"I can't go on living!"
"Minister Yun's youngest daughter has teamed up with the Eldest Princess to develop a crop called the potato, boasting a yield of over ten thousand catties per mu, a short growth cycle, strong satiety, and the versatility to serve as either a staple food or a vegetable."
"My father and I made a scene in front of the emperor, crying and wailing, banging our heads until they were practically bruised and battered before finally begging the sage to relent and make the Prince of Beiping's Residence the sole experimental potato-cultivation site in all of the Li Kingdom."
"Wuwuwuwu, and as a result... wuwuwuwu... I have failed my father... wuwuwuwu... I have failed the Eldest Princess... wuwuwuwu... I have failed His Majesty..."
This unbroken string of wuwuwus pierced the ears like magic music, making the onlookers feel as though their heads were left ringing with nothing but the sound of crying.
"County Princess Luoshui, what on earth happened at your estate?"
"County Princess Luoshui, do you really have a crop like that in your manor?"
"County Princess Luoshui, could you please finish what you're saying before you cry?"
They were halfway through eating melons when the protagonist stopped talking and simply focused on weeping.
The onlookers, who had previously only been opening their front gates and sticking their heads out to watch the commotion, now had no choice but to come over to her side. Those tasked with comforting people tried to comfort her, while those peeking secretly into the residence stretched their necks as if trying to turn into giraffes.
"Wuwuwuwu, my second uncle's younger sister and my second grandfather's grandson actually ran over to steal potato seeds! And they even said that if I didn't share them, they would drag the whole clan down with us."
"Even if we sacrificed our entire clan to cultivate the potatoes, we would have no complaints, but the two of them stole the potato seeds with the intention of selling this high-yield crop to other surrounding countries!"
"The subjects of our own Li Kingdom haven't even tasted this rare treasure yet, so why should we satisfy their selfish desires? That's why, even though they shifted all the blame onto our family down at the Jingzhao Prefecture, we will never hand over the potato seeds."
Wenren Luoshui wiped away her tears. Her eyes were red and swollen, yet she spoke in a resolute and powerful tone.
"The people regard food as their heaven. The seeds that the Eldest Princess, His Majesty, and Lady Yun went through untold hardships to find-if our Prince of Beiping's Residence fails to grow them, it is our Prince of Beiping's Residence's incompetence. But we will return every single seed to the imperial court. If even a single potato is missing, then cut off one of this county princess's fingers! If my hands and feet aren't enough to chop off, I still have my father, my stepmother, and my younger brother. We will definitely guard our moral bottom line!"
"Well said! County Princess Luoshui is truly worthy of being a descendant of the Prince of Beiping! Such character is beyond the reach of ordinary women."
A warm yet penetrating male voice drifted over. She looked in the direction of the voice and realized she found this person rather familiar.
Yet she could not remember where she had seen him.
"The Imperial Preceptor!"
"Lord Imperial Preceptor has emerged from secluded cultivation?!"
The Imperial Preceptor?
Wenren Luoshui had only ever heard rumors that the Li Kingdom possessed an Imperial Preceptor, but in all the dozen-odd years she had lived in the Li Kingdom, she had never laid eyes on him once.
Word had it that he had always been in seclusion-he had practically been shut away for fifty years!
Yet before her stood a man with skin as lustrous as jade, his face showing not the slightest sign of losing its youthful plumpness, and a pair of jet-black pupils that seemed capable of seeing straight into the human heart upon meeting his gaze.
The man walked slowly toward me, and Wenren Luoshui constantly felt that the vibe he gave her was extremely familiar, only she simply could not recall where on earth she had seen him.
"Little girl, you don't even know to pay your respects when you see your Junior Martial Uncle?"
????
After walking over to Wenren Luoshui's side, the Imperial Preceptor leaned close to her ear and whispered.
Wenren Luoshui failed to react for a moment, freezing in place with a single teardrop still hanging from her eyelashes, lingering on the verge of falling like someone dancing on the edge of a cliff.
Junior Martial Uncle?
If her memory served her right, that man whom she was permitted to call Junior Martial Uncle had suddenly vanished when she was ten years old. No matter how the people in the metaphysics community searched, they had never found a trace of him.
So how on earth had this Junior Martial Uncle managed to come over here?
