human as soon as possible. Before that, he shouldn’t get too close to King Jing. Even if he liked her, he had to keep a certain distance. He definitely couldn’t let King Jing discover his secret.
… Yes, he could make a pact with King Jing! According to his observation of King Jing over the past few days, King Jing would most likely not reject his request!
Holding hands, dating, kissing … Anyway, they had kissed a few times already. It should be okay.
Then ….. Should he not describe it?
Li Yu, who had peeked at the little yellow mosquito, felt an itch in his heart. He was also a very normal boy, so he definitely had some expectations. In fact, he didn’t reject King Jing’s closeness to him anymore. In the past, it was all a misunderstanding, and he didn’t understand his own feelings in time. Now, not only did he not reject this kind of thing, he even secretly rubbed it. They were all adults, so it was reasonable that this kind of thing would naturally happen when the conditions were right.
Li Yu blushed. He couldn’t help but imagine himself suddenly turning back into a fish during a certain intense exercise at a certain critical moment …
That scene would be so beautiful that he couldn’t bear to look at it directly. He and King Jing might even have their blood splattered all over.
In order to avoid such an accident, Li Yu temporarily crossed out “indescribable”. With a face full of regret, he thought that men should still control their lower bodies. As long as he finished the main storyline, he wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore!
Li Yu was excited and agitated. He tossed and turned on a small rock in the cave until his fish body almost rubbed the rock bald. Only then did he fall asleep.
When he woke up, King Jing was no longer there. It turned out that King Jing had received a summons from the Emperor early in the morning. The Emperor ordered King Jing to enter the palace to discuss something important.
When King Jing returned last night, the fish was still shy and didn’t come out of the cave. When King Jing received the Emperor’s verbal order in the morning, the fish was sleeping soundly and didn’t realize it. King Jing stroked the fish’s tail that was outside the cave and considerately entered the palace himself, afraid that he would wake the fish up.
Li Yu was quite sensible and understood that it was important to meet the King. However, the plot of the original novel was messed up. Li Yu thought for a long time but still couldn’t think of any other plot. The Third Prince and the Sixth Prince were both beaten up and had to behave themselves with their tails between their legs. Perhaps the Emperor was acting up because of his fatherly love and wanted to talk about the old days with King Jing. Or perhaps the Emperor wanted to make it up to King Jing because of the investigation of the nursery rhyme and the fake monk.
Li Yu felt that this trip to the palace wasn’t a bad thing and gradually calmed down.
He calculated the time that King Jing would return and changed his appearance. He placed the fish pillow in the crystal fish tank and chose a silver robe that he liked very much to wear before tidying up his clothes.
The jade hairpin that King Jing gave him was still there. The hairpin needed to be combed into a bun. Li Yu didn’t know how to do it, and Eunuch Wang had followed King Jing into the palace. He was too embarrassed to ask for help and could only improvise. He found a silver hair band and tied it into a small ponytail. Then he inserted the jade hairpin and exposed the round fish at the end of the hairpin.
Li Yu nodded at the bronze mirror and felt that he was quite beautiful.
King Jing still hadn’t returned. Li Yu sat in front of the table and spread out a pen and paper. He wrote down everything that he had thought of during the night and waited for King Jing to return.
Palace of Heavenly Purity.
Li Yu’s guess was right. The Emperor’s imperial bodyguards had recently found out that the nursery rhyme that framed King Jing was first spread by the Third Prince’s people. They had also found many witnesses and brought them to the Emperor for him to personally interrogate. After many days, the Emperor was once again infuriated by the Third Prince. The head of the Imperial Astronomer, Sun Simiao, had come to report that the Imperial Astronomer had found out that an official had accepted bribes and that the person who had bribed the official was the Third Prince, Mu Tianming!
Only then did the Emperor realize why the Third Prince had suddenly questioned the Imperial
Astronomer that day. Was he trying to create an opportunity for the person who had accepted his bribe?
The Third Prince had intended to use the nursery rhyme and the fake monk to frame King Jing. He had even extended his hand to the Imperial Astronomer. He had simply violated all of the Emperor’s taboos. The Emperor had originally wanted to find an appropriate time to punish the Third Prince, but at this time, the Third Prince had bumped into him and done something stupid.
It turned out that the Third Prince’s injuries from the beatings had improved a lot. He had begun to report to the Imperial Study every day under the supervision of the eunuchs and study with the young princes. The Third Prince was very unhappy. The Emperor had said it nicely and wanted him to study hard. However, he was no longer a child. In the imperial family, the adult princes were supposed to share the Emperor’s burdens and work for him, but he could only study. If the Emperor didn’t say anything, how long would he have to study? Wasn’t this a disguised way to prevent him from entering the imperial court?
When the Second Prince had made a mistake, he had been grounded. He had been grounded until he couldn’t think clearly. However, the Emperor didn’t even let him out. After that, he didn’t even mention the Second Prince.
Only then did the Third Prince know fear and regret. He went to the Sixth Prince for help. The Sixth Prince, who had also been beaten and was recuperating, asked him to go into seclusion. However, the Third Prince didn’t want to waste any more time. His birth mother, Consort Zhang, was in constant contact with the wives of the officials who supported him. Mu Tianming used this relationship to ask the officials to plead for him in the imperial court so that he could be allowed to work again. He didn’t expect to be able to work in a dignified manner. He only wanted to show his face in front of the Emperor and not let the Emperor forget about him.
