Chapter 112

Chapter 112

Although Chenxing Street wasn't the most bustling market in the capital, it had the virtue of fair prices.

Just past noon, the street was already packed with people.

The late-summer heat had people's shirts soaked with sweat, yet the common folk remained patient, with vendors hawking and buyers haggling all over the place.

Old Man Shen and Shen Ao were both honest folk. Despite the sudden windfall of three thousand taels at home, they still picked a shop on this street—lower margins, but tons of foot traffic.

They'd been haggling from morning until afternoon, and to make matters worse, the shop they'd set their sights on turned out to have the Shen clan holding a twenty percent stake.

When all four bosses showed up and saw it was Shen Zaiyou and his boy trying to buy the place, the clan chief's son immediately tipped off several of the clan's elders, including the clan's top official, sixth-rank Shen Zaishan.

Shen Zaiyou was about to drop three hundred taels of silver, cash in full, on a prime shop in the busiest part of town.

This news hit like the sky was falling.

Ever since his wife got deathly sick ten years ago, Shen Zaiyou's family had been dead last in the whole clan.

He'd borrowed from everyone to keep her alive with medicine, but in the end, she still died, and the debts were more than he could ever pay back in one lifetime.

Shen Zaishan, as Shen Zaiyou's younger brother, had gotten him and his son jobs in the palace, which made him a big name in the clan—basically half a clan leader.

But three months ago, Shen Zaiyou and Shen Ao had screwed up big time and lost their jobs.

After hearing Shen Zaishan gripe about them so much, the clan already saw Shen Zaiyou's family as nothing but leeches.

So when word got out today that the family was dropping cash on a prime shop, curious clan members flooded the street so bad they nearly blocked it off.

They'd been arguing all morning—Third Uncle going at it with Shen Lian and Shen Ao's old man.

Third Uncle swore Old Man Shen couldn't have that kind of money saved up, so it had to be skimmed off the clan's renovation and supply funds.

Shen Ao laughed out of pure anger. Those gigs had paid a grand total of a little over twenty taels—where the hell were they supposed to skim two hundred from?

But Third Uncle dug in, insisting that all three men's salaries combined over ten years would only just cover their debts. If that two hundred taels wasn't stolen from the clan's coffers, then it had to be from swiping fancy palace dishes.

Three months ago, Third Uncle had expected the father and son to come crawling on their knees, but instead Shen Zaiyou and Shen Ao had turned in their resignations with their chins up—losing their jobs with that much attitude.

So they must have already lined their pockets.

Old Man Shen didn't want to waste breath on Shen Zaishan—he just told him to take his suspicions to the authorities instead of yapping here.

But Shen Ao, young and hot-headed, went straight to bragging about his little brother, saying the White Immortal Powder Shen Lian made was a miracle blood-clotting medicine, with the army scrambling to order it—supply couldn't keep up. Two hundred taels was pocket change to Shen Lian these days.

Third Uncle shot back that no matter how good the Wound Healing Powder was, it couldn't rake in that kind of money, and kept insisting their silver was dirty money, definitely embezzled from clan funds. He demanded the bookkeeper do an audit on the spot and wouldn't let the father and son leave.

At that, Old Man Shen couldn't sit still anymore. Red in the face, he swore he hadn't touched a single copper of the clan's money.

To put the fear in them, Old Man Shen—who almost never did this—slammed his hand on the table and, putting on his most dignified face, bluffed: "The silver was a gift to my boy Lian'er from the Crown Prince himself! My son built a working model of a water mill and presented it to the Crown Prince. If it ever gets built, it could feed every last person in the land! My son will be made a marquis and a prime minister one day—what's a lousy two hundred taels to him?"

The whole crowd went dead silent.

The clan rarely heard Shen Zaiyou talk that tough, so for a second, nobody could tell if he was bluffing. After all, sure, his youngest was a bit of an odd, bookish nerd, but everyone knew he'd scored first on the Imperial Academy exam. So it wouldn't be shocking if he'd actually pulled something off.

It wasn't until Third Uncle threw his head back and laughed that the tense, awed mood broke, turning into suspicion that Old Man Shen was full of it.

"Feed the people?" Third Uncle sneered with contempt, pointing at Shen Ao and laughing. "Your two boys can barely feed themselves without borrowing from clan kin, and you're gonna feed the people of the Great Wei? Your youngest is just an 8th-rank imperial doctor at the Imperial Academy—how's he gonna get anywhere near the Crown Prince to offer advice? Even back when the Crown Prince was Prince Qi, he never liked being out in the open. I'm sixth-rank and I've never even had the honor of getting near him. How's your 8th-rank little doctor gonna reach that high?"

-

At that exact moment, the 8th-rank Upright Imperial Physician was clinging to the Crown Prince's back, murmuring hoarsely, "Dian Xia... you don't like my little crappy imperial garden anymore?"

"I never liked it."

"You're lying. You always looked so excited whenever you came into my yard before, like you'd just done something bad."

Xie Yuan suddenly grabbed the wrist of the hand around his waist, yanked it forward, and glared down at him. "Shen Lian, don't talk to me about the past. If I took any of it seriously, I wouldn't still be standing here in front of you."

Shen Lian sucked in a breath, staring up at the young male concubine in shock, like he was stubbornly refusing to wake up from a sweet dream.

But reality had already slammed him hard enough to bring him to the edge of waking up.

He stepped back a little, pushed the stray hair off his forehead with his other hand, neck and shoulders all stiff, fingers shaking slightly.

"I'm sorry, Dian Xia. I know, I know I did something terrible."