"This Imperial Preceptor cast a divination today, and the hexagrams say that the chosen ones capable of making the national power of the Li Kingdom soar have already appeared, manifesting respectively at the Prince of Beiping's Residence and Minister Yun's estate."
"Any monarch who secures the support of these two chosen ones will go down in history as an enlightened ruler."
Listening to her Junior Martial Uncle talk serious nonsense, Wenren Luoshui wondered how she, a cannon-fodder supporting female character, could possibly turn into a chosen one.
Why not just say that she and Yunjian were celestial maidens from the heavens sent down to reincarnate?
Catching the look of playful sarcasm in Wenren Luoshui's eyes, the Junior Martial Uncle secretly glared fiercely at her with a look.
At the sight of that glare, Wenren Luoshui recalled the days when Junior Martial Uncle had relentlessly forced her to practice drawing talisman papers during her childhood, and she immediately lowered her head, obediently playing the quail.
The time this Imperial Preceptor had existed in the Li Kingdom surpassed even the founding history of the Li Kingdom itself.
Coupled with outside rumors, the Imperial Preceptor had already been mythologized in the hearts of the people.
In many households, people hung portraits not of Bodhisattvas, but of this very Imperial Preceptor.
Added to Wenren Luoshui's earlier commotion, everyone's rage toward Wenren Shuang and Wenren Bing made them want to beat these two ungrateful traitors to death.
Just at that moment, the Eldest Princess emerged from the manor with her men.
Many people ran back into their courtyards to grab rotten eggs and spoiled vegetable leaves, hurling them all at Wenren Shuang and Wenren Bing as if venting their spleen.
As for these two, one possessed a volatile temperament and considered herself above reproach.
The other firmly believed himself to be the protagonist of this world, never imagining he would ever encounter such a wretched and disheveled scene.
Buffeted by the stench of rotten eggs landing on her face until she felt dizzy, Wenren Shuang glared resentfully at Wenren Luoshui and roared.
"Wenren Luoshui, you won't die a good death! All of this was plotted by you, wasn't it?"
Unfortunately, outsiders now assumed that saying such things was merely her attempt to drag Wenren Luoshui down into the water and use her as a scapegoat.
Thus, the rotten eggs were thrown even more fiercely!
Standing behind the Junior Martial Uncle, Wenren Luoshui pulled a funny face at Wenren Shuang.
Piss you off!
So what if you're the protagonist?
This young lady isn't even afraid of ghosts; why should she be afraid of a mere protagonist?
Wenren Shuang happened to catch her expression, and it infuriated her so much that she longed to break free from the Ironclad Guards, pounce upon Wenren Luoshui, and bite her to death.
The farce came to an end, but their chores were far from finished. Without standing on ceremony, Wenren Luoshui brought the Junior Martial Uncle straight into the manor.
An extra person meant an extra pair of hands for work.
Why not put free labor to use?
"Xiaoshui, are you and the Imperial Preceptor very close?"
With the original owner's memories intact, Yunjian naturally knew of the Imperial Preceptor. Seeing that the interaction between her best friend and the Imperial Preceptor looked quite intimate, she could not resist leaning close to her ear to ask.
"He's that Junior Martial Uncle of mine who vanished without a trace."
At Wenren Luoshui's words, Yunjian immediately recalled the legendary metaphysical genius from her past life.
The Wenren family was a lineage of heavenly masters, yet producing two geniuses consecutively within the exact same time period was exceedingly rare even in history.
Aside from Wenren Luoshui, the other genius produced by the Wenren family was precisely this Junior Martial Uncle of hers.
Word had it that his talent even surpassed Wenren Luoshui's, but unfortunately, he had later mysteriously disappeared.
Leading the men to the back garden, Wenren Luoshui and Yunjian stood on zero ceremony-one shoved potatoes into the Junior Martial Uncle's hands, while the other shoved a hoe at him.
"Get to work, big brother."
In their past lives, the ages of these few people had not differed by much; the Junior Martial Uncle was only older than the two of them by a mere two years.
He had been an abandoned orphan picked up by the grand elder of the Wenren family. The grand elder never married throughout his life, and upon discovering that the boy possessed a genius for studying Daoist arts, he had happily gone through the process and paperwork to adopt the child.
Therefore, the three of them could well be said to have grown up together.