After the officials finished their discussion, they drafted a memorial. It said that the Third Prince knew his mistake and was sincerely repentant. He was willing to share the Emperor’s burdens.
They also specially invited a Hanlin scholar from the Hanlin Academy to write about the Third Prince’s recent situation extremely pitiful and the father-son relationship between him and the Emperor.
The officials didn’t know if the Emperor was moved when he received the memorial. However, the Emperor was angered by the joint memorial. He had just found out that the Third Prince had bribed the officials from the Imperial Astronomer. At this moment, many people in the imperial court were pleading for the Third Prince. The Emperor was especially wary of the close personal relationships between princes and officials. The Third Prince wasn’t even close to the position of Crown Prince and was already vainly trying to put pressure on the Emperor?
He only ordered the Third Prince to study for a few more days to grind down the Third Prince’s impetuous temperament. Could it be that the Third Prince couldn’t even understand this? How could he talk about repentance?
The Emperor wrote down the names of the officials who had joined together. The Third Prince waited and waited but didn’t receive an order from the Emperor. Not only did the Emperor order him to study with the seventh and eighth princes, he also ordered him to copy the filial piety scriptures every day and hand them over to the Grand Secretary for inspection.
The Third Prince lost all face. The officials that the Emperor paid attention to were later either transferred or demoted by the Emperor. It took a long time for the Third Prince to realize that he had made a mistake again. When he turned back to the Sixth Prince, the military advisor, the Sixth Prince was at his wit’s end.
Everything is easy to lose but hard to gain. I told you to go into hibernation, but you didn’t listen.
Who told you to continue to seek death?
The Emperor was angered by the Third Prince. He thought about how none of his capable sons put their thoughts on the right path. His two younger sons were too young and couldn’t see anything for the time being. Although the Imperial Bodyguards had already confirmed that the Sixth Prince was working for the Third Prince and that the Emperor hated the Third Prince, the Sixth Prince should be able to change his mind as long as he gave some warning. However, the Emperor didn’t know why, but he couldn’t swallow his anger if he was asked to train the Sixth Prince instead.
The Emperor couldn’t help but think of his other son, King Jing. He thought of King Jing’s calligraphy and the few games of chess he had played with him. He knew that King Jing was very capable, but because he was born mute and in order to protect King Jing, he had never let King Jing be put in an important position.
However, no one knew of his painstaking efforts. The Second Prince and the Third Prince were still short-sighted. They made a move against King Jing and the people around King Jing. They probably also thought that King Jing, who wasn’t valued by him, could be bullied.
These people didn’t care about his face, and he also didn’t want to care about their feelings. If King Jing wanted to establish himself in front of the new Emperor in the future, he didn’t have to rely on the new Emperor’s pity. He could also help King Jing establish himself.
In any case, the Emperor wasn’t in a hurry to choose a Crown Prince. After the Third Prince’s dirty deeds, it was time for him to appease King Jing.
The Emperor summoned King Jing to the palace and sighed before King Jing. In the end, he ordered King Jing to work in the Ministry of Works.
King Jing’s mind was about to fly back to his residence when he was suddenly hit by a meat pie. “……”
The Emperor said with conviction, “A lot of things have happened in the court recently, and they all make me worry. Tianchi, why don’t you come and help me? I remember that Tianzhao, Tianming, and the others began to listen to politics when they were twelve years old. You’re too late now.”
Wasn’t it just hard work? King Jing nodded with a wooden face.
The Emperor felt that King Jing didn’t seem very happy. Could it be that there were princes who weren’t willing to work for him?
However, King Jing’s temperament was like this. He was indifferent to both favor and humiliation.
If King Jing was like the Second Prince and the Third Prince, the Emperor thought about it and estimated that it would be no different from a disaster.
The Emperor thought to himself that he was lucky to have a capable son, but –
But no matter how capable this son was, it wasn’t a blessing for him.
He remembered that not long after King Jing was born, he was diagnosed by the imperial physician as mute. He wouldn’t be able to speak for the rest of his life. The imperial physician had said some heartfelt words to him.
Being born mute would often be passed down to future generations.
Therefore, no matter how capable King Jing was, he couldn’t shoulder the burden of the country for him. He also couldn’t choose King Jing and become a sinner of the royal family.
After he succeeded the throne, he had always valued the legitimate sons and looked forward to the birth of a legitimate son. However, the three legitimate princes that Empress Xiaohui had given birth to were all plagued with misfortune. Perhaps he wouldn’t have such a fate … The Emperor was disappointed.
King Jing accepted the task, bid farewell to the Emperor, and returned to his residence.
This task should be the Emperor’s compensation for him. King Jing knew very well in his heart, but he didn’t feel any extra joy.
However, when he opened the door and saw Xiaoyu with a strange bump on his head, King Jing couldn’t help but smile.
“Your Highness, look!”
Li Yu proudly pointed at the hairpin on Xiaoyu’s head.
King Jing had already seen it. A hairpin was usually a sign of love. Xiaoyu put on his hairpin, didn’t that mean … that she was willing to pledge her love to him?
King Jing stood there, unable to calm down for a long time.
“Your Highness, there’s more!”
Li Yu sat on the bed and waved at him.
King Jing recalled the gentleness of the person who was about to drown in the carriage yesterday, and his ears turned slightly red.
Xiaoyu sat on the bed and called him. It was still broad daylight. Was he going to start sucking in gold now?
…. As long as Xiaoyu wanted, there was nothing he couldn’t do.
King Jing sat down.
