Great Wei Dynasty, Year 21 of Anhe, Shuzhou.
The spring sunlight was bright, and not a cloud stretched across the sky for ten thousand miles.
From a residence in the rear courtyard of Marquis Dingyuan's Xiao Manor came the faint, crisp sound of counting.
"...Twenty, twenty-one..."
"Fifty-two."
"...Fifty-three, fifty-four...one hundred."
"Son-in-law, you've copied the Family Rules a full hundred times already, and it only took fifteen days."
Chen Yi looked at Xiao Die's admiring face. Knowing she had not noticed the count was short, he suppressed a laugh and suggested, "How about you count it again?"
"Mhm, mhm. I'm the best at counting. Eldest Miss has praised me before—she even said she'd let me help with the accounts someday."
Those accounts would probably be difficult to tally correctly.
Chen Yi thought this to himself, but seeing how earnestly she counted, he did not interrupt her again and merely stood quietly to one side.
He wore a long azure robe. Though not exceptionally handsome, he was refined and clean-cut.
Coupled with the easygoing frankness that inadvertently seeped from him, he possessed a mild, unhurried air.
Xiao Die, by contrast, wore a short jacket and horse-face skirt. The two buns at the back of her head made her oval face especially adorable.
After watching for a while,
perhaps afraid that Xiao Die's serious counting would make him laugh, Chen Yi walked to the window and looked at the red lantern nearby, with the character "Joy" written upon it.
Fifteen days earlier,
he had transmigrated here and become the Xiao Family son-in-law—a son-in-law who had tried and failed to flee the marriage.
When he awoke, he had not been in this picturesque Chunhe Garden, but in the Disciplinary Hall of Xiao Manor.
In his muddled state, he only remembered many people around him glaring at him with vicious, cold expressions.
Vaguely, he heard voices that seemed both real and unreal.
Some said he should be beaten to death with rods. Some said he should be sent back to the Chen Family of Jiangnan. Others suggested stuffing him into a pig cage and drowning him.
The pig cage was going too far. He had only fled a marriage; he had not committed adultery and run away with someone.
It was not until his wife—whom he later learned from Xiao Die was his wife, Xiao Family Second Miss Xiao Jinghong—said:
"Since he has already become my husband, everything shall be decided by me."
Her voice was clear and clean, suppressing all the surrounding din and clamor.
After that, his wife punished him by making him copy the Xiao Family's Family Rules a thousand times and confining him for one hundred days.
A thousand times—easy to say. The entire Family Rules had a hundred characters. A thousand copies meant a hundred thousand characters. Even typing them on a computer would take more than ten days, let alone writing them here with nothing but a brush?
That was manageable, at least. Sooner or later, he would finish writing them.
The key was that after regaining consciousness, Chen Yi learned from his memories that he had been a famous talented scholar of Jiangnan Prefecture. He was proficient in the four arts of qin, chess, calligraphy, and painting, skilled in poetry, and his calligraphy had even received Master Juyi's praise at Jinling Academy.
The persona had been built too high. This ordinary corporate drudge had nearly been exposed by Xiao Die as soon as he began copying the Family Rules. In the end, he could only blame it on amnesia to muddle through for the time being.
But Chen Yi knew this was only a delaying tactic.
Xiao Die was simple-minded, but the others in Xiao Manor were no fools.
Especially his wife—the female general Xiao Jinghong, who had joined the army in her father's stead at fifteen and slaughtered the Barbarian Tribe so badly by eighteen that they threw down their armor and fled.
If she saw his handwriting, which looked like a dog crawling across the page, she would probably deal with him under military law on the spot.
Fortunately, after more than ten days of hard work, his calligraphy had improved considerably—
Name: Chen Yi Way of Calligraphy: Proficient (5/100) Font: Wei Qing (Proficient) Fortune: 0 [Daily Intelligence · Yellow Grade, Lower Rank: At noon, Xiao Wan'er, Eldest Miss of Marquis Dingyuan's mansion, will settle the mansion accounts and discover that the butler in charge of purchases has been lining his own pockets. She will then expel him from the family. A small amount of Fortune may be obtained.]
Chen Yi swept a glance over the illusory screen, stood with his hands behind his back, and looked up at the sky as he began counting down:
"Ten, nine, eight..."
Xiao Die seemed to hear him.
"Forty-three...eleven, ten, nine, eight...ah, son-in-law, don't mess with me! I counted wrong again."
[Fortune +1.] [Evaluation: The person has not arrived, the voice has not been heard, the scene has not been seen—yet Fortune falls from the heavens, and he does not take it. Truly a naturally lazy fellow.]
Ignoring the "lazy" evaluation, Chen Yi skillfully added the Fortune point to his Way of Calligraphy, then turned toward the pouting Xiao Die and said with a smile:
"My fault. I was only thinking that it was time to eat."