Shen Lian's gaze drifted over the dark gold patterns on his chest. "Truly terrible. I've been afraid to recall it in detail. I'm not actually as chill about this as I look, like I just assume you won't hurt me. That's not it. I just don't know what to do.

Back when I was still in school, my only family got deathly sick, and I just went about my days looking normal like this, because I didn't know what to do.

If you dragged me back to the capital and had me beheaded, I'd live quietly like this right up until the day they killed me.

I just want to tell you—I'm not saying I don't care that you're hurt. I just can't solve certain things. My life is always full of a bunch of damn messes, and I'm a useless piece of garbage who ruins everything.

All these days I've been acting cute and flirting with you—not to make up for what I did, but just to make you happy again. But if even my little crappy imperial garden makes you this uncomfortable, then I guess I've failed. What do I do, Dian Xia? No matter how I explain it, you won't believe me anymore."

Xie Yuan's pupils trembled slightly.

Even now, every time Shen Lian spoke with such apparent sincerity, it could still instantly give him a strange sense of security.

Just like the feeling that foolish little imperial doctor had given him before.

The only difference was that he now knew Shen Lian's true face.

Why? How could such a liar, in every move and every word, always make Xie Yuan feel a sincerity and comfort he'd never experienced before?

It was precisely because of these faint joys that he had fallen step by step.

He had taken a hard fall once, yet he could still be moved by this doctor's words and gaze—was he an idiot?

"You think I don't want to believe you?" Xie Yuan looked at him. "You had all those days on the road back from Gusu to the capital to come up with a more plausible excuse. You could have pinned the blame on any of First Brother's or Second Brother's factions, but instead you made up some story about a god forcing you to write that letter. How am I supposed to believe that?"

"But that's the real reason I wrote it. As long as it doesn't threaten my life, I don't want to make up lies to deceive you. No matter how absurd the truth is, I'll tell you directly."

Shen Lian spoke softly, pained and hopeless. "If I hadn't written that letter, you might have lost your resolve to fight for the succession, because you wouldn't have suffered the disaster at Fenggu Valley, and your allies wouldn't have been purged while you were kicked while you were down.

It was me who warned you to watch for an ambush, which let you avoid that catastrophe. If I couldn't ignite your drive to compete for the throne, I would have been punished by heaven and left this world. I'm not particularly afraid of death, but I worry that you and my family would grieve."

Xie Yuan frowned, and to his own surprise, actually mulled over Shen Lian's absurd explanation once more.

There could indeed have been an ambush at Fenggu Valley, but no one could confirm it now.

That day, Xie Yuan had disregarded the old general's counsel and ordered the army to retreat urgently. Upon reflection, part of that decision had indeed been vaguely influenced by the little imperial doctor's repeated warnings in the letter not to follow Prince Qi to Fenggu Valley.

Could Shen Lian truly foresee the future?

Once you're in love, you get stupid easy to fool. Any crazy excuse, as long as it came from the little doctor, sounded like it made sense.

Otherwise, why would the King Zhou be the only one in the entire nation who didn't believe Daji was a fox spirit?

The Crown Prince forced himself to stop overthinking, buying the young imperial physician's explanation for now. "So according to you, the gods in heaven want me to contend for the throne? I've lived all these years and never once felt the heavens were this sweet on me."

"The heavens don't play favorites." Shen Lian couldn't clearly explain the system's intentions.

He'd pored over every line of the system's instructions before.

The system came from a galaxy that was a fourth-level civilization.

To them, the most valuable energy wasn't stellar—it was the three-dimensional matter-energy produced when conscious observation collapsed microscopic particles out of a superposition state.

Lower civilizations couldn't use this energy—couldn't even wrap their heads around it.

It could be used to build causality weapons.

They plucked historical events from lower civilizations' galaxies that could stir up massive emotional resonance, broadcasting them to countless galaxies at once, so conscious beings in lower civilizations kept feeding them causal energy—boosting their efficiency.

Running on that energy, the system would map out the fate lines of chosen figures in those events, locking "the chosen ones" onto paths that would squeeze out the most resonance.

A fate could be smooth sailing or a total tragedy.

The ones who sparked the strongest emotional resonance were usually the most powerful people of their eras—who ended up dying miserably.

The system didn't know good from evil.

It just picked a top-tier destiny based on tons of past cases, pushing the "chosen one" to keep the causal energy flowing for their civilization.

The destiny that put Xie Yuan on the throne went from rock bottom to the top—but left him unable to trust a soul for the rest of his life. It fit the "beautiful, strong, and tragic" energy-source formula perfectly.

The system loved this kind of path most, because the lingering regret it created kept the energy flowing across all times and spaces.

Honestly, the system didn't give a damn about Xie Yuan—it was just a courier hauling energy sources.

These crazy system explanations were hard enough for Shen Lian, a guy from the future, to get—so how was he supposed to explain them to the young male concubine?

The more he explained, the more it sounded like nonsense.

Shen Lian slowly reached out, trying to loop his arms around Xie Yuan's neck.

He didn't resist.

"Dian Xia, you can pretend to believe me for now. Once I survive this assassination and the higher-ups give up their control over you, I'll be able to reopen the mysterious space and perform tricks for you. Then you'll believe me."

Xie Yuan said, "You're boiling the frog nice and slow. No, I won't pretend to believe you. You still have debts to repay."

Shen Lian startled and withdrew his hand. "My father and brother could come home any moment! What are you planning to do in my family's courtyard?"

"I hadn't thought of that, but since you've reminded me," Xie Yuan stepped forward, pulling the man into his embrace, "let's see if the disgraced Lord Shen can get back in line before his old man comes home."