In the Golden Throne Hall, the ministers were squabbling again. Wenren Luoshui stood among them, so bored she was nodding off.
[System, got any juicy gossip? Give me something to perk me up. I'm so sleepy.]
[Yunjian: System, can you play music? Put on "The Most Dazzling Little Apple" for us.]
[What the hell is that? If you're playing anything, it should be "Madam Shexiang."]
[Yunjian: What's wrong with "The Most Dazzling Little Apple"? It's great for waking you up!]
[The system is mine, so it has to listen to me.]
[Yunjian: You dictator!]
[So what? Hit me, then!]
The ministers: One Commandery Princess Luoshui was already enough of a headache, and now it turned out Little Lord Yun was cut from the same cloth as the Little Commandery Princess.
Listening to these two bicker during morning court every day really made them both love and hate the pair.
[Salty Fish System: I don't think I'm a speaker. Let me give you some gossip instead.]
[Yunjian: System, can you tell us some gossip from modern times? Or can you only dig up gossip from this era?]
[Salty Fish System: We systems keep in touch with each other too, you know!]
The moment someone questioned its abilities, the system bristled.
Hmph!
Did they think it was Hello Kitty just because it hadn't shown its claws?
The ministers: Oh! So this system could even dig up gossip from outside their era?
What were they to do?
They were getting so excited!
The two groups who had been arguing heard the system and the women's inner voices. Although they were still arguing on the surface, their voices had already dropped.
[Then tell us one, system. Let's hear it.]
[Salty Fish System: Hold on. I remember discussing some gossip with a friend just yesterday. Let me search my database.]
[Yunjian: Seriously? Seriously? You can't even remember the gossip your friend told you?]
[Can systems get senile dementia too?]
The system: ...
If it ever broke down, it would definitely be because these two had put it through the wringer.
The ministers: Poor system. Thank goodness they didn't have to endure these two questioning them like that.
[Salty Fish System: Found it, found it! This one's pretty melodramatic. A mother-in-law and her daughter-in-law got pregnant at the same time, and the daughter-in-law's family used her pregnancy as leverage to demand a higher bride price at the last minute.]
[Wait, the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law got pregnant at the same time, and then the daughter-in-law used her pregnancy to demand a higher bride price? If they haven't registered their marriage, wouldn't this daughter-in-law only count as the mother-in-law's son's girlfriend?]
[Yunjian: If I may ask, how old is this mother-in-law? In the time and place we used to live in, men had to be at least twenty-two to register a marriage, and women had to be twenty. If his mother married at twenty and had him that same year, wouldn't she be at least forty-two or forty-three?]
[What's so strange about that? Maybe the man's family is rich, and his mother went and had IVF?]
The ministers: Wait, there was a lot of information packed into this gossip.
What was IVF?
Why could IVF make someone pregnant?
Or could IVF solve the problem of infertility?
Also, how far in the future was this "future" they were talking about?
Why did both men and women have to be over twenty before they could marry?
In the Li Kingdom, a twenty-year-old man's children could already be attending school.
The rules of the future really were bizarre.
[Salty Fish System: Come on, it's just a bit of gossip. Why are you two taking it so seriously?]
[Aren't we just asking reasonable questions? Besides, this gossip is bizarre in the first place! Back in our time and place, if this got posted online, it would definitely become a trending topic.]
[Yunjian: Hahahaha! The comments would definitely be full of people blaming the woman again. Right or wrong, insulting the woman first is always the safest bet.]
[No, no, no. There are plenty of levelheaded people online these days too.]
[Salty Fish System: Do you two want to hear the rest or not?]
The ministers wondered: On what?
Online?
A line like a fishing line?
Why would they hang something like this on fishing lines? What good would hanging it there do?
Why were people in the future so weird?
[All right, all right, sweetie, you go ahead. We'll try not to interrupt.]
The system gave a haughty little huff, but dutifully continued telling the story.
[Salty Fish System: The man's family was quite wealthy. They owned a company. He and his girlfriend had been together since university and had dated for seven years. They only began taking the next step once both their careers were stable.]
[Salty Fish System: But a month before the couple's wedding, the woman's parents suddenly called the man's parents and said they wanted a higher bride price. They raised it from five hundred thousand to one million five hundred thousand.]
[Hiss! Would the man's family agree to such an unreasonable demand? That's three times the original amount!]
[Yunjian: If that were my son, he could either break up with that girl or stop calling me his mother! How can they just change something that's already been agreed on? They aren't even married yet, and her family is already testing their limits. Who knows whether they'll do something even worse after the wedding?]
Yunjian made a well-reasoned argument, and Wenren Luoshui kept nodding beside her.
Anyone who could go back on an agreement like that was bound to have plenty of schemes in mind.
If they didn't break up now, their married life wouldn't be particularly harmonious either.
[Salty Fish System: The key thing is, the woman's family also said this money was for her parents' retirement. When she married, none of the bride price would go with her to the couple's own home.]
Wenren Luoshui wondered whether she had misheard and asked incredulously.
[Her parents meant they wouldn't give the bride a single cent? Would she agree to that?]
[Salty Fish System: The man's parents were curious too, so they asked the woman whether she really agreed with her parents doing this. She huddled behind her parents, looking pitiful, and quietly said she would do whatever they told her.]
[If she's so obedient to her parents, why date anyone? Why get married? Why not just spend her whole life with them?]
[Yunjian: Because her life wouldn't be complete that way!]
The ministers listening to the gossip: That was an option?
Here, whatever dowry the bride's family agreed to provide was what they provided.
Occasionally, a family would slap its own face swollen to pass for plump, padding out the dowry procession with empty show.
But the contents would certainly match the items on the dowry list.
Did people in the future conduct themselves so shamelessly?
[How did the man's parents resolve this in the end?]
[Yunjian: If I were his parents, faced with such shameless in-laws and a son who refused to break up, I'd make him go out to work and earn that money himself. He picked his own wife, after all.]
[Hahahaha! Then he'd resent you and think you, his mother, had ruined his life. Why didn't you stop him when he took the wrong path?]
[Yunjian: Then that ungrateful wretch of a son would stab me to death when my guard was down.]
Wenren Luoshui continued, [Then I was reborn. This time, I wanted neither my cowardly husband nor my ungrateful son.]
[Yunjian: I chose to divorce my husband and stopped interfering with my son, watching their antics from the sidelines.]
[In the end, my husband's company went bankrupt, and my son came crying to me, begging me to take him back. But I simply tossed him one airy remark.]
[Yunjian: My light boat has already sailed past ten thousand mountains!]
Wenren Luoshui and Yunjian exchanged a glance and spoke in unison in their minds.
[Together: Brilliant!]
Their voices were so obnoxious and begging for a beating that the ministers listening around them broke out in goosebumps at that final sound.