At the word "eat," Xiao Die's eyes lit up, and a trace of bashfulness appeared on her pretty face.
"Son-in-law, the mansion's chef made butter pastries at noon, and there's stewed fish too..."
"Fish is good." Knowing she was craving it again, Chen Yi blinked teasingly. "Why don't you go hurry them along? We can eat together."
"Alright!"
As though afraid he might change his mind, Xiao Die threw down the Yunsong Paper in her hands and ran out, not forgetting to remind the armored soldier at the door:
"Keep watch over son-in-law, understand?"
"Yes, Miss Xiao Die."
Catching sight of the armored soldier's thick arms, Chen Yi sighed, returned to his chair, leaned back, and looked at the beam overhead.
His calligraphy was more or less up to standard now, but he still lacked qin, chess, painting, and poetry.
Poetry was fine. With Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing behind him, he feared no one.
He knew absolutely nothing about the others. To avoid exposing himself, he had to make up for them one by one.
After considering it for a while, memories from this body surfaced in Chen Yi's mind.
Chen Yi, courtesy name Qingzhou, was born in Year 1 of Anhe to the Chen Family of Jiangnan Prefecture. His father was the current family head, Chen Xuanji.
Though he was merely a concubine-born son of the Chen Family, he had lived a fairly decent life since birth.
As a child, he studied with a teacher in the lineage school. He had been steeped in poetry and books from a young age, and later drew inferences from one instance to another, mastering the four arts of qin, chess, calligraphy, and painting.
At thirteen, the Imperial Court dispatched troops to Guangyue Prefecture to eliminate the coastal bandit scourge, and he wrote A Youth's Journey · Greeting the Banners.
At fifteen, his father was ordered to serve as envoy to the Western Regions Buddhist Kingdom, and he wrote Farewell in Jinling, earning praise throughout Jiangnan Prefecture: "Loyal and filial both, with poetry talent surpassing others."
But after that, his circumstances began to plunge downhill.
First, his mother died of illness. Then his Second Uncle Chen Xuandu became Provincial Administration Commissioner of Beizhou and rarely returned home, leaving all major and minor household matters in the hands of First Madam Cui Yu.
He truly endured two bitter years.
Not only was he confined to the house and forbidden from going out, he was not allowed to read, and he did not even have paper and brush for writing. As a result, he missed the most important imperial examination.
Chen Yi would not believe it if someone said he felt no hatred.
But what use was hatred? Chen Xuanji was absent, Chen Xuandu was absent, his mother was dead, and no one in the family could help him.
He could only grit his teeth and endure, waiting.
Yet before his father returned, Cui Yu arranged for him to marry into the Xiao Family of Marquis Dingyuan.
In truth, on the road from Jiangnan Prefecture to Shuzhou, he had considered taking his own life more than once.
But for the chance to take revenge and kill Cui Yu someday, he chose to accept the arrangement and marry into the Xiao Family.
"Unfortunately, in the end, he was still murdered."
Chen Yi knew that on the day of the wedding, the original owner had been controlled by some strange and bizarre method and forced to flee the marriage. He had already died before the Xiao Family found him.
If Chen Yi had not come here, the whole affair could never have remained as "peaceful" as it was now.
Perhaps the Chen Family and Xiao Family would have become enemies because of it. Perhaps the Xiao Family would have been saddled with the reputation of a "vicious family." Even Xiao Jinghong would have struggled to remain unscathed; the label of "shrew" would surely have been inescapable.
At that thought, a sense of suffocation rose in Chen Yi's chest. "He was someone with a bitter fate too."
He sat up slightly, picked up a wolf-hair brush, dipped it in ink, and wrote:
Shuzhou Chant · Marrying into the Xiao Family
A bleak land of black mountains and Chishui, For more than twenty years, cast aside was I. Remembering old days, I idly marked Xiao Clan letters; Entering Shu, I became a man unbound. Beside a sunken boat, a thousand sails passed; Before a sick tree, ten thousand trees bloomed in spring. Today, hearing you sing this single tune, For now, I borrow wine to kindle my spirit anew.
After finishing, Chen Yi picked up the Yunsong Paper and blew the ink dry. He read it over once, then nodded in satisfaction.
As expected of me. Talent beyond measure.
But at some point, Xiao Die had appeared behind Chen Yi, carrying a steaming basin of beef in her hands. She looked at the poem, then at him.
She looked at the poem, then at him.
"Son-in-law..."
"Hm?" Chen Yi turned around.
Xiao Die stared blankly at him for a long while. When she finally came back to herself, she hurriedly ran out again with the basin of beef.
As she ran, she shouted, "This is bad, Eldest Miss, this is bad! Son-in-law wants to flee again!!"
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